Chapter 18: The Queen

Evolution did not give his mother the birth canal and **. So this little being, which will be called a human being in the future, has no exit from *, but only by the teeth in his mouth. He and his baby brothers gobbled up their mother's body. Because man is the strongest and most energetic, he eats the most, and he becomes stronger.

Humanity lives in complete darkness. After his mother's death, there was nothing to eat but the sweet liquid that flowed on the surface of his world. He didn't know yet that the vertical surface was the inner surface of a huge tree hole, and that the liquid he was eating was the sap of the tree. He also didn't know that the warmer beings much larger than himself were the older pigs, ready to leave the darkness in the trees, and the smaller ones were young individuals, born later than himself.

All he cared about was eating, moving, seeing the light. Every now and then, in a melody that he could not comprehend, a sudden light shone into the darkness. Every time it started there was a loud sound, and he couldn't understand the source of the sound. Then the tree will tremble slightly, the sap will stop flowing, and all of the tree's energy will be used to change the shape of the trunk somewhere to create an opening for light to let in. When there is light, human beings move towards it. When the light is gone, the human loses his sense of direction and continues to wander aimlessly in search of liquids to sip.

Until one day, when almost all the other beings there were smaller than himself, none of them were greater, and the light came, and this time he was strong and nimble enough to get there before the opening closed. He bent his body along the curves of the trees, feeling for the first time the file-like bark of trees beneath his soft belly. He barely noticed the new pain as the light shook him. It's no longer confined to one place, it's everywhere, and it's not gray, it's bright greens and yellows. His ecstasy lasted for many seconds. Then he was hungry again, and outside the Mother Tree the sap flowed only between the crevices of the bark, where it was difficult to reach, and all the other beings were no longer the little ones he could push aside, but were all bigger than himself, and drove him away from the easily accessible places to eat. It's a new thing, a new world, a new life, that scares him.

Later, when he learns the language, he will recall this journey from darkness to light, and then he will call it the passage from the first life to the second life, from the dark life to the half-light life.

————

The Dead Speak of Man, Human Life, 1:1-5

Miró decides to leave Lusitania. Take the Talker's starship to Trondheim. Perhaps in his trial he could convince the world not to fight Lucitania. At worst, he would have become a martyr, inspired, commemorated, and a symbol. Whatever happens to him, it's better than staying here.

In the first few days after he climbed the fence, Miró recovered quickly. Gained some perception and control of his hands and feet. Enough to walk on a stagger, like an old man. Enough to move his arms and hands. Enough to end the shame of having to be washed by his mother. But then his recovery slowed down and stopped. "That's the end of it," Navio said. "It's time for permanent damage. You are so lucky, Miro, you can walk, you can talk, you are a whole man. You're no worse than, say, a very healthy centenarian. I wish you could have told you that your body will be the same as it was before you climbed the fence, and that you will have all the energy and control of a twenty-year-old. But I'm glad I don't have to tell you you're going to be bedridden for life, wearing diapers and urinary catheters, and doing nothing but listening to soft music and wondering where your body has gone. ”

So I'm heartily grateful, Miro thought. I feel so happy when my fingers curl up into useless sticks at the ends of my arms, when I listen to my own speech whimpering and incomprehensible, for the sake of me being like a centenarian, for the sake of me that I can hope to live another eighty years and be a centenarian.

As soon as it became clear that he no longer needed constant attention, the family dispersed and went about their respective business. These words are too exciting for them to stay at home with a crippled brother, son, friend. He understands perfectly. He also didn't want them to stay at home with him. He wanted to be with them. His work is not yet done. Now, after all this time, all the fences, all the rules are gone. Now he could ask the Pigs questions that had puzzled him for so long.

At first he tried to work through Ouanda. She came to see him every morning and evening to finish her report on the terminal in the antechamber of Ribeira's house. He reads her reports, asks her questions, and listens to her stories. And she remembered the questions he wanted her to ask the Pigs. However, after a few days like this, he noticed that in the evening she did have an answer to Miro's question. But there is no tracking, no search for meaning. Her real attention is focused on her own work. So Miró stopped asking her questions for him. He lied to her, saying that he was much more interested in the work she was doing, that her path of exploration was the most important.

The truth is that he hates to see Ouanda. It was painful and terrible for him to reveal that she was his sister, but he knew that if the decision was up to him alone, he would put aside the taboo of [***] and marry her, and if necessary, live in the forest with the pigs. But, Ouanda, she is a believer, a belonging. There is no way she can violate the only universal law of mankind. She was also sad when she knew that Miro was her brother, but she immediately began to separate herself from him, forgetting the strokes, the kisses, the murmurs, the vows, the teasing, the laughing......

It would be better if he forgot about that. But he couldn't. Every time he saw her, he saw her so polite, so courteous and so kind, it hurt him. He's her brother, he's disabled, she'll be nice to him. But love is gone.

He unkindly compares Ouanda to his own mother, who once loved what she loved, ignoring the barriers between them. But the mother's lover is a complete man, a capable man, and not this useless remnant.

So Miró stayed at home and studied the report documents of everyone else's work. It's torture to know what they're up to, to know that he can't be a part of it, but it's better than watching a dull video or listening to music or doing nothing on the terminal.

He could type and type slowly, by carefully aligning his hands so that his stiffest finger, the index finger, touched just one key. It's not fast enough to enter any more complex data, or even write a memo, but he can pull up other people's public documents and read the work they're doing. He was able to maintain some contact with Lusitania on the important work that suddenly blossomed due to the opening of the door.

