She opened her eyes again and strode out into the hip-high grass toward him. He saw her and waited wordlessly as she approached. Bees buzzed around her; butterflies staggered drunkenly through the air, avoiding her somehow in their seemingly random flight. At the last moment she reached out and gathered a bee from a blossom into her hand, into her fist, but then quickly, before it could sting her, she lobbed it into Peter’s face.
Flustered, surprised, he batted away the infuriated bee, ducked under it, dodged, and finally ran a few steps before it lost track of him and buzzed its way out among the flowers again. Only then could he turn furiously to face her.
“What was that for!”
She giggled at him — she couldn’t help it. He had looked so funny.
“Oh, good, laugh. I can see you’re going to be fine company.”
“Be angry, I don’t care,” said Wang-mu. “I’ll just tell you this. Do you think that away off on Lusitania, Ender’s aiъa suddenly thought, ‘Ho, a bee!’ and made you brush at it and dodge it like a clown?”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, aren’t you clever. Well gosh, Miss Royal Mother of the West, you sure solved all my problems! I can see I must always have been a real boy! And these ruby shoes, why, they’ve had the power to take me back to Kansas all along!”
“What’s Kansas?” she asked, looking down at his shoes, which were not red.
“Just another memory of Ender’s that he kindly shared with me,” said Peter Wiggin.
He stood there, his hands in his pockets, regarding her.
She stood just as silently, her hands clasped in front of her, regarding him right back.
“So are you with me?” he finally asked.
“You must try not to be nasty with me,” she said.
“Take that up with Ender.”
“I don’t care whose aiъa controls you,” she said. “You still have your own thoughts, which are different from his — you feared the bee, and he didn’t even think of a bee right then, and you know it. So whatever part of you is in control or whoever the real ‘you’ happens to be, right there on the front of your head is the mouth that’s going to be speaking to me, and I’m telling you that if I’m going to work with you, you better be nice to me.”
“Does this mean no more bee fights?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s just as well. With my luck Ender no doubt gave me a body that goes into shock when I’m stung by a bee.”
“It can also be pretty hard on the bee,” she said.
He grinned at her. “I find myself liking you,” he said. “I really hate that.”
He strode off toward the starship. “Come on!” he called out to her. “Let’s see what information Jane can give us about this world we’re supposed to take by storm.”
CHAPTER 2
“YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD”
[Image]
“When I follow the path of the gods through the wood,
My eyes take every twisting turn of the grain,
But my body moves straight along the planking,
So those who watch me see that the path of the gods is straight,
While I dwell in a world with no straightness in it.”
from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
Novinha would not come to him. The gentle old teacher looked genuinely distressed as she told Ender. “She wasn’t angry,” the old teacher explained. “She told me that …”
Ender nodded, understanding how the teacher was torn between compassion and honesty. “You can tell me her words,” he said. “She is my wife, so I can bear it.”
The old teacher rolled her eyes. “I’m married too, you know.”
Of course he knew. All the members of the Order of the Children of the Mind of Christ — Os Filhos da Mente de Cristo — were married. It was their rule.
“I’m married, so I know perfectly well that your spouse is the one person who knows all the words you can’t bear to hear.”
“Then let me correct myself,” said Ender mildly. “She is my wife, so I am determined to hear it, whether I can bear it or not.”