Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) (Ender Quartet) Read Online Free PDF

Estevão as he slowly died in the embrace of a murderous tree. Whatever comfort God sent to them in their hour of supreme sacrifice. But no such joy had come to Novinha. God apparently did not extend the benefits of his service to the next of kin. And in her grief and rage she blamed Ender. Why had she married him, if not to make herself safe from these disasters?
    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.