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Ender couldn't help chuckling at the idea. "Sleeping in separate beds. Praying all the time. Never touching each other."
"If that's marriage, Andrew, then Ouanda and I are married right now."
"It is marriage, Miro. Because the couples in the Filhos da Mente de Cristo are working together, doing a work together."
"Then we're married," said Miro. "You and I. Because we're trying to save Jane together."
"Just friends," said Ender. "We're just friends."
"Rivals is more like it. Jane keeps us both like lovers on a string."
Miro was sounding too much like Novinha's accusations about Jane. "We're hardly lovers," he said. "Jane isn't human. She doesn't even have a body."
"Aren't you the logical one," said Miro. "Didn't you just say that you and Mother could still be married, without even touching?"
It was an analogy that Ender didn't like, because it seemed to have some truth in it. Was Novinha right to be jealous of Jane, as she had been for so many years?
"She lives inside our heads, practically," said Miro. "That's a place where no wife will ever go."
"I always thought," said Ender, "that your mother was jealous of Jane because she wished she had someone that close to her."
"Bobagem," said Miro. "Lixo." Nonsense. Garbage. "Mother was jealous of Jane because she wanted so badly to be that close to you, and she never could."
"Not your mother. She was always self-contained. There were times when we were very close, but she always turned back to her work."
"The way you always turned back to Jane."
"Did she tell you that?"
"Not in so many words. But you'd be talking to her, and then all of a sudden you'd fall silent, and even though you're good at subvocalizing, there's still a little movement in the jaw, and your eyes and lips react a little to what Jane says to you. She saw. You'd be with Mother, close, and then all of a sudden you were somewhere else."
"That's not what split us apart," said Ender. "It was Quim's death."