Xenocide

Qing-jao noticed her, of course, but snubbed her. It hurt Wang-mu to have Qing-jao treat her so coldly, for they had once been friends and Wang-mu still loved her, or at least loved the young woman that Qing-jao had been before the crisis. Yet there was nothing Wang-mu could say or do to restore their friendship. She had chosen another path.

Wang-mu kept all the tissue samples carefully separated and labeled. Instead of taking them to a medical technician, however, she found a much simpler way. Dressing in some of Qing-jao's old clothing, so that she looked like a godspoken student instead of a servant girl, she went to the nearest college and told them that she was working on a project whose nature she could not divulge, and she humbly requested that they perform a scan on the tissue samples she provided. As she expected, they asked no questions of a godspoken girl, even a complete stranger. Instead they ran the molecular scans, and Wang-mu could only assume that Jane had done as she promised, taking control of the computer and making the scan include all the operations Ela needed.

On the way home from the college, Wang-mu discarded all the samples she had collected and burned the report the college had given her. Jane had what she needed– there was no point in ru

“So you've lost your woman and I've lost mine,” said Miro.

Ender sighed. Every now and then Miro got into a talky mood, and because bitterness was always just under the surface with him, his chat tended to be straight to the point and more than a little unkind. Ender couldn't begrudge him the talkiness– he and Valentine were almost the only people who could listen to Miro's slow speech patiently, without giving him a sign that they wanted him to get on with it. Miro spent so much of his time with pent-up thoughts, unexpressed, that it would be cruel to shut him down just because he had no tact.

Ender wasn't pleased to be reminded of the fact that Novinha had left him. He was trying to keep that thought out of his mind, while he worked on other problems– on the problem of Jane's survival, mostly, and a little bit on every other problem, too. But at Miro's words, that aching, hollow, half-panicked feeling returned. She isn't here. I can't just speak and have her answer. I can't just ask and have her remember. I can't just reach and feel her hand. And, most terrible of all: Perhaps I never will again.

“I suppose so,” said Ender.

“You probably don't like to equate them,” said Miro. “After all, she's your wife of thirty years, and Ouanda was my girlfriend for maybe five years. But that's only if you start counting when puberty hit. She was my friend, my closest friend except maybe Ela, since I was little. So if you think about it, I was with Ouanda most of my life, while you were only with Mother for half of yours.”

“Now I feel much better,” said Ender.

“Don't get pissed off at me,” said Miro.

“Don't piss me off,” said Ender.

Miro laughed. Too loudly. “Feeling grumpy, Andrew?” he cackled. “A bit out of sorts?”

It was too much to take. Ender spun his chair, turning away from the terminal where he had been studying a simplified model of the ansible network, trying to imagine where in that random latticework Jane's soul might dwell. He gazed steadily at Miro until he stopped laughing.

“Did I do this to you?” asked Ender.

Miro looked more angry than abashed. “Maybe I needed you to,” he said. “Ever think of that? You were so respectful, all of you. Let Miro keep his dignity. Let him brood himself into madness, right? Just don't talk about the thing that's happened to him. Didn't you ever think I needed somebody to jolly me out of it sometimes?”

“Didn't you ever think that I don't need that?”

Miro laughed again, but it came a bit late, and it was gentler. “On target,” he said. “You treated me the way you like to be treated when you grieve, and now I'm treating you the way I like to be treated. We prescribe our own medicine for each other.”

“Your mother and I are still married,” Ender said.

“Let me tell you something,” said Miro, “out of the wisdom of my twenty years or so of life. It's easier when you finally start admitting to yourself that you'll never have her back. That she's permanently out of reach.”

“Ouanda is out of reach. Novinha isn't.”

“She's with the Children of the Mind of Christ. It's a nu

“Not so,” said Ender. “It's a monastic order that only married couples can join. She can't belong to them without me.”

“So,” said Miro. “You can have her back whenever you want to join the Filhos. I can just see you as Dom Cristao.”

Ender couldn't help chuckling at the idea. “Sleeping in separate beds. Praying all the time. Never touching each other.”

“If that's marriage, Andrew, then Ouanda and I are married right now.”

“It is marriage, Miro. Because the couples in the Filhos da Mente de Cristo are working together, doing a work together.”

“Then we're married,” said Miro. “You and I. Because we're trying to save Jane together.”

“Just friends,” said Ender. “We're just friends.”

“Rivals is more like it. Jane keeps us both like lovers on a string.”

Miro was sounding too much like Novinha's accusations about Jane. “We're hardly lovers,” he said. “Jane isn't human. She doesn't even have a body.”

“Aren't you the logical one,” said Miro. “Didn't you just say that you and Mother could still be married, without even touching?”

It was an analogy that Ender didn't like, because it seemed to have some truth in it. Was Novinha right to be jealous of Jane, as she had been for so many years?

“She lives inside our heads, practically,” said Miro. “That's a place where no wife will ever go.”

“I always thought,” said Ender, “that your mother was jealous of Jane because she wished she had someone that close to her.”

“Bobagem,” said Miro. “Lixo.” Nonsense. Garbage. “Mother was jealous of Jane because she wanted so badly to be that close to you, and she never could.”

“Not your mother. She was always self-contained. There were times when we were very close, but she always turned back to her work.”

“The way you always turned back to Jane.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Not in so many words. But you'd be talking to her, and then all of a sudden you'd fall silent, and even though you're good at subvocalizing, there's still a little movement in the jaw, and your eyes and lips react a little to what Jane says to you. She saw. You'd be with Mother, close, and then all of a sudden you were somewhere else.”

“That's not what split us apart,” said Ender. “It was Quim's death.”

“Quim's death was the last straw. If it hadn't been for Jane, if Mother had really believed you belonged to her, heart and soul, she would have turned to you when Quim died, instead of turning away.”

Miro had said the thing that Ender had dreaded all along. That it was Ender's own fault. That he had not been the perfect husband. That he had driven her away. And the worst thing was that when Miro said it, Ender knew that it was true. The sense of loss, which he had already thought was unbearable, suddenly doubled, trebled, became infinite inside him.

He felt Miro's hand, heavy, clumsy, on his shoulder.

“As God is my witness, Andrew, I never meant to make you cry.”

“It happens,” said Ender.

“It's not all your fault,” said Miro. “Or Jane's. You've got to remember that Mother's crazy as a loon. She always has been.”