Ouanda is working with the Pigs to compile a dictionary of male and wife languages, and has completed a phonetic spelling system so that they can write down their language.

Kim was helping her, but Miró knew he had his own purpose: he wanted to be a missionary to the other tribes of the Pigs, to bring the gospel to them before they saw the Queen of the Worms and the Overlord, and he wanted to translate at least some of the sacred scriptures and preach them to the Pigs in their own language. All this work on the Pig language and culture was good, important, preserving history, preparing to communicate with other tribes, but Miró knew that Mr. Christopher's scholars could do it easily, and they were now brave enough to go into the forest in their robes, calmly ask questions of the Pig Clan, and answer the Pig Clan's questions skillfully and forcefully. Miro believes that Ouanda is allowing herself to become superfluous.

The real work related to the pigs, as far as Miró had seen, was done by Ender and a handful of key technicians from Bosquina's maintenance department. They are laying pipes from the river to the clearing of the Mother Tree to bring water to the pigs. They were building the electricity supply and teaching the brothers how to use the computer terminal. At the same time, they were also teaching their most primitive agricultural techniques and trying to domesticate cabra to pull the plow. It was a bit confusing that all the different levels of technology came to the Pigs, but Ander discussed it with Miró, explaining that he wanted the Pigs to see their agreement produce a quick, dramatic, and immediate effect. Water supply, a holographic terminal connected to a computer so that they can read anything in the library, electric lights at night. But all of this is still just magic, and it depends entirely on human society. At the same time, Ender is trying to keep them self-sufficient, creative, and imaginative. The shock of electricity creates myths, spread from tribe to tribe, and spread throughout the world, but for many, many years it was nothing more than rumors. Only wooden ploughs, sickles, rakes, amaranth seeds are the things that will bring about real change, things that will allow the pig population of the land they go to grow tenfold. And those can be spread from one place to another, with a handful of seeds in a small cabla bag and the memory of how to get the job done.

It's something Miró is eager to be a part of. But what can he do in the amaranth field with his mallet hand and lame step? What is the use of him sitting in front of a loom, weaving cabra? He can't even walk to teach.

Ella is working on the development of new crops from the planet, and even small animals and insects, which need to be able to resist or even disable cyclotronia. The mother is helping her, giving advice, but less and less, because she is working on the most important and secret plan for all of them. This time, it was Ander who came to Milo and told him what only his family and Oanda knew: that the Queen of the Worms was alive, that she would be revived, and that she and all the Zerg she would give birth to once Nowanhua found a way to make her resistant to Cyclotronia. When ready, the queen will be revived immediately.

And Miro won't be involved. For the first time, humans and two alien races live together in the same world as xenomorphs, and Miro has nothing to do with it. He's less human than the pigs. He can't speak or use his hands well. He's no longer a tool-wielding, language-speaking animal. Now he's an alien. They just kept him as a pet.

He wanted to leave. More precisely, he wants to disappear, even leave the self.

But not now. There's a new puzzle that only he knows, so only he can solve. His terminal is now behaving very strangely.

He noticed this in the first week after he recovered from complete paralysis. He searched for some of Ouanda's documents, and found that he had accessed the classified documents before he had done anything special. They were heavily guarded, and he had no idea what a password was, but a simple, routine search would list the information. That's her speculation about the evolution of the pigs and their possible pre-cyclomedic societies and life forms. The kind of thing she would have talked to Miró about and argue with him nearly two weeks ago. Now she kept it a secret and didn't discuss it with him at all.

Miró didn't tell her that he had seen the documents, but he did initiate some discussion on the subject and caught her attention, and once Miró showed his interest, she spontaneously began to talk about her thoughts. Sometimes it's almost like going back in time. It's just that he listens to his own indistinct voice, and keeps most of his opinion to himself, just listening to her, and letting what he used to argue with her slip by. Still, seeing her classified documents gave him insight into what she was really interested in.

But how did he see them?

This happens again and again. Ella's papers, mother's, Mr. Christo's. When the pigs begin to tinker with their new terminals, Miro is able to see them in an echo mode that he has never seen the terminal use before - a mode that allows him to watch all of their computer communications and then make suggestions to change things up a bit. He had a different kind of fun guessing what the pigs were really trying to do and quietly helping them do it. But how did he get such powerful, informal access to this machine?

The terminal is also learning to adapt himself to him. Instead of a long coding sequence, he just needs to start a sentence and the machine will follow his instructions. In the end, he didn't even have to type. He touched the keyboard, and the terminal showed a list of all the things he had done regularly, and scanned them from beginning to end. He touched a key, and it went straight to what he wanted, skipping dozens of preparatory steps so that he wouldn't have to spend minutes agonizing to type letters one letter at a time.

At first he thought that Orjardo had written a new program for him, or maybe someone in the mayor's office. But Orjado just stared blankly at what the terminal was doing and said, "Bacana," that was awesome. And when he sent a message to the mayor, she didn't receive it at all. Rather, it was the deceased who said that people came to visit him.

"Then your terminal is of great help," Ender said.

Miró didn't answer. He was too busy, trying to figure out why the mayor had sent a speaker to answer his note.

"The mayor didn't hear from you," Ander said. "I received it. Also, it would be better if you didn't mention what your terminal was doing to anyone else. ”

"Why?" asked Miro. It's one of those words he can say that isn't too vague.

"Because that's not a new program that's helping you. That's a person. ”

Miro laughed. No human can be as fast as this program that is helping him. In fact, it was faster, intuitive, and imaginative than most of the programs he had ever used, faster than humans, but smarter than programs.

