Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

Again he stifled the thought, though it had come up a dozen times since he first realized that it was Peter sitting at his left hand in the starship. I created him. He isn't real, just my nightmare. If I kill him, it wouldn't be murder, would it? It would be the moral equivalent of--what? Waking up? I have imposed my nightmare on the world, and if I killed him the world would just be waking up to find the nightmare gone, nothing more.

If it had been Peter alone, Ender might have talked himself into such a murder, or at least he thought he might. But it was young Val who stopped him. Fragile, beautiful of soul--if Peter could be killed, so could she. If he should be killed, then perhaps she ought to be as well--she had as little right to exist; she was as unnatural, as narrow and distorted in her creation. But he could never do that. She must be protected, not harmed. And if the one was real enough to remain alive, so must the other be. If harming young Val would be murder, so would harming Peter. They were spawned in the same creation.

My children, thought Ender bitterly. My darling little offspring, who leaped fully-formed from my head like Athena from the mind of Zeus. Only what I have here isn't Athena. More like Diana and Hades. The virgin huntress and the master of hell.

"We'd better go," said Peter. "Before Andrew talks himself into killing me.

Ender smiled wanly. That was the worst thing--that Peter and young Val seemed to have come into existence knowing more about his own mind than he knew himself. In time, he hoped, that intimate knowledge of him would fade. But in the meantime, it added to the humiliation, the way that Peter taunted him about thoughts that no one else would have guessed. And young Val--he knew from the way she looked at him sometimes that she also knew. He had no secrets anymore.

"I'll go home with you," Val said to Quara.

"No," Quara answered. "I've done what I've done. I'll be there to see Glass through to the end of his test."

"We wouldn't want to miss our chance to suffer openly," said Peter.

"Shut up, Peter," said Ender.

Peter grinned. "Oh, come on. You know that Quara's just milking this for all it's worth. It's just her way of making herself the star of the show--everybody being careful and tender with her when they should be cheering for what Ela accomplished. Scene-stealing is so low, Quara--right up your alley."

Quara might have answered, if Peter's words had not been so outrageous and if they had not contained a germ of truth that confused her. Instead it was young Val who fixed Peter with a cold glare and said, "Shut up, Peter."

The same words Ender had said, only when young Val said them, they worked. He grinned at her, and winked--a conspiratorial wink, as if to say, I'll let you play your little game, Val, but don't think I don't know that you're sucking up to everybody by being so sweet. But he said no more as they left Grego in his cell.

Mayor Kovano joined them outside. "A great day in the history of humanity," he said. "And by sheerest accident, I get to be in all the pictures." The others laughed--especially Peter, who had struck up a quick and easy friendship with Kovano.

"It's no accident," said Peter. "A lot of people in your position would have panicked and wrecked everything. It took an open mind and a lot of courage to let things move the way they have."

Ender almost laughed aloud at Peter's obvious flattery. But flattery is never so obvious to the recipient. Oh, Kovano punched Peter in the arm and denied everything, but Ender could see that he loved hearing it, and that Peter had already earned more real influence with Kovano than Ender had. Don't these people see how Peter is cynically winning them all over?

The only one who saw Peter with anything like Ender's fear and loathing was the Bishop--but in his case it was theological prejudice, not wisdom, that kept him from being sucked in. Within hours of their return from Outside, the Bishop had called upon Miro, urging him to accept baptism. "God has performed a great miracle in your healing," he said, "but the way in which it was done--trading one body for another, instead of directly healing the old one--leaves us in the dangerous position that your spirit inhabits a body that has never been baptized. And since baptism is performed on the flesh, I fear that you may be unsanctified." Miro wasn't very interested in the Bishop's ideas about miracles--he didn't see God as having much to do with his healing--but the sheer restoration of his strength and his speech and his freedom made him so ebullient that he probably would have agreed to anything. The baptism would take place early next week, at the first services to be held in the new chapel.

But the Bishop's eagerness to baptize Miro was not echoed in his attitude toward Peter and young Val. "It's absurd to think of these monstrous things as people," he said. "They can't possibly have souls. Peter is an echo of someone who already lived and died, with his own sins and repentances, his life's course already measured and his place in heaven or hell already assigned. And as for this--girl, this mockery of feminine grace--she cannot be who she claims to be, for that place is already occupied by a living woman. There can be no baptism for the deceptions of Satan. By creating them, Andrew Wiggin has built his own Tower of Babel, trying to reach into heaven to take the place of God. He cannot be forgiven until he takes them back to hell and leaves them there."

Did Bishop Peregrino imagine for one moment that that was not exactly what he longed to do? But Jane was adamant about it, when Ender offered the idea. "That would be foolish," she said. "Why do you think they would go, for one thing? And for another, what makes you think you wouldn't simply create two more? Haven't you ever heard the story of the sorcerer's apprentice? Taking them back there would be like cutting the brooms in half again--all you'd end up with is more brooms. Leave bad enough alone."

So here they were, walking to the lab together--Peter, with Mayor Kovano completely in his pocket. Young Val, who had won over Quara no less completely, though her purpose was altruistic instead of exploitative. And Ender, their creator, furious and humiliated and afraid.

I made them--therefore I'm responsible for everything they do. And in the long run, they will both do terrible harm. Peter, because harm is his nature--at least the way I conceived him in the patterns of my mind. And young Val, despite her innate goodness, because her very existence is a deep injury to my sister Valentine.

"Don't let Peter goad you so," whispered Jane i

n his ear.

"People think he belongs to me," Ender subvocalized. "They figure that he must be harmless because I'm harmless. But I have no control over him."

"I think they know that."

"I've got to get him away from here."

"I'm working on that," said Jane.

"Maybe I should pack them up and take them off to some deserted planet somewhere. Do you know Shakespeare's play The Tempest?"

"Caliban and Ariel, is that what they are?"

"Exile, since I can't kill them."

"I'm working on it," said Jane. "After all, they're part of you, aren't they? Part of the pattern of your mind? What if I can use them in your place, to allow me to go Outside? Then we could have three starships, and not just one."