"I'm not going to kill myself."
"If you don't help us try to find a way to save you, then that's exactly what you're doing," said Ender.
Jane's face disappeared from the display over the terminal.
"Running away won't help, either," said Ender.
"Leave me alone," said Jane. "I have to think about this for a while."
"Do
n't worry, Miro," said Ender. "She'll do it."
"That's right," said Jane.
"Back already?" asked Ender.
"I think very quickly."
"And you're going to work on this, too?"
"I consider it my fourth project," said Jane. "I'm telling Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu about it right now."
"She's showing off," said Ender. "She can carry on two conversations at once, and she likes to brag about it to make us feel inferior."
"You are inferior," said Jane.
"I'm hungry," said Ender. "And thirsty."
"Lunch," said Miro.
"Now you're bragging," said Jane. "Showing off your bodily functions."
"Alimentation," said Ender. "Respiration. Excretion. We can do things you can't do."
"In other words, you can't think very well, but at least you can eat and breathe and sweat."
"That's right," said Miro. He pulled out the bread and cheese while Ender poured the cold water, and they ate. Simple food, but it tasted good and they were satisfied.
14
VIRUS MAKERS
"You're asking me to help you in your rebellion against the gods?"
Wang-mu remained bowed before her mistress--her former mistress--saying nothing. In her heart she had words she might have uttered. No, my mistress, I am asking you to help us in our struggle against the terrible bondage forced on the godspoken by Congress. No, my mistress, I'm asking you to remember your proper duty to your father, which even the godspoken may not ignore if they would be righteous. No, my mistress, I'm asking you to help us discover a way to save a decent and helpless people, the pequeninos, from xenocide.
But Wang-mu said nothing, because this was one of the first lessons she learned from Master Han. When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom, you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man. Qing-jao was not hungry for wisdom from Wang-mu, and never would be. So silence was all that Wang-mu could offer. She could only hope that Qing-jao would find her own road to proper obedience, compassionate decency, or the struggle for freedom.
Any motive would do, as long as Qing-jao's brilliant mind could be enlisted on their side. Wang-mu had never felt so useless in her life as now, watching Master Han labor over the questions that Jane had given him. In order to think about faster-than-light travel he was studying physics; how could Wang-mu help him, when she was only learning about geometry? To think about the descolada virus he was studying microbiology; Wang-mu was barely learning the concepts of gaialogy and evolution. And how could she be of any help when he contemplated the nature of Jane? She was a child of manual workers, and her hands, not her mind, held her future. Philosophy was as far above her as the sky was above the earth. "But the sky only seems to be far away from you," said Master Han, when she told him this. "Actually it is all around you. You breathe it in and you breathe it out, even when you labor with your hands in the mud. That is true philosophy." But she understood from this only that Master Han was kind, and wanted to make her feel better about her uselessness.
Qing-jao, though, would not be useless. So Wang-mu had handed her a paper with the project names and passwords on them.
"Does Father know you're giving these to me?"
Wang-mu said nothing. Actually, Master Han had suggested it, but Wang-mu thought it might be better if Qing-jao didn't know at this point that Wang-mu came as an emissary from her father.
Qing-jao interpreted Wang-mu's silence as Wang-mu assumed she would--that Wang-mu was coming secretly, on her own, to ask for Qing-jao's help.