Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

I was found like a jade matrix in the mountainside, unshaped by any hand. Han Fei-tzu, Han Qing-jao, Si Wang-mu, I place myself in your hands. Don't call a precious jewel a mere stone. Don't call a speaker of truth a liar."
    Qing-jao felt pity rising within her, but she rejected it. Now was not the time to succumb to weak feelings. The gods had created her for a reason; surely this was the great work of her life. If she failed now, she would be unworthy forever; she would never be pure. So she would not fail. She would not allow this computer program to deceive her and win her sympathy.
    She turned to her father. "We must notify Starways Congress at once, so they can set into motion the simultaneous shutoff of all the ansibles as soon as clean computers can be readied to replace the contaminated ones."
    To her surprise, Father shook his head. "I don't know, Qing-jao. What this-- what she says about Starways Congress-- they are capable of this sort of thing. Some of them are so evil they make me feel filthy just talking to them. I knew they planned to destroy Lusitania without-- but I served the gods, and the gods chose-- or I thought they did. Now I understand so much of the way they treat me when I meet with-- but then it would mean that the gods don't-- how can I believe that I've spent my whole life in service to a brain defect-- I can't-- I have to ..."
    Then, suddenly, he flung his left hand outward in a swirling pattern, as if he were trying to catch a dodging fly. His right hand flew upward, snatched the air. Then he rolled his head around and around on his shoulders, his mouth hanging open. Qing-jao was frightened, horrified. What was happening to her father? He had been speaking in such a fragmented, disjointed way; had he gone mad?
    He repeated the action-- left arm spiraling out, right hand straight up, grasping nothing; head rolling. And again. Only then did Qing-jao realize that she was seeing Father's secret ritual of purification. Like her woodgrain-tracing, this dance-of-the-hands-and-the-head must be the way he was given to hear the voice of the gods when he, in his time, was left covered with grease in a locked room.
    The gods had seen his doubt, had seen him waver, so they took control of him, to discipline and purify him. Qing-jao could not have been given clearer proof of what was going on. She turned to the face above the terminal display. "See how the gods oppose you?" she said.
    "I see how Congress humiliates your father," answered Jane.
    "I will send word of who you are to every world at once," said Qing-jao.
    "And if I don't let you?" said Jane.
    "You can't stop me!" cried Qing-jao. "The gods will help me!" She ran from her father's room, fled to her own. But the face was already floating in the air above her own terminal.
    "How will you send a message anywhere, if I choose not to let it go?" asked Jane.
    "I'll find a way," said Qing-jao. She saw that Wang-mu had run after her and now waited, breathless, for Qing-jao's instructions. "Tell Mu-pao to find one of the game computers and bring it to me. It is not to be connected to the house computer or any other."
    "Yes, Mistress," said Wang-mu. She left quickly.
    Qing-jao turned back to Jane. "Do you think you can stop me forever?"
    "I think you should wait until your father decides."
    "Only because you hope that you've broken him and stolen his heart away from the gods. But you'll see-- he'll come here and thank me for fulfilling all that he taught me."
    "And if he doesn't?"
    "He will."
    "And if you're wrong?"
    Qing-jao shouted, "Then I'll serve the man he was when he was strong and good! But you'll never break him!"
    "It's Congress that broke him from his birth. I'm the one who's trying to heal him."
    Wang-mu ran back into the room. "Mu-pao will have one here in a few minutes."
    "What do you hope to do with this toy computer?" asked Jane.
    "Write my report," said Qing-jao.
    "Then what will you do with it?"
    "Print it out. Have it distributed as widely as possible on Path. You can't do anything to interfere with that . I won't use a computer that you can reach at any point."
    "So you'll tell everyone on Path; it changes nothing. And even if it did, do you think I can't also tell them the truth?"
    "Do you think they'll believe you, a program controlled by the enemy of Congress, rather than me, one of the godspoken?"
    "Yes."
    It took a moment for Qing-jao to realize that it was Wang-mu who had said yes, not Jane. She turned to her secret maid