"That's an old friend of mine, I thought. At the very least, she was the one who told me about you and suggested that I let you know that secrecy is a good note. You see, she's a little shy. She didn't make many friends. ”

"How much?"

"Right now, exactly two. In the previous millennium or two, there was only one. ”

"Not human," Miró said.

"Xeno," Ender said. "More human than most humans. For a long time, we loved each other, helped each other, and relied on each other. But in the last week or two, since I've been here, we've drifted apart. I'm — more involved in the lives of the people around me. Your family. ”

"Mother. ”

"Yes. Your mother, your brothers and sisters, work with the pigs and work for the queen worm. My friend and I are used to having constant conversations with each other. I don't have time right now. We sometimes hurt each other's feelings. She was lonely, so I think she chose another friend. ”

“n?oquero。 "I don't want to.

"No, you want to. Ender said. "She has helped you. Now that you know her presence, you'll find out that she is—a very good friend. You won't find a better one. More faithful. More helpful. ”

"Puppy?"

"Don't be a stubborn donkey," Ender said. "I'm introducing you to a fourth race that is alien to humans. You're supposed to be a heteroanthropologist, aren't you? She knows you, Miró. Your physical disability is not a problem for her. She didn't have a body at all. She exists in the Philopher fluctuations in the Ansebo communication of the Great Hundred World. She's the smartest of living creatures, and you're the second human she chooses to appear in front of. ”

"How?" How was she born? How did she know me and choose me?

"You ask her yourself. Ander touched the ornament in his ear. Just a word of advice. Once she trusts you, always keep her with you. She is not kept any secrets. She used to have a lover who shut her up. It was only an hour, but after that things between them were never the same again. They became—just friends. A good friend, a faithful friend, until his death. But for the rest of his life, he would regret that unthought infidelity. ”

Ender's eyes glisten with tears, and Miro realizes that whatever the creature that lives in the computer is, it is not an illusion, it is part of the man's life. And he is passing on the right to know this friend to Miró, like a father to a son.

Ender left, not saying anything else, and Miro turned to the terminal. There was a hologram of a woman. She was small and sat on a stool, leaning against a wall of holograms. She's not beautiful. It's not ugly either. Her face has a very unique surname. Her eyes were unforgettable, innocent, and full of sorrow. Her mouth is delicate and elegant, and she wants to laugh and cry. Her dress looked light as gauze, but not provocative, but rather pure, a little girl-like, small-breasted body, her hands lightly clasped at her knees, her legs childishly parted, her toes inward. She was probably sitting on a seesaw in a playground. Or at her lover's bedside.

"Bomdia," Miro said softly. (Note: Good morning, in Portuguese.) ）

"Hi," she said. "I want him to introduce us to each other. ”

She is quiet and silent, but it is Miro who feels shy. For so long, Ouanda had been the only female surname in his life, with the exception of the female surnames in his family, and as a result, he lacked confidence in socializing. At the same time, he knew he was speaking to a hologram. A very convincing hologram, but still nothing more than a laser beam in the air.

She lifted a hand and gently lowered it to her chest.

"I don't feel anything," she said. "There are no nerves. ”

Tears welled up in his eyes. It's self-pity, of course. He would probably never have had a more real woman than this. If he tries to stroke the girl's last name, his caresses will turn into rude scratching. From time to time, when he is not careful, his saliva is turbulent, and he doesn't even feel it. Awesome love.

"But I have eyes," she said. "And ears. I see everything that happens in all the worlds. I look at the heavens through thousands of telescopes. I listen to hundreds of billions of conversations every day. She smiled as she ate. "I am the most powerful woman in the universe. (Note: Okay, I see, in fact, Jane's real name is Guanyin...) ）

Then, suddenly, she stood up, getting bigger and closer, only to show only the part above her waist, as if she were approaching an invisible camera. When she stared straight at him, passion burned in her eyes. "And you're a student at a parochial school, and you've never seen anything but a small town and a forest in your life. ”

"There weren't many opportunities to travel. He said.

"We'll see," she replied. "So. What do you want to do today?"

"What's your name?" he asked.

"You don't need my name," she said.

"How am I going to call you?"

"Whenever you need me, I'm here. ”

"But I want to know," he said.

She touched her ear. "I'll tell you my name when you take me wherever you like me. ”

Impulsively, he told her something he had never said to anyone else. "I want to get out of this place," Miro said. "Can you take me out of Lusitania?"

She quickly began to flirt, sarcastically teasing. "But we've just met! Really, Mr. Ribera, I'm not that kind of girl. ”

"Maybe we'll get to know each other once we're familiar," Miro said, laughing.

She made a subtle, magical change, and the woman on the screen was now a slender cat, gracefully stretching her waist on a branch. She grunted loudly, stretching out a paw to comb herself. "My claws can rip your neck open in one moment," she whispered, the tone of her voice concealing temptation, her claws foreshadowing murder. "If I let me catch you alone, I can bite your throat with just a kiss. ”

He smiled. Then he realized that throughout the conversation, he had actually forgotten how slurred his speech was. She knows every word. She never once asked, "What? I didn't hear clearly," or anything else that people had said that was polite but hurtful. She had no trouble understanding him.

"I want to figure everything out," Miro said. "I wanted to know everything and put it together to figure out what it meant. ”

"A great plan," she said, "will look great on your resume." ”

——————————————————

Ender discovers that Orhado is a much stronger driver than he is. The boy has greater depth perception, and the navigation system actually takes care of itself when he plugs his eyes directly into the on-board computer. Ander can go all out to observe.

