Was there any way for Wang-mu to judge even herself?
Half the time I don't even know the purpose of what I do. I came to this house because I was ambitious and wanted to be a secret maid to a rich godspoken girl. It was pure selfishness on my part, and pure generosity that led Qing-jao to take me in. And now here I am helping Master Han commit treason--what is my purpose in that? I don't even know why I do what I do. How can I know what other people's true purposes are? There's no hope of ever knowing good from bad.
She sat up in lotus position on her mat and pressed her face into her hands. It was as if she felt herself pressed against a wall, but it was a wall that she made herself, and if she could only find a way to move it aside--the way she could move her hands away from her face whenever she wanted--then she could easily push through to the truth.
She moved her hands away. She opened her eyes. There was Master Han's terminal, across the room. There, today, she had seen the faces of Elanora Ribeira von Hesse and Andrew Wiggin. And Jane's face.
She remembered Wiggin telling her what the gods would be like. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them. Why would he say such a thing? How could he know what a god would be?
Somebody who wants to teach you how to know everything that they know and do everything that they do--what he was really describing was parents, not gods.
Only there were plenty of parents who didn't do that. Plenty of parents who tried to keep their children down, to control them, to make slaves of them. Where she had grown up, Wang-mu had seen plenty of that.
So what Wiggin was describing wasn't parents, really. He was describing good parents. He wasn't telling her what the gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness.
What were the gods, then? They would want everyone else to know and have and be all good things. They would teach and share and train, but never force.
Like my parents, thought Wang-mu. Clumsy and stupid sometimes, like all people, but they were good. They really did look out for me. Even sometimes when they made me do hard things because they knew it would be good for me. Even sometimes when they were wrong, they were good. I can judge them by their purpose after all. Everybody calls their purpose good, but my parents' purposes really were good, because they meant all their acts toward me to help me grow wiser and stronger and better. Even when they made me do hard things because they knew I had to learn from them. Even when they caused me pain.
That was it. That's what the gods would be, if there were gods. They would want everyone else to have all that was good in life, just like good parents. But unlike parents or any other people, the gods would actually know what was good and have the power to cause good things to happen, even when nobody else understood that they were good. As Wiggin said, real gods would be smarter and stronger than anybody else. They would have all the intelligence and power that it was possible to have.
But a being like that--who was someone like Wang-mu to judge a god? She couldn't understand their purposes even if they told her, so how could she ever know that they were good? Yet the other approach, to trust in them and believe in them absolutely--wasn't that what Qing-jao was doing?
No. If there were gods, they would never act as Qing-jao thought they acted--enslaving people, tormenting and humiliating them.
Unless torment and humiliation were good for them . . .
No! She almost cried aloud, and once again pressed her face into her hands, this time to keep silence.
I can only judge by what I understand. If as far as I can see, the gods that Qing-jao believes in are only evil, then yes, perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps I can't comprehend the great purpose they accomplish by making the godspoken into helpless slaves, or destroying whole species. But in my heart I have no choice but to reject such gods, because I can't see any good in what they're doing. Perhaps I'm so stupid and foolish that I will always be the enemy of the gods, working against their high and incomprehensible purposes. But I have to live my life according to what I understand, and what I understand is that there are no such gods as the ones the godspoken teach us about. If they exist at all, they take pleasure in oppression and deception, humiliation and ignorance. They act to make other people smaller and themselves larger. Those would not be gods, then, even if they existed. They would be enemies. Devils.
The same with the beings, whoever they are, who made the descolada virus. Yes, they would have to be very powerful to make a tool like that. But they would also have to be heartless, selfish, arrogant beings, to think that all life in the universe was theirs to manipulate as they saw fit. To send the descolada out into the universe, not caring who it killed or what beautiful creatures it destroyed--those could not be gods, either.
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.
15
LIFE AND DEATH
cause of everything, he has to make a story about everything and we don't know any stories. We know memories. We know things that happen. But we don't know why they happen, not the way he wants us to.>
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 cliche 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 cliche, 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/O 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 w
as 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, Suleimao."
"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."