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

out to her. "Let's see what information Jane can give us about this world we're supposed to take by storm."

CHAPTER 2
     
    “YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD”

    "When I follow the path of the gods through the wood,
    My eyes take every twisting turn of the grain,
    But my body moves straight along the planking,
    So those who watch me see that the path of the gods is straight,
    While I dwell in a world with no straightness in it."
    from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
     
     
    Novinha would not come to him. The gentle old teacher looked genuinely distressed as she told Ender. "She wasn't angry," the old teacher explained. "She told me that ..."
    Ender nodded, understanding how the teacher was torn between compassion and honesty. "You can tell me her words," he said. "She is my wife, so I can bear it."
    The old teacher rolled her eyes. "I'm married too, you know."
    Of course he knew. All the members of the Order of the Children of the Mind of Christ -- Os Filhos da Mente de Cristo -- were married. It was their rule.
    "I'm married, so I know perfectly well that your spouse is the one person who knows all the words you can't bear to hear."
    "Then let me correct myself," said Ender mildly. "She is my wife, so I am determined to hear it, whether I can bear it or not."
    "She says that she has to finish the weeding, so she has no time for lesser battles."
    Yes, that sounded like Novinha. She might tell herself that she had taken the mantle of Christ upon her, but if so it was the Christ who denounced the Pharisees, the Christ who said all those cruel and sarcastic things to his enemies and his friends alike, not the gentle one with infinite patience.
    Still, Ender was not one to go away merely because his feelings were hurt. "Then what are we waiting for?" asked Ender. "Show me where I can find a hoe."
    The old teacher stared at him for a long moment, then smiled and led him out into the gardens. Soon, wearing work gloves and carrying a hoe in one hand, he stood at the end of the row where Novinha worked, bent over in the sunlight, her eyes on the ground before her as she cut under the root of weed after weed, turning each one up to bum to death in the hot dry sun. She was coming toward him.
    Ender stepped to the unweeded row beside the one Novinha worked on, and began to hoe toward her. They would not meet, but they would pass close to each other. She would notice him or not. She would speak to him or not. She still loved and needed him. Or not. But no matter what, at the end of this day he would have weeded in the same field as his wife, and her work would have been more easily done because he was there, and so he would still be her husband, however little she might now want him in that role.
    The first time they passed each other, she did not so much as look up. But then she would not have to. She would know without looking that the one who joined her in weeding so soon after she refused to meet with her husband would have to be her husband. He knew that she would know this, and he also knew she was too proud to look at him and show that she wanted to see him again. She would study the weeds until she went half blind, because Novinha was not one to bend to anyone else's will.
    Except, of course, the will of Jesus. That was the message she had sent him, the message that had brought him here, determined to talk to her. A brief note couched in the language of the Church. She was separating herself from him to serve Christ among the Filhos. She felt herself called to this work. He was to regard himself as having no further responsibility toward her, and to expect nothing more from her than she would gladly give to any of the children of God. It was a cold message, for all the gentleness of its phrasing.
    Ender was not one to bend easily to another's will, either. Instead of obeying the message, he came here, determined to do the opposite of what she asked. And why not? Novinha had a terrible record as a decision maker. Whenever she decided to do something for someone else's good, she ended up inadvertently destroying them. Like Libo, her childhood friend and secret lover, the father of all her children during her marriage to the violent but sterile man who had been her husband until he died. Fearing that he would die at the hands of the pequeninos, the way his father had died, Novinha withheld from him her vital discoveries about the biology of the planet Lusitania, fearing that the knowledge of it would kill him. Instead, it was