She struggled for a moment, and a tear flowed down her cheek. “You told me that you loved me.”
“I was sorry for you. That day in Valentine’s kitchen, all right? But the truth is I was probably just trying to impress Valentine. The other Valentine. Show her what a good guy I am. She actually has some of those virtues—I care a lot about what she thinks of me. So . . . I fell in love with being the kind of guy who was worthy of Valentine’s respect. That’s as close to loving you as I ever got. And then we found out what our real mission was and suddenly you aren’t dying anymore and here I am, stuck with having said I loved you and now I’ve got to keep going and going to maintain the fiction even as it becomes clearer and clearer that I miss Jane, I miss her so desperately that it hurts, and the only reason I can’t have her back is because you won’t let go—”
“Please,” said Val. “It hurts too much. I didn’t think you—I—”
“Miro,” said Quara, “this is the shittiest thing I’ve ever seen anybody do to anybody else and I’ve seen some doozies.”
“Shut up, Quara,” said Ela.
“Oh, who made you queen of the starship?” retorted Quara.
“This isn’t about you,” said Ela.
“I know, it’s about Miro the complete bastard—”
Firequencher launched himself gently from his seat and in a moment had his strong hand clamped over Quara’s mouth. “This isn’t the time,” he said to her softly. “You understand nothing.”
She got her face free. “I understand enough to know that this is—”
Firequencher turned to the Hive Queen’s worker. “Help us,” he said.
The worker got up and with astonishing speed had Quara out of the main deck of the shuttle. Where the Hive Queen took Quara and how she restrained her were questions that didn’t even interest Miro. Quara was too self-centered to understand the little play that Miro and Val were acting out. But the others understood.
What mattered, though, was that Val not understand. Val had to believe that he meant what he was saying now. It had almost been working before Quara interrupted. But now they had lost the thread.
“Val,” said Miro wearily, “it doesn’t matter what I say. Because you’ll never let go. And you know why? Because you aren’t Val. You’re Ender. And even though Ender can wipe out whole planets in order to save the human race, his own life is sacred. He’ll never give it up. Not one scrap. And that includes you—he’ll never let go of you. Because you’re the last and greatest of his delusions. If he gives you up, he’ll lose his last hope of really being a good man.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Val. “The only way he can be a really good man is to give me up.”
“That’s my point,” said Miro. “He isn’t a really good man. So he can’t give you up. Even to attempt to prove his virtue. Because the tie of the aiúa to the body can’t be faked. He can fool everybody else, but he can’t fool your body. He’s just not good enough to let you go.”
“So it’s Ender that you hate, not me.”
“No, Val, I don’t hate Ender. He’s an imperfect guy, that’s all. Like me, like everybody else. Like the real Valentine, for that matter. Only you have the illusion of perfection—but that’s fine, because you’re not real. You’re just Ender in drag, doing his Valentine bit. You come off the stage and there’s nothing there, it comes off like makeup and a costume. And you really believed I was in love with that?”
Val swiveled on her chair, turning her back to him. “I almost believe you mean these things,” she said.
“What I can’t believe,” said Miro, “is that I’m saying them out loud. But that’s what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it? For me to be honest with you for the first time, so maybe you could be honest with yourself and realize that what you have isn’t a life at all, it’s just a perpetual confession of Ender’s inadequacy as a human being. You’re the childhood innocence he thinks he lost, but here’s the truth about that: Before they ever took him away from his parents, before he ever went up to that Battle School in the sky, before they made a perfect killing machine out of him, he was already the brutal, ruthless killer that he always feared he was. It’s one of the things that even Ender tries to pretend isn’t so: He killed a boy before he ever became a soldier. He kicked that boy’s head in. Kicked him and kicked him and the kid never woke up. His parents never saw him alive again. The kid was a prick but he didn’t deserve to die. Ender was a killer from the start. That’s the thing that he can’t live with. That’s the reason he needs you. That’s the reason he needs Peter. So he can take the ugly ruthless killer side of himself and put it all on Peter. And he can look at perfect you and say, ‘See, that beautiful thing was inside me.’ And we all play along. But you’re not beautiful, Val. You’re the pathetic apologia of a man whose whole life is a lie.”
Val broke down sobbing.
Almost, almost Miro had compassion and stopped. Almost he shouted at her, No, Val, it’s you I love, it’s you I want! It’s you I longed for all my life and Ender is a good man because all this nonsense about you being a pretense is impossible. Ender didn’t create you consciously, the way hypocrites create their facades. You grew out of him. The virtues were there, are there, and you are the natural home for them. I already loved and admired Ender, but not until I met you did I know how beautiful he was inside.
Her back was to him. She couldn’t see the torment that he felt.
“What is it, Val? Am I supposed to pity you again? Don’t you understand that the only conceivable value that you have to any of us is if you just go away and let Jane have your body? We don’t need you, we don’t want you. Ender’s aiúa belongs in Peter’s body because that’s the only one that has a chance of acting out Ender’s true character. Get lost, Val. When you’re gone, we have a chance to live. While you’re here, we’re all dead. Do you think for one second that we’ll miss you? Think again.”
