Orson Card - Children of the Mind

"You are unbelievable," said Quara. She unstrapped herself from her chair, got up, and went out the open door.

Wang-mu watched her go. Peter was right. Humans were still the most alien of alien species. Still the most dangerous, the most unreasonable, the least predictable.

Even so, Wang-mu dared to make a couple of predictions to herself.

First, she was confident that the research team would someday establish communications with the descoladores.

The second prediction was much more iffy. More like a hope. Maybe even just a wish. That someday Quara would tell Wang-mu the truth. That someday the hidden wound that Quara bore would be healed. That someday they might be friends.

But not today. There was no hurry. Wang-mu would try to help Quara because she was so obviously in need, and because the people who had been around her the longest were clearly too sick of her to help. But helping Quara was not the only thing or even the most important thing she had to accomplish. Marrying Peter and starting a life with him -- that was a much higher priority. And getting something to eat, a drink of water, and a place to pee -- those were the highest priorities of all at this precise moment in her life.

I guess that means I'm human, thought Wang-mu. Not a god. Maybe just a beast after all. Part raman. Part varelse. But more raman than varelse, at least on her good days. Peter, too, just like her. Both of them part of the same flawed species, determined to join together to make a couple of more members of that species. Peter and I together will call forth some aiúa to come in from Outside and take control of a tiny body that our bodies have made, and we'll see that child be varelse on some days and raman on others. On some days we'll be good parents and some days we'll be wretched failures. Some days we'll be desperately sad and some days we'll be so happy we can hardly contain it. I can live with that.

"THE ROAD GOES ON WITHOUT HIM NOW"

"I once heard a tale of a man

who split himself in two.

The one part never changed at all;

the other grew and grew.

The changeless part was always true,

The growing part was always new,

And I wondered, when the tale was through,

Which part was me, and which was you."

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Valentine arose on the morning of Ender's funeral full of bleak reflection. She had come here to this world of Lusitania in order to be with him again and help him in his work; it had hurt Jakt, she knew, that she wanted so badly to be part of Ender's life again, yet her husband had given up the world of his childhood to come with her. So much sacrifice. And now Ender was gone.

Gone and not gone. Sleeping in her house was the man that she knew had Ender's aiúa in him. Ender's aiúa, and the face of her brother Peter. Somewhere inside him were Ender's memories. But he hadn't touched them yet, except unconsciously from time to time. Indeed, he was virtually hiding in her house in order not to rekindle those memories.

"What if I see Novinha? He loved her, didn't he?" Peter had asked almost as soon as he arrived. "He felt this awful sense of responsibility to her. And in a sense, I worry that I'm somehow married to her."

"Interesting question of identity, isn't it?" Valentine had answered. But it wasn't just an interesting question to Peter. He was terrified of getting caught up in Ender's life. Afraid, too, of living a life wracked with guilt as Ender's had been. "Abandonment of family," he had said. To which Valentine had replied, "The man who married Novinha died. We watched him die. She isn't looking for some young husband who doesn't want her, Peter. Her life is full of grief enough without that. Marry Wang-mu, leave this place, go on, be a new self. Be Ender's true son, have the life he might have had if the demands of others hadn't tainted it from the start."

Whether he fully accepted her advice or not, Valentine couldn't guess. He remained hidden in the house, avoiding even those visitors who might trigger memories. Olhado came, and Grego, and Ela, each in turn, to express their condolences to Valentine on the death of her brother, but Peter never came into the room. Wang-mu did, however, this sweet young girl who nevertheless had a kind of steel in her that Valentine quite liked. Wang-mu played the gracious friend of the bereaved, keeping the conversation going as each of these children of Ender's wife talked about how Ender had saved their family, blessed their lives when they had thought themselves beyond the reach of all blessing.

And in the corner of the room, Plikt sat, absorbing, listening, fueling the speech that she had lived her whole life for.

Oh, Ender, the jackals have gnawed at your life for three thousand years. And now your friends will have their turn. In the end, will the toothmarks on your bones be all that different?

Today all would come to a close. Others might divide time differently, but to Valentine the Age of Ender Wiggin had come to a close. The age that began with one xenocide attempted had now ended with other xenocides prevented or, at least, postponed. Human beings might now be able to live with other peoples in peace, working out a shared destiny on dozens of colony worlds. Valentine would write the history of this, as she had written a history on every world that she and Ender had visited together. She would write, not a kind of oracle or scripture, the way Ender had done with his three books, The Hive Queen, The Hegemon , and The Life of Human ; rather her book would be scholarly, with sources cited. She aspired to be, not Paul or Moses, but Thucydides. Though she wrote all under the name Demosthenes, her legacy from those childhood days when she and Peter, the first Peter, the dark and dangerous and magnificent Peter, had used their words to change the world. Demosthenes would publish a book chronicling the history of human involvement on Lusitania, and in that book would be much about Ender -- how he brought the cocoon of the Hive Queen here, how he became a part of the family most pivotal in dealings with the pequeninos. But it would not be a book about Ender. It would be a book about utlanning and framling, raman and varelse. Ender, who was a stranger in every land, belonging nowhere, serving everywhere, until he chose this world as his home, not just because there was a family that needed him, but also because in this place he did not have to be entirely a member of the human race. He could belong to the tribe of the pequenino, to the hive of the queen. He could be part of something larger than mere humanity.

And though there was no child with Ender's name as father on its birth certificate, he had become a father here. Of Novinha's children. Of Novinha herself, in a way. Of a young copy of Valentine herself. Of Jane, the first spawn of a mating between races, who now was a bright and beautiful creature who lived in mothertrees, in digital webs, in the philotic twinings of the ansibles, and in a body that had once been Ender's and which, in a way, had once been Valentine's, for she remembered looking into mirrors and seeing that face and calling it herself.

And he was father of this new man, Peter, this strong and whole man. For he was not the Peter who had first come out of the starship. He was not the cynical, nasty, barbed young boy who strutted with arrogance and seethed with rage. He had become whole. There was the cool of ancient wisdom in him, even as he burned with the hot sweet fire of youth. He had a woman who was his equal in wit and virtue and vigor by his side. He had a normal lifetime of a man before him. Ender's truest son would make of this life, if not something as profoundly world-changing as Ender's life had been, then something happier. Ender would have wanted neither more nor less for him. Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.