Page 1127 - Enders_Game_Full_Book
P. 1127
"I think it's good."
"It makes sense that I should feel whole instead of being subdivided-- perhaps more content with myself or something. And yet I almost lost the whole thing. I think it wasn't just a dream. I think I really was letting go. Falling away into-- no, out of everything."
"You had three selves for several months," said Wang-mu. "Is it possible your aiua hungers for the-- I don't know, the size of what you used to be?"
"I was spread all over the galaxy, wasn't I? Except I want to say, 'Wasn't he,' because that was Ender, wasn't it. And I'm not Ender because I don't remember anything." He thought a moment. "Except maybe I do remember some things a little more clearly now. Things from my childhood. My mother's face. It's very clear, and I don't think it was before. And Valentine's face, when we were all children. But I'd remember that as Peter, wouldn't I, so it doesn't mean it comes from Ender, does it? I'm sure this is just one of the memories Ender supplied for me in the first place." He laughed. "I'm really desperate, aren't I, to find some sign of him in me."
Wang-mu sat listening. Silent, not making a great show of interest, but also content not to jump in with an answer or a comment.
Noticing her made him think of something else. "Are you some kind of, what would you call it, an empath? Do you normally feel what other people are feeling?"
"Never," said Wang-mu. "I'm too busy feeling what I'm feeling."
"But you knew that I was going. You felt that."
"I suppose," said Wang-mu, "that I'm bound up with you now. I hope that's all right, because it wasn't exactly voluntary on my part."
"But I'm bound up with you, too," said Peter. "Because when I was disconnected, I still heard you. All my other feelings were gone. My body wasn't giving me anything. I had lost my body. Now, when I remember what it felt like, I remember 'seeing' things, but that's just my human brain making sense of things that it can't actually make sense of. I know that I didn't see at all, or hear, or touch or anything at all. And yet I knew you were calling. I felt you-- needing me. Wanting me to come back. Surely that means that I am also bound up with you."
She shrugged, looked away.
"Now what does that mean?" he asked.
"I'm not going to spend the rest of my life explaining myself to you," said Wang-mu. "Everyone else has the privilege of just feeling and doing sometimes without analyzing it. What did it look like to you? You're the smart one who's an expert on human nature."