Children of the Mind

by Orson Scott Card

  Have I lost my mind?

  Or have I, finally, found my heart?

  She was suddenly filled with unaccustomed emotion. All her life she had kept her own feelings at such a distance from herself that now she hardly knew how to contain them. I love him, though Wang-mu, and her heart nearly burst with the intensity of her passion. He will never love me, thought Wang-mu, and her heart broke as it had never broken in all the thousand disappointments of her life.

  My love for him is nothing compared to his need for her, his knowledge of her. For his ties to her are deeper than these past few weeks since he was conjured into existence on that first voyage Outside. In all the lonely years of Ender's wandering, Jane was his most constant friend, and that is the love that now pours out of Peter's eyes with tears. I am nothing to him, I'm a latecome afterthought to his life, I have seen only a part of him and my love was nothing to him in the end.

  She, too, wept.

  But she turned away from Peter when a cry went up from the Samoans standing on the beach. She looked with tear-weary eyes out over the waves, and rose to her feet so she could be sure she saw what they were seeing. It was Malu's ship. He had turned back to them. He was coming back.

  Had he seen something? Had he heard whatever cry it was from Jane that Peter was hearing now?

  Grace was beside her, holding her hand. "Why is he coming back?" she asked Wang-mu.

  "You're the one who understands him," said Wang-mu.

  "I don't understand him at all," said Grace. "Except his words; I know the ordinary meanings of his words. But when he speaks, I can feel the words straining to contain the things he wants to say, and they can't do it. They aren't large enough, those words of his, even though he speaks in our largest language, even though he builds the words together into great baskets of meaning, into boats of thought. I can only see the outer shape of the words and guess at what he means. I don't understand him at all."

  "Why then do you think I do?"

  "Because he's coming back to speak to you."

  "He comes back to speak to Peter. He's the one connected to the god, as Malu calls her."

  "You don't like this god of his, do you," said Grace.

  Wang-mu shook her head. "I have nothing against her. Except that she owns him, and so there's nothing left for me."

  "A rival," said Grace.

  Wang-mu sighed. "I grew up expecting nothing and getting less. But I always had ambition far beyond my reach. Sometimes I reached anyway, and caught in my hands more than I deserved, more than I could handle. Sometimes I reach and never touch the thing I want."

  "You want him?"

  "I only just realized that I want him to love me as I love him. He was always angry, always stabbing at me with his words, but he worked beside me and when he praised me I believed his praise."

  "I would say," said Grace, "that your life till now has not been perfectly simple."

  "Not true," said Wang-mu. "Till now, I have had nothing that I didn't need, and needed nothing that I didn't have."

  "You have needed everything you didn't have," said Grace, "and I can't believe that you're so weak that you won't reach for it even now."

  "I lost him before I found I wanted him," she said. "Look at him."

  Peter rocked back and forth, whispering, subvocalizing, his litany an endless conversation with his dying friend.

  "I look at him," said Grace, "and I see that he's right there, in flesh and blood, and so are you, right here, in flesh and blood, and I can't see how a smart girl like you could say that he is gone when your eyes must surely tell you that he's not."

  Wang-mu looked up at the enormous woman who loomed over her like a mountain range, looked up into her luminous eyes, and glared. "I never asked you for advice."

  "I never asked you, either, but you came here to try to get me to change my mind about the Lusitania Fleet, didn't you? You wanted to get Malu to get me to say something to Aimaina so he'd say something to the Necessarians of Divine Wind so they'd say something to the faction of Congress that hungers for their respect, and the coalition that sent the fleet will fall apart and they'll order it to leave Lusitania untouched. Wasn't that the plan?"

  Wang-mu nodded.

  "Well, you deceived yourself. You can't know from the outside what makes a person choose the things they choose. Aimaina wrote to me, but I have no power over him. I taught him the way of Ua Lava, yes, but it was Ua Lava that he followed, he doesn't follow me. He followed it because it felt true to him. If I suddenly started explaining that Ua Lava also meant not sending fleets to wipe out planets, he'd listen politely and ignore me, because that would have nothing to do with the Ua Lava he believes in. He would see it, correctly, as an attempt by an old friend and teacher to bend him to her will. It would be the end of the trust between us, and still it wouldn't change his mind."

  "So we failed," said Wang-mu.

  "I don't know if you failed or not," said Grace. "Lusitania isn't blown up yet. And how do you know if that was ever really your purpose for coming here?"

  "Peter said it was. Jane said so."

  "And how do they know what their purpose was?"

  "Well, if you want to go that far, none of us has any purpose at all," said Wang-mu. "Our lives are just our genes and our upbringing. We simply act out the script that was forced upon us."

  "Oh," said Grace, sounding disappointed. "I'm sorry to hear you say something so stupid."

  Again the great canoe was beached. Again Malu rose up from his seat and stepped out onto the sand. But this time--was it possible?--this time he seemed to be hurrying. Hurrying so fast that, yes, he lost a little bit of dignity. Indeed, slow as his progress was, Wang-mu felt that he was fairly bounding up the beach. And as she watched his eyes, saw where he was looking, she realized he was coming, not to Peter, but to her.

