“I never asked you, either, but you came here to try to get me to change my mind about the Lusitania Fleet, didn’t you? You wanted to get Malu to get me to say something to Aimaina so he’d say something to the Necessarians of Divine Wind so they’d say something to the faction of Congress that hungers for their respect, and the coalition that sent the fleet will fall apart and they’ll order it to leave Lusitania untouched. Wasn’t that the plan?”
Wang-mu nodded.
“Well, you deceived yourself. You can’t know from the outside what makes a person choose the things they choose. Aimaina wrote to me, but I have no power over him. I taught him the way of Ua Lava, yes, but it was Ua Lava that he followed, he doesn’t follow me. He followed it because it felt true to him. If I suddenly started explaining that Ua Lava also meant not sending fleets to wipe out planets, he’d listen politely and ignore me, because that would have nothing to do with the Ua Lava he believes in. He would see it, correctly, as an attempt by an old friend and teacher to bend him to her will. It would be the end of the trust between us, and still it wouldn’t change his mind.”
“So we failed,” said Wang-mu.
“I don’t know if you failed or not,” said Grace. “Lusitania isn’t blown up yet. And how do you know if that was ever really your purpose for coming here?”
“Peter said it was. Jane said so.”
“And how do they know what their purpose was?”
“Well, if you want to go that far, none of us has any purpose at all,” said Wang-mu. “Our lives are just our genes and our upbringing. We simply act out the script that was forced upon us.”
“Oh,” said Grace, sounding disappointed. “I’m sorry to hear you say something so stupid.”
Again the great canoe was beached. Again Malu rose up from his seat and stepped out onto the sand. But this time — was it possible? — this time he seemed to be hurrying. Hurrying so fast that, yes, he lost a little bit of dignity. Indeed, slow as his progress was, Wang-mu felt that he was fairly bounding up the beach. And as she watched his eyes, saw where he was looking, she realized he was coming, not to Peter, but to her.
Novinha woke up in the soft chair they had brought for her and for a moment she forgot where she was. During her days as xenobiologist, she had often fallen asleep in a chair in the laboratory, and so for a moment she looked around to see what it was that she was working on before she fell asleep. What problem was it she was trying to solve?
Then she saw Valentine standing over the bed where Andrew lay. Where Andrew’s body lay. His heart was somewhere else.
“You should have wakened me,” said Novinha.
“I just arrived,” said Valentine. “And I didn’t have the heart to wake you. They said you almost never sleep.”
Novinha stood up. “Odd. It seems to me as if that’s all I do.”
“Jane is dying,” said Valentine.
Novinha’s heart leapt within her.
“Your rival, I know,” said Valentine.
Novinha looked into the woman’s eyes, to see if there was anger there, or mockery. But no. It was only compassion.
“Trust me, I know how you feel,” said Valentine. “Until I loved and married Jakt, Ender was my whole life. But I was never his. Oh, for a while in his childhood, I mattered most to him then — but that was poisoned because the military used me to get to him, to keep him going when he wanted to give up. And after that, it was always Jane who heard his jokes, his observations, his inmost thoughts. It was Jane who saw what he saw and heard what he heard. I wrote my books, and when they were done I had his attention for a few hours, a few weeks. He used my ideas and so I felt he carried a part of me inside him. But he was hers.”