Xenocide

From the kitchen came the sound of the flute; they were being called to di

The flute played on, a breathy low melody, drawing Qing-jao out of herself and toward the company of the household. To her, this half-whispered music was the song of the inmost spirit, the quiet conversation of trees over a still pond, the sound of memories arising unbidden into the mind of a woman in prayer. Thus were they called to dine in the house of the noble Han Fei-tzu.

Having heard Qing-jao's challenge, Jane thought: This is what fear of death tastes like. Human beings feel this all the time, and yet somehow they go on from day to day, knowing that at any moment they may cease to be. But this is because they can forget something and still know it; I can never forget, not without losing the knowledge entirely. I know that Han Qing-jao is on the verge of finding secrets that have stayed hidden only because no one has looked hard for them. And when those secrets are known, I will die.

“Ender,” she whispered.

Was it day or night on Lusitania? Was he awake or asleep? For Jane, to ask a question is either to know or not-know. So she knew at once that it was night. Ender had been asleep, but now he was awake; he was still attuned to her voice, she realized, even though many silences had passed between them in the past thirty years.

“Jane,” he whispered.

Beside him his wife, Novinha, stirred in her sleep. Jane heard her, felt the vibration of her movement, saw the changing shadows through the sensor that Ender wore in his ear. It was good that Jane had not yet learned to feel jealousy, or she might have hated Novinha for lying there, a warm body beside Ender's own. But Novinha, being human, was gifted at jealousy, and Jane knew how Novinha seethed whenever she saw Ender speaking to the woman who lived in the jewel in his ear. “Hush,” said Jane. “Don't wake people up.”

Ender answered by moving his lips and tongue and teeth, without letting anything louder than a breath pass his lips. “How fare our enemies in flight?” he said. He had greeted her this way for many years.

“Not well,” said Jane.

“Perhaps you shouldn't have blocked them. We would have found a way. Valentine's writings–”

“Are about to have their true authorship uncovered.”

“Everything's about to be uncovered.” He didn't say: because of you.

“Only because Lusitania was marked for destruction,” she answered. She also didn't say: because of you. There was plenty of blame to go around.

“So they know about Valentine?”

“A girl is finding out. On the world of Path.”

“I don't know the place.”

“A fairly new colony, a couple of centuries. Chinese. Dedicated to preserving an odd mix of old religions. The gods speak to them.”

“I lived on more than one Chinese world,” said Ender. “People believed in the old gods on all of them. Gods are alive on every world, even here in the smallest human colony of all. They still have miracles of healing at the shrine of Os Venerados. Rooter has been telling us of a new heresy out in the hinterland somewhere. Some pequeninos who commune constantly with the Holy Ghost.”

“This business with gods is something I don't understand,” said Jane. “Hasn't anyone caught on yet that the gods always say what people want to hear?”

“Not so,” said Ender. “The gods often ask us to do things we never desired, things that require us to sacrifice everything on their behalf. Don't underestimate the gods.”

“Does your Catholic God speak to you?”

“Maybe he does. I never hear him, though. Or if I do, I never know that it's his voice I'm hearing.”

“And when you die, do the gods of every people really gather them up and take them off somewhere to live forever?”

“I don't know. They never write.”

“When I die, will there be some god to carry me away?”

Ender was still for a moment, and then he began to address her in his storytelling ma

Jane waited, but Ender said no more. “That's the whole story?”

“Isn't it enough?”

“Why did you tell me this? It's all dreams and wishes. What does it have to do with me?”

“It was the story that came to mind.”

“Why did it come to mind?”

“Maybe that's how God speaks to me,” said Ender. “Or maybe I'm sleepy and I don't have what you want from me.”

“I don't even know what I want from you.”

"I know what you want," said Ender. "You want to be alive, with your own body, not dependent on the philotic web that binds the ansibles together. I'd give you that gift if I could. If you can figure out a way for me to do it, I'll do it for you. But Jane, you don't even know what you are. Maybe when you know how you came to exist, what makes you yourself, then maybe we can save you from the day when they shut down the ansibles to kill you. "

“So that's your story? Maybe I'll burn down with the house, but somehow my soul will end up in a three-year-old orphan boy?”

“Find out who you are, what you are, your essence, and we'll see if we can move you somewhere safer until all this is over. We've got an ansible. Maybe we can put you back.”

“There aren't computers enough on Lusitania to contain me.”

“You don't know that. You don't know what your self is.”

“You're telling me to find my soul.” She made her voice sound derisive as she said the word.

“Jane, the miracle wasn't that the doll was reborn as a boy. The miracle was the fact that the puppet ever came to life at all. Something happened to turn meaningless computer co

His speech was slurring. He wants me to go away so he can sleep, she thought. “I'll work on this.”

“Good night,” he murmured.