  Novinha woke up in the soft chair they had brought for her and for a moment she forgot where she was. During her days as xenobiologist, she had often fallen asleep in a chair in the laboratory, and so for a moment she looked around to see what it was that she was working on before she fell asleep. What problem was it she was trying to solve?

  Then she saw Valentine standing over the bed where Andrew lay. Where Andrew's body lay. His heart was somewhere else.

  "You should have wakened me," said Novinha.

  "I just arrived," said Valentine. "And I didn't have the heart to wake you. They said you almost never sleep."

  Novinha stood up. "Odd. It seems to me as if that's all I do."

  "Jane is dying," said Valentine.

  Novinha's heart leapt within her.

  "Your rival, I know," said Valentine.

  Novinha looked into the woman's eyes, to see if there was anger there, or mockery. But no. It was only compassion.

  "Trust me, I know how you feel," said Valentine. "Until I loved and married Jakt, Ender was my whole life. But I was never his. Oh, for a while in his childhood, I mattered most to him then--but that was poisoned because the military used me to get to him, to keep him going when he wanted to give up. And after that, it was always Jane who heard his jokes, his observations, his inmost thoughts. It was Jane who saw what he saw and heard what he heard. I wrote my books, and when they were done I had his attention for a few hours, a few weeks. He used my ideas and so I felt he carried a part of me inside him. But he was hers."

  Novinha nodded. She did understand.

  "But I have Jakt, and so I'm not unhappy anymore. And my children. Much as I loved Ender, powerful man that he is, even lying here like this, even fading away--children are more to a woman than any man can be. We pretend otherwise. We pretend we bear them for him, that we raise them for him. But it's not true. We raise them for themselves. We stay with our men for the children's sake." Valentine smiled. "You did."

  "I stayed with the wrong man," said Novinha.

  "No, you stayed with the right one. Your Libo, he had a wife and other children--she was the one, they were the ones who had a right to claim him. You s
tayed with another man for your own children's sake, and even though they hated him sometimes, they also loved him, and even though in some ways he was weak, in others he was strong. It was good for you to have him for their sake. It was a kind of protection for them all along."

  "Why are you saying these things to me?"

  "Because Jane is dying," said Valentine, "but she might live if only Ender would reach out to her."

  "Put the jewel back into his ear?" said Novinha scornfully.

  "They're long past needing that," said Valentine. "Just as Ender is long past needing to live this life in this body."

  "He's not so old," said Novinha.

  "Three thousand years," said Valentine.

  "That's just the relativity effect," said Novinha. "Actually he's--"

  "Three thousand years," said Valentine again. "All of humanity was his family for most of that time; he was like a father away on a business trip, who comes home only now and then, but when he's there, he's the good judge, the kind provider. That's what happened each time he dipped back down into a human world and spoke the death of someone; he caught up on all the family doings he had missed. He's had a life of three thousand years, and he saw no end of it, and he got tired. So at last he left that large family and he chose your small one; he loved you, and for your sake he set aside Jane, who had been like his wife in all those years of his wandering, she'd been at home, so to speak, mothering all his trillions of children, reporting to him on what they were doing, tending house."

  "And her own works praise her in the gates," said Novinha.

  "Yes, the virtuous woman. Like you."

  Novinha tossed her head in scorn. "Never me. My own works mocked me in the gates."

  "He chose you and he loved you and he loved your children and he was their father, those children who had lost two fathers already; and he still is their father, and he still is your husband, but you don't really need him anymore."

  "How can you say that?" demanded Novinha, furious. "How do you know what I need?"

  "You know it yourself. You knew it when you came here. You knew it when Estevao died in the embrace of that rogue fathertree. Your children were leading their own lives now and you couldn't protect them and neither could Ender. You still loved him, he still loved you, but the family part of your life was over. You didn't really need him anymore."

  "He never needed me."

  "He needed you desperately," said Valentine. "He needed you so much he gave up Jane for you."

  "No," said Novinha. "He needed my need for him. He needed to feel like he was providing for me, protecting me."

  "But you don't need his providence or his protection anymore," said Valentine.

  Novinha shook her head.

  "Wake him up," said Valentine, "and let him go."

  Novinha thought at once of all the times she had stood at graveside. She remembered the funeral of her parents, who died for the sake of saving Milagre from the descolada during that first terrible outbreak. She thought of Pipo, tortured to death, flayed alive by the piggies because they thought that if they did he'd grow a tree, only nothing grew except the ache, the pain in Novinha's heart--it was something she discovered that sent him to the pequeninos that night. And then Libo, tortured to death the same way as his father, and again because of her, but this time because of what she didn't tell him. And Marcao, whose life was all the more painful because of her before he finally died of the disease that had been killing him since he was a child. And Estevao, who let his mad faith lead him into martyrdom, so he could become a venerado like her parents, and no doubt someday a saint as they would be saints. "I'm sick of letting people go," said Novinha bitterly.

  "I don't see how you could be," said Valentine. "There's not a one of all the people who have died on you that you can honestly say you 'let go.' You clung to them tooth and nail."

