Jane, now– Jane might be a god. Jane knew vast amounts of information and had great wisdom as well, and she was acting for the good of others, even when it would take her life– even now, after her life was forfeit. And Andrew Wiggin, he might be a god, so wise and kind he seemed, and not acting for his own benefit but for the pequeninos. And Valentine, who called herself Demosthenes, she had worked to help other people find the truth and make wise decisions of their own. And Master Han, who was trying to do the right thing always, even when it cost him his daughter. Maybe even Ela, the scientist, even though she had not known all that she ought to have known– for she was not ashamed to learn truth from a servant girl.
Of course they were not the sort of gods who lived off in the Infinite West, in the Palace of the Royal Mother. Nor were they gods in their own eyes– they would laugh at her for even thinking of it. But compared to her, they were gods indeed. They were so much wiser than Wang-mu, and so much more powerful, and as far as she could understand their purposes, they were trying to help other people become as wise and powerful as possible. Even wiser and more powerful than they were themselves. So even though Wang-mu might be wrong, even though she might truly understand nothing at all about anything, nevertheless she knew that her decision to work with these people was the right one for her to make.
She could only do good as far as she understood what goodness was. And these people seemed to her to be doing good, while Congress seemed to be doing evil. So even though in the long run it might destroy her– for Master Han was now an enemy of Congress, and might be arrested and killed, and her along with him– still she would do it. She would never see real gods, but she could at least work to help those people who were as close to being gods as any real person could ever be.
And if the gods don't like it, they can poison me in my sleep or catch me on fire as I'm walking in the garden tomorrow or just make my arms and legs and head drop off my body like crumbs off a cake. If they can't manage to stop a stupid little servant girl like me, they don't amount to much anyway.
Chapter 15 – LIFE AND DEATH
Valentine showed up unbidden at Olhado's door. It was early morning. He wouldn't go to work till afternoon– he was a shift manager at the small brickworks. But he was already up and about, probably because his family was. The children were trooping out the door. I used to see this on television back in the ancient days, thought Valentine. The family going out the door in the morning, all at the same time, and Dad last of all with the briefcase. In their own way, my parents acted out that life. Never mind how deeply weird their children were. Never mind how after we paraded off to school in the morning, Peter and I went prowling through the nets, trying to take over the world through the use of pseudonyms. Never mind that Ender was torn away from the family as a little boy and never saw any of them again, even on his one visit to Earth– except me. I think my parents still imagined they were doing it right, because they went through a ritual they had seen on TV.
And here it is again. The children bursting through the door. That boy must be Nimbo, the one who was with Grego at the confrontation with the mob. But here he is, just a clich‚ child– no one would guess that he had been part of that terrible night only a little while ago.
Mother gave them each a kiss. She was still a beautiful young woman, even with so many children. So ordinary, so like the clich‚, and yet a remarkable woman, for she had married their father, hadn't she? She had seen past the deformity.
And Dad, not yet off to work, so he could stand there, watching them, patting them, kissing them, saying a few words. Light, clever, loving– the predictable father. So, what's wrong with this picture? The dad is Olhado. He has no eyes. Just the silvery metal orbs punctuated with two lens apertures in the one eye, and the computer I/0 outlet in the other. The kids don't seem to notice. I'm still not used to it.
“Valentine,” he said, when he saw her.
“We need to talk,” she said.
He ushered her inside. He introduced his wife, Jaqueline. Skin so black it was almost blue, laughing eyes, a beautiful wide smile that you wanted to dive into, it was so welcoming. She brought a limonada, ice-cold and sweating in the morning heat, and then discreetly withdrew. “You can stay,” said Valentine. “This isn't all that private.” But she didn't want to stay. She had work to do, she said. And she was gone.
“I've wanted to meet you for a long time,” said Olhado.
“I was meetable,” she said.
“You were busy.”
“I have no business,” said Valentine.
“You have Andrew's business.”
“We're meeting now, anyway. I've been curious about you, Olhado. Or do you prefer your given name, Lauro?”
“In Milagre, your name is whatever people call you. I used to be Sule, for my middle name, Suleimdo.”
“Solomon the wise.”
“But after I lost my eyes, I was Olhado, then and forever.”
“'The watched one'?”
“Olhado could mean that, yes, past participle of olhar, but in this case it means 'The guy with the eyes.'”
“And that's your name.”
“My wife calls me Lauro,” he said. “And my children call me Father.”
“And I?”
"Whatever.
“Sule, then.”
“Lauro, if you must. Sule makes me feel like I'm six.”
“And reminds you of the time when you could see.”
He laughed. “Oh, I can see now, thanks very much. I see very well.”
“So Andrew says. That's why I've come to you. To find out what you see.”