When they first started their exploration flights, the scenery looked the same. Endless grasslands, large herds of kabra, and the occasional forest in the distance - of course, they never go near those forests because they don't want to attract the attention of the pigs who live in them. In addition, they are looking for a home for the Queen of Worms, and it is not feasible to put her too close to a certain tribe.

Today they headed west, on the other side of the Forest of Roots, along a small river to its mouth. They stopped on the beach, and rows of big waves slowly rolled over and crashed against the shore. Ander tasted the water. Salty. Ocean.

Orhado had the on-board terminal show a map of this area of Lusitania with their location, the Roots Forest, and other nearby pig settlements. It was a good place, and in his consciousness Ender could feel the approval of the worm queen. Close to the ocean, water and sun.

They skimmed over the water and climbed up several hundred meters until the right bank rose to a low cliff. "Is there a place to park here?" Ander asked.

Orjado found a place, fifty meters from the top of the mountain. They walked up the river, reeds gradually replacing pasture with grass along the way. Of course, every river on Lusitania looks like that. After she was able to access Nowanhua's documents and was allowed to work on the subject, Ella used them to easily confirm the genetic pattern. Reeds and sucking flies reproduce together. Grass and water snake pairing. Then there's the endless kapim grass, whose pollen columns rub against the belly of the childbearing age kabra, giving birth to the next generation of manure-making animals. Wrapped around the rhizomes of the kapim grass is Tropega, a long, winding vine that Ella proves to have the same genes as the singadora, the birds that nest on the ground, and who build their nests from the plant's living plants. The same pairs continue to appear in the forest: the Macio worms hatch from the seeds of the Murdona vine and then lay the seeds of the Murdona. Prado, those little insects pair with the shrubs of the forest with glittering leaves. And, most importantly, the pigs and the trees, both of which are at the pinnacle of their kingdoms, and the plants and animals are combined into one long-lived life.

This is a list, a complete list of the animals and plants on the surface of Lusitania. There were many, much more in the past. But unwinding made Lusitania monotonous.

But even this monotony has a peculiar beauty. Geology is as varied as any other world – rivers, hills, mountains, deserts, oceans, islands. Thick kapim grass and patches of forest form the backdrop for this topographic symphony. The eyes become more sensitive to undulations, outcrops, cliffs, pits, and, most importantly, the sparkle and surge of the water surface in the sun. Lusitania, like Trondheim, is one of the rare worlds ruled by a single theme rather than every possible ensemble. In Trondheim, though, that's because the planet is almost on the edge of its habitable range, and its climate is just enough to support life on the surface. The climate and soil of Lusitania are shouting welcome to the coming plough, the miner's iron pick, the mason's spatula. Give me life, it says.

Ender didn't realize that he loved the place because it was devastated and desolate, just like his own life, the one that had been taken away and distorted in his childhood, albeit on a smaller scale, the latter in every point as terrible as what Cyclotronia had done to the world. But it still thrived, and found a few threads that would allow it to survive and continue to grow. From the challenge of cyclotronia are born three kinds of lives for the little ones. From the war school, from years of loneliness, was born Ander Viggin. He fits the place as if he designed it. The boy who walked beside him, through the pasture, felt as if he were his real son, as if he had known the boy since he was an infant. I know what it's like to have a metal wall between me and the world, Oljado. But here and now I have let that wall come down, touch the earth personally, drink the water, soothe it, and receive love.

The earthy river bank rises step by step, from the coast to the top of the mountain about 12 meters. The soil can be dug up to a certain degree of moisture and maintain a certain shape. The queen was a burrowing creature, and Ender felt a desire to dig, so he dug up, Olhado beside him. The ground was easily dug open, and the roof of their cave was sturdy.

And so the matter was settled.

"This is it," Ander said aloud.

Orjardo grinned. But Ender was actually speaking to Jane, and her answer was only he could hear.

"Nowanhua thinks they've got it. The test results were all yin - cyclochromia was inactive in cloned Zerg cells in the presence of the new adhesin. Ella thinks the kind of daisy she's working on is suitable for making natural muscin. If that works, people just need to plant seeds everywhere, and then the Zerg can avoid cyclotronia by sucking the nectar. ”

Her tone was quite enthusiastic, but it was all business, no jokes. No jokes at all.

"Okay," Ender said. He felt stabbed by jealousy—Jane would no doubt be more comfortable talking to Miró, laughing at him and teasing him, just as she had done to Ender in the past.

But it's fairly easy to get rid of jealousy. He held out a hand and placed it casually on Orhado's shoulder, and he pulled the child closer, and together they walked back to the parked car. Orhado marked the place on the map and saved it. He was laughing and telling jokes all the way home, and Ender laughed with him. The boy is not Jane. But he is Orhado, and Ender loves him, and Orhado needs Ender, and this is what Ender needs most after millions of years of evolution. It was the hunger for it that had kept him eating away at him during the years he had been with Valentine, making him go from one world to another. This boy with metal eyes. His clever and extremely destructive younger brother, Greg. Koyula's keen understanding, her innocence, Kim's utter self-denial, asceticism, and faithfulness, Ella's reliable surname, but she knows when to act, and Miro

Miro.

I can't comfort Miró, not in this world, not at this time. He was deprived of his life's work, along with his body, his hopes for the future, and I said nothing to give him meaningful work to do. He lived in pain, his lover became his sister, and life in the pigs was now impossible for him, and the pigs turned to other humans for friendship and knowledge.

"Miro needs," Ender said softly.

"Miro needs to leave Lusitania," Orjado said.

"Hmm," Ender said.

