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Miro watched as Ender got up from the bench and walked away toward the sun, into the shining orchard. Surely this is how Adam would have looked, thought Miro, if he had never eaten the fruit. If he had stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed in the garden. Three thousand years Ender has skimmed the surface of life. It was my mother he finally snagged on. I spent my whole childhood trying to be free of her, and he comes along and chooses to attach himself and . . .
And what am I snagged on, except him? Him in women's flesh. Him with a handful of hair on a kitchen table.
Miro was getting up from
the bench when Ender suddenly turned to face him and waved to attract his attention. Miro started to walk toward him, but Ender didn't wait; he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.
"Tell Jane!" he called. "If she can figure out! How to do it! She can have that body!"
It took Miro a moment to realize that he was speaking of Young Val.
She's not just a body, you self-centered old planet-smasher. She's not just an old suit to be given away because it doesn't fit or the style has changed.
But then his anger fled, for he realized that he himself had done precisely that with his old body. Tossed it away without a backward glance.
And the idea intrigued him. Jane. Was it even possible? If her aiua could somehow be made to take up residence in Young Val, could a human body hold enough of Jane's mind to enable her to survive when Starways Congress tried to shut her down?
"You boys are so slow," Jane murmured in his ear. "I've been talking to the Hive Queen and Human and trying to figure out how the thing is done--assigning an aiua to a body. The hive queens did it once, in creating me. But they didn't exactly pick a particular aiua. They took what came. What showed up. I'm a little fussier."
Miro said nothing as he walked to the monastery gate.
"Oh, yes, and then there's the little matter of your feelings toward Young Val. You hate the fact that in loving her, it's really, in a way, Ender that you love. But if I took over, if I were the will inside Young Val's life, would she still be the woman you love? Would anything of her survive? Would it be murder?"
"Oh, shut up," said Miro aloud.
The monastery gatekeeper looked up at him in surprise.
"Not you," said Miro. "But that doesn't mean it isn't a good idea."
Miro was aware of her eyes on his back until he was out and on the path winding down the hill toward Milagre. Time to get back to the ship. Val will be waiting for me. Whoever she is.
What Ender is to Mother, so loyal, so patient--is that how I feel toward Val? Or no, it isn't feeling, is it? It's an act of will. It's a decision that can never be revoked. Could I do that for any woman, any person? Could I give myself forever?
He remembered Ouanda then, and walked with the memory of bitter loss all the way back to the starship.
4
"I AM A MAN OF PERFECT
SIMPLICITY!"
"When I was a child, I thought
a god was disappointed
whenever some distraction
interrupted my tracing of the lines
revealed in the grain of the wood.
Now I know the gods expect such interruptions,
for they know our frailty.
It is completion that surprises them."
from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
