Children of the Mind (Ender's Saga 4)

Before she could ask to know where they were going and why, Peter pulled her into the courtyard of a busy restaurant. "This one cooks the fish," said Peter. "I hope you don't mind that."

"What, the others serve it raw?" asked Wang-mu, laughing. Then she realized that Peter was serious. Raw fish!

"The Japanese are famous for it," said Peter, "and in Nagoya it's almost a religion. Notice--not a Japanese face in the restaurant. They wouldn't deign to eat fish that was destroyed by heat. It's just one of those things that they cling to. There's so little that's distinctively Japanese about their culture now, so they're devoted to the few uniquely Japanese traits that survive."

Wang-mu nodded, understanding perfectly how a culture could cling to long-dead customs just for the sake of national identity, and also grateful to be in a place where such customs were all superficial and didn't distort and destroy the lives of the people the way they had on Path.

Their food came quickly--it takes almost no time to cook fish--and as they ate, Peter shifted his position several times on the mat. "Too bad this place isn't nontraditional enough to have chairs."

"Why do Europeans hate the earth so much that you must always lift yourself above it?" asked Wang-mu.

"You've already answered your question," said Peter coldly. "You start from the assumption that we hate the earth. It makes you sound like some magic-using primitive."

Wang-mu blushed and fell silent.

"Oh, spare me the passive oriental woman routine," said Peter. "Or the passive I-was-trained-to-be-a-servant-and-you-sound-like-a-cruel-heartless-master manipulation through guilt. I know I'm a shit and I'm not going to change just because you look so downcast."

"Then you could change because you wish not to be a shit any longer."

"It's in my character. Ender created me hateful so he could hate me. The added benefit is that you can hate me, too."

"Oh, be quiet and eat your fish," she said. "You don't know what you're talking about. You're supposed to analyze human beings and you can't understand the person closest to you in all the world."

"I don't want to understand you," said Peter. "I want to accomplish my task by exploiting this brilliant intelligence you're supposed to have--even if you believe that people who squat are somehow 'closer to the earth' than people who remain upright."

"I wasn't talking about me," she said. "I was talking about the person closest to you. Ender."

"He is blessedly far from us right now."

"He didn't create you so that he could hate you. He long since got over hating you."

"Yeah, yeah, he wrote The Hegemon, et cetera, et cetera."

"That's right," said Wang-mu. "He created you because he desperately neede

d someone to hate him."

Peter rolled his eyes and took a drink of milky pineapple juice. "Just the right amount of coconut. I think I'll retire here, if Ender doesn't die and make me disappear first."

"I say something true, and you answer with coconut in the pineapple juice?"

"Novinha hates him," said Peter. "He doesn't need me."

"Novinha is angry at him, but she's wrong to be angry and he knows it. What he needs from you is a . . . righteous anger. To hate him for the evil that is really in him, which no one but him sees or even believes is there."

"I'm just a nightmare from his childhood," said Peter. "You're reading too much into this."

"He didn't conjure you up because the real Peter was so important in his childhood. He conjured you up because you are the judge, the condemner. That's what Peter drummed into him as a child. You told me yourself, talking about your memories. Peter taunting him, telling him of his unworthiness, his uselessness, his stupidity, his cowardice. You do it now. You look at his life and call him a xenocide, a failure. For some reason he needs this, needs to have someone damn him."

"Well, how nice that I'm around, then, to despise him," said Peter.

"But he also is desperate for someone to forgive him, to have mercy on him, to interpret all his actions as well meant. Valentine is not there because he loves her--he has the real Valentine for that. He has his wife. He needs your sister to exist so she can forgive him."

"So if I stop hating Ender, he won't need me anymore and I'll disappear?"

"If Ender stops hating himself, then he won't need you to be so mean and you'll be easier to get along with."

"Yeah, well, it's not that easy getting along with somebody who's constantly analyzing a person she's never met and preaching at the person she has met."