Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

stay out of the family quarrels. I always have."
    "And out of the family business. The only one of Novinha's children not to go into science."
    "Science has brought everyone else so much happiness, it's hard to imagine why I wouldn't have gone into it."
    "Not hard to imagine ," said Valentine. And then, because she had found that brittle-sounding people will talk quite openly if goaded, she added a little barb. "I imagine that you simply didn't have the brains to keep up."
    "Absolutely true," said Olhado. "I only have wit enough to make bricks."
    "Really?" said Valentine. "But you don't make bricks."
    "On the contrary. I make hundreds of bricks a day. And with everyone knocking holes in their houses to build the new chapel, I foresee a booming business in the near future."
    "Lauro," said Valentine, "you don't make bricks. The laborers in your factory make bricks."
    "And I, as manager, am not part of that?"
    "Brickmakers make bricks. You make brickmakers."
    "I suppose. Mostly I make brickmakers tired ."
    "You make other things," said Valentine. "Children."
    "Yes," said Olhado, and for the first time in the conversation he relaxed. "I do that . Of course, I have a partner."
    "A gracious and beautiful woman."
    "I looked for perfection, and found something better." It wasn't just a line of patter. He meant it. And now the brittleness was gone, the wariness too. "You have children. A husband."
    "A good family. Maybe almost as good as yours. Ours lacks only the perfect mother, but the children will recover from that."
    "To hear Andrew talk about you, you're the greatest human being who ever lived."
    "Andrew is very sweet. He could also get away with saying such things because I wasn't here."
    "Now you are here," said Olhado. "Why?"
    "It happens that worlds and species of ramen are at a cusp of decision, and the way events have turned out, their future depends in large part on your family. I don't have time to discover things in a leisurely way-- I don't have time to understand the family dynamics, why Grego can pass from monster to hero in a single night, how Miro can be both suicidal and ambitious, why Quara is willing to let the pequeninos die for the descolada's sake--"
    "Ask Andrew. He understands them all. I never could."
    "Andrew is in his own little hell right now. He feels responsible for everything. He's done his best, but Quim is dead, and the one thing your mother and Andrew both agree on is that somehow it's Andrew's fault. Your mother's leaving him has torn him up."
    "I know."
    "I don't even know how to console him. Or even which, as his loving sister, to hope for-- that she'll come back into his life, or leave him forever."
    Olhado shrugged. All the brittleness was back.
    "Do you really not care?" asked Valentine. "Or have you decided not to care?"
    "Maybe I decided long ago, and now I really don't."
    Part of being a good interviewer, too, is knowing when to be silent. Valentine waited.
    But Olhado was also good at waiting. Valentine almost gave up and said something. She even toyed with the idea of confessing failure and leaving.
    Then he spoke. "When they replaced my eyes, they also took out the tear ducts. Natural tears would interfere with the industrial lubricants they put in my eyes. "
    "Industrial?"
    "My little joke," said Olhado. "I seem to be very dispassionate all the time, because my eyes never well up with tears. And people can't read my expressions. It's funny, you know. The actual eyeball doesn't have any ability to change shape and show an expression. It just sits there. Yes, your eyes dart around-- they either keep steady eye contact or look down or up-- but my eyes do that, too. They still move with perfect symmetry. They still point in the direction I'm looking. But people can't stand to look at them. So they look away. They don't read the expressions on my face. And therefore they think there are no expressions. My eyes still sting and redden and swell a little at times when I would have cried, if I still had tears."
    "In other words," said Valentine, "you do care."
    "I always cared," he said. "Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn't know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn't have any personal ego on the line in the family quarrels, I could see more clearly than any of them. I saw the lines of power-- Mother's absolute dominance even though Marcão beat her when he was angry or drunk. Miro,