Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

very clearly. You're useless to us if you lose your health. As Andrew has told me, over and over-- we must do all we can do without destroying our ability to keep doing it."
    Then she was gone, too.
    Wang-mu immediately began to weep again. Han Fei-tzu slid over and sat beside her on the floor, cradled her head against his shoulder, and rocked gently back and forth. "Hush, my daughter, my sweet one, in your heart you already knew who you were, and so did I, so did I. Truly your name was wisely given. If they perform their miracles on Lusitania, you will be the Royal Mother of all the world."
    "Master Han," she whispered. "I'm crying also for Qing-jao. I have been given more than I ever hoped for. But who will she be, if the voice of the gods is taken from her?"
    "I hope," said Fei-tzu, "that she will be my true daughter again. That she will be as free as you, the daughter who has come to me like a petal on the winter river, borne to me from the land of perpetual spring."
    He held her for many long minutes more, until she began to doze on his shoulder. Then he laid her back on her mat, and he retired to his own corner to sleep, with hope in his heart for the first time in many days.
     
     
     
    When Valentine came to see Grego in prison, Mayor Kovano told her that Olhado was with him. "Aren't these Olhado's working hours?"
    "You can't be serious," said Kovano. "He's a good manager of brickmakers, but I think saving the world might be worth an afternoon of somebody else covering for him on management."  
    "Don't get your expectations too high," said Valentine. "I wanted him involved. I hoped he might help. But he isn't a physicist."
    Kovano shrugged. "I'm not a jailer, either, but one does what the situation requires. I have no idea whether it has to do with Olhado being in there or Ender's visit a little while ago, but I've heard more excitement and noise in there than-- well, than I've ever heard when the inmates were sober. Of course, public drunkenness is what people are usually jailed for in this town."
    "Ender came?"
    "From the Hive Queen. He wants to talk to you. I didn't know where you were."
    "Yes. Well, I'll go see him when I leave here." Where she had been was with her husband. Jakt was getting ready to go back into space on the shuttle, to prepare his own ship for quick departure, if need be, and to see whether the original Lusitanian colony ship could possibly be restored for another flight after so many decades without maintenance of the stardrive.
    The only thing it had been used for was storage of seeds and genes and embryos of Earthborn species, in case they were someday needed. Jakt would be gone for at least a week, possibly longer, and Valentine couldn't very well let him go without spending some time with him. He would have understood, of course-- he knew the terrible pressure that everyone was under. But Valentine also knew that she wasn't one of the key figures in these events. She would only be useful later, writing the history of it.
    When she left Jakt, however, she had not come straight to the mayor's office to see Grego. She had taken a walk through the center of town. Hard to believe that only a short time ago-- how many days? Weeks? --the mob had formed here, drunken and angry, working themselves up to a murderous rage. Now it was so quiet. The grass had even recovered from the trampling, except for one mudhole where it refused to grow back.
    But it wasn't peaceful here. On the contrary. When the town had been at peace, when Valentine first arrived, there had been bustle and business here in the heart of the colony, all through the day. Now a few people were out and about, yes, but they were glum, almost furtive. Their eyes stayed down, looking at the ground before their feet, as if everyone were afraid that if they didn't watch every step they'd fall flat.
    Part of the glumness was probably shame, thought Valentine. There was a hole in every building in town now, where blocks or bricks had been torn out to use in the building of the chapel. Many of the gaps were visible from the praça where Valentine walked.
    She suspected, however, that fear more than shame had killed the vibrancy in this place. No one spoke of it openly, but she caught enough comments, enough covert glances toward the hills north of town that she knew. What loomed over this colony wasn't the fear of the coming fleet. It wasn't shame over the slaughter of the pequenino forest. It was the buggers. The dark shapes only