Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

skill I had before. After all, you managed to give Valette the same genes as Valentine. Maybe I'm all that Peter ever was."
    "Maybe pigs have wings."
    Peter laughed. "They would, if you went Outside and believed hard enough."
    "Go, then," said Ender.
    "Yes, I know you'll be glad to get rid of me."
    "And sic you on the rest of humanity? Let that be punishment enough, for their having sent the fleet." Ender gripped Peter by the arm, pulled him close. "Don't think that this time you can maneuver me into helplessness. I'm not a little boy anymore, and if you get out of hand, I'll destroy you."
    "You can't," said Peter. "You could more easily kill yourself."
    The ceremony began. This time there was no pomp, no ring to kiss, no homily. Ela and her assistants simply brought several hundred sugar cubes impregnated with the viricide bacterium, and as many vials of solution containing the recolada. They were passed among the congregation, and each of the pequeninos took the sugar cube, dissolved and swallowed it, and then drank off the contents of the vial.
    "This is my body which is given for you," intoned Peter. "This do in remembrance of me."
    "Have you no respect for anything?" asked Ender.
    "This is my blood, which I shed for you. Drink in remembrance of me." Peter smiled. "This is a communion even I can take, unbaptized as I am."
    "I can promise you this," said Ender. "They haven't invented the baptism yet that can purify you ."
    "I'll bet you've been saving up all your life, just to say that to me." Peter turned to him, so Ender could see the ear in which the jewel had been implanted, linking him to Jane. In case Ender didn't notice what he was pointing out, Peter touched the jewel rather ostentatiously. "Just remember, I have the source of all wisdom here. She'll show you what I'm doing, if you ever care. If you don't forget me the moment I'm gone."
    "I won't forget you," said Ender.
    "You could come along," said Peter.
    "And risk making more like you Outside?"
    "I could use the company."
    "I promise you, Peter, you'd soon get as sick of yourself as I am sick of you."
    "Never," said Peter. "I'm not filled with self-loathing the way you are, you poor guilt-obsessed tool of better, stronger men. And if you won't make more companions for me, why, I'll find my own along the way."
    "I have no doubt of it," said Ender.
    The sugar cubes and vials came to them; they ate, drank.
    "The taste of freedom," said Peter. "Delicious."
    "Is it?" said Ender. "We're killing a species that we never understood."
    "I know what you mean," said Peter. "It's a lot more fun to destroy an opponent when he's able to understand how thoroughly you defeated him."
    Then, at last, Peter walked away.
    Ender stayed through the end of the ceremony, and spoke to many there: Human and Rooter, of course, and Valentine, Ela, Ouanda, and Miro.
    He had another visit to make, however. A visit he had made several times before, always to be rebuffed, sent away without a word. This time, though, Novinha came out to speak with him. And instead of being filled with rage and grief, she seemed quite calm.
    "I'm much more at peace," she said. "And I know, for what it's worth, that my rage at you was unrighteous."
    Ender was glad to hear the sentiment, but surprised at the terms she used. When had Novinha ever spoken of righteousness?
    "I've come to see that perhaps my boy was fulfilling the purposes of God," she said. "That you couldn't have stopped him, because God wanted him to go to the pequeninos to set in motion the miracles that have come since then." She wept. "Miro came to me. Healed," she said. "Oh, God is merciful after all. And I'll have Quim again in heaven, when I die."
    She's been converted, thought Ender. After all these years of despising the church, of taking part in Catholicism only because there was no other way to be a citizen of Lusitania Colony, these weeks with the Children of the Mind of Christ have converted her. I'm glad of it, he thought. She's speaking to me again.
    "Andrew," she said, "I want us to be together again."
    He reached out to embrace her, wanting to weep with relief and joy, but she recoiled from his touch.
    "You don't understand," she said. "I won't go home with you. This is my home now."
    She was right-- he hadn't understood. But now he did. She hadn't just been converted to Catholicism. She had been converted to this order of permanent sacrifice, where only husbands and wives could join, and only together, to take vows of