he said, "I don't want you to die. I don't want you to choose to die."
"You did," said Val.
"I chose to live," said Miro. "I chose to leap to the body in which life was possible. Don't you see that I'm only trying to get you and Jane to do what I already did? For a moment there in the starship, there was my old body and there was this new one, looking at each other. Val, I remember both views. Do you understand me? I remember looking at this body and thinking, 'How beautiful, how young, I remember when that was me, who is this now, who is this person, why can't I be this person instead of the cripple I am right now,' I thought that and I remember thinking it, I didn't imagine it later, I didn't dream it, I remember thinking it at the time. But I also remember standing there looking at myself with pity, thinking, 'Poor man, poor broken man, how can he bear to live when he remembers what it was like to be alive?' and then all of a sudden he crumbled into dust, into less than dust, into air, into nothing. I remember watching him die. I don't remember dying because my aiua had already leapt. But I remember both sides."
"Or you remember being your old self until the leap, and your new self after."
"Maybe," said Miro. "But there wasn't even a full second. How could I remember so much from both selves in the same second? I think I kept the memories that were in this body from the split second when my aiua ruled two bodies. I think that if Jane leaps into you, you'll keep all your old memories, and take hers, too. That's what I think."
"Oh, I thought you knew it."
"I do know it," said Miro. "Because anything else is unthinkable and therefore unknown. The reality I live in is a reality in which you can save Jane and Jane can save you."
"You mean you can save us."
"I've already done all I can do," said Miro. "All. I'm done. I asked the Hive Queen. She's thinking about it. She's going to try. She'll have to have your consent. Jane's consent. But it's none of my business now. I'll just be an observer. I'll either watch you die or watch you live." He pulled her close to him and held her. "I want you to live."
Her body in his arms was stiff and unresponsive, and he soon let her go. He pulled away from her.
"Wait," she said. "Wait until Jane has this body, then do whatever she'll let you do with it. But don't touch me again, because I can't bear the touch of a man who wants me dead."
The words were too painful for him to answer. Too painful, really, for him to absorb them. He started the hovercar. It rose a little into the air. He tipped it forward and they flew on, circling the wood until they came to the place where the fathertrees named Human and Rooter marked the old entrance to Milagre. He could feel her presence beside him the way a man struck by lightning might feel the nearness of a power line; without touching it, he tingles with the pain that he knows it carries within it. The damage he had done could not be undone. She was wrong, he did love her, he didn't want her dead, but she lived in a world in which he wanted her extinguished and there was no reconciling it. They could share this ride, they could share the next voyage to another star system, but they would never be in the same world again, and it was too painful to bear, he ached with the knowledge of it but the ache was too deep for him to reach it or even feel it right now. It was there, he knew it was going to tear at him for years to come, but he couldn't touch it now. He didn't need to examine his feelings. He had felt them before, when he lost Ouanda, when his dream of life with her became impossible. He couldn't touch it, couldn't heal it, couldn't even grieve at what he had only just discovered that he wanted and once again couldn't have.
"Aren't you the suffering saint," said Jane in his ear.
"Shut up and go away," Miro subvocalized.
"That doesn't sound like a man who wants to be my lover," said