Chapter 8 Ms. Ivanova

This means a lifelong deception.

You go out and you find something, something important, and then when you get back to the station you write a report that is completely innocuous and doesn't say a word about any of the cultural contamination that we know about.

You're too young to understand what kind of torture this is.

Father and I started doing this because we couldn't stand to hide our knowledge from the pigs.

Like me, you will find that it is just as painful to hide knowledge from your peers.

When you watch them struggle with a problem, knowing that you have data that can easily solve their dilemma, when you see them close to the truth, but because they lack your data, they retract their correct conclusions and fall back into the wrong - if that doesn't make you miserable, then you're not human.

You have to remind yourself, always that this is their law, their choice. It is they who have built a wall between themselves and the truth, and if we let them know how easily that wall can be breached and has been completely breached, they will only punish us. And for every foreign scientist who thirsts for truth, there are ten descabe?ados [mindless] despised fellows of knowledge, who have never put forward any original hypothesis, and whose work is nothing but tossing the writings of real scientists, in order to find the slightest error or contradiction or flaw in the method. These bloodsuckers will read each of your reports over and over again, and if you're not careful, they'll get caught.

This means that you can't even mention a culturally tainted pig name: "Cup" will tell them that we taught them the rudimentary art of pottery. What the "calendar" and "sickle" mean is even more obvious. And if they had known the name of the arrow, God would not have been able to save us.

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Memorandum from Liberida Figueira de Madisi to Ouanda Figueila Makambi and Miro Ribeira von José, taken from the Lusitanian Papers, was presented as evidence by order of the Parliament in the trial in absentia against the Lusitanian heteroanthropologists for treason and malfeasance

Nowanhua was still hovering around the biology workstation, even though her meaningful work had been done an hour earlier. The cloned potato plants all grew well in the nutrient solution, and now all that was left was to observe each day which of her genetic mutations would produce the strongest plants and the most useful roots.

If I have nothing to do, why don't I go home? Her children needed her, for sure, and she never treated them well: she left early every day and came home only when the little ones were asleep. But even now, knowing that it was time for her to go back, she sat there staring at the lab, seeing nothing, doing nothing, doing nothing.

She wanted to go home, but she couldn't understand why she wasn't happy to think about it. After all, she reminded herself that Marcau was dead. He died three weeks ago. This point in time is not fast enough. He did all the things I needed him to do, and I did what he wanted, but four years before he rotted and died, all our reasons ran out. We never shared a moment of love in all these years, but I never wanted to leave him. Divorce should be impossible, but separation is enough. To stop the beatings. Ever since he threw her on the concrete floor for the last time, her hips have been stiff and sometimes painful. What a lovely legacy you've left behind, Makau, my dog husband.

Her hips burned as she thought so. She nodded contentedly. It's just what I deserve, and I'll be sad when it's healed.

She got up and walked, never staggering, though the pain in her hip was very uncomfortable for her. I'm not going to spoil myself, not in any way. It's just what I deserve.

She walked out of the door and closed it. As soon as she left, the computer turned off the lights, except for those necessary for the various plants to force the photosynthesis period. She loved her plants, her little brutes, surprisingly passionately. Grow, she yelled at them every night, grow and flourish. She will grieve for those who have lost and will only strangle them when they are clearly without a future. As she walked away from the workstation, she could still hear their unconscious music, the screams of tiny cells as they grew and divided, differentiating themselves into more complex forms. She was moving from light to darkness, from life to death, and the emotional pain and the burning pain in her joints echoed each other in a perfect beat.

When she looked at her house from the top of the hill, she could see the light shining through the window at the foot of the hill. Koyula and Gregor's room was dark, and she should not have to endure their unbearable accusations to-day—Koyula with silence, Gregor with anger and misdeeds. But there were too many other lights on, including her own room and antechamber. Something unusual happened, and she didn't like extraordinary events.

Orjado sat in the living room, wearing his headphones as usual, but tonight, he still had interface connectors stuck in his eyes. Apparently, he was retrieving old visual memories from the computer, or, more likely, some of his own. Again, as she had done so many times before, how she wished she could pass down her visual memories and erase them, replacing them with happier ones. Pippo's corpse would be the one she would be happy to get rid of, and replace it with some of the good old days when the three of them were together at the Alien Workstation. And Lipo's wrapped corpse, a wonderful body that had not been torn apart by the wrapping of the fabrics, and she would have wanted to exchange it for some other memory of his body, the touch of his lips, the expression of his dexterous hands. But those good memories are gone, buried deep in pain. I stole them, those good days, and because of that they were taken back for the retribution I deserved.