"You have a starship, don't you?" said Orjardo. "I remember reading a story before. Or maybe it's a video. About a past hero of the Zerg Wars, Mezho Lakeham. He had saved the Earth from destruction, but it was known that he would die, long before the next war. So people put him on a starship that flew at relativistic speeds, just to send him out and bring him back. A hundred years have passed on Earth, but only two years have passed for him. ”

"Do you think Miro needs to be as drastic as that?"

"There's a war coming. There are many decisions to make. Miró is the smartest and greatest man in all of Lusitania. You know, he doesn't lose his mind. Even in the worst days of being with my father. Marcus Aux. Sorry, I'm still calling him father. ”

"It doesn't matter. He is, in most senses. ”

'Miro thinks carefully and then he decides what is best to do, and that's usually the right decision. His mother also relied on him. In my opinion, we will need Miro when the Galactic Council sends its fleet against us. He would study all the information, everything we learned in the years he was gone, put it together, and tell us what to do. ”

Ander couldn't help himself. He laughed.

"Then it's a bad idea," Orjardo said.

"You're more visionary than anyone else I know," Ender said. "I'll have to think about it, but maybe you're right. ”

They drove silently for a while.

"I was just talking," Orjado said. "The words I said about Miro. It's just something that comes to mind that puts him in the same way as that old story. Maybe the story isn't real at all. ”

"It's real," Ender said.

"How do you know?"

"I know Mejer Lakeham. ”

Aljardo whistled. "You're so old. You're older than any tree. ”

"I'm older than any human colony. Unfortunately, that didn't make me smarter. ”

"Are you really Ender?

"That's why my password is that. ”

"It's funny. Before you came here, the bishop wanted to tell us all that you are Satan. Kim was the only one in the family who took his word seriously. But if the Bishop had told us that you were Ender, we would have stoned you to death in the square on the day you arrived. ”

"Why aren't you doing it now?"

"We know you now. That makes all the difference, doesn't it? Even Kim doesn't hate you now. Once you really get to know others, you can't hate them. ”

"Maybe it's just that you can't really get to know people until you stop hating them. ”

"Is this a circular paradox? Mr. Christopher says that most truths can only be expressed in a circular paradox. ”

"I don't think it has anything to do with the truth, Orjado. It's just cause and effect. We'll never be able to tell the difference. Science refuses to acknowledge any cause, except the main cause – when a domino is knocked down, the piece next to it falls. But in the human condition, the only reason that matters is the end result, the purpose. What a person thinks in his heart. Once you understand what others really want, you can't continue to hate them. You may be afraid of them, but you can't hate them because you can always find the same desire in your own heart. ”

"Mother doesn't like the fact that you're Ender. ”

"I know. ”

"But she still loves you. ”

"I know. ”

"And Kim—that's funny, now that he knows you're Ender, he's liking you even more for it. ”

"That's because he's a jihadist, and I got my bad reputation by winning a jihad. ”

"And me," Orjado said.

"Yes, you," Ender said.

"You've killed more people than anyone else in history. ”

"Whatever you do, do your best, my mother used to tell me. ”

"But when you speak for my father, you make me feel sorry for him. You make people love each other and forgive each other. How could you kill millions of people in the midst of xenoextinction?"

"I thought I was playing a game. I don't know if those are true. But that's not an excuse, Orjado. If I had known that war was real, I would still have done the same thing. We thought they wanted to kill us. We were wrong, but we can't know that. Ander shook his head. "Only I know better. I know my enemies. That's why I was able to defeat her, the queen of worms, I know her so well so I love her, maybe because I love her so much I know her. I don't want to fight her anymore. I want to quit. So I blew up her planet. ”

"And today we have found a place for her to be reborn. "Orjado is very serious. "Are you sure she wouldn't want to start with you and sweep humanity away?"

"I'm as sure of it," Ender said, "as much as I'm sure of something else." ”

"Not absolutely certain," Orjardo said.

"It must be enough to bring her back to life," Ender said. "And that's just as sure of anything as we are. Our conviction of something is enough for us to act as it is true. When we are so sure, we call it knowledge. Fact. We bet our lives on the line. ”

"I guess that's what you're doing. Bet your last name on her being what you think she is. ”

"I'm even more arrogant than that. I also gambled your last name, and everybody's own, and I didn't even ask anyone else's opinion. ”

"It's funny," Orjardo said. "If I were to ask people if they would trust Ender to make a decision that could affect the future of the human race, they would say, of course not. But if I ask them if they trust the deceased to speak, they will say, yes, most of them. And they wouldn't have guessed that they were the same person. ”

"yes," Ender said. "It's funny. ”

Neither of them laughed. Then, after a long time, Orjardo spoke again. His mind wandered to a more important topic.

"I don't want Miro to go for thirty years. ”

"You were forty-two years old. ”

"And he's coming back at his age. Twenty. It's only half my age. (Note: The first version reads: "Please say twenty years.") "Twenty years from now, I'll be thirty-two. But he's back at his current age. Twenty. Twelve years younger than me. If any girl would marry someone with reflective eyes, I would probably be married and have children. He wouldn't even recognize me. I'm no longer his brother. Orhado choked. "It's like he's dead. ”

"No," Ender said. It was like he was moving from his second life to his third life. ”

"It still feels like dead. Orjado said.

"It's like getting a new lease of life," Ander said. "As long as you can continue to have a new life, sometimes it's okay to die. ”

——————————————————————

Valentine called the next day. As he typed the command into the terminal, Ender's fingers trembled. That's not just a message. It was a phone call, a pure Ansebo sound communication. It's incredibly expensive, but that's not a problem. The problem is that the communication with the Ansebo of the Great Hundred World must have been cut off, and Jane will allow this call to come in, which means that it is an emergency call. Ander immediately thought that Valentine might be in danger. It occurred to him that the Galactic Council might have decided that Ender had something to do with the rebellion, and traced her back to him through his connection.

