“And did he?”
Peter sneered. “Oh, of course, he was splendid. Ender can do no wrong. Yadda yadda yadda.”
She ignored his hostility toward Ender. “He met Leiloa Lavea?”
“Her name means ‘to be lost, to be hurt.'”
“Let me guess. She chose it herself.”
“Exactly. You know how writers are. Like Hikari, they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.”
“How gnomic,” said Wang-mu.
“Oh, shut up about that,” said Peter. “Did you actually believe all that stuff about Edge nations and Center nations?”
“I thought of it,” said Wang-mu. “When I first learned Earth history from Han Fei-tzu. He didn’t laugh when I told him my thoughts.”
“Oh, I’m not laughing, either. It’s naive bullshit, of course, but it’s not exactly funny.”
Wang-mu ignored his mockery. “If Leiloa Lavea is dead, where will we go?”
“To Pacifica. To Lumana’i. Hikari learned of Ua Lava in his teenage years at university. From a Samoan student — the granddaughter of the Pacifican ambassador. She had never been to Lumana’i, of course, and so she clung all the more tightly to its customs and became quite a proselytizer for Leiloa Lavea. This was long before Hikari ever wrote a thing. He never speaks of it, he’s never written of Ua Lava, but now that he’s tipped his hand to us, Jane is finding all sorts of influence of Ua Lava in all his work. And he has friends in Lumana’i. He’s never met them, but they correspond through the ansible net.”
“What about the granddaughter of the ambassador?”
“She’s on a starship right now, headed home to Lumana’i. She left twenty years ago, when her grandfather died. She should get there … oh, in another ten years or so. Depending on the weather. She’ll be received with great honor, no doubt, and her grandfather’s body will be buried or burned or whatever they do — burned, Jane says — with great ceremony.”
“But Hikari won’t try to talk to her.”
“It would take a week to space out even a simple message enough for her to receive it, at the speed the ship is going. No way to have a philosophical discussion. She’d be home before he finished explaining his question.”
For the first time, Wang-mu began to understand the implications of the instantaneous starflight that she and Peter had used. These long, life-wrenching voyages could be done away with.
“If only,” she said.
“I know,” said Peter. “But we can’t.”
She knew he was right. “So we go there ourselves,” she said, returning to the subject. “Then what?”
“Jane is watching to see whom Hikari writes to. That’s the person who’ll be in a position to influence him. And so …”
“That’s who we’ll talk to.”
“That’s right. Do you need to pee or something before we arrange transportation back to our little cabin in the woods?”
“That would be nice,” said Wang-mu. “And you could do with a change of clothes.”
“What, you think even this conservative outfit might be too bold?”
“What are they wearing on Lumana’i?”
“Oh, well, a lot of them just go around naked. In the tropics. Jane says that given the massive bulk of many adult Polynesians, it can be an inspiring sight.”
Wang-mu shuddered. “We aren’t going to try to pretend to be natives, are we?”
“Not there,” said Peter. “Jane’s going to fake us as passengers on a starship that arrived there yesterday from Moskva. We’re probably going to be government officials of some kind.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked.
Peter looked at her oddly. “Wang-mu, we’re already committing treason against Congress just by having left Lusitania. It’s a capital offense. I don’t think impersonating a government official is going to make much of a difference.”
“But I didn’t leave Lusitania,” said Wang-mu. “I’ve never seen Lusitania.”
“Oh, you haven’t missed much. It’s just a bunch of savannahs and woods, with the occasional Hive Queen factory building starships and a bunch of piglike aliens living in the trees.”
“I’m an accomplice to treason though, right?” asked Wang-mu.
“And you’re also guilty of ruining a Japanese philosopher’s whole day.”
“Off with my head.”