What have I got myself into? Wang-mu wondered. Is this going to be my life, a week here, a month there?
And then she thought: What if it is? If the week is with Peter, if the month is at his side, then that may well be home enough for me. And if it’s not, there’ll be time enough to work out some sort of compromise. Even Ender settled down at last, on Lusitania.
Besides, I may be a wanderer myself. I’m still young — how do I even know what kind of life I want to lead? With Jane to take us anywhere in just a heartbeat, we can see all of the Hundred Worlds and all the newest colonies, and anything else we want to see before we even have to think of settling down.
Someone was shouting out in the control room. Miro knew he should get up from Jane’s sleeping body and find out. But he did not want to let go of her hand. He did not want to take his eyes away from her.
“We’re cut off!” came the cry again — Quara, shouting, terrified and angry. “I was getting their broadcasts and suddenly now there’s nothing.”
Miro almost laughed aloud. How could Quara fail to understand? The reason she couldn’t receive the descolador broadcasts anymore was because they were no longer orbiting the planet of the descoladores. Couldn’t Quara feel the onset of gravity? Jane had done it. Jane had brought them home.
But had she brought herself? Miro squeezed her hand, leaned over, kissed her cheek. “Jane,” he whispered. “Don’t be lost out there. Be here. Be here with me.”
“All right,” she said.
He raised his face from hers, looked into her eyes. “You did it,” he said.
“And rather easily, after all that worry,” she said. “But I don’t think my body was designed to sleep so deeply. I can’t move.”
Miro pushed the quick release on her bed, and all the straps came free.
“Oh,” she said. “You tied me down.”
She tried to sit up, but lay back down again immediately.
“Feeling faint?” Miro asked.
“The room is swimming,” she said. “Maybe I can do future starflights without having to lay my own body out so thoroughly.”
The door crashed open. Quara stood in the doorway, quivering with rage. “How dare you do it without so much as a warning!”
Ela was behind her, remonstrating with her. “For heaven’s sake, Quara, she got us home, isn’t that enough?”
“You could have some decency!” Quara shouted. “You could tell us that you were performing your experiment!”
“She brought you with us, didn’t she?” said Miro, laughing.
His laughter only infuriated Quara more. “She isn’t human! That’s what you like about her, Miro! You never could have fallen in love with a real woman. What’s your track record? You fell in love with a woman who turned out to be your half-sister, then Ender’s automaton, and now a computer wearing a human body like a puppet. Of course you laugh at a time like this. You have no human feelings.”
Jane was up now, standing on somewhat shaky legs. Miro was pleased to see that she was recovering so quickly from her hour in a comatose state. He hardly noticed Quara’s vilification.
“Don’t ignore me, you smug self-righteous son-of-a-bitch!” Quara screamed in his face.
He ignored her, feeling, in fact, rather smug and self-righteous as he did. Jane, holding his hand, followed close behind him, past Quara, out of the sleeping chamber. As she passed, Quara shouted at her, “You’re not some god who has a right to toss me from place to place without even asking!” and she gave Jane a shove.
It wasn’t much of a shove. But Jane lurched against Miro. He turned, worried she might fall. Instead he got himself turned in time to see Jane spread her fingers against Quara’s chest and shove her back, much harder. Quara knocked her head against the corridor wall and then, utterly off balance, she fell to the floor at Ela’s feet.
“She tried to kill me!” cried Quara.
“If she wanted to kill you,” said Ela mildly, “you’d be sucking space in orbit around the planet of the descoladores.”