Orjardo turned to face her, and the joint appeared in his eyes with an abomination. She couldn't contain her trembling, her shame. I'm sorry, she said silently. If you have another mother, you should undoubtedly keep your eyes. You were born the best, the healthiest, the most perfect, the laborious of my children, but of course nothing that was born from me* will remain intact for long.

She didn't say anything about these words, of course, just as Orjardo didn't say anything to her. She turned around to go back to her room to see why the lights were on.

"Mother," Orjado said. He had taken off his headphones and screwed the connector out of his eye.

"Well, what?"

"We have a visitor," he said. "The man who spoke. ”

She felt a chill run through herself. Not tonight, she screamed silently (oops, I can't help but use those four words. ）。 But she also knew that tomorrow, she wouldn't want to see him, not the day after tomorrow, never again.

"He's got his pants clean now, and he's changing them in your room. I hope you don't mind. ”

Ella emerges from the kitchen. "You're home," she said. "I poured you a couple of Espresso coffees, and I poured you a cup as well. ”

"I'll wait outside until he leaves," Ms. Noe said.

Ella and Orhado looked at each other. Nuo Wanhua immediately understood that they saw her as a problem to be solved, and it was clear that whatever the speaker was doing here, they agreed. Well, I'm a dilemma that you won't solve.

"Mother," said Orjardo, "he is not what the bishop says. He's a good man. ”

Nuo Wanhua replied to him in her usual sarcastic tone. "Since when have you become an expert on the question of good and evil?"

Ella and Orjado looked at each other again. She knew what they were thinking. How can we explain it to her? How can we convince her? Well, dear children, you can't. I am unconvincing, and Lippo has found this every week in his life. He never got the secret from me. His death was not my fault.

But they at least partially succeeded in getting her to change her mind. She didn't leave the house, but brushed Ella, who was standing in the doorway, and retreated to the kitchen, but didn't touch her at all. Small coffee cups are arranged in a neat and well-proportioned circle on the table, and the coffee pot is placed in the middle. She sat down and rested her forearms on the table. So the man said that he was here, and he came to her. Where else would he go? He's going to blame me here, isn't he? He's another guy whose life I've ruined, like my children's lives, like Macau's, like Lipo's, and Pippo's, and my own.

A strong, but surprisingly smooth man's arm reached over her shoulder, picked up the pot, and began to pour coffee from the elegant and delicate spout, a small stream of hot coffee swirling into one Yinuo coffee cup.

"Can I pour [coffee]?" he asked. That's a stupid question, since he's already falling. But his voice is gentle, and he speaks with an elegant Cassitian accent in Portuguese.

So, a Spaniard?

"Desculpa-me," she whispered. Forgive me. "trouxeosenhortantosquil?metros—"

"We don't measure range in kilometers in astronautics, Ms. Ivanova. We measure it in years. What he was saying was an accusation, but his voice sounded like longing, even forgiveness, even comfort. I'll probably be fascinated by the sound. This voice is a liar.

"If I could cancel your trip and send you back twenty-two years ago, I would do it. It was a mistake to call you. I'm sorry. Her own voice sounded flat. Because her whole life was a lie, even this apology sounded mechanical.

"I haven't started to feel this time yet," the speaker said. He was still standing behind her, so she hadn't seen his face until now. "For me, I left my sister only a week ago. She was the last person I still had alive. Her daughter hadn't been born yet, and now she's probably out of college, married, and probably has children of her own. I'll never get to know her. But I know your children, Ms. Ivanova. ”

She lifted her coffee and drank it down, even though it burned her tongue and throat and hurt her stomach. "It's only been a few hours and you think you know them?"

"Know better than you, Ms. Ivanova. ”

Nowanhua gasped when she heard Ella's bold statement for the speaker. And, even though she thought his words were most likely right, being said so by a stranger still irritated her. She turned her head to look at him and scolded him, but he had already walked away, and he was not behind her. She turned around a little more, and finally stood up to find him, but he was not in the room. Ella stood in the doorway, her eyes wide.

"Come back!" said Nowanhua. "You can't do that to me, just walk away with those words!"

But he didn't answer. Instead, she heard a low laugh coming from the back of the house. Nuo Wanhua followed the sound and left. She walked from room to the other end of the house. Miró sat on Nowanhua's own bed, and the speaker stood by the door, laughing with him. As soon as he saw his mother, the smile left Milo's face. It made her heart feel like a thorn in her spine. She hadn't seen his smile in years, and had forgotten how beautiful his face was when she laughed, just like his father's, and her presence had erased it.

"We came here to talk because Kim was angry," Miró explained, "and Ella made the bed." ”

"I don't think anyone cares about the bed," Nuo Wanhua said coldly. "Do you care, talker?"

