Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"Oh, Mistress, it's not my place to forgive you. You must forgive me."

"No, I was wrong. I know it--the gods have shown me my unworthiness for laughing at you."

Then the gods are very stupid, if they think that it was your laughter that made me angry. Either that or they're lying to you. I hate your gods and how they humiliate you without ever telling you a single thing worth knowing. So let them strike me dead for thinking that thought!

But Wang-mu knew that wouldn't happen. The gods would never lift a finger against Wang-mu herself. They'd only make Qing-jao--who was her friend, in spite of everything--they'd make Qing-jao bow down and trace the floor until Wang-mu felt so ashamed that she wanted to die.

"Mistress," said Wang-mu, "you did nothing wrong and I was never offended."

It was no use. Qing-jao was on the floor. Wang-mu turned away, buried her face in her hands--but kept silent, refusing to make a sound even in her weeping, because that would force Qing-jao to start over again. Or it would convince her that she had hurt Wang-mu so badly that she had to trace two lines, or three, or--let the gods not require it!--the whole floor again. Someday, thought Wang-mu, the gods will tell Qing-jao to trace every line on every board in every room in the house and she'll die of thirst or go mad trying to do it.

To stop herself from weeping in frustration, Wang-mu forced herself to look at the terminal and read the report that Qing-jao had read. Valentine Wiggin was born on Earth during the Bugger Wars. She had started using the name Demosthenes as a child, at the same time as her brother Peter, who used the name Locke and went to on to be Hegemon. She wasn't simply a Wiggin--she was one of the Wiggins, sister of Peter the Hegemon and Ender the Xenocide. She had been only a footnote in the histories--Wang-mu hadn't even remembered her name till now, just the fact that the great Peter and the monster Ender had a sister. But the sister turned out to be just as strange as her brothers; she was the immortal one; she was the one who kept on changing humanity with her words.

Wang-mu could hardly believe this. Demosthenes had already been important in her life, but now to learn that the real Demosthenes was sister of the Hegemon! The one whose story was told in the holy book of the speakers for the dead: the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Not that it was holy only to them. Practically every religion had made a space for that book, because the story was so strong--about the destruction of the first alien species humanity ever discovered, and then about the terrible good and evil that wrestled in the soul of the first man ever to unite all of humanity under one government. Such a complex story, and yet told so simply and clearly that many people read it and were moved by it when they were children. Wang-mu had first heard it read aloud when she was five. It was one of the deepest stories in her soul.

She had dreamed, not once but twice, that she met the Hegemon himself--Peter, only he insisted that she call him by his network name, Locke. She was both fascinated and repelled by him; she could not look away. Then he reached out his hand and said, Si Wang-mu, Royal Mother of the West, only you are a fit consort for the ruler of all humanity, and he took her and married her and she sat beside him on his throne.

Now, of course, she knew that almost every poor girl had dreams of marrying a rich man or finding out she was really the child of a rich family or some other such nonsense. But dreams were also sent from the gods, and there was truth in any dream you had more than once; everyone knew that. So she still felt a strong affinity for Peter Wiggin; and now, to realize that Demosthenes, for whom she had also felt great admiration, was his sister--that was almost too much of a coincidence to bear. I don't care what my mistress says, Demosthenes! cried Wang-mu silently. I love you anyway, because you have told me the truth all my life. And I love you also as the sister of the Hegemon, who is the husband of my dreams.

Wang-mu felt the air in the room change; she knew the door had been opened. She looked, and there stood Mu-pao, the ancient and most dreaded housekeeper herself, the terror of all servants--including Wang-mu, even though Mu-pao had relatively little power over a secret maid. At once Wang-mu moved to the door, as silently as possible so as not to interrupt Qing-jao's purification.

Out in the hall, Mu-pao closed the door to the room so Qing-jao wouldn't hear.

"The Master calls for his daughter. He's very agitated; he cried out a while ago, and frightened everyone."

"I heard the cry," said Wang-mu. "Is he ill?"

"I don't know. He's very agitated. He sent me for your mistress and says he must talk to her at once. But if she's communing with the gods, he'll understand; make sure you tell her to come to him as soon as she's done."

"I'll tell her now. She has told me that nothing should stop her from answering the call of her father," said Wang-mu.

Mu-pao looked aghast at the thought. "But it's forbidden to interrupt when the gods are--"

"Qing-jao will do a greater penance later. She will want to know her father is calling her." It gave Wang-mu great satisfaction to put Mu-pao in her place. You may be ruler of the house servants, Mu-pao, but I am the one who has the power to interrupt even the conversation between my godspoken mistress and the gods themselves.

As Wang-mu expected, Qing-jao's first reaction to being interrupted was bitter frustration, fury, weeping. But when Wang-mu bowed herself abjectly to the floor, Qing-jao immediately calmed. This is why I love her and why I can bear serving her, thought Wang-mu, because she does not love the power she has over me and because she has more compassion than any of the other godspoken I have heard of. Qing-jao listened to Wang-mu's explanation of why she had interrupted, and then embraced her. "Ah, my friend Wang-mu, you are very wise. If my father has cried out in anguish and then called to me, the gods know that I must put off my purification and go to him."

Wang-mu followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, until they knelt together on the mat before Han Fei-tzu's chair.

Qing-jao waited for Father to speak, but he said nothing. Yet his hands trembled. She had never seen him so anxious.

"Father," said Qing-jao, "why did you call me?"

He shook his head. "Something so terrible--and so wonderful--I don't know whether to shout for joy or kill myself." Father's voice was husky and out of control. Not since Mother died--no, not since Father had held her after the test that proved she was godspoken--not since then had she heard him speak so emotionally.

"Tell me, Father, and then I'll tell you my news--I've found Demosthenes, and I may have found the key to the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet."

Father's eyes opened wider. "On this day of all days, you've solved the problem?"

"If it is what I think it is, then the enemy of Congress can be destroyed. But it will be very hard. Tell me what you've discovered!"

"No, you tell me first. This is strange--both happening on the same day. Tell me!"

"It was Wang-mu who made me think of it. She was asking questions about--oh, about how computers work--and suddenly I realized that if there were in every ansible computer a hidden program, one so wise and powerful that it could move itself from place to place to stay hidden, then that secret program could be intercepting all the ansible communications. The fleet might still be there, might even be sending messages, but we're not receiving them and don't even know that they exist because of these programs."

"In every ansible computer? Working flawlessly all the time?" Father sounded skeptical, of course, because in her eagerness Qing-jao had told the story backward.

"Yes, but let me tell you how such an impossible thing might be possible. You see, I found Demosthenes."