Last Shadow (9781250252135)

by Card, Orson Scott

  I knew what I was marrying when he and I spoke our vows before the Catholic bishop of Lusitania Colony, in the presence of a pequenino mothertree. I undertook this contract, this covenant, with the intention of fulfilling my part to the best of my ability, which includes being as patient as I can with his lapses. It would be easier to bear if it were possible to talk with him about this bifurcation of his personality, but any approach to such a topic sets off either a cold avoidance or a heated response in which he says such wounding things to me that I haven’t the courage to try it again very soon.

  There will come a time when he realizes that he doesn’t like acting out his childhood image of his brother, and that I am not a person that it is right for him to treat with the savagery of his wit. He has never been violent with me as his brother often was with him; I have that comfort. And, as long as I don’t venture on any topic that sounds as if I’m trying to change his behavior or his self-image, he listens to me with respect—perhaps more respect than I deserve. When we were maneuvering to get Starways Congress to stop the fleet that had been sent to destroy Lusitania and all the species on it, some of the wise people we conversed with showed him that they, at least, regarded me as a person worthy of honor and respect. I don’t know why, but I do know that my Peter Wiggin noticed it and now often echoes it.

  If these great figures from other worlds treated me that way, he must have concluded that they knew something he did not. He is humble about his level of knowledge, because he does not have the original Peter’s memory set, and he lacks most of Andrew’s memories as well. He came to life with a full command of Stark, the language of the Hundred Worlds, and also of the English language that was the basis of Stark three thousand years ago. That is the language he lapses into when he’s tired, along with slang expressions, some of them quite filthy, that he learned and used in Battle School. What my Peter inherited from Ender, from his aiúa, was the child’s knowledge. I have little doubt that my Peter could, in a pinch, lead an army into war, as Ender did.

  What he is not good at, however, is the skill set that has been imputed to the real Peter Wiggin—the wisdom, patience, knowledge, and empathy required to be a masterful negotiator with cynical politicians and idealists and religious leaders and all the other power wielders who influence the course of events in the human universe. And since that is precisely the course he has embarked upon—full of confidence that, being “Peter Wiggin,” he will be good at it—it is my role to be supportive of his endeavors, offering advice and information where I can, without triggering his defenses.

  Before Peter took me with him, I had a few excellent months on my home world of Path, living in the house of the sage Han Fei-Tzu. I arrived there as the close personal servant of Han Qing-Jao, his daughter; they were both among the God-spoken of that world, until Jane informed him, with irresistible proof, that the compulsions and obsessions of the God-spoken came from a genetic alteration designed to enhance their intelligence while crippling their lives. His daughter refused to believe that this was true, and as far as I know continues to believe that her former compulsions were messages from the gods, so that by acting as if she still received them, she can worship these uncommunicative deities. When I left their home, it was with her anger and Han’s blessing.

  Han taught me much that has helped me be of service to my Peter. He frowns when I say, “Master Han once told me,” but he listens. I am often tempted to preface my own thoughts and observations with that preamble, but so far I have not done so, because I hope my Peter will eventually recognize that my own ideas also have value, even if he takes them far less seriously than my quotations from Master Han.

  My ancestor-of-the-heart is the goddess Royal Mother of the West, whose name I was given at my birth. My mother, if it was she who named me, must have hoped that this optimistic, sacrilegious, presumptuous name would recommend me to the attention of the goddess. Most children of low birth on Path learned to hide such ridiculously high names behind nicknames, but once I understood what my name meant and how it was heard by educated people, I did not hide it, I insisted upon it. I never called myself merely Wang-Mu or, as more people with that name did, Mu. I always introduced myself as Si Wang-Mu, without apology or bashfulness, daring people to laugh.

  This is among the many things that my Peter still does not understand; he is not from Path and cannot really grasp the meaning. He persists in trying to use customs from his upbringing, introducing me as his wife, Wang-Mu Wiggin, an absurdity; I am not his daughter, and why would the family name come last? But I simply smile and correct him mildly by saying my true name: “I am Si Wang-Mu, and Peter Wiggin is my husband.” Since we left Path, few have understood the divine origin of the name, but that does not matter. If they do a search on my name, they will first encounter my ancestor-of-the-heart, and they will know whose name I bear, and to whom my highest duty is owed.

  —Si Wang-Mu, Notes for a biographical sketch of the new Peter Wiggin

  Peter Wiggin stopped eating and leaned his head on his hand, his elbow on the table. “The food is delicious, Wang-Mu. I have no complaint. I’m just brain-weary.”

  “The work is frustrating,” said his wife, reaching out and lightly stroking his forearm.

  “I must correct you. Because I have no idea whether the work would be frustrating or not, because I can’t even begin to do it. We’ve been here a month and I’ve made no inroads. I’ve met with many politicians, because they know that they need to meet with rich constituents—”

  “My love,” said Wang-Mu, interrupting him. “You cannot be anyone’s constituent, because you have no home world.”

  “My money makes me anyone’s constituent,” said Peter.

