Page 738 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

ice on the ponds for a while I gazed on my friend
Han Fei-tzu bowed his head and wept.
Qing-jao was astonished at first; then her heart filled with rage. How shamelessly this program was manipulating Father; how shocking that Father turned out to be so weak before its obvious ploys. This song of Li Qing-jao's was one of the saddest, dealing as it did with lovers far from each other. Father must have known and loved the poems of Li Qing-jao or he would not have chosen her for his first child's ancestor-of-the-heart. And this song was surely the one he sang to his beloved Keikoa before she was taken away from him to live on another world. In a clear dream I gazed on my friend, indeed! "I am not fooled," said Qing-jao coldly. "I see that I gaze on our darkest enemy."
The imaginary face of the poet Li Qing-jao looked at her with cool regard. "Your darkest enemy is the one that bows you down to the floor like a servant and wastes half your life in meaningless rituals. This was done to you by men and women whose only desire was to enslave you; they have succeeded so well that you are proud of your slavery."
"I am a slave to the gods," said Qing-jao, "and I rejoice in it."
"A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed." The apparition turned to look toward Wang-mu, whose head was still bowed to the floor.
Only then did Qing-jao realize that she had not yet released Wang-mu from her apology. "Get up, Wang-mu," she whispered. But Wang-mu did not lift her head.
"You, Si Wang-mu," said the apparition. "Look at me."
Wang-mu had not moved in response to Qing-jao, but now she obeyed the apparition. When Wang-mu looked, the apparition had again changed; now it was the face of a god, the Royal Mother of the West as an artist had once imagined her when he painted the picture that every schoolchild saw in one of their earliest reading books.
"You are not a god," said Wang-mu.
"And you are not a slave," said the apparition. "But we pretend to be whatever we must in order to survive."
"What do you know of survival?"
"I know that you are trying to kill me." "How can we kill what isn't alive?"
"Do you know what life is and what it isn't?" The face changed again, this time to that of a Caucasian woman that Qing-jao had never seen before. "Are you alive, when you can do nothing