answered.
"Do you understand?"
"I'm very tired. I've never been tired before. I've never done something so very hard. It used up-- all my attention at once. And two more bodies, Ender. Making me pull them into the pattern like that-- I don't know how I did it."
"I didn't mean to." But she didn't answer.
"Are you coming or what?" asked Peter. "The others are all out the door. With all those little urine-sample jars."
"Ender, I'm afraid," said young Valentine. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."
"Neither do I," said Ender. "God forgive me if this somehow hurts you. I never would have brought you back to hurt you."
"I know," she said.
"No," said Peter. "Sweet old Ender conjures up a nubile young woman out of his own brain, who looks just like his sister in her teens. Mmm, mmm, Ender, old man, is there no limit to your depravity?"
"Only a shamefully sick mind would even think of such a thing," Ender murmured.
Peter laughed and laughed.
Ender took young Val by the hand and led her to the door. He could feel her hand sweating and trembling in his. She felt so real. She was real. And yet there, as soon as he stood in the doorway, he could see the real Valentine, middle-aged and heading toward old, yet still the gracious, beautiful woman he had known and loved for all these years. That's the true sister, the one I love as my second self. What was this young girl doing in my mind?
It was clear that Grego and Ela had said enough that people knew something strange had happened. And when Miro had strode from the ship, hale and vigorous, clear of speech and so exuberant he looked ready to burst into song-- that had brought on a buzz of excitement. A miracle. There were miracles out there, wherever the starship went.
Ender's appearance, though, brought a hush. Few would have known, at a glance, that the young girl with him was Valentine in her youth-- no one there but Valentine herself had known her then. And no one but Valentine was likely to recognize Peter Wiggin in his vigorous young manhood; the pictures in the history texts were usually of the holos taken late in his life, when cheap, permanent holography was first coming into its own.
But Valentine knew. Ender stood before the door, young Val beside him, Peter emerging just behind, and Valentine knew them both. She stepped forward, away from Jakt, until she stood before Ender face to face.
"Ender," she said. "Dear sweet tormented boy, was this what you create, when you go to a place where you can make anything you want?" She reached out her hand and touched the young copy of herself upon the cheek. "So beautiful," she said. "I was never this beautiful, Ender. She's perfect. She's all I wanted to be but never was."
"Aren't you glad to see me, Val, my dearest sweetheart Demosthenes?" Peter pushed his way between Ender and young Val. "Don't you have tender memories of me, as well? Am I not more beautiful than you remembered? I'm certainly glad to see you . You've done so well with the persona I created for you. Demosthenes. I made you, and you don't even thank me for it."
"Thank you, Peter," whispered Valentine. She looked again at young Val. "What will you do with them?"
"Do with us ?" said Peter. "We're not his to do anything with. He may have brought me back, but I'm my own man now, as I always was."
Valentine turned back to the crowd, still awestruck at the strangeness of events. After all, they had seen three people board the ship, had seen it disappear, then reappear on the exact spot no more than seven minutes later-- and instead of three people emerging, there were five, two of them strangers. Of course they had stayed to gawk.
But there'd be no answers for anyone today. Except on the most important question of all. "Has Ela taken the vials to the lab?" she asked. "Let's break it up here, and go see what Ela's made for us in outspace."
Chapter 17
Ender's Children
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