She's old. The hologram of her face shows the incisions of the island of Trondheim, on the ice and on the ship. But her smile was still the same as before, and her eyes were shining with the same tears.

Ander was at first silent because of the changes the years had done to his sister, and she was silent because of the fact that Ander didn't seem to change, and he looked like her memories of the past were reappearing.

"Ah, Ender," she sighed. "Am I ever so young?"

"And will I age so beautifully?"

She smiled. Then she started crying. He didn't; how could he? He thought about her for two months. She thought about him for twenty-two years.

"I think you've heard," he said, "about the trouble we have with the council." ”

"I'm guessing you're at the center of the matter. ”

"Just stumbling into it, really," Ender said. "But I'm glad I'm here. I'm here to stay. ”

Valentine nodded, wiping away her tears. "Yes. I guess too. But I'll have to call to confirm. I don't want to spend two or ten years flying over to see you, and you're gone when I arrive. ”

"See me?" said Ender.

"I'm so excited about your revolution there, Ender. Twenty years of raising my family, teaching my students, loving my husband, and living my life peacefully, I thought I would never resurrect Demosthenes again. But then came the news of illegal contact with the pigs, followed by the news of Lusitania's rebellion, and then all of a sudden people started talking about the most ridiculous things, and I think it was the same hatred that started as it had in the past. Remember those videos of the Zerg? How horrible, how horrible they were? All of a sudden we were all looking at the footage of the corpses they found, the alien anthropologists, I can't remember their names, but everywhere you look at those abominable pictures, raising the temperature of our war fever. And then there's the story of cyclotronism, saying that if anyone went from Lusitania to another world, they would destroy everything—the most terrible plague imaginable—"

"That's true," Ender said, "but we're dealing with it." Try to figure out ways to prevent the spread of cycloma when we go to other worlds. ”

"True or fake, Ander, these are leading us to war. I remember the war - no one else remembers. So I raised Timosthenes from life. I stumbled upon some memos and reports. Their fleet carries the little doctor, Ender. If they're determined to do it, they can blow Lusitania to pieces. It's like—"

"It's like what I've done before. It would be perfect retribution for me to die in this way, don't you think? See Matthew 26:52.)

"Don't joke with me, Ender! I'm a middle-aged Obasan, and I've lost patience with stupidity. At least not that patience right now. I wrote some ugly truth-telling about what the Galactic Council was doing, and published it under the name of Demosthenes. They're looking for me. They call it treason. ”

"So you're coming here?"

"It's not just me. Dear Jacquet is handing over his fleet to his brothers and sisters. We have already bought a starship. Apparently some kind of resistance was helping us - someone named Jane hacked into the computer and hid our whereabouts. ”

"I know Jane," Ender said.

"So you do have an organization! I was shocked when I got a message that I could call you. Your Ansebo should have been cut off. ”

"We have some very strong friends. ”

"Ender, Jacquet and I are leaving today. We also have our three children with us. ”

"Your first child—"

"Yes, Shift, the one who made me fat when you left, she's almost twenty-two now. A very cute girl. There is also a good friend, the children's governess, named Prikte. ”

"I have a student with that name," Ender said, recalling a conversation just two months ago.

"Oh yes, well, that was twenty years ago, Ender. We also brought a few of Jacquet's best men and their families with us. It's kind of like an ark. It's not an emergency – you've got twenty-two years to prepare for me. In fact, it's a little longer, probably more than thirty years. Our voyage will consist of several jumps, the first few in the other direction, so that no one can be sure that we are going to Lusitania. ”

Come here. Thirty years later. I'll be older than she is now. Come here. I will have my family by that time too. Nuo Wanhua and my children, if we had, would have grown up like hers. Whether we have it or not

At this time, the thought of Nowanhua reminded him of Miro, and remembered Orhado's suggestion a few days ago, the day they found a nesting place for the queen of worms.

"Would you mind so much," said Ender, "if I sent someone to meet you halfway?"

"Meet us? in deep space?" Referring to space far away from the planet) No, don't send someone to do such a thing, Ender - this sacrifice is too great, to run so far, the computer can navigate us quite correctly - "

"It's not really for you, although I want him to see you. He is one of the local heteroanthropologists. He was seriously injured in an accident. Brain damage, like a serious stroke. He's- he's the smartest guy here in Lusitania, someone I trust in his judgment, but he's completely out of touch with our lives here. We'll need him later, though. When you arrive. He's a very nice man, Var. He can make the last few weeks of your journey educational. ”

"Can your friend arrange for us the data for such a rendezvous? We are good sailors, but only at sea. ”

"Jane will send the revised sailing data to your ship's computer when you depart. ”

"Ender - it will be thirty years for you, but for me - I will see you in a few weeks. She began to cry.

"Maybe I'll go with Miro to meet you. ”

"No," she said, "I hope you will be as old and perverse as I arrive when I arrive." I can't stand what I see on my terminal, a little ghost in your thirties. ”

"Thirty-five. ”

"Stay there and wait for me!" she commanded.

"I will. He said. "And, Miro, the boy I'm going to send to you. Treat him as my son. ”

She nodded solemnly. "In a time of crisis like this, Ender. I wish we had Peter. ”

"I don't. If he were to run our petty rebellion, he would eventually become the overlord of the entire world. We just want them to leave us alone. ”

"Maybe it's impossible to want one and not the other," Mr. Var said. "But we can turn around and argue about that. Goodbye, my dear brother. ”

He didn't answer. Just looked at her, kept looking at her until she closed the connection with a weird grin.