"Order and chaos," said the speaker, "have their own beauty." He still didn't turn to face her, and she was glad about it, because it meant she didn't have to look him in the eye when she sent out those poisonous words.

"I'm telling you, talker, you're doing a stupid errand this time," she said. "Hate me for it, if you will, but you have no death to speak of. I was a stupid girl. I naively thought that as soon as I called, the author of the queen worm and the overlord would come. I had just lost a man who was like a father to me, and I needed solace. ”

Then he turned to her. He was a young man, at least, younger than her, but his seductive eyes were full of understanding. perigoso (note: Portuguese, dangerous), she thought. He's dangerous, he's beautiful, and I'll probably indulge in his empathy.

"Ms. Ivanova," he said, "how can you, after reading the Queen of Worms and the Overlord, think that its author will bring solace?"

It was Miró who answered the question—the silent, slow-talking Miró who suddenly interjected into the conversation with a fervor that she hadn't seen since he was a child. "I've read it," he said, "and the original Death Storyteller wrote the story of the Queen with deep compassion." ”

The speaker smiled sadly. "But he didn't write for the Zerg, did he? He was writing to humanity, and at that time humanity was still celebrating the destruction of the Zerg as a great victory. He wrote cruelly, in order to turn their pride into remorse, their joy into sorrow. And now the humans have completely forgotten that they once hated the Zerg, that they once revered and praised a name that is no longer utterable—"

"I don't have anything I can't say," Ivanova said. "His name is Ender, and he destroys everything he touches. Like me, she didn't say it.

"Oh, what do you know about him?" his voice struck at him, like a lawn saw, jagged and ruthless. "How do you know that he has not been in friendly contact with anything, that no one has loved him, that no one has enjoyed his love, that has destroyed everything he has touched - this is a lie that cannot be true in any human being who has ever lived. ”

"Is this your creed, Speaker? I don't think you know much. She was deliberately provocative, but she was still frightened by his anger. She thought that his mildness was as unshakable as that of a confessed priest.

The anger disappeared from his face almost immediately. "You don't have to have a troubled conscience. He said. "It was your call that made me start my journey here, but I was on the way when someone else summoned a speaker. ”

"Oh?" "Is there anyone else in this ignorant city who is familiar with the Queen of Worms and the Overlord to the point of wanting to find a speaker, and who is not influenced by Bishop Peregrino to the point of daring to summon one?"

"For I have been summoned to speak of the death of your deceased husband, Macos Maria Ribera. ”

This is appalling news. "He's finally dead, who would want to think of him again!"

The speaker did not answer. Instead, Miró sat on her bed and pointed pointedly: "Someone will, like Greg is one." The Speaker revealed to us something we should have known long ago—that the boy was grieving for his father and that we all hated him—"

"Cheap psychology," she interrupted Miro. "We have our own therapists, and of course they are not much more useful than this. ”

Ella's voice came from behind her. "I told him to tell me about my father's death, mother. I thought it would be decades before he came here, but I'm glad he's here now, at a time when he can help us a little. ”

"How can he help us!"

"He's helped, Mother. Greg fell asleep with him in his arms, and Koyula spoke to him. ”

"Exactly," said Milo, "she was telling him he stinks." ”

"It's mostly true," said Ella, "because Gregoino peed on him." ”

Miro and Ella laughed at the memory, and so did the speaker. More than anything else, it upset Nowanhua - it had been a very long time since such a joyous atmosphere had been in the house, ever since Marcau had brought her here a year after Pippo's death. Nowanhua couldn't help but think of her happiness in the days when Miro was born, and how Mira babbled and called the name of everything in the first few years of their lives when Ella was a child, how Ella toddled and crawled around the house after him, how the two of them played together, how they could jump around in the grass of the pig forest that could be seen through the wall, and the happiness that Nowanhua got from the children was poison to Mako, which made him hate them both, because he knew that neither of them was his。 By the time Kim was born, the family was already full of resentment, and he had never learned how to laugh out loud where his parents might have noticed. Hearing Miro and Ella laughing together was like a sudden opening in a thick black curtain, and suddenly the sun returned, and Nowanhua had forgotten that there was day besides night.

How dare this stranger break into her home like this and tear open all the curtains she has already drawn!

"I won't allow it," she said. "You don't have the right to inquire into my husband's life. ”

He raised an eyebrow. She knew the Codex as well as anyone else, so she knew full well that not only did he have the right to do so, but the law protected him from pursuing the true story of the dead.

"Macau is a wretched man," she insisted, "and to tell the truth about him is nothing but pain." ”

"You're quite right, in the sense that the truth about him can only bring pain, but not because he's a pathetic man," the speaker said. "If I only say the things that are well known—that he hates his children, beats his wife, and gets drunk from bar to bar until the sheriff sends him home—then I will not cause pain, will I? I will bring great satisfaction, because then everyone will be more certain that they are absolutely right about him. He's a scumbag, so they're completely right about him like they're a scumbag. ”

"And you think he's not?"