  “Yes, except that you have bestowed it nowhere.”

  “When word gets out that I have contributed toward the reelection of this clown or that one, then I have become the enemy of all his enemies and the even more hated rival of all his allies.”

  “Politics is about remaining perpetually uncommitted and also universally supportive. We could drop dollops of money into this or that cause, and signal that we are willing to spend that money when the occasion demands.”

  “I’m beginning to agree with you,” said Peter.

  “Jane assures me that your funds are inexhaustible. She insists that is not hyperbole, that there is no way we could spend the money fast enough to outpace the rate at which your investments throughout the human universe are generating revenue.”

  Peter frowned. He didn’t like where this conversation was going. “That isn’t my money.”

  “If you inherit it,” said Wang-Mu, “and the original owner is dead, then it is your money.”

  “It’s half Valentine’s by right, and the other half should be divided between me and Jane.”

  “Valentine has her own fortune, more than she or her children can spend during their lives,” said Wang-Mu. “When you have a brilliant mind investing your holdings for more than three thousand years, your possessions no longer fit under the heading ‘wealth.’”

  “I’ve heard Jane recite this sermon more than you have,” said Peter.

  “And yet I remember it when you forget.”

  “I don’t forget it, I just feel uncomfortable about using his fortune.”

  “Feel what you want, but you could use it to crack open many doors just a little wider. Perhaps wide enough for you to sidle in.”

  “I know that you think that the ‘real’ me is Ender Wiggin so the fortune really belongs to me,” said Peter.

  Wang-Mu regarded him steadily, but said nothing.

  “I’m not going to be angry with you when I’m the one who brought it up,” said Peter. “So you can unclench a little.”

  “My love,” said Wang-Mu, “I don’t clench. I’m not afraid of your wrath. I’m only sorry for having provoked it.”

  Peter knew from experience that when Wang-Mu said such things, she wasn’t being deliberately infuriating. She actually meant what she said. So he ha
d schooled himself not to let such provocations get under his skin. She could not understand how much self-control he exercised, and how rarely he let it slip. Then again, she probably did understand it, and noticed every time when he restrained himself; yet she said nothing to mark it, she did not praise him for being so forbearing. She simply treated him as kindly as ever.

  “Peter,” she said. “I know you remember that when we tried to influence the Japanese contingent in Starways Congress, we did not come here to Unity, to the capitol, and we never met with any of the Congressors or Senators. We met with the people who influenced them, and first we met with the people who had most influence over those influencers.”

  “And before that, we figured out who those influencers of influencers were,” said Peter. “And we had your father’s counsel about that.”

  “Han Fei-Tzu is not my father,” said Wang-Mu. “He was my teacher. His beloved daughter breaks his heart, but I was not and could not be a substitute for her.”

  “Can’t I please just speak lazily from time to time? He might as well be your father.”

  “If I let such things pass when we’re alone, then someday, speaking to someone else, you’ll refer to your wife’s father, and someone will ask, Who is he? And then what will you say? If you say he is Han Fei-Tzu, it will give us great weight and importance, for his name is known among all the people of Chinese ancestry; but a simple bit of research will reveal that it is a lie, and you will be discredited.”

  “You always think ahead,” said Peter. “Like a good mother.”

  “I have no children,” said Wang-Mu.

  “I’m your child,” said Peter. “I’m not even a year old, and what memories I do have are mostly second-hand. If anyone is raising me, it’s you.”

  Peter saw that his words had made her sad. “Do you think I respect you so little as to treat you like a child?”

  “No, I think you support me so well that you constantly educate me, even though you are scarcely educated yourself.”

  Wang-Mu smiled. “My love, like a good carpenter you have hit the nail on the head. We are raising each other. We have both had other teachers, but now we have only each other. And I think we are doing very well.”

  “I’m even more brain-weary now than I was before.”

  “A basketball game is being televised tonight in real time.”

  “Unity is so basketball-crazy, and the politicians more so than most,” said Peter.

  “It’s an exciting game.”

  “It’s a fake game,” said Peter. “The gravity here is only ninety-four percent of the gravity of Earth. They keep the baskets at the regulation height, but now everybody can slam dunk, everybody can leap down the court at speeds unimaginable on Earth.”

  “They don’t play professional basketball on Earth anymore, do they?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “Nobody would pay to go see the games, they’re so slow and nobody seems to fly,” said Peter. “Nobody would broadcast them because nobody would watch.”

  “It’s a lost world, the world of your childhood,” said Wang-Mu.

  “Lusitania was the world of my childhood,” said Peter. “And now Unity is my new childhood home.”

  “Yet you remember basketball on Earth.”

  Peter once again saw where this was leading. As Peter Wiggin, he couldn’t remember anything at all, because he had never been Peter Wiggin, he only shared—probably—his genome. His memories of basketball on Earth came from what he saw on television before he went to Battle School—as Ender Wiggin. Some of his memories came along with his aiúa, maybe a lot of those memories, but Peter had no desire to dredge them up. Why had he done so now? Because Wang-Mu reminded him of the basketball game being televised tonight. Had she planned all along that it would lead him to think of the fact that in some sense he really was Andrew Wiggin?

