Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"You?" asked Wang-mu. "I volunteered because I was afraid you would humiliate other servants by requiring them to do it."

"I will never again ask anyone to do something so low and debasing that I refuse to do it myself," said Master Han.

"Then we'll do it together," said Wang-mu. "Please remember, Master Han--you will help Jane by reading and responding to reports, while manual tasks are the only way that I can help at all. Don't insist on doing what I can do. Instead spend your time on the things that only you can do."

Jane interrupted before Master Han could answer. "Wang-mu, I want you to read the reports as well."

"Me? But I'm not educated at all."

"Nevertheless," said Jane.

"I won't even understand them."

"Then I'll help you," said Master Han.

"This isn't right," said Wang-mu. "I'm not Qing-jao. This is the sort of thing she could do. It isn't for me."

"I watched you and Qing-jao through the whole process that led to her discovery of me," said Jane. "Many of the key insights came from you, Si Wang-mu, not from Qing-jao."

"From me? I never even tried to--"

"You didn't try. You watched. You made connections in your mind. You asked questions."

"They were foolish questions," said Wang-mu. Yet in her heart she was glad: Someone saw!

"Questions that no expert would ever have asked," said Jane. "Yet they were exactly the questions that led Qing-jao to her most important conceptual breakthroughs. You may not be godspoken, Wang-mu, but you have gifts of your own."

"I'll read and respond," said Wang-mu, "but I will also gather tissue samples. All of the tissue samples, so that Master Han does not have to speak to these godspoken visitors and listen to them praise him for a terrible thing that he didn't do."

Master Han was still opposed. "I refuse to think of you doing--"

Jane interrupted him. "Han Fei-tzu, be wise. Wang-mu, as a servant, is invisible. You, as master of the house, are as subtle as a tiger in a playground. Nothing you do goes unnoticed. Let Wang-mu do what she can do best."

Wise words, thought Wang-mu. Why then are you asking me to respond to the work of scientists, if each person must do what he does best? Yet she kept silent. Jane had them begin by taking their own tissue samples; then Wang-mu set about gathering tissue samples from the rest of the household. She found most of what she needed on combs and unwashed clothing. Within days she had samples from a dozen godspoken visitors, also taken from their clothing. No one had to take fecal samples after all. But she would have been willing.

Qing-jao noticed her, of course, but snubbed her. It hurt Wang-mu to have Qing-jao treat her so coldly, for they had once been friends and Wang-mu still loved her, or at least loved the young woman that Qing-jao had been before the crisis. Yet there was nothing Wang-mu could say or do to restore their friendship. She had chosen another path.

Wang-mu kept all the tissue samples carefully separated and labeled. Instead of taking them to a medical technician, however, she found a much simpler way. Dressing in some of Qing-jao's old clothing, so that she looked like a godspoken student instead of a servant girl, she went to the nearest college and told them that she was working on a project whose nature she could not divulge, and she humbly requested that they perform a scan on the tissue samples she provided. As she expected, they asked no questions of a godspoken girl, even a complete stranger. Instead they ran the molecular scans, and Wang-mu could only assume that Jane had done as she promised, taking control of the computer and making the scan include all the operations Ela needed.

On the way home from the college, Wang-mu discarded all the samples she

had collected and burned the report the college had given her. Jane had what she needed--there was no point in running the risk that Qing-jao or perhaps a servant in the house who was in the pay of Congress might discover that Han Fei-tzu was working on a biological experiment. As for someone recognizing her, the servant Si Wang-mu, as the young godspoken girl who had visited the college--there was no chance of that. No one looking for a godspoken girl would so much as glance at a servant like her.

"So you've lost your woman and I've lost mine," said Miro.

Ender sighed. Every now and then Miro got into a talky mood, and because bitterness was always just under the surface with him, his chat tended to be straight to the point and more than a little unkind. Ender couldn't begrudge him the talkiness--he and Valentine were almost the only people who could listen to Miro's slow speech patiently, without giving him a sign that they wanted him to get on with it. Miro spent so much of his time with pent-up thoughts, unexpressed, that it would be cruel to shut him down just because he had no tact.

Ender wasn't pleased to be reminded of the fact that Novinha had left him. He was trying to keep that thought out of his mind, while he worked on other problems--on the problem of Jane's survival, mostly, and a little bit on every other problem, too. But at Miro's words, that aching, hollow, half-panicked feeling returned. She isn't here. I can't just speak and have her answer. I can't just ask and have her remember. I can't just reach and feel her hand. And, most terrible of all: Perhaps I never will again.

"I suppose so," said Ender.

"You probably don't like to equate them," said Miro. "After all, she's your wife of thirty years, and Ouanda was my girlfriend for maybe five years. But that's only if you start counting when puberty hit. She was my friend, my closest friend except maybe Ela, since I was little. So if you think about it, I was with Ouanda most of my life, while you were only with Mother for half of yours."

"Now I feel much better," said Ender.

"Don't get pissed off at me," said Miro.

"Don't piss me off," said Ender.