Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

Venerados. Rooter has been telling us of a new heresy out in the hinterland somewhere. Some pequeninos who commune constantly with the Holy Ghost."
    "This business with gods is something I don't understand," said Jane. "Hasn't anyone caught on yet that the gods always say what people want to hear?"
    "Not so," said Ender. "The gods often ask us to do things we never desired, things that require us to sacrifice everything on their behalf. Don't underestimate the gods."
    "Does your Catholic God speak to you?"
    "Maybe he does. I never hear him, though. Or if I do, I never know that it's his voice I'm hearing."
    "And when you die, do the gods of every people really gather them up and take them off somewhere to live forever?"
    "I don't know. They never write."
    "When I die, will there be some god to carry me away?"
    Ender was still for a moment, and then he began to address her in his storytelling manner. "There's an old tale of a dollmaker who never had a son. So he made a puppet that was so lifelike that it looked like a real boy, and he would hold the wooden boy on his lap and talk to it and pretend it was his son. He wasn't crazy-- he still knew it was a doll-- he called it Pinehead. But one day a god came and touched the puppet and it came to life, and when the dollmaker spoke to it, Pinehead answered. The dollmaker never told anyone about this. He kept his wooden son at home, but he brought the boy every tale he could gather and news of every wonder under heaven. Then one day the dollmaker was coming home from the wharf with tales of a far-off land that had just been discovered, when he saw that his house was on fire. Immediately he tried to run into the house, crying out, 'My son! My son!' But his neighbors stopped him, saying, 'Are you mad? You have no son!' He watched the house burn to the ground, and when it was over he plunged into the ruins and covered himself with hot ashes and wept bitterly. He refused to be comforted. He refused to rebuild his shop. When people asked him why, he said his son was dead. He stayed alive by doing odd jobs for other people, and they pitied him because they were sure the fire had made him a lunatic. Then one day, three years later, a small orphan boy came to him and tugged on his sleeve and said, 'Father, don't you have a tale for me?'"
    Jane waited, but Ender said no more. "That's the whole story?"
    "Isn't it enough?"
    "Why did you tell me this? It's all dreams and wishes. What does it have to do with me?"
    "It was the story that came to mind."
    "Why did it come to mind?"
    "Maybe that's how God speaks to me," said Ender. "Or maybe I'm sleepy and I don't have what you want from me."
    "I don't even know what I want from you."
    " I know what you want," said Ender. "You want to be alive, with your own body, not dependent on the philotic web that binds the ansibles together. I'd give you that gift if I could. If you can figure out a way for me to do it, I'll do it for you. But Jane, you don't even know what you are . Maybe when you know how you came to exist, what makes you yourself, then maybe we can save you from the day when they shut down the ansibles to kill you. "
    "So that's your story? Maybe I'll burn down with the house, but somehow my soul will end up in a three-year-old orphan boy?"
    "Find out who you are, what you are, your essence, and we'll see if we can move you somewhere safer until all this is over. We've got an ansible. Maybe we can put you back."
    "There aren't computers enough on Lusitania to contain me."
    "You don't know that. You don't know what your self is."
    "You're telling me to find my soul ." She made her voice sound derisive as she said the word.
    "Jane, the miracle wasn't that the doll was reborn as a boy. The miracle was the fact that the puppet ever came to life at all. Something happened to turn meaningless computer connections into a sentient being. Something created you. That's what makes no sense. After that one, the other part should be easy."
    His speech was slurring. He wants me to go away so he can sleep, she thought. "I'll work on this."
    "Good night," he murmured.
    He dropped off to sleep almost at once. Jane wondered: Was he ever really awake? Will he remember in the morning that we talked?
    Then she felt the bed shift. Novinha; her breathing was different. Only then did Jane realize: Novinha woke up while Ender and I were talking. She knows what those almost inaudible clicking and smacking noises always mean, that Ender was subvocalizing in