Last Shadow (9781250252135) Page 13

  Wang-Mu took his hand and held it, not tightly, but firmly enough to speak of her happiness with him.

  “If you expect me to kiss him and hug him, you can forget it,” said Thulium. “I don’t even kiss or hug my father.”

  “Shut up, Ultima Thule,” said Jane. “You’re ruining the moment.”

  The light in the room began to fade. “Talker won’t go with you back out of my hive house,” said Talker. “I need her here. Follow Thulium, and she will take you safely home.”

  Thulium walked through them and started down the path as the light faded. They followed closely, and this time it was Wang-Mu that Peter held to, and he held her hand, not her upper arm. They traveled as partners through the darkness, which struck him as appropriate and symbolic of what they should always be, what he should make sure they always were, because Wang-Mu had always been ready for them to become partners in this marriage, which was their true expedition, one that should last them the rest of their lives.

  9

  Jane: You think I didn’t handle this very well.

  Miro: You weren’t handling it at all.

  Jane: Who was, then? The Queen? Certainly not Wang-Mu. She was completely centered on Peter.

  Miro: The expedition to meet the Hive Queen was Thulium’s. Peter was a subject under discussion.

  Jane: Oh, Miro. You’re too subtle for me sometimes.

  Miro: Thulium wanted to meet the Hive Queen. She wanted to get to the surface of Descoladora. She wanted to run the genetic investigation of Descoladora on the ground. She wanted to subject herself to the microbiota of Descoladora so she was her own test case. She longs to be important in a way that only Sergeant and his children, among the leguminids, seek to be. She longs for a mother and doesn’t like you in the job, so she had hopes for the Hive Queen. But Wang-Mu will end up with the duty.

  Jane: You weren’t even there, Miro.

  Miro: Just because I don’t attend a showing of Romeo and Juliet doesn’t mean that I don’t know who’s dead at the end.

  Jane: But did you know the Hive Queen would set Peter the task of learning to love one of the most impossible of the leguminids?

  Miro: And Sprout.

  Jane: Sprout is easy.

  Miro: Deliberately building new philotic connections is never easy. Many people are never able to create one strong enough to matter.

  Jane: Your assessment of Peter’s chances, then?

  Miro: The philotic connections are between aiúas. This new Peter is still deciding who he wants to be. But the part of him so deep he can’t alter it, that person I know well. I watched him form bonds of love with the equally impossible Ribeira family, and he did it with some of us in the first hour we knew him.

  Jane: Your assessment of Peter’s chances, I ask again?

  Miro: From what the Queen told you, he’s already accepting that he really is Ender, and that this is the best of his impulses.

  Jane: And a third time I ask.

  Miro: Ender knows exactly how it’s done. Peter will recognize the pattern, when he thinks of it—and then Ender will act on it, using Peter’s voice and body.

  Jane: You’re sure of this?

  Miro: Yes. And now you ask, How sure? And I answer, I’m betting all our futures on it.

  —Transcript of pillow talk, Miro and Jane Ribeira Jane’s redacted notes provided to Plikt for “The Ribeira Family Saves the World”

  Thulium sat at her computer going over the data and drafts coming from the Box. They were doing as well as could be done without going to the surface. But the inadequacies in their work grated on her, especially when her access to Descoladora’s surface was limited by the incompetencies of Peter Wiggin.

  The door opened and Peter himself came into the room and sat down in a comfortable-looking chair near the wall beside her. His angle would not allow him to read anything appearing on her desk. This had to be a deliberate choice; he wanted her not to feel as if he was there to pry.

  “All right,” she said to him, not taking her gaze from the pages displayed in the air in front of her. “Be lovable and let’s see what happens.”

  Peter said nothing.

  “Do you think we have forever?” demanded Thulium.

  “Do you?” asked Peter.

  “Oh, is it my job to be cute so you can love the clever little leguminid girl?”

  “I have an idea,” said Peter. “We have the same goal—get to the surface—and we face the same barrier—the lack of a philotic connection between us.”

  “Everyone has that idea,” said Thulium.

  “Except you,” said Peter. “Because you’re deliberately making conversation between us nearly impossible, except for this ridiculous meta-dialogue.”

  Thulium had to admit that he was right. Her brattiness caused no harm when it was directed toward the twins, or her father. But she couldn’t afford to alienate Peter any more than she already had.

  She saved her setup and blanked the holospace. Then she rotated her chair and faced Peter. “Like me better now?”

  “Liking is a feeling, and I don’t give a rat’s petoot about emotions,” said Peter. “What matters right now is communication.”

  “Good. Then let’s take on the great question of Love. Not an emotion, I think you already agree.”

  “There are emotions we call love, but they’re really a combination of various yearnings, some noble and some selfish. Not relevant,” said Peter. “Our job isn’t to give somebody the illusion that we’re buddies. Our job is to make it true that we trust each other in pursuit of a common purpose.”

  “Not a bad definition of love,” said Thulium. “But still inadequate.”

  “Defining love is like defining good. It’s impossible to do without falling into a tautological loop.”

  “What have you been reading since Ender plucked you out of darkness?” asked Thulium.

  “Things come to my mind that must be the product of Ender’s thought long ago. Someday I’d like to understand how character and memory are carried in the aiúa even after the original brain is dead and rotted away.”

  “You are a fascinating puzzle, Peter,” said Thulium. “But it’s not my job to solve it.”

  “Or mine either, right now,” said Peter. “Let’s not take on the definition of love. Instead, please tell me what gear you’re going to need on the surface of Descoladora. I doubt that any of the pertinent equipment exists on Lusitania in a portable form, since it would never have been needed here.”

  Thulium was taken aback. She knew at once that he was right—portable versions of the genetic scanners would be needed, and a lot of sample-taking equipment as well. They had built their own on the Herodotus, and their own equipment was better than anything on Lusitania; but it was not portable.

  “I expected to build my own,” said Thulium.

  “And yet you sit here reading reports from scientists who, having never visited the surface, don’t have access to the most pertinent data,” said Peter.

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Search the nets to find out who already makes and sells portable equipment that will do a good enough job for our purposes. The more portable, with long-lasting and solar-replenished batteries, the better.”

  “It won’t do all that we need. I have to build it.”

  “Wrong,” said Peter. “It may not do all that we want, but if you search well enough, you’ll find equipment that will do what we need. I don’t care if it takes five machines to do what a single machine of your making could do—we don’t have time for you to design and make it.”

  “How much time do you think it will take to ship us the equipment we can buy, if it even exists?” asked Thulium.

  Peter sat in his chair, looking down at his feet. Or the floor around his feet.

  “Ah,” Thulium said. “You’re going to take my shopping list and go and get them for me. Faster than light.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” said Peter.

  “But how will you
even know if the equipment is right, and if it works properly?”

  “First,” said Peter, “Wang-Mu will be with me, and she’s very clever. Teach her how to observe and test, and it will be done, and done well. Second, even if we make a mistake, we’ll bring it to you and you’ll test it, and send us back with corrections, unless the deficiencies are things you can easily correct yourself with your handy junior tool kit.”

  “Who’s being bratty now?” asked Thulium.

  “I’m trying to communicate with you in your own dialect,” said Peter. “Third, by seeing that I can follow your instructions and successfully complete a few—or many—instantaneous voyages to other star systems, you will come to trust my abilities in the areas pertinent to the expedition.”

  “And that, in your mind, will constitute love,” said Thulium.

  “I believe it may help us establish the philotic connection that we need. If it doesn’t do the job, we can think of something else.”

  “So you think that love consists of service,” said Thulium.

  “I think that trust develops out of desires granted and requests fulfilled. I request that you research well and find what we need for you to do your work quickly, accurately, and conveniently. If you fulfil that desire of mine, then I can fulfil your need and desire to have the best equipment available for sale in the human universe.”

  “It sounds like a fair bargain,” said Thulium.

  “And you and Sprout will test it all out together, and he’ll make alterations that you both agree are needed.”

  “I’ll make the alterations,” said Thulium.

  “Sprout should be in on the alterations, so he knows every centimeter of the gear as well as you do, and knows how to repair it in case you do something foolish and get injured so we have to get you back to Lusitania before the expedition is finished.”

  Thulium almost gasped. “This is how you build up trust?”

  “Between you and Sprout, yes,” said Peter. “He’s your backup. Your understudy. You can’t train me or Wang-Mu to such a level of competency, but my guess is that Sprout already understands the science and technology at a level very close to yours.”

  Thulium thought a moment. “Yes. In some areas, probably better than I do.”

  “So do you agree to involve him intensely in every aspect of equipment preparation, revision, repair, and use?”

  “Yes,” said Thulium.

  “You see how the trust grows between us?” asked Peter.

  “I’ll have a list for you tomorrow,” said Thulium.

  “I don’t want the list tomorrow,” said Peter.

  “What, you have a picnic or a dance to attend?” asked Thulium. “I’ve read Jane Austen, and I believe such things are the events they regarded as unmissable.”

  “I don’t want the list tomorrow,” said Peter. “I want it right, and I want it complete. And after I start bringing things, and you discover that you didn’t ask for the right things after all, or left out some important things, I want you to give me complete and correct replacement lists immediately.”

  Thulium realized that part of his insistence that she would probably make mistakes was rational—she probably would, because her information would be incomplete so her decisions would be faulty. But part of it was also to put pins into her pride, to let it be known that he was not overawed by her intelligence.

  “I’m smarter and better than you think I am,” Thulium said to Peter.

  “I could say the same. But my question is, are you smarter and better than you think you are?”

  Thulium would have expected the question to be a challenge: Are you as smart as you think you are? Instead, he was asking her to be smarter and better than her own opinion of her abilities. What did that mean?

  “I’m smart enough to admit the possibility of error, and plan for it,” said Thulium.

  “Good. Then my errand here this afternoon is complete,” said Peter. He rose to his feet.

