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pequeninos, and so was he. No doubt it was all an elaborate pretense at normality, but in Valentine's experience, normality was always a pretense, people acting out what they thought were their expected roles. Miro had simply reached a point where he was ready to act out something like a normal role in relation to Ouanda, no matter how false it might be to his true feelings. And maybe it wasn't so false, after all. She was twice his age now. Not at all the girl he had loved.
They had loved each other, but never slept together. Valentine had been pleased to hear it when Miro told her, though he said it with angry regret. Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves-- either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.
She had feared, when she first met Miro, that he was a self-pitying weakling or a self-centered predator resentful of his confinement. Neither was so. He might now regret his chastity in adolescence-- it was natural for him to wish he had coupled with Ouanda when he was still strong and they were both of an age-- but Valentine did not regret it. It showed that Miro had inner strength and a sense of responsibility to his community. To Valentine, it was predictable that Miro, by himself, had held back the mob for those crucial moments that saved Rooter and Human.
It was also predictable that Miro and Ouanda would now make the great effort to pretend that they were simply two people doing their jobs-- that all was normal between them. Inner strength and outward respect. These are the people who hold a community together, who lead. Unlike the sheep and the wolves, they perform a better role than the script given them by their inner fears and desires. They act out the script of decency, of self-sacrifice, of public honor-- of civilization. And in the pretense, it becomes reality. There really is civilization in human history, thought Valentine, but only because of people like these. The shepherds.
***
Novinha met him in the doorway of the school. She leaned on the arm of Dona Crista, the fourth principal of the Children of the Mind of Christ since Ender had come to Lusitania.
"I have nothing to say to you," Novinha said. "We're still married under the law, but that's all." "I didn't kill your son," he said.
"You didn't save him, either," she answered.
"I love you," Ender said.
"As much as you're capable of love," she said. "And then only when you've got a little time left over from looking after everybody else. You think you're some kind of guardian angel, with responsibility for the whole universe. All I asked you to do was take responsibility for my family.