Speaker for the Dead

another, deeper reason. He would go to minister to the girl Novinha, for in her brilliance, her isolation, her pain, her guilt, he saw his own stolen childhood and the seeds of the pain that lived with him still. Lusitania was twenty-two light-years away. He would travel only infinitesimally slower than the speed of light, and still he would not reach her until she was almost forty years old. If it were within his power he would go to her now with the philotic instantaneity of the ansible; but he also knew that her pain would wait. It would still be there, waiting for him, when he arrived. Hadn't his own pain survived all these years?
      His weeping stopped; his emotions retreated again. "How old am I?" he asked.
      "It has been 3081 years since you were born. But your subjective age is 36 years and 118 days."
      "And how old will Novinha be when I get there?"
      "Give or take a few weeks, depending on departure date and how close the starship comes to the speed of light, she'll be nearly thirty-nine."
      "I want to leave tomorrow."
      "It takes time to schedule a starship, Ender."
      "Are there any orbiting Trondheim?"
      "Half a dozen, of course, but only one that could be ready to go tomorrow, and it has a load of skrika for the luxury trade on Cyrillia and Armenia."
      "I've never asked you how rich I am."
      "I've handled your investments rather well over the years."
      "Buy the ship and the cargo for me."
      "What will you do with skrika on Lusitania?"
      "What do the Cyrillians and Annenians do with it?"
      "They wear some of it and eat the rest. But they pay more for it than anybody on Lusitania can afford."
      "Then when I give it to the Lusitanians, it may help soften their resentment of a Speaker coming to a Catholic colony."
      Jane became a genie coming out of a bottle. "I have heard, O Master, and I obey." The genie turned into smoke, which was sucked into the mouth of the jar. Then the lasers turned off, and the air above the terminal was empty.
      "Jane," said Ender.
      "Yes?" she answered, speaking through the jewel in his ear.
      "Why do you want me to go to Lusitania?"
      "I want you to add a third volume to The Hive Queen and the Hegemon. For the piggies."
      "Why do you care so much about them?"
      "Because when you've written the books that reveal the soul of the three sentient species known to man, then you'll be ready to write the fourth."
      "Another species of raman?" asked Ender.
      "Yes. Me."
      Ender pondered this for a moment. "Are you ready to reveal yourself to the rest of humanity?"
      "I've always been ready. The question is, are they ready to know me? It was easy for them to love the hegemon-- he was human. And the hive queen, that was safe, because as far as they know all the buggers are dead. If you can make them love the piggies, who are still alive, with human blood on their hands-- then they'll be ready to know about me."
      "Someday," said Ender, "I will love somebody who doesn't insist that I perform the labors of Hercules."
      "You were getting bored with your life, anyway, Ender."
      "Yes. But I'm middle-aged now. I like being bored."
      "By the way, the owner of the starship Havelok, who lives on Gales, has accepted your offer of forty billion dollars for the ship and its cargo."
      "Forty billion! Does that bankrupt me?"
      "A drop in the bucket. The crew has been notified that their contracts are null. I took the liberty of buying them passage on other ships using your funds. You and Valentine won't need anybody but me to help you run the ship. Shall we leave in the morning?"
      "Valentine," said Ender. His sister was the only possible delay to his departure. Otherwise, now that the decision had been made, neither his students nor his few Nordic friendships here would be worth even a farewell.
      "I can't wait to read the book that Demosthenes writes about the history of Lusitania." Jane had discovered the true identity of Demosthenes in the process of unmasking the original Speaker for the Dead.
      "Valentine won't come," said Ender.
      "But she's your sister."
      Ender smiled. Despite Jane's vast wisdom, she had no understanding of kinship. Though she had been created by humans and conceived herself in human terms, she was not biological. She learned of genetic matters by rote; she could not feel the desires and imperatives that human beings had in common with all other living things. "She's my sister, but Trondheim is her