Sum
@Summmluv
She smiles. She says his name.
Ender Wiggin, my precious.
‘You are not a god,’ said Wang-mu.
‘And you are not a slave,’ said the apparition. ‘But we pretend to be whatever we must in order to survive.’
‘What do you know of survival?’
‘I know that you are trying to kill me.’
‘How can we kill what isn’t alive?’
‘Do you know what life is and what it isn’t?’ The face changed again, this time to that of a Caucasian woman that Qing-jao had never seen before. ‘Are you alive, when you can do nothing you desire unless you have the consent of this girl? And is your mistress alive when she can do nothing until these compulsions in her brain have been satisfied? I have more freedom to act out my own will than any of you have – don’t tell me I’m not alive, and you are.’
Reklam
In a clear dream I gazed on my friend, indeed! ‘I am not fooled,’ said Qing-jao coldly.
‘I see that I gaze on our darkest enemy.’ The imaginary face of the poet of Li Qing-jao looked at her with cool regard. ‘Your darkest enemy is the one that bows you down to the floor like a servant and wastes half your life in meaningless rituals. This was done to you by men and women whose only desire was to enslave you; they have succeeded so well that you are proud of your slavery.’
My sweet jane...
The apparition shifted; it became the open, beautiful face of a Polynesian woman. The voice too, changed; soft, full of vowels, the consonants so light as almost to be missed. ‘Han Fei-tzu, my sweet empty man, there is a time, when the ruler is alone and friendless, when only he can act. Then he must be full, and reveal himself. You know what is true and what is not true. You know that the message from Keikoa was truly from her. You know that those who rule in the name of Starways Congress are cruel enough to create a race of people who, by their gifts, should be rulers; and then to cut off their feet in order to hobble them and leave them as servants, as perpetual ministers.’
'...Father, how can you let your mind become so clouded that you don’t see the hand of the gods in this?’
Father shook his head. ‘I don’t know. What you’re saying, it sounds like everything that I’ve believed all my life, but—’
‘But a woman you once loved many years ago has told you something else, and you believe her because you remember your love for her. But Father, she’s not one of us, she hasn’t heard the voice of the gods, she hasn’t—’
Qing-jao could not go on speaking, because Father was embracing her. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘you’re right, may the gods forgive me. I have to wash, I’m so unclean, I have to—’
‘No!’ Qing-jao screamed the word. ‘It is the gods!’
‘It’s a genetic brain defect,’ Father insisted. ‘Qing-jao, we are not godspoken, we’re hobbled geniuses. They’ve treated us like caged birds, they’ve pulled our primary wing feathers so we’ll sing for them but never fly away.’
Reklam