  "What if I did? Everyone I love has died and left me!"

  "That's such a weak excuse," said Valentine. "Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they're gone. You continued your parents' work, and Pipo's, and Libo's--and you raised Libo's children, didn't you? And they were partly Marcao's children, weren't they? Something of him remained in them, and not all bad. As for Estevao, he built something rather fine out of his death, I think, but instead of letting him go you still resent him for it. You resent him for building something more valuable to him than life itself. For loving God and the pequeninos more than you. You still hang on to all of them. You don't let anybody go."

  "Why do you hate me for that?" said Novinha. "Maybe it's true, but that's my life, to lose and lose and lose."

  "Just this once," said Valentine, "why don't you set the bird free instead of holding it in the cage until it dies?"

  "You make me sound like a monster!" cried Novinha. "How dare you judge me!"

  "If you were a monster Ender couldn't have loved you," said Valentine, answering rage with mildness. "You've been a great woman, Novinha, a tragic woman with many accomplishments and much suffering and I'm sure your story will make a moving saga when you die. But wouldn't it be nice if you learned something instead of acting out the same tragedy at the end?"

  "I don't want another one I love to die before me!" cried Novinha.

  "Who said anything about death?" said Valentine.

  The door to the room swung open. Plikt stood in the doorway. "I room," she said. "What's happening?"

  "She wants me to wake him up," said Novinha, "and tell him he can die."

  "Can I watch?" said Plikt.

  Novinha took the waterglass from beside her chair and flung the water at Plikt and screamed at her. "No more of you!" she cried. "He's mine now, not yours!"

  Plikt, dripping with water, was too astonished to find an answer.

  "It isn't Plikt who's taking him away," said Valentine softly.

  "She's just like all the rest of them, reaching out for a piece of him, tearing bits of him away and devouring him, they're all cannibals."

  "What," said Plikt nastily, angrily. "What, you wanted to feast on him yourself? Well, there was too much of him for you. What's worse, cannibals who nibble here and there, or a cannibal who keeps the whole man for herself when there's far more than she can ever absorb?"

  "This is the most disgusting conversation I think I've ever heard," said Valentine.

  "She hangs around for months, watching him like a vulture," said Novinha. "Hanging on, loitering in his life, never saying six words all at once. And now she finally speaks and listen to the poison that comes out of her."

  "All I did was spit your own bile back at you," said Plikt. "You're nothing but a greedy, hateful woman and you used him and used him and never gave anything to him and the only reason he's dying now is to get away from you."

  Novinha did not answer, had no words, because in her secret heart she knew at once that what Plikt had said was true.

  But Valentine strode around the bed, walked to the door, and slapped Plikt mightily across the face. Plikt staggered under the blow, sank down against the doorframe until she was sitting on the floor, holding her stinging cheek, tears flowing down her face. Valentine towered over her. "You will never speak his death, do you understand me? A woman who would tell a lie like that, just to cause pain, just to lash out at someone that you envy--you're no speaker for the dead. I'm ashamed I ever let you teach my children. What if some of the lie inside you got in them? You make me sick!"

  "No," said Novinha. "No, don't be angry at her. It's true, it's true."

  "It feels true to you," said Valentine, "because you always want to believe the worst about yourself. But it's not true. Ender loved you freely and you stole nothing from him and the only reason that he's still alive on that bed is because of his love for you. That's the only reason he can't leave this used-up life and help lead Jane into a place where she can stay alive."

  "No, no, Plikt is right, I consume the people th
at I love."

  "No!" cried Plikt, weeping on the floor. "I was lying to you! I love him so much and I'm so jealous of you because you had him and you didn't even want him."

  "I have never stopped loving him," said Novinha.

  "You left him. You came in here without him."

  "I left because I couldn't . . ."

  Valentine completed her sentence for her when she faded out. "Because you couldn't bear to let him leave you. You felt it, didn't you. You felt him fading even then. You knew that he needed to go away, to end this life, and you couldn't bear to let another man leave you so you left him first."

  "Maybe," said Novinha wearily. "It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach."

  "So listen to this fiction, then," said Valentine. "What if, just this once, instead of someone that you love betraying you and sneaking off and dying against your will and without your permission--what if just this once you wake him up and tell him he can live, bid him farewell properly and let him go with your consent. Just this once?"

  Novinha wept again, standing there in utter weariness. "I want it all to stop," she said. "I want to die."

  "That's why he has to stay," said Valentine. "For his sake, can't you choose to live and let him go? Stay in Milagre and be the mother of your children and grandmother of your children's children, tell them stories of Os Venerados and of Pipo and Libo and of Ender Wiggin, who came to heal your family and stayed to be your husband for many, many years before he died. Not some speaking for the dead, not some funeral oration, not some public picking over the corpse like Plikt wants to do, but the stories that will keep him alive in the minds of the only family that he ever had. He'll die anyway, soon enough. Why not let him go with your love and blessing in his ears, instead of with your rage and grief tearing at him, trying to hold him here?"

  "You spin a pretty story," said Novinha. "But in the end, you're asking me to give him to Jane."

  "As you said," Valentine answered. "All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe."