Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) (Ender Quartet)

it, he's never written of Ua Lava, but now that he's tipped his hand to us, Jane is finding all sorts of influence of Ua Lava in all his work. And he has friends in Lumana'i. He's never met them, but they correspond through the ansible net."
    "What about the granddaughter of the ambassador?"
    "She's on a starship right now, headed home to Lumana'i. She left twenty years ago, when her grandfather died. She should get there ... oh, in another ten years or so. Depending on the weather. She'll be received with great honor, no doubt, and her grandfather's body will be buried or burned or whatever they do -- burned, Jane says -- with great ceremony."
    "But Hikari won't try to talk to her."
    "It would take a week to space out even a simple message enough for her to receive it, at the speed the ship is going. No way to have a philosophical discussion. She'd be home before he finished explaining his question."
    For the first time, Wang-mu began to understand the implications of the instantaneous starflight that she and Peter had used. These long, life-wrenching voyages could be done away with.
    "If only," she said.
    "I know," said Peter. "But we can't."
    She knew he was right. "So we go there ourselves," she said, returning to the subject. "Then what?"
    "Jane is watching to see whom Hikari writes to. That's the person who'll be in a position to influence him. And so ..."
    "That's who we'll talk to."
    "That's right. Do you need to pee or something before we arrange transportation back to our little cabin in the woods?"
    "That would be nice," said Wang-mu. "And you could do with a change of clothes."
    "What, you think even this conservative outfit might be too bold?"
    "What are they wearing on Lumana'i?"
    "Oh, well, a lot of them just go around naked. In the tropics. Jane says that given the massive bulk of many adult Polynesians, it can be an inspiring sight."
    Wang-mu shuddered. "We aren't going to try to pretend to be natives, are we?"
    "Not there," said Peter. "Jane's going to fake us as passengers on a starship that arrived there yesterday from Moskva. We're probably going to be government officials of some kind."
    "Isn't that illegal?" she asked.
    Peter looked at her oddly. "Wang-mu, we're already committing treason against Congress just by having left Lusitania. It's a capital offense. I don't think impersonating a government official is going to make much of a difference."
    "But I didn't leave Lusitania," said Wang-mu. "I've never seen Lusitania."
    "Oh, you haven't missed much. It's just a bunch of savannahs and woods, with the occasional Hive Queen factory building starships and a bunch of piglike aliens living in the trees."
    "I'm an accomplice to treason though, right?" asked Wang-mu.
    "And you're also guilty of ruining a Japanese philosopher's whole day."
    "Off with my head."
    An hour later they were in a private floater -- so private that there were no questions asked by their pilot; and Jane saw to it that all their papers were in order. Before night they were back at their little starship.
    "We should have slept in the apartment," said Peter, balefully eyeing the primitive sleeping accommodations.
    Wang-mu only laughed at him and curled up on the floor. In the morning, rested, they found that Jane had already taken them to Pacifica in their sleep.
     
     
    Aimaina Hikari awoke from his dream in the light that was neither night nor morning, and arose from his bed into air that was neither warm nor cold. His sleep had not been restful, and his dreams had been ugly ones, frantic ones, in which all that he did kept turning back on him as the opposite of what he intended. In his dream, Aimaina would climb to reach the bottom of a canyon. He would speak and people would go away from him. He would write and the pages of the book would spurt out from under his hand, scattering themselves across the floor.
    All this he understood to be in response to the visit from those lying foreigners yesterday. He had tried to ignore them all afternoon, as he read stories and essays; to forget them all evening, as he conversed with seven friends who came to visit him. But the stories and essays all seemed to cry out to him: These are the words of the insecure people of an Edge nation; and the seven friends were all, he realized, Necessarians, and when he turned the conversation to the Lusitania Fleet, he soon understood that every one of them believed exactly as the two liars with their ridiculous names had said they did.
    So Aimaina