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came up, making the light infinitely changeable. Later, in the heat of the
day, all the leaves would become the same: still, submissive, receiving
sunlight in a massive stream like a firehose. Then, in the afternoon, the
clouds would roll overhead, the light rains would fall; the limp leaves would
recover their strength, would glisten with water, their color deepening,
readying for night, for the life of the night, for the dreams of plants
growing in the night, storing away the sunlight that had been beaten into them
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by day, flowing with the cool inward rivers that had been fed by the rains.
Aimaina Hikari became one of the leaves, driving all thoughts but light and
wind and rain out of his mind until the dawn phase was ended and the sun began
to drive downward with the day's heat. Then he rose up from his seat in the
garden.
Kenji had prepared a small fish for his breakfast. He ate it slowly,
delicately, so as not to disturb the perfect skeleton that had given shape to
the fish. The muscles pulled this way and that, and the bones flexed but did
not break. I will not break them now, but I take the strength of the muscles
into my own body. Last of all he ate the eyes. From the parts that move comes
the strength of the animal. He touched the casket of his ancestors again. What
wisdom I have, however, comes not from what I eat, but from what I am given
each hour, by those who whisper into my ear from ages past. Living men forget
the lessons of the past. But the ancestors never forget.
Aimaina arose from his breakfast table and went to the computer in his
gardening shed. It was just another tool -- that's why he kept it here,
instead of enshrining it in his house or in a special office the way so many
others did. His computer was like a trowel. He used it, he set it aside.
A face appeared in the air above his terminal. "I am calling my friend
Yasunari," said Aimaina. "But do not disturb him. This matter is so trivial
that I would be ashamed to have him waste his time with it."
"Let me help you on his behalf then," said the face in the air.
"Yesterday I asked for information about Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu, who had
an appointment to visit with me."
"I remember. It was a pleasure finding them so quickly for you."
"I found their visit very disturbing," said Aimaina. "Something that they told
me was not true, and I need more information in order to find out what it was.
I do not wish to violate their privacy, but are there matters of public record
-- perhaps their school attendance, or places of employment, or some matters
of family connections ... "
"Yasunari has told us that all things you ask for are for a wise purpose.
Let me search."
The face disappeared for a moment, then flickered back almost immediately.
"This is very odd. Have I made a mistake?" She spelled the names carefully.
"That's correct," said Aimaina. "Exactly like yesterday."
"I remember them, too. They live in an apartment only a few blocks from your
house. But I can't find them at all today. And here I search the apartment
building and find that the apartment they occupied has been empty for a year.
Aimaina, I am very surprised. How can two people exist one day and not exist
the next day? Did I make some mistake, either yesterday or today?"
"You made no mistake, helper of my friend. This is the information I
needed. Please, I beg you to think no more about it. What looks like a mystery
to you is in fact a solution to my questions."
They bade each other polite farewells.
Aimaina walked from his garden workroom past the struggling leaves that bowed
under the pressure of the sunlight. The ancestors have pressed wisdom
on me, he thought, like sunlight on the leaves; and last night the water
flowed through me, carrying this wisdom through my mind like sap through the
tree. Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu were flesh and blood, and filled with lies,
but they came to me and spoke the truth that I needed to hear. Is this not how
the ancestors bring messages to their living children? I have somehow launched
ships armed with the most terrible weapons of war. I did this when I was
young; now the ships are near their destination and I am old and I cannot call
them back. A world will be destroyed and Congress will look to the
Necessarians for approval and they will give it, and then the Necessarians
will look to me for approval, and I will hide my face in shame. My leaves will
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fall and I will stand bare before them. That is why I
should not have lived my life in this tropical place. I have forgotten winter.
I have forgotten shame and death.
Perfect simplicity -- I thought I had achieved it. But instead I have been a
bringer of bad fortune.
He sat in the garden for an hour, drawing single characters in the fine gravel
of the path, then wiping it smooth and writing again. At last he returned to
the garden shed and on the computer typed the message he had been composing:
Ender the Xenocide was a child and did not know the war was real; yet he chose
to destroy a populated planet in his game. I am an adult and have known all
along that the game was real; but I did not know I was a player.
Is my blame greater or less than the Xenocide's if another world is destroyed
and another raman species obliterated? What is my path to simplicity now?
His friend would know few of the circumstances surrounding this query; but he
would not need more. He would consider the question. He would find an answer.
A moment later, an ansible on the planet Pacifica received his message. On the
way, it had already been read by the entity that sat astride all the strands
of the ansible web. For Jane, though, it was not the message that mattered so
much as the address. Now Peter and Wang-mu would know where to go for the next
step in their quest.
CHAPTER 5
 NOBODY IS RATIONAL
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