  Or was it that anything she said, and anything he said, would lead there?

  “If you can talk about the game,” said Wang-Mu, “you might establish common ground with some of the Congressors.”

  “I don’t know enough about the game. I don’t know any players’ names. I don’t understand the subtleties of the game.”

  “I hear that nobody is born knowing those things, but they acquire them by study and observation,” said Wang-Mu.

  She could be pretty sarcastic, sometimes. He refrained from complaining.

  “But a better path might be to say that you admire the players’ speed and their leaping, soaring style of play, like Achilles’ manner of fighting in the Iliad. Then confess that you wish you understood the subtleties of play, and suddenly these emotionally needy politicians are offered the chance to become the teacher of one of the richest men in the universe. Surely that will be a road into your pocket, they’ll suppose, and now you’re in the door.”

  Peter had to admire the subtlety of her thinking: You’re not knowledgeable and can’t fake knowledge you don’t have. So confess your ignorance and enlist their help in teaching you.

  He should have thought of that. If he really were Peter Wiggin, he should already have been doing that; even as Ender Wiggin, he should have leapt to that idea, because Ender was a good leader.

  I’m just a pale shadow of greatness, barely perceptible on a cloudy day. My genes and my aiúa both have such promise; but I need an ignorant little servant girl to wake up my mind.

  Immediately he was ashamed of his thought. Technically, of course, she had been a servant girl, and her original education had been sorely lacking. But she had held her own with a teacher like Han Fei-Tzu, and she had contributed to the projects on Lusitania. He had no right to think of her that way. He should be as honored to have her as a teacher as Alexander should have been honored to have, as his teacher, a man who had been taught by Plato, who had been taught by Socrates.

  Why do I know who Plato and Socrates were? And Aristotle? What else is going to bleed through from Ender’s aiúa?

  “Wang-Mu,” said Peter. “What I’m doing here isn’t working. Why not?”

  “May I propose something quite radical?” she asked.

  “I’d be a fool to refuse to hear it,” said Peter.

  She nodded gravely. “You would, but does that mean you want me to tell you?”

  “Yes, my arrogant little wife, I do.”

  “I think that whatever you’re trying to accomplish here in Unity is not worth doing. Even if you succeed, what would it accomplish?”

  The words stung so sharply that he realized she had struck on an idea he had not yet allowed himself to think.

  “The better unification of the worlds. To prepare for new encounters with aliens who are our equals, or perhaps our superiors.”

  “If history is a guide,” said Wang-Mu, “it is exactly such an encounter that causes human nations and, now, worlds to unite.”

  Peter nodded. “You’re saying it will take care of itself.”

  “I’m saying something far harsher,” said Wang-Mu. “Humanity might well need another Peter Wiggin to be Hegemon, if there is a war with the Descolares, when we discover them. But that new Peter Wiggin will not be a stranger who came out of nowhere. Remember that the original Peter earned his place by pseudonymously influencing events under the names Locke and Demosthenes, and then, as Locke, brokering an important truce. When he finally revealed himself and was named Hegemon, it was at exactly the point in time when the reason for the office to exist had seemingly disappeared, and it took years and many wars, large and small, before he emerged as the trusted leader and peacekeeper of the world. It is already too late for you to duplicate any of those achievements.”

  Peter held very still, knowing nothing he could say, nothing he could do. He felt a stirring of emotion that he would have turned into rage, even a few days ago. But he contained it now. He recognized that this was an unworthy rage. It was the rage that came from knowing he was wrong and she was right.

  After a long while of looking at the food still in the bowls, he reached out with his chopsticks
and pulled up a piece of shrimp. It was still warm, so this conversation had not taken as long as he had thought. Chewing, he said, “If this task is impossible, what should we be doing?”

  “There’s only one thing that matters in the human worlds right now,” she said.

  He knew at once that she meant the Descolares. “I’m not a geneticist. And even though you’re a quick study, my dear, you’re not quick enough to enter the playing field with the Ribeiras or the leguminids.”

  “Nobody is,” said Si Wang-Mu. “So I think we should do what they cannot do—something so dangerous that it would be foolish to send any of the expert minds on such a mission.”

  Peter chewed, swallowed, lifted his rice bowl and scooped some into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed again. And now he knew what she was getting at. “You think we should take our vast diplomatic skills onto the surface of the Descolador planet. To whoever sent the digital genomes.”

  “Right now we know nothing about them. From orbit, how can we possibly know if they were the origin of the descolada virus? From orbit, how can we assess the danger they might or might not pose?”

  “On the planet’s surface, we might immediately take sick with seven deadly viruses and die.”

  “We can report that and let them watch our deaths,” said Wang-Mu. “Those are the risks of exploration.”

  “You speak of that as if death were nothing.”

  “Peter Wiggin,” she said, “you’ve been dead for millennia. And here you are.”