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

he tingles with the pain that he knows it carries within it. The damage he had done could not be undone. She was wrong, he did love her, he didn't want her dead, but she lived in a world in which he wanted her extinguished and there was no reconciling it. They could share this ride, they could share the next voyage to another star system, but they would never be in the same world again, and it was too painful to bear, he ached with the knowledge of it but the ache was too deep for him to reach it or even feel it right now. It was there, he knew it was going to tear at him for years to come, but he couldn't touch it now. He didn't need to examine his feelings. He had felt them before, when he lost Ouanda, when his dream of life with her became impossible. He couldn't touch it, couldn't heal it, couldn't even grieve at what he had only just discovered that he wanted and once again couldn't have.
    "Aren't you the suffering saint," said Jane in his ear.
    "Shut up and go away," Miro subvocalized.
    "That doesn't sound like a man who wants to be my lover," said Jane.
    "I don't want to be your anything," said Miro. "You don't even trust me enough to tell me what you're up to in our searching of worlds."
    "You didn't tell me what you were up to when you went to see the Hive Queen either."
    "You knew what I was doing," said Miro.
    "No I didn't," said Jane. "I'm very smart -- much smarter then you or Ender, and don't you forget it for an instant -- but I still can't outguess you meat-creatures with your much-vaunted 'intuitive leaps.' I like how you make a virtue out of your desperate ignorance. You always act irrationally because you don't have enough information for rational action. But I do resent your saying I'm irrational. I never am. Never."
    "Right, I'm sure," said Miro silently. "You're right about everything. You always are. Go away."
    "I'm gone."
    "No you're not," said Miro. "Not till you tell me what Val's and my voyages have actually been about. The Hive Queen said that colonizable worlds were an afterthought."
    "Nonsense," said Jane. "We needed more than one world if we were going to be sure to save the two nonhuman species. Redundancy."
    "But you send us out again and again."
    "Interesting, isn't it?" said Jane.
    "She said you were dealing with a worse danger than the Lusitania Fleet."
    "How she does go on."
    "Tell me," said Miro.
    "If I tell you," said Jane, "you might not go."
    "Do you think I'm such a coward?"
    "Not at all, my brave boy, my bold and handsome hero."
    He hated it when she patronized him, even as a joke. He wasn't in the mood for joking right now anyway.
    "Then why do you think I wouldn't go?"
    "You wouldn't think you were up to the task," said Jane.
    "Am I?" asked Miro.
    "Probably not," said Jane. "But then, you have me with you."
    "And what if you're suddenly not there?" asked Miro.
    "Well, that's just a risk we're going to have to take."
    "Tell me what we're doing. Tell me our real mission."
    "Oh, don't be silly. If you think about it, you'll know."
    "I don't like puzzles, Jane. Tell me."
    "Ask Val. She knows."
    "What?"
    "She already searches for exactly the data I need. She knows."
    "Then that means Ender knows. At some level," said Miro.
    "I suspect you're right, though Ender is not terribly interesting to me anymore and I don't much care what he knows."
    Yes, you're so rational, Jane.
    He must have subvocalized this thought, out of habit, because she answered him just as she answered his deliberate subvocalizations. "You say that ironically," she said, "because you think I am only saying that Ender doesn't interest me because I'm protecting myself from my hurt feelings because he took his jewel out of his ear. But in fact he is no longer a source of data and he is no longer a cooperative part of the work I'm engaged in, and therefore I simply don't have much interest in him anymore, except as one is somewhat interested in hearing from time to time about the doings of an old friend who has moved away."
    "Sounds like rationalization after the fact to me ," said Miro.
    "Why did you even bring Ender up?" asked Jane. "What does it matter whether he knows the real work you and Val are doing?"
    "Because if Val really knows our mission, and our mission involves an even worse danger than the Lusitania Fleet, then why has Ender lost interest in her so that she's fading?"
    Silence for a moment. Was it actually taking Jane so long to think of an answer that the time lag was noticeable to a human?
    "I