He must have been subvocalizing some of his thoughts, because Jane answered them. "Hath not an overblown computer program eyes and ears? Have I no heart or brain? When you tickle me do I not laugh?"

"Frankly, no," said Miro silently, working his lips and tongue and teeth to shape words that only she could hear.

"But when I die, every being of my kind will also die," she said. "Forgive me if I think of this as having cosmic significance. I'm not as self-abnegating as you are, Miro. I don't regard myself as living on borrowed time. It was my firm intention to live forever, so anything less is a disappointment."

"Tell me what I can do and I'll do it," he said. "I'd die to save you, if that's what it took."

"Fortunately, you'll die eventually no matter what," said Jane. "That's my one consolation, that by dying I'll do no more than face the same doom that every other living creature has to face. Even those long-living trees. Even those hive queens, passing their memories along from generation to generation. But I, alas, will have no children. How could I? I'm a creature of mind alone. There's no provision for mental mating."

"Too bad, too," said Miro, "because I bet you'd be great in the virtual sack."

"The best," Jane said.

And then silence for a little while.

Only when they approached Jakt's house, a new building on the outskirts of Milagre, did Jane speak again. "Keep in mind, Miro, that whatever Ender does with his own self, when Young Valentine speaks it's still Ender's aiúa talking."

"The same with Peter," said Miro. "Now there's a charmer. Let's just say that Young Val, sweet as she is, doesn't exactly represent a balanced view of anything. Ender may control her, but she's not Ender."

"There are just too many of him, aren't there," said Jane. "And, apparently, too many of me, at least in the opinion of Starways Congress."

"There are too many of us all," said Miro. "But never enough."

They arrived. Miro and Young Val were led inside. They ate feebly; they slept the moment they reached their beds. Miro was aware that voices went on far into the night, for he did not sleep well, but rather kept waking a little, uncomfortable on such a soft mattress, and perhaps uncomfortable at being away from his duty, like a soldier who feels guilty at having abandoned his post.

Despite his weariness, Miro did not sleep late. Indeed, the sky outside was still dim with the predawn seepage of sunlight over the horizon when he awoke and, as was his habit, rose immediately from his bed, standing shakily as the last of sleep fled from his body. He covered himself and went out into the hall to find the bathroom and discharge his bladder. When he emerged, he heard voices from the kitchen. Either last night's conversation was still going on, or some other neurotic early risers had rejected morning solitude and were chatting away as if dawn were not the dark hour of despair.

He stood before his own open door, ready to go inside and shut out those earnest voices, when Miro realized that one of them belonged to Young Val. Then he realized that the other one was Old Valentine. At once he turned and made his way to the kitchen, and again hesitated in a doorway.

Sure enough, the two Valentines were sitting across the table from each other, but not looking at each other. Instead they stared out the window as they sipped one of Old Valentine's fruit-and-vegetable decoctions.

"Would you like one, Miro?" asked Old Valentine without looking up.

"Not even on my deathbed," said Miro. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Good," said Old Valentine.

Young Val continued to say nothing.

Miro came inside the 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 brother went on without me, and found a family that took his whole heart, and there we were, planets apart, but finally happier without each other than we'd ever been together."