you must always lift yourself above it?" asked Wang-mu.
"You've already answered your question," said Peter coldly. "You start from the assumption that we hate the earth. It makes you sound like some magic-using primitive."
Wang-mu blushed and fell silent.
"Oh, spare me the passive oriental woman routine," said Peter. "Or the passive I-was-trained-to-be-a-servant-and-you-sound-like-a-cruel-heartless-master manipulation through guilt. I know I'm a shit and I'm not going to change just because you look so downcast."
"Then you could change because you wish not to be a shit any longer."
"It's in my character. Ender created me hateful so he could hate me. The added benefit is that you can hate me, too."
"Oh, be quiet and eat your fish," she said. "You don't know what you're talking about. You're supposed to analyze human beings and you can't understand the person closest to you in all the world."
"I don't want to understand you," said Peter. "I want to accomplish my task by exploiting this brilliant intelligence you're supposed to have -- even if you believe that people who squat are somehow 'closer to the earth' than people who remain upright."
"I wasn't talking about me," she said. "I was talking about the person closest to you. Ender."
"He is blessedly far from us right now."
"He didn't create you so that he could hate you. He long since got over hating you."
"Yeah, yeah, he wrote The Hegemon, et cetera, et cetera."
"That's right," said Wang-mu. "He created you because he desperately needed someone to hate him."
Peter rolled his eyes and took a drink of milky pineapple juice. "Just the right amount of coconut. I think I'll retire here, if Ender doesn't die and make me disappear first."
"I say something true, and you answer with coconut in the pineapple juice?"
"Novinha hates him," said Peter. "He doesn't need me."
"Novinha is angry at him, but she's wrong to be angry and he knows it. What he needs from you is a ... righteous anger. To hate him for the evil that is really in him, which no one but him sees or even believes is there."
"I'm just a nightmare from his childhood," said Peter. "You're reading too much into this."
"He didn't conjure you up because the real Peter was so important in his childhood. He conjured you up because you are the judge, the condemner. That's what Peter drummed into him as a child. You told me yourself, talking about your memories. Peter taunting him, telling him of his unworthiness, his uselessness, his stupidity, his cowardice. You do it now. You look at his life and call him a xenocide, a failure. For some reason he needs this, needs to have someone damn him."
"Well, how nice that I'm around, then, to despise him," said Peter.
"But he also is desperate for someone to forgive him, to have mercy on him, to interpret all his actions as well meant. Valentine is not there because he loves her -- he has the real Valentine for that. He has his wife. He needs your sister to exist so she can forgive him."
"So if I stop hating Ender, he won't need me anymore and I'll disappear?"
"If Ender stops hating himself, then he won't need you to be so mean and you'll be easier to get along with."
"Yeah, well, it's not that easy getting along with somebody who's constantly analyzing a person she's never met and preaching at the person she has met."
"I hope I make you miserable," said Wang-mu. "It's only fair, considering."
"I think Jane brought us here because the local costumes reflect who we are. Puppet though I am, I take some perverse pleasure in life. While you -- you can turn anything drab just by talking about it."
Wang-mu bit back her tears and returned to her food.
"What is it with you?" Peter said.
She ignored him, chewed slowly, finding the untouched core of herself, which was busily enjoying the food.
"Don't you feel anything?"
She swallowed, looked up at him. "I already miss Han Fei-tzu, and I've been gone scarcely two days." She smiled slightly. "I have known a man of grace and wisdom. He found me interesting. I'm quite comfortable with boring you."
Peter immediately made a show of splashing water on his ears. "I'm burning, that stung, oh, how can I stand it. Vicious! You have the breath of a dragon! Men die at your words!"
"Only puppets strutting around hanging from strings," said Wang-mu.
"Better to dangle from strings than to be bound tight by them," said Peter.
"Oh, the gods must love me, to have put me in the company of