——————————————————

Ander didn't have to tell Miró to go; Jen had already told him everything.

"Your sister is Demosthenes?" asked Miró.

Now Ander was used to his slurred voice. Or maybe he spoke a little clearer. Anyway, now what he says is less difficult to understand.

"We're a family of geniuses," Ender said. "I hope you'll like her.

"I hope she will like me. Miro laughed, but he looked a little timid.

"I said to her," said Ender, "to treat you as my son." ”

Miro nodded. "I know," he said. Then, almost defiantly, "Jane showed me your conversation with her." ”

Ander's heart was cold.

Jane's voice reached his ears. "I should have asked you first," she said, "but you know, you're going to say 'yes.'" ”

What Ander doesn't mind is the encroachment on **. It's the fact that Jane and Miró are so close. Get used to it, he told himself. Now she cares about Miro.

"We'll miss you," Ender said.

"Those who will miss me are already nostalgic," Miró said, "because they have treated me like a dead man." ”

"We need you to live," Ender said.

"When I came back, I was only nineteen years old. And brain damage. ”

"You're still Miro, still smart, trustworthy and loved. You sparked this rebellion, Miro. The fence is closed for you. Not why great goals, just for you. Don't let us down. ”

Miro smiled, but Ender couldn't tell if the distortion of his smile was due to his nervous paralysis or because it was an unhappy, bitter smile.

"Tell me something," Miro said.

"If I don't tell you," said Ender, "Jane will tell you, too." ”

"It's not a difficult question. I just want to know why Pippo and Lipo died. Why should the pigs give them honor? ”

Ender knew more about the issue than Miró: he knew why the boy cared so much about it. Miro learns that he is actually Lipo's son hours before he climbs over the fence, and then loses his future. Pippo, then Lipo, then Miró, father, son, grandson, all three generations of xenoanthropologists have lost their futures for the sake of the pigs. Miró hopes that by understanding why his ancestors died, he might be able to find more meaning in his own sacrifice.

The trouble is that the truth may make Miro feel that all the sacrifices are meaningless. So Ander replied with questions. "Don't you know why?"

Miro spoke slowly and cautiously so that Ander could hear his muffled voice. "I know the pigs think they're giving them honor. I know that the big shots and leaf eaters could have died in their place. For Lipo, I even know why. That was after the first amaranth harvest and there was a lot of food. The pigs were rewarding him for it. Just, why not earlier? Why not when we taught them to use the Murdonagan -- why not when we taught them to make jars, or to shoot arrows?"

"Want to hear the facts?" said Ender.

Miró knew from Ender's tone that the truth would not be easy to accept. "Yes," he said.

"Neither Pippo nor Lipo really deserve that kind of honor. The wives were not rewarded with the amaranths. What they reward is the Leaf Eaters for convincing them to conceive and give birth to a generation of babies, even if there is not enough food for them once they leave the Mother Tree. This is a huge risk, and if he is wrong, then a whole generation of young pigs will die. Lipo brought the harvest, but the Leaf Eater was, in a sense, the one who brought the pig population to the tipping point where they needed grain. ”

Miro nodded.

"Where's Pippo?"

Pippo told the pigs about his discovery. Cyclonia, which kills humans, is part of the normal physiology of pigs. Their bodies can handle changes that will kill us. The big man told his wives that this meant that humans were not omnipotent like gods. In some ways we're even weaker than the little ones. What makes humans stronger than pigs is not what we are born with—our size, our brains, our language—but that we are a thousand or two years ahead of them in terms of learning. If they had access to our knowledge, then we humans would no longer have the ability to be above them. The big man's discovery has the potential to be on an equal footing with humans - that's what the wives are going to be rewarded, not the information Pippo gave them that led to the discovery. ”

"So they're both-"

"The pigs don't want to kill Pippo or Lipo. In both cases, the achievement of deciding the surname belongs to a pig. The only reason Pippo and Lipo die is that they are unwilling to allow themselves to pick up a knife and kill a friend. ”

Miro must have seen the pain on Ender's face, despite Ender's best efforts to hide it. Because his response was directed at Ender's suffering.

"You," said Miro, "you can kill anyone." ”

"It's one of my talents," Ender said.

"You killed a human because you knew it was going to give him a new, better life," Miró said.

"Yes. ”

"Me too. Miro said.

"Yes," Ender said. "Sending you out is very much like killing you. ”

"But will I live into a new, better life?"

"I don't know. You're better than a tree in terms of moving around. ”

Miro smiled. "So I've got something better than the old humans, isn't it—at least I can walk. No one will have to strike me with a stick so that I can speak. Then Miro's expression turned sour again. "Of course, now he can have a thousand children. ”

"Don't be sure you're going to be single for the rest of your life," Ender said. "You might be disappointed. ”

"I hope so," Miró said.

Then, after a moment of silence: "Speak of people?"

"Call me Ender. ”

"Ander, then, are Pippo and Lipo worthless in their deaths?"

Ander knows that the real question is: Do I suffer from these worthlessness?

"There are worse causes of death than dying because you can't stand killing," Ander replied. ”

"What if he is alone," said Miró, "he can't kill, he can't die, he can't live?"

