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"I know. You have no friends, you have no intimate associates, you go to mass but you never go to confession, you are so completely detached that as far as possible you don't touch the life of this colony, you don't touch the life of the human race at any point. From all the evidence, you live in complete isolation."
Novinha wasn't prepared for this. He was naming the underlying pain of her life, and she didn't have a strategy devised to cope with it. "If I do, it isn't my fault."
"I know that. I know where it began, and I know whose fault it was that it continues to this day."
"Mine?"
"Mine. And everyone else's. But mine most of all, because I knew what was happening to you and I did nothing at all. Until today."
"And today you're going to keep me from the one thing that matters to me in my life! Thanks so much for your compassion!"
Again he nodded solemnly, as if he were accepting and acknowledging her ironic gratitude. "In one sense, Novinha, it doesn't matter that it isn't your fault. Because the town of Milagre is a community, and whether it has treated you badly or not, it must still act as all communities do, to provide the greatest possible happiness for all its members."
"Which means everybody on Lusitania except me--me and the piggies."
"The xenobiologist is very important to a colony, especially one like this, surrounded by a fence that forever limits our growth. Our xenobiologist must find ways to grow more protein and carbohydrate per hectare, which means genetically altering the Earthborn corn and potatoes to make--"
"To make maximum use of the nutrients available in the Lusitanian environment. Do you think I'm planning to take the examination without knowing what my life's work would be?"
"Your life's work, to devote yourself to improving the lives of people you despise."
Now Novinha saw the trap that he had laid for her. Too late; it had sprung. "So you think that a xenobiologist can't do her work unless she loves the people who use the things she makes?"
"I don't care whether you love us or not. What I have to know is what you really want. Why you're so passionate to do this."
"Basic psychology. My parents died in this work, and so I'm trying to step into their role."
"Maybe," said Pipo. "And maybe not. What I want to know, Novinha, what I must know before I'll let you take the test, is what community you do belong to."
"You said it yourself! I don't belong to any."
"Impossible. Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to and the ones she doesn't belong to. I am this and this and this, but definitely not that and that and that. All your definitions are negative. I could make an infinite list of the things you are not. But a person who really believes she doesn't belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad."
"That's me, insane to the root."
"Not insane. Driven by a sense of purpose that is frightening. If you take this test you'll pass it. But before I let you take it I have to know: Who will you become when you pass? What do you believe in, what are you part of, what do you care about, what do you love?"
"Nobody in this or any other world."
"I don't believe you."
"
I've never known a good man or woman in the world except my parents and they're dead! And even they--nobody understands anything."
"You."
"I'm part of anything, aren't I? But nobody understands anybody, not even you, pretending to be so wise and compassionate but you're only getting me to cry like this because you have the power to stop me from doing what I want to do--"
"And it isn't xenobiology."
"Yes it is! That's part of it, anyway."
"And what's the rest of it?"
"What you are. What you do. Only you're doing it all wrong, you're doing it stupidly."
"Xenobiologist and xenologer."
