Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"You can run but you can't hide!"

"Ender! Ender, stop it! Ender!"

He turned. It was Ela crying out to him.

"I don't know what's going on here, but stop it! We only have a few minutes left. Help me with the tests."

She was right. Whatever was going on with Miro's new body, with Peter's and Valentine's reappearance here, the important thing was the descolada. Had Ela succeeded in transforming it? Creating the recolada? And the virus that would transform the people of Path? If Miro could remake his body, and Ender could somehow conjure up the ghosts of his past and make them flesh again, it was possible, really possible, that Ela's vials now contained the viruses whose patterns she had held in her mind.

"Help me," whispered Ela again.

Ender and Miro--the new Miro, his hand strong and sure--reached out, took the vials she offered them, and began the test. It was a negative test--if the bacteria, algae, and tiny worms they added to the tubes remained for several minutes, unaffected, then there was no descolada in the vials. Since the vials had been teeming with the living virus when they boarded the ship, that would be proof that something, at least, had happened to neutralize them. Whether it was truly the recolada or simply a dead or ineffective descolada remained to be discovered when they returned.

The worms and algae and bacteria underwent no transformations. In tests beforehand, on Lusitania, the solution containing the bacteria turned from blue to yellow in the presence of the descolada; now it stayed blue. On Lusitania the tiny worms had quickly died and, graying husks, floated to the surface; now they wriggled on and on, staying the purplish-brown color that in them, at least, meant life. And the algae, instead of breaking apart and dissolving completely away, remained in the thin strands and tendrils of life.

"Done, then," said Ender.

"At least we can hope," said Ela.

"Sit down," said Miro. "If we're done, she'll take us back."

Ender sat. He looked at the seat where Miro had been sitting. His old crippled body was no longer identifiably human. It continued crumbling, the pieces breaking up into dust or flowing away as liquid. Even the clothing was dissolving into nothing.

"It's not part of my pattern anymore," said Miro. "There's nothing to hold it together anymore."

"What about these?" demanded Ender. "Why aren't they dissolving?"

"Or you?" asked Peter. "Why don't you dissolve? Nobody needs you now. You're a tired old fart who can't even hold onto his woman. And you never even fathered a child, you pathetic old eunuch. Make way for a real man. No one ever needed you--everything you've ever done I could have done better, and everything I did you never could have matched."

Ender buried his face in his hands. This was not an outcome he could have imagined in his worst nightmares. Yes, he knew they were going out into a place where things might be created out of his mind. But it had never occurred to him that Peter was still lingering there. He thought he had expunged that old hatred long ago.

And Valentine--why would he create another Valentine? This one so young and perfect, sweet and beautiful? There was a real Valentine waiting for him back on Lusitania--what would she think, seeing what he created out of his own mind? Perhaps it would be flattering to know how closely she was held in his heart; but she would also know that what he treasured was what she used to be, not what she was now.

The darkest and the brightest secrets of his heart would both stand exposed as soon as the door opened and he had to step back out onto the surface of Lusitania again.

"Dissolve," he said to them. "Crumble away."

"You do it first, old man," said Peter. "Your life is over, and mine is just beginning. All I had to try for the first time was Earth, one tired old planet--it was as easy as it would be for me to reach out and kill you with my bare hands, right now, if I wanted to. Snap your little neck like a dry noodle."

"Try it," whispered Ender. "I'm not the frightened little boy anymore."

"Nor are you a match for me," said Peter. "You never were, you never will be. You have too much heart. You're like Valentine. You flinch away from doing what has to be done. It makes you soft and weak. It makes you easy to destroy."

A sudden flash of light. What was it, death in Outspace after all? Had Jane lost the pattern in her mind? Were they blowing up, or falling into a sun?

No. It was the door opening. It was the light of the Lusitanian morning breaking into the relative darkness of the inside of the ship.

"Are you coming out?" cried Grego. He stuck his head into the ship. "Are you--"

Then he saw them. Ender could see him silently counting.

"Nossa Senhora," whispered Grego. "Where the hell did they come from?"

"Out of Ender's totally screwed-up head," said Peter.

"From old and tender memory," said the new Valentine.

"Help me with the viruses," said Ela.