How do I know this? thought Wang-mu. How can I be so sure of what I am supposed to do?
I know because it’s obvious, she thought. I know because I have seen my beloved mistress Han Qing-jao destroyed by pride and I will do whatever it takes to keep Peter from destroying himself by pride in his own wicked unworthiness. I know because I was also broken as a child and forced to become a wicked conniving selfish manipulating monster in order to protect the fragile love-hungry girl who would have been destroyed by the life I had to lead. I know how it feels to be an enemy to myself, and yet I have set that behind me and gone on and I can take Peter by the hand and show him the way.
Except that I don’t know the way, and I am still broken, and the love-hungry girl is still frightened and breakable, and the strong and wicked monster is still the ruler of my life, and Jane will die because I have nothing to give Peter. He needs to drink of kava, and I am only plain water. No, I am seawater, swirling with sand at the edge of the shore, filled with salt; he will drink of me and kill himself with thirst.
And so it was that she found herself also weeping, also stretched out on the sand, reaching toward the sea, reaching toward the place from which Malu’s canoe had bounded away like a starship leaping into space.
Old Valentine stared at the holographic display of her computer terminal, where the Samoans, all in miniature, lay weeping upon the beach. She stared at it until her eyes burned, and finally she spoke. “Turn it off, Jane,” she said.
The display went blank.
“What am I supposed to do about this?” said Valentine. “You should have shown my look-alike, my young twin. You should have wakened Andrew and shown him. What does this have to do with me? I know you want to live. I want you to live. But how can I do anything?”
Jane’s human face flickered into distracted existence above the terminal. “I don’t know,” she said. “But the order has just gone out. They’re starting to disconnect me. I’m losing parts of my memory. I already can’t think of as many things at once. I have to have a place to go, but there is no place, and even if there were one, I don’t know the way.”
“Are you afraid?” asked Valentine.
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “It will take hours, I think, for them to finish killing me. If I find out how I feel before the end, I’ll tell you, if I can.”
Valentine hid her face behind her hands for a long moment. Then she got up and headed out of the house.
Jakt saw her go and shook his head. Decades ago, when Ender left Trondheim and Valentine stayed in order to marry him, in order to be the mother of his children, he had rejoiced at how happy and alive she became without the burden that Ender had always placed upon her and that she had always unconsciously borne. And then she had asked him if he would come with her to Lusitania, and he said yes, and now it was the old way again, now she sagged under the weight of Ender’s life, of Ender’s need of her. Jakt couldn’t begrudge it — it wasn’t as if either of them had planned it or willed it; it wasn’t as if either one was trying to steal a part of Jakt’s own life from him. But it still hurt to see her so bowed down under the weight of it, and to know that despite all his love for her, there was nothing Jakt could do to help her bear it.
Miro faced Ela and Quara in the doorway of the starship. Inside, Young Valentine was already waiting, along with a pequenino named Firequencher and a nameless worker that the Hive Queen had sent.
“Jane is dying,” Miro said. “We have to go now. She won’t have capacity enough to send a starship if we wait too long.”