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"Are you ashamed of me?" she asked.
"Embarrassed," he said. "To have my unconscious mind made so public. But not ashamed. Not of you." He glanced toward Nimbo, then back to her. "Stay here and finish what you started."
She smiled slightly. "He's a good boy who thought that he was doing something fine."
"Yes," he said. "But it got away from him."
"He didn't know what he was doing," she said. "When you don't understand the consequences of your acts, how can you be blamed for them?"
He knew that she was talking as much about him, Ender the Xenocide, as about Nimbo. "You don't take the blame," he answered. "But you still take responsibility. For healing the wounds you caused."
"Yes," she said. "The wounds you caused. But not all the wounds in the world."
"Oh?" he asked. "And why not? Because you plan to heal them all yourself?"
She laughed--a light, girlish laugh. "You haven't changed a bit, Andrew," she said. "Not in all these years."
He smiled at her, hugged her lightly, and sent her back into the light of the room. He himself, though, turned back out into the darkness and headed home. There was light enough for him to find his way, yet he stumbled and got lost several times.
"You're crying," said Jane in his ear.
"This is such a happy day," he said.
"It is, you know. You're just about the only person wasting any pity on you tonight."
"Fine, then," said Ender. "If I'm the only one, then at least there's one."
"You've got me," she said. "And our relationship has been chaste all along."
"I've really had enough of chastity in my life," he answered. "I wasn't hoping for more."
"Everyone is chaste in the end. Everyone ends up out of the reach of all the deadly sins."
"But I'm not dead," he said. "Not yet. Or am I?"
"Does this feel like heaven?" she asked.
He laughed, and not nicely.
"Well, then, you can't be dead."
"You forget," he said. "This could easily be hell."
"Is it?" she asked him.
He thought about all that had been accomplished. Ela's viruses. Miro's healing. Young Val's kindness to Nimbo. The smile of peace on Novinha's face. The pequeninos' rejoicing as their liberty began its passage through their world. Already, he knew, the viricide was cutting an ever-widening swath through the prairie of capim surrounding the colony; by now it must already have passed into other forests, the descolada, helpless now, giving way as the mute and passive recolada took its place. All these changes couldn't possibly take place in hell.
"I guess I'm still alive," he said.
"And so am I," she said. "That's something, too. Peter and Val, they're not the only people to spring from your mind."
"No, they're not," he said.
"We're both still alive, even if we have hard times coming."
He remembered what lay in store for her, the mental crippling that was only weeks away, and he was ashamed of himself for having mourned his own losses. "Better to have loved and lost," he murmured, "than never to have loved at all."
"It may be a cliche," said Jane, "but that doesn't mean it can't be true."
