not slaves to the data we receive. The environment floods us with information, our genes give us certain impulses, but we don't always act on that information, we don't always obey our inborn needs. We make leaps. We know what can't be known and then spend our lives seeking to justify that knowledge. I know that what I'm trying to do is possible."
"You mean you want it to be possible."
"Yes," said Miro. "But just because I want it doesn't mean it can't be true."
"But you don't know."
"I know it as much as anyone knows anything. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. I don't know the sun will rise tomorrow. The Little Doctor might blow up the world before I wake. A volcano might rise out of the ground and blast us all to smithereens. But I trust that tomorrow will come, and I act on that trust."
"Well, I don't trust that letting Jane replace Ender as my inmost self will leave anything resembling me in existence," said Val.
"But I know -- I know -- that it's our only chance, because if we don't get you another aiua Ender is going to extinguish you, and if we don't get Jane another place to be her physical self, she's also going to die. What's your better plan?"
"I don't have one," said Val. "I don't. If Jane can somehow be brought to dwell in my body, then it has to happen because Jane's survival is so important to the future of three raman species. So I won't stop you. I can't stop you. But don't think for a moment that I believe that I will live through it. You're deluding yourself because you can't bear to face the fact that your plan depends on one simple fact: I'm not a real person. I don't exist, I don't have a right to exist, and so my body is up for grabs. You tell yourself you love me and you're trying to save me, but you've known Jane a lot longer, she was your truest friend during your months of loneliness as a cripple, I understand that you love her and would do anything to save her life, but I won't pretend what you're pretending. Your plan is for me to die and Jane to take my place. You can call that love if you want, but I will never call it that."
"Then don't do it," Miro said. "If you don't think you'll live through it, don't."
"Oh, shut up," said Val. "How did you get to be such a pathetic romantic? If it were you in my place, wouldn't you be giving speeches right now about how you're glad you have a body to give to Jane and it's worth it for you to die for the sake of humans, pequeninos, and hive queens alike?"
"That's not true," said Miro.
"That you wouldn't give speeches? Come on, I know you better than that," she said.
"No," said Miro. "I mean I wouldn't give up my body. Not even to save the world. Humanity. The universe. I lost my body once before. I got it back by a miracle I still don't understand. I'm not going to give it up without a fight. Do you understand me? No, you don't, because you don't have any fight in you. Ender hasn't given you any fight. He's made you a complete altruist, the perfect woman, sacrificing everything for the sake of others, creating her identity out of other people's needs. Well, I'm not like that. I'm not glad to die now. I intend to live. That's how real people feel, Val. No matter what they say, they all intend to live."
"Except the suicides?"
"They intended to live, too," said Miro. "Suicide is a desperate attempt to get rid of unbearable agony. It's not a noble decision to let someone with more value go on living instead of you."
"People make choices like that sometimes," said Val. "It doesn't mean I'm not a real person because I can choose to give my life to someone else. It doesn't mean I don't have any fight in me."
Miro stopped the hovercar, let it settle to the ground. He was on the edge of the pequenino forest nearest to Milagre. He was aware that there were pequeninos working in the field who stopped their labor to watch them. But he didn't care what they saw or what they thought. He took Val by the shoulders and with tears streaming down his cheeks