"No human being is worthless if you can understand what he wants. No one's life is worthless. Even the most wicked man or woman, as long as you understand their hearts, there are some acts of generosity, at least a little atonement for their sins. ”

"If you believe that, then you're more naïve than you look," Ms. Nowanhua said.

"Am I?" said the speaker. "The first time I heard your call was less than two weeks ago. I studied you then, and even if you don't remember it anymore, Nuo Wanhua, I still remember you as a young girl for your sweetness and kindness. You've been lonely, but both Pippo and Lipo know you and find you worthy of love. ”

"Pippo is dead. ”

"But he loved you. ”

"You don't know anything, talk about people! You're twenty-two light years away! And I'm not saying I'm worthless, I'm talking about Makaw!"

"But you don't believe that, Nuo Wanhua. Because you know the tender and generous act that was enough to redeem the poor man's life. ”

Nowanhua didn't know what she was fearing, but she had to shut him up before he could say it explicitly, even if she had no clue what he thought he had found in the brute. "How dare you call me Nuo Wanhua!" she shouted. "No one has called me that in the past four years!"

His answer was to raise his hand, his fingers running his fingers over her cheek from behind. It was a shy gesture, almost childish, and it reminded her of Lipo, and she couldn't bear it anymore. She grabbed his hand, threw it away, and squeezed past him into the room. "Get out!" she yelled at Miro. Her son hurriedly got up and retreated to the door. She could see from his face that she could still scare Miró with her anger after all the things she had seen in the house.

"You won't get anything from me!" she shouted to the speaker.

"I'm not here to take things from you," he said calmly.

"That's the same, I don't want anything you give! You're worthless to me, don't you hear? you're the one who's worthless!lixo, ruina, estragon - vaiforad'aqui, nǎotensdireitoestaremminhacasa!" You don't have the right to stay in my house.

"Nöoesestrago," he whispered, "eressolofecundo, evouplantarjardimaí." (Note: In Portuguese, you are fertile soil, and I will be out of the garden in this way.) Then, before she could respond, he closed the door and left.

In fact, she couldn't respond to him, and his words were so ridiculous. She called him a destroyer, and his answer was as if she were speaking of herself as a wasteland. And she was laughing at him, not by calling him Mr. or even by an informal you, but by using presumptuous second-person pronouns to call Erru. It's a way of talking to a child or a dog. And although he replied in the same tone, with the same presumptuousness, the meaning was completely different. "Thou art fertile soil, and I will plant it. (Note: The original text here is in Middle English, so the translation is also in Chinese...... For the sake of a bit of charm in reading, I omit the adverbial of the second line) This is the way in which a poet speaks to his mistress, or even a husband to his wife, and this second-person pronoun is not arrogant, but intimate. How dare he, she whispered to herself, stroking the cheek he had touched. He was far more brutal than any man of speech I could have imagined. Bishop Peregrino is right. He was a dangerous man, an unbeliever, an antichrist, and he brazenly broke into the temple of my heart, which I had kept as a holy place, and no one else had ever been allowed to set foot on it. How dare he trample on the few sprouts of life that he held on to that gravel soil, I would rather I die before I saw him, he must have ruined me before he was done.

She was dazed and realized that someone was crying. Koyula. The screaming would of course wake her up, and she was always afraid of noise when she slept. Nuo Wanhua was about to open the door to comfort her, but then she heard the crying stop and a soft male voice singing to her. The song is in another language. It sounded like German, to Norwan, or Norse, either way, she didn't understand it anyway. But she knew who was singing, and she knew that Koyula was comforted.

Ever since she first realized that Miro was determined to become a stranger and follow in the footsteps of the two men killed by the pigs, the post-80s Shaolin abbot and then regrouped us all together, but in the process he will find my secrets. If he finds out how Pippo died, and then tells the truth, then Miró will know the same secret, and it will kill him. I don't want to give more sacrifices to the pigs, they are too cruel for me to worship.

Later, as she lay in bed, behind her closed door, trying to fall asleep, she heard more whispers coming from the front of the room, and this time she could hear Kim and Orhado laughing with Miro and Ella. She imagined that she could see them, a room lit up by laughter. But when the god of sleep seized her, and her imagination turned into a dream, it was not the man of the tongue who sat among her children and taught them to laugh, it was Lipo, who was resurrected, and everyone knew that he was her true husband, the man she really married in her heart, though she refused to marry him in the church. Even in her sleep, the pleasure was too much for her to bear, and tears wet the sheets on her bed.