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

comes from outside, if in fact you only experience it inside your own heart? Where can you run from it? How can you hide? Qing-jao must be free by now, freed by the carrier virus that Peter brought with him to Path and put into the hands of Han Fei-tzu. But Peter -- what freedom can there be for him?
    And yet he must still live as if he were free. He must still struggle for freedom even if the struggle itself is just one more symptom of his slavery. There is a part of him that yearns to be himself. No, not him self. A self.
    So what is my part in all of this? Am I supposed to work a miracle, and give him an aiúa? That isn't in my power.
    And yet I do have power, she thought.
    She must have power, or why else had he spoken to her so openly? A total stranger, and he had opened his heart to her at once. Why? Because she was in on the secrets, yes, but something else as well.
    Ah, of course. He could speak freely to her because she had never known Andrew Wiggin. Maybe Peter was nothing but an aspect of Ender's nature, all that Ender feared and loathed about himself. But she could never compare the two of them. Whatever Peter was, whoever controlled him, she was his confidante.
    Which made her, once again, someone's servant. She had been Qing-jao's confidante, too.
    She shuddered, as if to shake from her the sad comparison. No, she told herself. It is not the same thing. Because that young man wandering so aimlessly among the wildflowers has no power over me, except to tell me of his pain and hope for my understanding. Whatever I give to him I will give freely.
    She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the frame of the door. I will give it freely, yes, she thought. But what am I planning to give him? Why, exactly what he wants -- my loyalty, my devotion, my help in all his tasks. To submerge myself in him. And why am I already planning to do all this? Because however he might doubt himself, he has the power to win people to his cause.
    She opened her eyes again and strode out into the hip-high grass toward him. He saw her and waited wordlessly as she approached. Bees buzzed around her; butterflies staggered drunkenly through the air, avoiding her somehow in their seemingly random flight. At the last moment she reached out and gathered a bee from a blossom into her hand, into her fist, but then quickly, before it could sting her, she lobbed it into Peter's face.
    Flustered, surprised, he batted away the infuriated bee, ducked under it, dodged, and finally ran a few steps before it lost track of him and buzzed its way out among the flowers again. Only then could he turn furiously to face her.
    "What was that for!"
    She giggled at him -- she couldn't help it. He had looked so funny.
    "Oh, good, laugh. I can see you're going to be fine company."
    "Be angry, I don't care," said Wang-mu. "I'll just tell you this. Do you think that away off on Lusitania, Ender's aiúa suddenly thought, 'Ho, a bee!' and made you brush at it and dodge it like a clown?"
    He rolled his eyes. "Oh, aren't you clever. Well gosh, Miss Royal Mother of the West, you sure solved all my problems! I can see I must always have been a real boy! And these ruby shoes, why, they've had the power to take me back to Kansas all along!"
    "What's Kansas?" she asked, looking down at his shoes, which were not red.
    "Just another memory of Ender's that he kindly shared with me," said Peter Wiggin.
    He stood there, his hands in his pockets, regarding her.
    She stood just as silently, her hands clasped in front of her, regarding him right back.
    "So are you with me?" he finally asked.
    "You must try not to be nasty with me," she said.
    "Take that up with Ender."
    "I don't care whose aiúa controls you," she said. "You still have your own thoughts, which are different from his -- you feared the bee, and he didn't even think of a bee right then, and you know it. So whatever part of you is in control or whoever the real 'you' happens to be, right there on the front of your head is the mouth that's going to be speaking to me, and I'm telling you that if I'm going to work with you, you better be nice to me."
    "Does this mean no more bee fights?" he asked.
    "Yes," she said.
    "That's just as well. With my luck Ender no doubt gave me a body that goes into shock when I'm stung by a bee."
    "It can also be pretty hard on the bee," she said.
    He grinned at her. "I find myself liking you," he said. "I really hate that."
    He strode off toward the starship. "Come on!" he called