“Ouch,” said Peter, as if his pain were a joke.
Wang-mu showed no mercy — she was not a servant now. “You’re so proud of knowing more than me, but everything you know is either what Ender put in your head or what Jane whispers in your ear. I have no Jane, I had no Ender. Everything I know, I learned the hard way. I lived through it. So please don’t treat me with contempt again. If I have any value on this expedition, it will come from my knowing everything you know — because everything you know, I can be taught, but what I know, you can never learn.”
The joking was over. Peter’s face reddened with anger. “How … who …”
“How dare I,” said Wang-mu, echoing the phrases she assumed he had begun. “Who do I think I am.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Peter softly, turning away.
“I’m not staying in my place, am I?” she asked. “Han Fei-tzu taught me about Peter Wiggin. The original, not the copy. How he made his sister Valentine take part in his conspiracy to seize the hegemony of Earth. How he made her write all of the Demosthenes material — rabble-rousing demagoguery — while he wrote all the Locke material, the lofty, analytical ideas. But the low demagoguery came from him.”
“So did the lofty ideas,” said Peter.
“Exactly,” said Wang-mu. “What never came from him, what came only from Valentine, was something he never saw or valued. A human soul.”
“Han Fei-tzu said that?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’s an ass,” said Peter. “Because Peter had as much of a human soul as Valentine had.” He stepped toward her, looming. “I’m the one without a soul, Wang-mu.”
For a moment she was afraid of him. How did she know what violence had been created in him? What dark rage in Ender’s aiъa might find expression through this surrogate he had created?
But Peter did not strike a blow. Perhaps it was not necessary.
Aimaina Hikari came out himself to the front gate of his garden to let them in. He was dressed simply, and around his neck was the locket that all the traditional Japanese of Divine Wind wore: a tiny casket containing the ashes of all his worthy ancestors. Peter had already explained to her that when a man like Hikari died, a pinch of the ashes from his locket would be added to a bit of his own ashes and given to his children or his grandchildren to wear. Thus all of his ancient family hung above his breastbone, waking and sleeping, and formed the most precious gift he could give his posterity. It was a custom that Wang-mu, who had no ancestors worth remembering, found both thrilling and disturbing.
Hikari greeted Wang-mu with a bow, but held out his hand for Peter to shake. Peter took it with some small show of surprise.
“Oh, they call me the keeper of the Yamato spirit,” said Hikari with a smile, “but that doesn’t mean I must be rude and force Europeans to behave like Japanese. Watching a European bow is as painful as watching a pig do ballet.”
As Hikari led them through the garden into his traditional paper-walled house, Peter and Wang-mu looked at each other and grinned broadly. It was a wordless truce between them, for they both knew at once that Hikari was going to be a formidable opponent, and they needed to be allies if they were to learn anything from him.
“A philosopher and a physicist,” said Hikari. “I looked you up when you sent your note asking for an appointment. I have been visited by philosophers before, and physicists, and also by Europeans and Chinese, but what truly puzzles me is why the two of you should be together.”
“She found me sexually irresistible,” said Peter, “and I can’t get rid of her.” Then he grinned his most charming grin.
To Wang-mu’s pleasure, Peter’s Western-style irony left Hikari impassive and unamused, and she could see a blush rising up Peter’s neck.
It was her turn — to play the gnome for real this time. “The pig wallows in mud, but he warms himself on the sunny stone.”