I will never forgive myself for saying these things, Miro realized. Even though I know the necessity of helping Ender let go of this body by making this an unbearable place for him to stay, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ll remember saying it, I’ll remember the way she looks now, weeping with despair and pain. How can I live with that? I thought I was deformed before. All I had wrong with me then was brain damage. But now—I couldn’t have said any of these things to her if I hadn’t thought of them. There’s the rub. I thought of these terrible things to say. That’s the kind of man I am.
Ender opened his eyes again, then reached a hand up to touch Novinha’s face, the bruises there. He moaned to see Valentine and Plikt, too. “What did I do to you?”
“It wasn’t you,” said Novinha. “It was her.”
“It was me,” he said. “I meant to let her have . . . something. I meant to, but when it came right down to it, I was afraid. I couldn’t do it.” He looked away from them, closed his eyes. “She tried to kill me. She tried to drive me out.”
“You were both working way below the level of consciousness,” said Valentine. “Two strong-willed aiúas, unable to back off from life. That’s not so terrible.”
“What, and you were just standing too close?”
“That’s right,” said Valentine.
“I hurt you,” said Ender. “I hurt all three of you.”
“We don’t hold people responsible for convulsions,” said Novinha.
Ender shook his head. “I’m talking about . . . before. I lay there listening. Couldn’t move my body, couldn’t make a sound, but I could hear. I know what I did to you. All three of you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Valentine. “We all chose our lives. I could have stayed on Earth in the first place, you know. Didn’t have to follow you. I proved that when I stayed with Jakt. You didn’t cost me anything—I’ve had a brilliant career and a wonderful life, and much of that is because I was with you. As for Plikt, well, we finally saw—much to my relief, I might add—that she isn’t always in complete control of herself. Still, you never asked
her to follow you here. She chose what she chose. If her life is wasted, well, she wasted it the way she wanted to and that’s none of your business. As for Novinha—”
“Novinha is my wife,” said Ender. “I said I wouldn’t leave her. I tried not to leave her.”
“You haven’t left me,” Novinha said.
“Then what am I doing in this bed?”
“You’re dying,” said Novinha.
“My point exactly,” said Ender.
“But you were dying before you came here,” she said. “You were dying from the moment that I left you in anger and came here. That was when you realized, when we both realized, that we weren’t building anything together anymore. Our children aren’t young. One of them is dead. There’ll be no others. Our work now doesn’t coincide at any point.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s right to end the—”
“As long as we both shall live,” said Novinha. “I know that, Andrew. You keep the marriage alive for your children, and then when they’re grown up you stay married for everybody else’s children, so they grow up in a world where marriages are permanent. I know all that, Andrew. Permanent—until one of you dies. That’s why you’re here, Andrew. Because you have other lives that you want to live, and because of some miraculous fluke you actually have the bodies to live them in. Of course you’re leaving me. Of course.”
“I keep my promise,” Ender said.
“Till death,” said Novinha. “No longer than that. Do you think I won’t miss you when you’re gone? Of course I will. I’ll miss you as any widow misses her beloved husband. I’ll miss you whenever I tell stories about you to our grandchildren. It’s good for a widow to miss her husband. It gives shape to her life. But you—the shape of your life comes from them. From your other selves. Not from me. Not anymore. I don’t begrudge that, Andrew.”
“I’m afraid,” said Ender. “When Jane drove me out, I’ve never felt such fear. I don’t want to die.”
“Then don’t stay here, because staying in this old body and with this old marriage, Andrew, that would be the real death. And me, watching you, knowing that you don’t really want to be here, that would be a kind of death for me.”
“Novinha, I do love you, that’s not pretense, all the years of happiness we had together, that was real—like Jakt and Valentine it was real. Tell her, Valentine.”
“Andrew,” said Valentine, “please remember. She left you.”
Ender looked at Valentine. Then at Novinha, long and hard. “That’s true, isn’t it. You left me. I made you take me.”
Novinha nodded.
“But I thought—I thought you needed me. Still.”
Novinha shrugged. “Andrew, that’s always been the problem. I needed you, but not out of duty. I don’t need you because you have to keep your word to me. Bit by bit, seeing you every day, knowing that it’s duty that keeps you, how do you think that will help me, Andrew?”
“You want me to die?”
“I want you to live,” said Novinha. “To live. As Peter. That’s a fine young boy with a long life ahead of him. I wish him well. Be him now, Andrew. Leave this old widow behind. You’ve done your duty to me. And I know you do love me, as I still love you. Dying doesn’t deny that.”
Ender looked at her, believing her, wondering if he was right to believe her. She means it; how can she mean it; she’s saying what she thinks I want her to say; but what she says is true. Back and forth, around and around the questions played in his mind.
But then at some point he lost interest in the questions and he fell asleep.
That’s how it felt to him. Fell asleep.
The three women around his bed saw his eyes close. Novinha even sighed, thinking that she had failed. She even started to turn away. But then Plikt gasped. Novinha turned back around. Ender’s hair had all come loose. She reached up to where it was sliding from his scalp, wanting to touch him, to make it be all right again, but knowing that the best thing she could do would be not to touch him, not to waken him, to let him go.
