Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

They had loved each other, but never slept together. Valentine had been pleased to hear it when Miro told her, though he said it with angry regret. Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who

were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves--either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.

She had feared, when she first met Miro, that he was a self-pitying weakling or a self-centered predator resentful of his confinement. Neither was so. He might now regret his chastity in adolescence--it was natural for him to wish he had coupled with Ouanda when he was still strong and they were both of an age--but Valentine did not regret it. It showed that Miro had inner strength and a sense of responsibility to his community. To Valentine, it was predictable that Miro, by himself, had held back the mob for those crucial moments that saved Rooter and Human.

It was also predictable that Miro and Ouanda would now make the great effort to pretend that they were simply two people doing their jobs--that all was normal between them. Inner strength and outward respect. These are the people who hold a community together, who lead. Unlike the sheep and the wolves, they perform a better role than the script given them by their inner fears and desires. They act out the script of decency, of self-sacrifice, of public honor--of civilization. And in the pretense, it becomes reality. There really is civilization in human history, thought Valentine, but only because of people like these. The shepherds.

Novinha met him in the doorway of the school. She leaned on the arm of Dona Crista, the fourth principal of the Children of the Mind of Christ since Ender had come to Lusitania.

"I have nothing to say to you," Novinha said. "We're still married under the law, but that's all."

"I didn't kill your son," he said.

"You didn't save him, either," she answered.

"I love you," Ender said.

"As much as you're capable of love," she said. "And then only when you've got a little time left over from looking after everybody else. You think you're some kind of guardian angel, with responsibility for the whole universe. All I asked you to do was take responsibility for my family. You're good at loving people by the trillion, but not so good at dozens, and you're a complete failure at loving one."

It was a harsh judgment, and he knew it wasn't true, but he didn't come to argue. "Please come home," he said. "You love me and need me as much as I need you."

"This is home now. I've stopped needing you or anybody. And if this is all you came to say, you're wasting my time and yours."

"No, it's not all."

She waited.

"The files in the laboratory. You've sealed them all. We have to find a solution to the descolada before it destroys us all."

She gave him a withering, bitter smile. "Why did you bother me with this? Jane can get past my passwords, can't she?"

"She hasn't tried," he said.

"No doubt to spare my sensibilities. But she can, ne?"

"Probably."

"Then have her do it. She's all you need now. You never really needed me, not when you had her."

"I've tried to be a good husband to you," said Ender. "I never said I could protect you from everything, but I did all I could."

"If you had, my Estevao would be alive."

She turned away, and Dona Crista escorted her back inside the school. Ender watched her until she turned a corner. Then he turned away from the door and left the school. He wasn't sure where he was going, only that he had to get there.

"I'm sorry," said Jane softly.

"Yes," he said.

"When I'm gone," she said, "maybe Novinha will come back to you."

"You won't be gone if I can help it," he said.

"But you can't. They're going to shut me down in a couple of months."

"Shut up," he said.

"It's only the truth."