“I understand all that,” said Quara. “I cooperated, didn't I? It just makes me sick to hear you talking as if the pequeninos were somehow brave about collaborating in an act of xenocide in order to save their own skin.”
“Us or them, kid,” said Peter. “Us or them.”
“You can't possibly understand,” said Ender, “how ashamed I am to hear my own arguments on his lips.”
Peter laughed. “Andrew pretends not to like me,” he said. “But the kid's a fraud. He admires me. He worships me. He always has. Just like his pretty little angel here.”
Peter poked at young Val. She didn't shy away. She acted instead as if she hadn't even felt his finger in the flesh of her upper arm.
“He worships us both. In his twisted little mind, she's the moral perfection that he can never achieve. And I am the power and genius that was always just out of poor little Andrew's reach. It was really quite modest of him, don't you think? For all these years, he's carried his betters with him inside his mind.”
Young Val reached out and took Quara's hand. “It's the worst thing you'll ever do in your life,” she said, “helping the people you love to do something that in your heart you believe is deeply wrong.”
Quara wept.
But it was not Quara that worried Ender. He knew that she was strong enough to hold the moral contradictions of her own actions, and still remain sane. Her ambivalence toward her own actions would probably mellow her, make her less certain from moment to moment that her judgment was absolutely correct, and that all who disagreed with her were absolutely wrong. If anything, at the end of this she would emerge more whole and compassionate and, yes, decent than she had been before in her hotheaded youth. And perhaps young Val's gentle touch– along with her words naming exactly the pain that Quara was feeling– would help her to heal all the sooner.
What worried Ender was the way Grego was looking at Peter with such admiration. Of all people, Grego should have learned what Peter's words could lead to. Yet here he was, worshiping Ender's walking nightmare. I have to get Peter out of here, thought Ender, or he'll have even more disciples on Lusitania than Grego had– and he'll use them far more effectively and, in the long run, the effect will be more deadly.
Ender had little hope that Peter would turn out to be like the real Peter, who grew to be a strong and worthy hegemon. This Peter, after all, was not a fully fleshed-out human being, full of ambiguity and surprise. Rather he had been created out of the caricature of attractive evil that lingered in the deepest recesses of Ender's unconscious mind. There would be no surprises here. Even as they prepared to save Lusitania from the descolada, Ender had brought a new danger to them, potentially just as destructive.
But not as hard to kill.
Again he stifled the thought, though it had come up a dozen times since he first realized that it was Peter sitting at his left hand in the starship. I created him. He isn't real, just my nightmare. If I kill him, it wouldn't be murder, would it? It would be the moral equivalent of– what? Waking up? I have imposed my nightmare on the world, and if I killed him the world would just be waking up to find the nightmare gone, nothing more.
If it had been Peter alone, Ender might have talked himself into such a murder, or at least he thought he might. But it was young Val who stopped him. Fragile, beautiful of soul– if Peter could be killed, so could she. If he should be killed, then perhaps she ought to be as well– she had as little right to exist; she was as unnatural, as narrow and distorted in her creation. But he could never do that. She must be protected, not harmed. And if the one was real enough to remain alive, so must the other be. If harming young Val would be murder, so would harming Peter. They were spawned in the same creation.
My children, thought Ender bitterly. My darling little offspring, who leaped fully-formed from my head like Athena from the mind of Zeus. Only what I have here isn't Athena. More like Diana and Hades. The virgin huntress and the master of hell.
“We'd better go,” said Peter. “Before Andrew talks himself into killing me.”
Ender smiled wanly. That was the worst thing– that Peter and young Val seemed to have come into existence knowing more about his own mind than be knew himself. In time, he hoped, that intimate knowledge of him would fade. But in the meantime, it added to the humiliation, the way that Peter taunted him about thoughts that no one else would have guessed. And young Val– he knew from the way she looked at him sometimes that she also knew. He had no secrets anymore.
“I'll go home with you,” Val said to Quara.
“No,” Quara answered. “I've done what I've done. I'll be there to see Glass through to the end of his test.”
“We wouldn't want to miss our chance to suffer openly,” said Peter.
“Shut up, Peter,” said Ender.
Peter grinned. “Oh, come on. You know that Quara's just milking this for all it's worth. It's just her way of making herself the star of the show– everybody being careful and tender with her when they should be cheering for what Ela accomplished. Scene-stealing is so low, Quara– right up your alley.”
Quara might have answered, if Peter's words had not been so outrageous and if they had not contained a germ of truth that confused her. Instead it was young Val who fixed Peter with a cold glare and said, “Shut up, Peter.”
The same words Ender had said, only when young Val said them, they worked. He grinned at her, and winked– a conspiratorial wink, as if to say, I'll let you play your little game, Val, but don't think I don't know that you're sucking up to everybody by being so sweet. But he said no more as they left Grego in his cell.
Mayor Kovano joined them outside. “A great day in the history of humanity,” he said. “And by sheerest accident, I get to be in all the pictures.” The others laughed– especially Peter, who had struck up a quick and easy friendship with Kovano.
“It's no accident,” said Peter. “A lot of people in your position would have panicked and wrecked everything. It took an open mind and a lot of courage to let things move the way they have.”
Ender almost laughed aloud at Peter's obvious flattery. But flattery is never so obvious to the recipient. Oh, Kovano punched Peter in the arm and denied everything, but Ender could see that he loved hearing it, and that Peter had already earned more real influence with Kovano than Ender had. Don't these people see how Peter is cynically winning them all over?
The only one who saw Peter with anything like Ender's fear and loathing was the Bishop– but in his case it was theological prejudice, not wisdom, that kept him from being sucked in. Within hours of their return from Outside, the Bishop had called upon Miro, urging him to accept baptism. “God has performed a great miracle in your healing,” he said, “but the way in which it was done– trading one body for another, instead of directly healing the old one– leaves us in the dangerous position that your spirit inhabits a body that has never been baptized. And since baptism is performed on the flesh, I fear that you may be unsanctified.” Miro wasn't very interested in the Bishop's ideas about miracles– he didn't see God as having much to do with his healing– but the sheer restoration of his strength and his speech and his freedom made him so ebullient that he probably would have agreed to anything. The baptism would take place early next week, at the first services to be held in the new chapel.
But the Bishop's eagerness to baptize Miro was not echoed in his attitude toward Peter and young Val. “It's absurd to think of these monstrous things as people,” he said. “They can't possibly have souls. Peter is an echo of someone who already lived and died, with his own sins and repentances, his life's course already measured and his place in heaven or hell already assigned. And as for this– girl, this mockery of feminine grace– she cannot be who she claims to be, for that place is already occupied by a living woman. There can be no baptism for the deceptions of Satan. By creating them, Andrew Wiggin has built his own Tower of Babel, trying to reach into heaven to take the place of God. He cannot be forgiven until he takes them back to hell and leaves them there.”