“Don’t watch this,” murmured Valentine. But none of them made a move to go. They watched, not touching, not speaking again, as his skin sagged against his bones, as it dried and crumbled, as he turned to dust under the sheets, on the pillow, and then even the dust crumbled until it was too fine to see. Nothing there. No one there at all, except the dead hair that had fallen away from him first.
Valentine reached down and began to sweep the hair into a pile. For a moment Novinha was revolted. Then she understood. They had to bury something. They had to have a funeral and lay what was left of Andrew Wiggin in the ground. Novinha reached out and helped. And when Plikt also took up a few stray hairs, Novinha did not shun her, but took those hairs into her own hands, as she took the ones that Valentine had gathered. Ender was free. Novinha had freed him. She had said the things she had to say to let him go.
Was Valentine right? Would this be different, in the long run, from the other ones that she had loved and lost? Later she would know. But now, today, this moment, all she could feel was the sick weight of grief inside her. No, she wanted to cry. No, Ender, it wasn’t true, I still need you, duty or oathkeeping, whatever it takes, I still want you with me, no one ever loved me as you loved me and I needed that, I needed you, where are you now, where are you when I love you so?
She leapt back out of the web that had so gently, kindly held her; it clung to her; I will be back, she thought, I will be back to you, but not to stay so long again; it hurts you when I stay so long.
She leapt and found herself again with that familiar aiúa that she had been entwined with for three thousand years. He seemed lost, confused. One of the bodies was missing, that was it. The old one. The old familiar shape. He was barely holding on to the other two. He had no root or anchor. In neither of them did he feel that he belonged. He was a stranger in his own flesh.
She approached him. This time she knew better than before what she was doing, how to control herself. This time she held back, she didn’t take anything that was his. She gave him no challenge to his possession. Just came near.
And in his uncertainty she was familiar to him. Uprooted from his oldest home, he was able now to see that, yes, he knew her, had known her for a long time. He came closer to her, unafraid of her. Yes, closer, closer.
Follow me.
She leapt into the Valentine body. He followed her. She passed through without touching, without tasting the life of it; it was his to touch, his to taste. He felt the limbs of her, the lips and tongue; he opened the eyes and looked; he thought her thoughts; he heard her memories.
Tears in the eyes, down the cheeks. Deep grief in the heart. I can’t bear to be here, he thought. I don’t belong. No one wants me here. They all want me out of here and gone.
The grief tore at him, pushed him away. It was an unbearable place for him.
The aiúa that had once been Jane now reached out, tentatively, and touched a single spot, a single cell.
He grew alarmed, but only for a moment. This isn’t mine, he thought. I don’t belong here. It’s yours. You can have it.
She led him here and there inside this body, always touching, taking mastery of it; only this time instead of fighting her, he gave control of it to her, over and over. I’m not wanted here. Take it. Have joy with it. It’s yours. It never was my own.
She felt the flesh become herself, more and more of it, the cells by hundreds, thousands, moving their allegiance from the old master who no longer wanted to be there, to the new mistress who worshipped them. She did not say to them, You are mine, the way she had tried to when she came here b
efore. Instead her cry now was, I am yours; and then, finally, you are me.
She was astonished with the wholeness of this body. She realized, now, that until this moment she had never been a self before. What she had for all those centuries was an apparatus, not a self. She had been on life support, waiting for a life. But now, trying on the arms like sleeves, she found that yes, her arms were this long; yes, this tongue, these lips move just where my tongue and lips must move.
And then, seeping into her awareness, claiming her attention—which had once been divided among ten thousand thoughts at once—came memories that she had never known before. Memories of speech with lips and breath. Memories of sights with eyes, sounds with ears. Memories of walking, running.
And then the memories of people. Standing in that first starship, seeing her first sight—of Andrew Wiggin, the look on his face, the wonder as he saw her, as he looked back and forth between her and—
And Peter.
Ender.
Peter.
She had forgotten. She had been so caught up in this new self she found that she forgot the lost aiúa who had given it to her. Where was he?
Lost, lost. Not in the other one, not anywhere, how could she have lost him? How many seconds, minutes, hours had he been away? Where was he?
Darting away from the body, from herself that called itself Val, she probed, she searched, but could not find.
He’s dead. I lost him. He gave me this life and he had no way of holding on then, yet I forgot him and he’s gone.
But then she remembered he had been gone before. When she chased him through his three bodies and at last he leapt away for a moment, it was that leap that had led her to the lacework of the web of trees. He would do it again, of course. He would leap to the only other place he had ever leapt to.
She followed him and he was there, but not where she had been, not among the mothertrees, nor even among the fathertrees. Not among the trees at all. No, he had followed where she hadn’t wanted then to go, along the thick and ropey twines that led to them; no, not to them, to her. The Hive Queen. The one that he had carried in her dry cocoon for three thousand years, world to world, until at last he found a home for her. Now she at last returned the gift; when Jane’s aiúa probed along the twines that led to her, there he was, uncertain, lost.
The Ender Quintet (Omnibus) Page 155