“Want me to play back a scene for you? A blast from the past? I have all my favorite memories stored on computer. I can plug in and play back anything you want. I have, for instance, Andrew's first visit in my family's home. I also have some top-flight family quarrels. Or do you prefer public events? Every Mayor's inaugural since I got these eyes? People do consult me about things like that– what was worn, what was said. I often have trouble convincing them that my eyes record vision, not sound– just like their eyes. They think I should be a holographer and record it all for entertainment.”
“I don't want to see what you see. I want to know what you think.”
“Do you, now?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I have no opinions. Not on anything you'd be interested in. I stay out of the family quarrels. I always have.”
“And out of the family business. The only one of Novinha's children not to go into science.”
“Science has brought everyone else so much happiness, it's hard to imagine why I wouldn't have gone into it.”
“Not hard to imagine,” said Valentine. And then, because she had found that brittle-sounding people will talk quite openly if goaded, she added a little barb. “I imagine that you simply didn't have the brains to keep up.”
“Absolutely true,” said Olhado. “I only have wit enough to make bricks.”
“Really?” said Valentine. “But you don't make bricks.”
“On the contrary. I make hundreds of bricks a day. And with everyone knocking holes in their houses to build the new chapel, I foresee a booming business in the near future.”
“Lauro,” said Valentine, “you don't make bricks. The laborers in your factory make bricks.”
“And I, as manager, am not part of that?”
“Brickmakers make bricks. You make brickmakers.”
“I suppose. Mostly I make brickmakers tired.”
“You make other things,” said Valentine. “Children.”
“Yes,” said Olhado, and for the first time in the conversation he relaxed. “I do that. Of course, I have a partner.”
“A gracious and beautiful woman.”
“I looked for perfection, and found something better.” It wasn't just a line of patter. He meant it. And now the brittleness was gone, the wariness too. “You have children. A husband.”
“A good family. Maybe almost as good as yours. Ours lacks only the perfect mother, but the children will recover from that.”
“To hear Andrew talk about you, you're the greatest human being who ever lived.”
“Andrew is very sweet. He could also get away with saying such things because I wasn't here.”
“Now you are here,” said Olhado. “Why?”
“It happens that worlds and species of ramen are at a cusp of decision, and the way events have turned out, their future depends in large part on your family. I don't have time to discover things in a leisurely way– I don't have time to understand the family dynamics, why Grego can pass from monster to hero in a single night, how Miro can be both suicidal and ambitious, why Quara is willing to let the pequeninos die for the descolada's sake–”
“Ask Andrew. He understands them all. I never could.”
“Andrew is in his own little hell right now. He feels responsible for everything. He's done his best, but Quim is dead, and the one thing your mother and Andrew both agree on is th
at somehow it's Andrew's fault. Your mother's leaving him has torn him up.”
“I know.”
“I don't even know how to console him. Or even which, as his loving sister, to hope for– that she'll come back into his life, or leave him forever.”
Olhado shrugged. All the brittleness was back.
“Do you really not care?” asked Valentine. “Or have you decided not to care?”
“Maybe I decided long ago, and now I really don't.”
Part of being a good interviewer, too, is knowing when to be silent. Valentine waited.
But Olhado was also good at waiting. Valentine almost gave up and said something. She even toyed with the idea of confessing failure and leaving.
Then he spoke. "When they replaced my eyes, they also took out the tear ducts. Natural tears would interfere with the industrial lubricants they put in my eyes. "
“Industrial?”
“My little joke,” said Olhado. “I seem to be very dispassionate all the time, because my eyes never well up with tears. And people can't read my expressions. It's funny, you know. The actual eyeball doesn't have any ability to change shape and show an expression. It just sits there. Yes, your eyes dart around– they either keep steady eye contact or look down or up– but my eyes do that, too. They still move with perfect symmetry. They still point in the direction I'm looking. But people can't stand to look at them. So they look away. They don't read the expressions on my face. And therefore they think there are no expressions. My eyes still sting and redden and swell a little at times when I would have cried, if I still had tears.”
“In other words,” said Valentine, “you do care.”
“I always cared,” he said. “Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn't know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn't have any personal ego on the line in the family quarrels, I could see more clearly than any of them. I saw the lines of power– Mother's absolute dominance even though Marcao beat her when he was angry or drunk. Miro, thinking it was Marcao he was rebelling against, when always it was Mother. Grego's meanness– his way of handling fear. Quara, absolutely contrary by nature, doing whatever she thought the people who mattered to her didn't want her to do. Ela, the noble martyr– what in the world would she be, if she couldn't suffer? Holy, righteous Quim, finding God as his father, on the premise that the best father is the invisible kind who never raises his voice.”
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