  “One point that you may not have thought of,” said Thulium. “The really good equipment is going to be ridiculously expensive. Especially because the kind of thing I need is usually made to order, since there’s not enough demand to justify making them ahead and storing them until they’re ordered. So you’ll need to have access to the leguminid fortune.”

  “I inherited most of Ender Wiggin’s estate,” said Peter. “Chances are that I already own, in whole or in part, all the companies that make the equipment we need. And if I don’t, then I can always buy them.”

  He left the room, closing the door gently behind him.

  Thulium thought about Peter Wiggin. He’s trying to be a decent person, she concluded. He’s also trying to establish leadership, but not with threats, only with—what, persuasion? Except that he’s also willing to be persuaded. He doesn’t start from the assumption that he’s right. He wants me to stop assuming that I’m always right. And when I’m wrong, he brings me up short until I’m able to hear him. Nobody on the Herodotus did things that way, except sometimes Aunt Carlotta.

  But was that how the Giant handled his three ridiculously clever and self-willed children?

  Regardless of how she felt about Peter Wiggin, Thulium had to admit that at the very least, she would end up with an extraordinary collection of valuable and useful equipment. And since Peter would have no idea what anything was actually for, she could slip in orders for equipment that she’d need in the future, on Lusitania or anywhere else her work took her.

  No, she told herself. If I want extraneous equipment, I’ll tell him it’s extraneous but explain why I want it. If he can’t trust my requests to be honest, then the philotic connection between us can’t develop properly.

  Then another thought: Our expedition really matters. If Peter turns out to be unable to transport me and Sprout, Jane can do it. She’s done it before. Peter can take Wang-Mu, and Jane can take care of me and Sprout.

  She had a vague feeling that this attitude was also counterproductive, and might not even be accurate. Jane might refuse to transport Thulium if she realized that Thulium deliberately ignored or sabotaged the assignment to connect philotically with Peter.

  Then she had another thought. If Jane brings back Yuuto and Mayumi and Airi, the cousins’ parents from Tochoji, what will that do to Sprout’s and my independence, our ability to take part in perilous expeditions without any adult supervision? Unless one were to count Peter and Wang-Mu as adults, a doubtful proposition at best.

  Jane won’t bring them to us until we’ve accomplished her purpose. She’ll especially keep Sergeant away. Father would interfere just to show his authority over me.

  Maybe, even if Sergeant forbade her, even if he locked her in a closet like that one time on the Herodotus, Peter could snatch her up wherever she was and transport her with him. Father’s authority could never trump the authority of an aiúa that could journey Outside and Inside without even needing a ship.

  Maybe I need Peter to be very powerful, and to be so connected to me that he will understand that my own father has no idea of what my best interests are, and therefore is not entitled to exercise authority over me. Maybe making a connection with Peter Wiggin will set me truly free from the bondage I have been in since Father kidnapped me away from my mother, Airi, so he was my only parent. My only master. My owner.

  10

  You asked me to tell you how to access the funds you will need to acquire Thulium’s requested instruments and equipment. Since I do not know which worlds you will visit, I have set you up with an SCA—a Starways Congress Account. There is no password. When the seller calls the SCA administrator in that area, you will be asked several identifying questions.

  First is the year of your birth, and then the city and planet of your birth. Third is the name of your maternal grandfather; I will remind you if you have forgotten. The fourth is your wife’s maiden name. I talked them out of asking for the name of a childhood pet or the brand of your first automobile.

  They also demanded that I
supply your real year of birth, since they did not believe my answer, upon which I supplied the birth certificate of the original Peter Wiggin. Try to remember his birthday. Because the real date of your entry into our universe is even less believable than that date in the distant past.

  Be careful on every planet to rent or buy a house, not a hotel room or apartment. Install the starship box in the back, out of view of the street. Have equipment delivered to the house, and when the laborers arrive, have them transport it to the box in the back yard. You should look up which cultures require tipping, and when the tip should be given. You will, of course, need cash for such transactions.

  I have every reason to expect that you and Si Wang-Mu will be completely successful in all your missions of acquisition. The primary danger I foresee is that you will become such good friends with people in the world you are visiting that it will be hard for you to find a convenient time to come back to Lusitania, which will, of course, require that your box and all its contents disappear without explanation. Never tell anyone anything about your intention to depart or your schedule of departure. I’d rather not have to waste time creating false flight information about your leaving.

  —Memorandum: Jane Ribeira to Peter Wiggin II Plikt, “The Ribeira Family Saves the World”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you need this equipment to do?”

  Peter, following his policy of not speaking when he was sure his anger or contempt would be audible in his tone of voice, simply looked the man in the eyes long enough for Wang-Mu to realize it was her cue. It never took her long.

  “I wish I could tell you,” said Wang-Mu. “But we are merely the purchasing agents, and this exact machine was what we were told to acquire. If you can’t supply it, then our clients will look elsewhere.”

  “And you’ll be out a fat commission,” said the store’s owner.

  “We will receive a better payment if we don’t deliver the wrong equipment,” said Wang-Mu. “Since we would be responsible for paying for that equipment ourselves. And our dissatisfied clients would not give us a good reputation.”