Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

surrounding the colony; by now it must already have passed into other forests, the descolada, helpless now, giving way as the mute and passive recolada took its place. All these changes couldn't possibly take place in hell.
    "I guess I'm still alive," he said.
    "And so am I," she said. "That's something, too. Peter and Val, they're not the only people to spring from your mind."
    "No, they're not," he said.
    "We're both still alive, even if we have hard times coming."
    He remembered what lay in store for her, the mental crippling that was only weeks away, and he was ashamed of himself for having mourned his own losses. "Better to have loved and lost," he murmured, "than never to have loved at all."
    "It may be a cliché," said Jane, "but that doesn't mean it can't be true."

Chapter 18
 
The God of Path
 
 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
      
 
 
    Wang-mu and Master Han waited together on the riverbank some hundred meters from their house, a pleasant walk through the garden. Jane had told them that someone would be coming to see them, someone from Lusitania. They both knew this meant that faster-than-light travel had been achieved, but beyond that they could only assume that their visitor must have come to an orbit around Path, shuttled down, and was now making his way stealthily toward them.
    Instead, a ridiculously small metal structure appeared on the riverbank in front of them. The door opened. A man emerged. A young man-- largeboned, Caucasian, but pleasant-looking anyway. He held a single glass tube in his hand.
    He smiled.
    Wang-mu had never seen such a smile. He looked right through her as if he owned her soul. As if he knew her, knew her better than she knew herself.
    "Wang-mu," he said, gently. "Royal Mother of the West. And Fei-tzu, the great teacher of the Path."
    He bowed. They bowed to him in return.
    "My business here is brief," he said. He held the vial out to Master Han. "Here is the virus. As soon as I've gone-- because I have no desire for genetic alteration myself, thank you-- drink this down. I imagine it tastes like pus or something equally disgusting, but drink it anyway.