"Don't lie to yourself," Ander said. "You're going to do all three things one day. ”

Miró left the following morning. People said goodbye with tears. The next few weeks were extremely difficult for Nowanhua to spend any little time in her own home, because Miro's absence was so painful for her. Although she wholeheartedly agrees with Ender's opinion that Miro should leave, the loss of her child is still unbearable. This made Ander wonder if his own parents had felt such pain when he was taken away. He suspected they weren't. Nor did they look forward to his return. His love for another man's children has outweighed the love of his parents for their own children. Well, he'll take revenge commensurately for their neglect of him. He will show them what a father should do in 3,000 years. Bishop Peregrino officiated for them in his office. (Note: The following two sentences have been deleted in later versions.) According to Nuo Wanhua's calculations, she was young enough to have six more children, if they were in a hurry. They embarked on the great cause with great enthusiasm.

————————————————————

However, before the wedding, there are two more words worth mentioning. One day in the summer, Ella, Oanda, and Nowanhua present their findings and as complete speculations as possible to Ender: the life cycle and social structure of the pig race, male and female surnames, and the reconstruction of the most likely way of life before Eutronomics tied it to trees forever, until then they were little more than habitats. Ander also made his own understanding of what kind of creatures the pigs were, especially what kind of people humans were before they entered the life of the light.

He lived with the pigs for a week while writing about the life of a human. The big man and the leaf-eater read the book carefully and discussed it with him, he revised and rewrote it, and finally the book was finished. On that day, he invited everyone who worked with the pigs—Ribera's family, Oanda and her sisters, the many workers who had brought technological miracles to the pigs, the scholars and monks of the Children of the Spirits, the Bishop Peregrino, the mayor of Bosquina—and read the book to them. The book was not long, and it took less than an hour to read it. They gathered on the hillside near where the little human sapling had grown, which was now more than three meters tall, where the roots shielded them from the afternoon sun.

"Speak of man," said the bishop, "you almost convinced me to become a humanist." (Note: Humanism, or humanism, is the antithesis of the Catholic tradition.) "Others were less trained in eloquence and could not find anything to say, either then or afterward. But from that day on, they knew what kind of creatures the pigs were, just as the readers of the queen understood the zerg, and the readers of the overlord understood the never-ending search for the great human in a wilderness of doubt and estrangement.

"That's why I called you here," Ms. Nuo said. "I dreamed of writing this book at one point. But you wrote it out. ”

"I play more of a role in this story than I chose for myself," Ender said. "But you fulfilled your dream, Ivanova. It was your work that brought this book to life. Also, you and your children made it whole for me to write this book. ”

He signed the book, just as he did on other books, and the deceased spoke of people.

Jane took over the book and brought it to the world many light-years through Ansebo. At the end of the book, she also attached the pact and the image of Orhado, signing the pact and the transfer of humanity to the full light. She distributed the book in four places, in about twenty places in each of the worlds, and gave it to people who wanted to read it and understand its meaning. The copy was sent as a computer-to-computer message, and by the time the Galactic Council knew about it, it had been distributed too widely to suppress.

Instead, they try to belittle it as a fake. Say those images are all rough simulations. Textual analysis shows that this book could not have been written by the same author as the other two books. Says that the Ansepo usage log shows that it could not have come from Lusitania, where there is no Ansebo communication. Some believed them. Most of them don't care. There are still many people who care about reading the life of human beings, but they are not open enough to accept the pig race as a different species.

Some people accepted the pigs, read the complaint of Demosthenes a few months ago, and began to refer to the fleet already on the way to Lusitania as the "Second Xenoextinction". It's a very ugly name. There aren't enough prisons in the world to lock up all the people who use that name. The Galactic Council had expected the war to begin forty years later when their ship arrived in Lusitania. However, the war has already begun, and it will be fierce. Many believed what the deceased had written, and many were prepared to accept the pigs as aliens and to regard those who sought to kill the pigs as murderers.

Then, one day in the autumn, Ander took out the carefully wrapped cocoon, and he and Nowanhua, Orhado, Kim, and Ella skimmed the thousand-mile capim meadow until they reached the hill by the river. The daisies they had planted were already blooming, and the winters here would be mild, and the queen would be spared cyclopsy.

Ander carefully took the queen to the bank of the river and placed her in the cave he and Olhado had prepared. They placed the corpse of a freshly slaughtered Kabra outside her cave.

Then Orjado drove them back. Ender was weeping because of the great, uncontrollable ecstasy that had come to his mind from the queen of worms, and her joy was too strong for a human heart to bear, and Nowanhua held him, Kim prayed calmly, and Ella sang a song that had been called Minas Gerais in old Brazil. Multiple mines. A cheerful folk song popular among farmers and miners in the mountain villages. It was a good time, a wonderful place, better than Ender had ever dreamed of, when he was young, fighting for his life in the lifeless corridors of the war school.

"I can probably die now," Ender said. "The work of my life is done. ”

"Mine too," Ms. Nuo said. "But I guess that means it's time to start living. ”

Behind them, in the cold, damp air of a small cavern by a small river, a powerful jaw tore open the cocoon, and a thin, weak body struggled forward. Her wings could only spread slowly, dried in the sun, and she struggled feebly to the riverbank, sucking the moisture and strength into her dry body. Little by little, she nibbled on the cabra. The unhatched eggs in her body cried out to be released, and she laid the first dozen eggs in Kabra's corpse, then ate some of the nearest daisies, trying to feel the changes in her body when she finally came back to life.

The sun shone on her back, the breeze blew through her wings, the water cooled under her feet, her eggs warmed and hatched in the flesh of the cabra: life, having waited so long, that she could only be sure today that she would not be the last of her race, but the beginning.

(End of book)