Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) (Ender Quartet) by Orson Scott Card Page A

kitchen, went to the sink, and drew himself a glass of water, which he drank in one long draught.
    "I told you it was Miro in the bathroom," said Old Valentine. "No one processes so much water every day as this dear lad."
    Miro chuckled, but he did not hear Young Val laugh.
    "I am interfering with the conversation," he said. "I'll go."
    "Stay," said Old Valentine.
    "Please," said Young Val.
    "Please which?" asked Miro. He turned toward her and grinned.
    She shoved a chair toward him with her foot. "Sit," she said. "The lady and I were having it out about our twinship."
    "We decided," said Old Valentine, "that it's my responsibility to die first."
    "On the contrary," said Young Val, "we decided that Gepetto did not create Pinocchio because he wanted a real boy. It was a puppet he wanted all along. That real-boy business was simply Gepetto's laziness. He still wanted the puppet to dance -- he just didn't want to go to all the trouble of working the strings."
    "You being Pinocchio," said Miro. "And Ender ..."
    "My brother didn't try to make you," said Old Valentine. "And he doesn't want to control you, either."
    "I know," whispered Young Val. And suddenly there were tears in her eyes.
    Miro reached out a hand to lay atop hers on the table, but at once she snatched hers away. No, she wasn't avoiding his touch, she was simply bringing her hand up to wipe the annoying tears out of her eyes.
    "He'd cut the strings if he could, I know," said Young Val. "The way Miro cut the strings on his old broken body."
    Miro remembered it very clearly. One moment he was sitting in the starship, looking at this perfect image of himself, strong and young and healthy; the next moment he was that image, had always been that image, and what he looked at was the crippled, broken, brain-damaged version of himself. And as he watched, that unloved, unwanted body crumbled into dust and disappeared.
    "I don't think he hates you," said Miro, "the way I hated my old self."
    "He doesn't have to hate me. It wasn't hate anyway that killed your old body." Young Val didn't meet his eyes. In all their hours together exploring worlds, they had never talked about anything so personal. She had never dared to discuss with him that moment when both of them had been created. "You hated your old body while you were in it, but as soon as you were back in your right body, you simply stopped paying any attention to the old one. It wasn't part of you anymore. Your aiúa had no more responsibility for it. And with nothing to hold it together -- pop goes the weasel."
    "Wooden doll," said Miro. "Now weasel. What else am I?"
    Old Valentine ignored his bid for a laugh. "So you're saying Ender finds you uninteresting."
    "He admires me," said Young Val. "But he finds me dull."
    "Yes, well, me too," said Old Valentine.
    "That's absurd," said Miro.
    "Is it?" asked Old Valentine. "He never followed me anywhere; I was always the one who followed him. He was searching for a mission in life, I think. Some great deed to do, to match the terrible act that ended his childhood. He thought writing The Hive Queen would do it. And then, with my help in preparing it, he wrote The Hegemon and he thought that might be enough, but it wasn't. He kept searching for something that would engage his full attention and he kept almost finding it, or finding it for a week or a month, but one thing was certain, the thing that engaged his attention was never me , because there I was in all the billion miles he traveled, there I was across three thousand years. Those histories I wrote -- it was no great love for history, it was because it helped in his work. The way my writing used to help in Peter's work. And when I was finished, then, for a few hours of reading and discussion, I had his attention. Only each time it was less satisfying because it wasn't I who had his attention, it was the story I had written. Until finally I found a man who gave me his whole heart, and I stayed with him. While my adolescent