He had never said to her the most obvious thing, that if there was anyone to blame, it was God, not him. After all, it was God who had made saints -- well, almost saints -- out of her parents, who died as they discovered the antidote to the descolada virus when she was only a child. Certainly it was God who led Estevão out to preach to the most dangerous of the pequeninos. Yet in her sorrow it was God she turned to, and turned away from Ender, who had meant to do nothing but good for her.

He never said this because he knew that she would not listen. And he also refrained from saying it because he knew she saw things another way. If God took Father and Mother, Pipo, Libo, and finally Estevão away from her, it was because God was just and punished her for her sins. But when Ender failed to stop Estevão from his suicidal mission to the pequeninos, it was because he was blind, self-willed, stubborn, and rebellious, and because he did not love her enough.

But he did love her. With all his heart he loved her.

All his heart?

All of it he knew about. And yet when his deepest secrets were revealed in that first voyage Outside, it was not Novinha that his heart conjured there. So apparently there was someone who mattered even more to him.

Well, he couldn't help what went on in his unconscious mind, any more than Novinha could. All he could control was what he actually did, and what he was doing now was showing Novinha that regardless of how she tried to drive him away, he would not be driven. That no matter how much she imagined that he loved Jane and his involvement in the great affairs of the human race more than he loved her, it was not true, she was more important to him than any of it. He would give it all up for her. He would disappear behind monastery walls for her. He would weed rows of unidentified plant life in the hot sun. For her.

But even that was not enough. She insisted that he do it, not for her, but for Christ. Well, too bad. He wasn't married to Christ, and neither was she. Still, it couldn't be displeasing to God when a husband and wife gave all to each other. Surely that was part of what God expected of human beings.

"You know I don't blame you for the death of Quim," she said, using the old family nickname for Estevão.

"I didn't know that," he said, "but I'm glad to find it out."

"I did at first, but I knew all along that it was irrational," she said. "He went because he wanted to, and he was much too old for some interfering parent to stop him. If I couldn't, how could you?"

"I didn't even want to," said Ender. "I wanted him to go. It was the fulfillment of his life's ambition."

"I even know that now. It's right. It was right for him to go, and it was even right for him to die, because his death meant something. Didn't it?"

"It saved Lusitania from a holocaust."

"And brought many to Christ." She laughed, the old laugh, the rich ironic laugh that he had come to treasure if only because it was so rare. "Trees for Jesus," she said. "Who could have guessed?"

"They're already calling him St. Stephen of the Trees."

"That's quite premature. It takes time. He must first be beatified. Miracles of healing must take place at his tomb. Believe me, I know the process."

"Martyrs are thin on the ground these days," said Ender. "He will be beatified. He will be canonized. People will pray for him to intercede with Jesus for them, and it will work, because if anyone has earned the right to have Christ hear him, it's your son Estevão."

Tears slipped down her cheeks, even as she laughed again. "My parents were martyrs and will be saints; my son, also. Piety skipped a generation."

"Oh, yes. Yours was the generation of selfish hedonism."

She finally turned to face him, tear-streaked dirty cheeks, smiling face, twinkling eyes that saw through into his heart. The woman he loved.

"I don't regret my adultery," she said. "How can Christ forgive me when I don't even repent? If I hadn't slept with Libo, my children would not have existed. Surely God does not disapprove of that?"

"I believe what Jesus said was, 'I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive. But of you it is required that you forgive all men.'"

"More or less," she said. "I'm not a scriptorian." She reached out and touched his cheek. "You're so strong, Ender. But you seem tired. How can you be tired? The universe of human beings still depends on you. Or if not the whole of humankind, then certainly you belong to this world. To save this world. But you're tired."

"Deep inside my bones I am," he said. "And you have taken my last lifeblood away from me."

"How odd," she said. "I thought what I removed from you was the cancer in your life."

"You aren't very good at determining what other people want and need from you, Novinha. No one is. We're all as likely to hurt as help."

"That's why I came here, Ender. I'm through deciding things. I put my trust in my own judgment. Then I put trust in you. I put trust in Libo, in Pipo, in Father and Mother, in Quim, and everyone disappointed me or went away or ... no, I know you didn't go away, and I know it wasn't you that -- hear me out, Andrew, hear me. The problem wasn't in the people I trusted, the problem was that I trusted in them when no human being can possibly deliver what I needed. I needed deliverance, you see. I needed, I need, redemption. And it isn't in your hands to give me -- your open hands, which give me more than you even have to give, Andrew, but still you haven't got the thing I need. Only my Deliverer, only the Anointed One, only he has it to give. Do you see? The only way I can make my life worth living is to give it to him. So here I am."

"Weeding."

"Separating the good fruit from the tares, I believe," she said. "People will have more and better potatoes because I took out the weeds. I don't have to be prominent or even noticed to feel good about my life now. But you, you come here and remind me that even in becoming happy, I'm hurting someone."

"But you're not," said Ender. "Because I'm coming with you. I'm joining the Filhos with you. They're a married order, and we're a married couple. Without me you can't join, and you need to join. With me you can. What could be simpler?"

"Simpler?" She shook her head. "You don't believe in God, how's that for starters?"

"I certainly do too believe in God," said Ender, annoyed.

"Oh, you're willing to concede God's existence, but that's not what I meant. I mean believe in him the way a mother means it when she says to her son, I believe in you. She's not saying she believes that he exists -- what is that worth? -- she's saying she believes in his future, she trusts that he'll do all the good that is in him to do. She puts the future in his hands, that's how she believes in him. You don't believe in Christ that way, Andrew. You still believe in yourself. In other people. You've sent out your little surrogates, those children you conjured up during your visit in hell -- you may be here with me in these walls right now, but your heart is out there scouting planets and trying to stop the fleet. You aren't leaving anything up to God. You don't believe in him."

"Excuse me, but if God wanted to do everything himself, what did he make us for in the first place?"

"Yes, well, I seem to recall that one of your parents was a heretic, which is no doubt where your strangest ideas come from." It was an old joke between them, but this time neither of them laughed.

"I believe in you," Ender said.

"But you consult with Jane."

He reached into his pocket, then held out his hand to show her what he had found there. It was a jewel, with several very fine wires leading from it. Like a glowing organism ripped from its delicate place amid the fronds of life in a shallow sea. She looked at it for a moment uncomprehending, then realized what it was and looked at the ear where, for all the years she had known him, he had worn the jewel that linked him to Jane, the computer-program-come-to-life who was his oldest, dearest, most reliable friend.