Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

permanent abstinence in the midst of their marriage. "Novinha," he said, "I haven't the faith or the strength to be one of the Children of the Mind of Christ."
    "When you do," she said, "I'll be waiting for you here."
    "Is this the only hope I have of being with you?" he whispered. "To forswear loving your body as the only way to have your companionship?"
    "Andrew," she whispered, "I long for you. But my sin for so many years was adultery that my only hope of joy now is to deny the flesh and live in the spirit. I'll do it alone if I must. But with you-- oh, Andrew, I miss you."
    And I miss you, he thought. "Like breath itself I miss you," he whispered. "But don't ask this of me. Live with me as my wife until the last of our youth is spent, and then when desire is slack we can come back here together. I could be happy then."
    "Don't you see?" she said. "I've made a covenant. I've made a promise ."
    "You made one to me, too," he said.
    "Should I break a vow to God, so I can keep my vow with you?"
    "God would understand."
    "How easily those who never hear his voice declare what he would and would not want."
    "Do you hear his voice these days?"
    "I hear his song in my heart, the way the Psalmist did. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want."
    "The twenty-third. While the only song I hear is the twenty-second."
    She smiled wanly. "'Why hast thou forsaken me?'" she quoted.
    "And the part about the bulls of Bashan," said Ender. "I've always felt like I was surrounded by bulls."
    She laughed. "Come to me when you can," she said. "I'll be here, when you're ready."
    She almost left him then.
    "Wait."
    She waited.
    "I brought you the viricide and the recolada."
    "Ela's triumph," she said. "It was beyond me, you know. I cost you nothing, by abandoning my work. My time was past, and she had far surpassed me." Novinha took the sugar cube, let it melt for a moment, swallowed it.
    Then she held the vial up against the last light of evening. "With the red sky, it looks like it's all afire inside." She drank it-- sipped it, really, so that the flavor would linger. Even though, as Ender knew, the taste was bitter, and lingered unpleasantly in the mouth long afterward.
    "Can I visit you?"
    "Once a month," she said. Her answer was so quick that he knew she had already considered the question and reached a decision that she had no intention of altering.
    "Then once a month I'll visit you," he said.
    "Until you're ready to join me," she said.
    "Until you're ready to return to me ," he answered.
    But he knew that she would never bend. Novinha was not a person who could easily change her mind. She had set the bounds of his future.
    He should have been resentful, angry. He should have blustered about getting his freedom from a marriage to a woman who refused him. But he couldn't think what he might want his freedom for . Nothing is in my hands now, he realized. No part of the future depends on me. My work, such as it is, is done, and now my only influence on the future is what my children do-- such as they are: the monster Peter, the impossibly perfect child Val.
    And Miro, Grego, Quara, Ela, Olhado-- aren't they my children, too? Can't I also claim to have helped create them, even if they came from Libo's love and Novinha's body, years before I even arrived in this place?
    It was full dark when he found young Val, though he couldn't understand why he was even looking for her. She was in Olhado's house, with Plikt; but while Plikt leaned against a shadowed wall, her face inscrutable, young Val was among Olhado's children, playing with them.
    Of course she's playing with them, thought Ender. She's still a child herself, however much experience she might have had thrust upon her out of my memories.
    But as he stood in the doorway, watching, he realized that she wasn't playing equally with all the children. It was Nimbo who really had her attention. The boy who had been burned, in more ways than one, the night of the mob. The game the children played was simple enough, but it kept them from talking to each other. Still, there was eloquent conversation between Nimbo and young Val. Her smile toward him was warm, not in the manner of a woman encouraging a lover, but rather as a sister gives her brother the silent message of love, of confidence, of trust.
    She's healing him, thought Ender. Just as Valentine, so many years ago, healed me. Not with words. Just with her company.
    Could I have created her with even that ability intact? Was there that