"Jail didn't occur to me," said Ender. "I expected he'd shut off her access to--"
"That isn't the Mayor's job," said Novinha. "It's mine. I'm the head xenobiologist. Why didn't you come to me, Elanora? Why to him?"
Ela sat there in silence, looking at her mother steadily. It was how she handled conflict with her mother, with passive resistance.
"Quara's out of control, Novinha," said Ender. "Telling secrets to the fathertrees was bad enough. Telling them to the descolada is insane."
"Es psicologista, agora?" Now you're a psychologist?
"I'm not planning to lock her up."
"You're not planning anything," said Novinha. "Not with my children."
"That's right," said Ender. "I'm not planning to do anything with children. I do have a responsibility, however, to do something about an adult citizen of Milagre who is recklessly endangering the survival of every human being on this planet, and maybe every human being everywhere."
"And where did you get that noble responsibility, Andrew? Did God come down to the mountain and carve your license to rule people on tablets of stone?"
"Fine," said Ender. "What do you suggest?"
"I suggest you stay out of business that doesn't concern you. And frankly, Andrew, that includes pretty much everything. You're not a xenobiologist. You're not a physicist. You're not a xenologer. In fact, you're not much of anything, are you, except a professional meddler in other people's lives."
Ela gasped. "Mother!"
"The only thing that gives you any power anywhere is that damned jewel in your ear. She whispers secrets to you, she talks to you at night when you're in bed with your wife, and whenever she wants something, there you are in a meeting where you have no business, saying whatever it was she told you to say. You talk about Quara committing treason--as far as I can tell, you're the one who's betraying real people in favor of an overgrown piece of software!"
"Novinha," said Ender. It was supposed to be the beginning of an attempt to calm her.
But she wasn't interested in dialogue. "Don't you dare to try to deal with me, Andrew. All these years I thought you loved me--"
"I do."
"I thought you had really become one of us, part of our lives--"
"I am."
"I thought it was real--"
"It is."
"But you're just what Bishop Peregrino warned us you were from the start. A manipulator. A controller. Your brother once ruled all of humanity, isn't that the story? But you aren't so ambitious. You'll settle for a little planet."
"In the name of God, Mother, have you lost your mind? Don't you know this man?"
"I thought I did!" Novinha was weeping now. "But no one who loved me would ever let my son go out and face those murderous little swine--"
"He couldn't have stopped Quim, Mother! Nobody could!"
"He didn't even try. He approved!"
"Yes," said Ender. "I thought your son was acting nobly and bravely, and I approved of that. He knew that while the danger wasn't great, it was real, and yet he still chose to go--and I approved of that. It's exactly what you would have done, and I hope that it's what I would do in the same place. Quim is a man, a good man, maybe a great one. He doesn't need your protection and he doesn't want it. He has decided what his life's work is and he's doing it. I honor him for that, and so should you. How dare you suggest that either of us should have stood in his way!"
Novinha was silent at last, for the moment, anyway. Was she measuring Ender's words? Was she finally realizing how futile and, yes, cruel it was for her to send Quim away with her anger instead of her hope? During that silence, Ender still had some hope.
Then the silence ended. "If you ever meddle in the lives of my children again, I'm done with you," said Novinha. "And if anything happens to Quim--anything--I will hate you till you die, and I'll pray for that day to come soon. You don't know everything, you bastard, and it's about time you stopped acting as if you did."
She stalked to the door, but then thought better of the theatrical exit. She turned back to Ela and spoke with remarkable calm. "Elanora, I will take immediate steps to block Quara from access to records and equipment that she could use to help the descolada. And in the future, my dear, if I ever hear you discussing lab business with anyone, especially this man, I will bar you from the lab for life. Do you understand?"
Again Ela answered her with silence.
"Ah," said Novinha. "I see that he has stolen more of my children from me than I thought."
Then she was gone.
Ender and Ela sat in stunned silence. Finally Ela stood up, though she didn't take a single step.
"I really ought to go do something," said Ela, "but I can't for the life of me think what."
"Maybe you should go to your mother and show her that you're still on her side."
"But I'm not," said Ela. "In fact, I was thinking maybe I should go to Mayor Zeljezo and propose that he remove Mother as head xenobiologist because she has clearly lost her mind."
"No she hasn't," said Ender. "And if you did something like that, it would kill her."
"Mother? She's too tough to die."
"No," said Ender. "She's so fragile right now that any blow might kill her. Not her body. Her--trust. Her hope. Don't give her any reason to think you're not with her, no matter what."
Ela looked at him with exasperation. "Is this something you decide, or does it just come naturally to you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Mother just said things to you that should have made you furious or hurt or--something, anyway--and you just sit there trying to think of ways to help her. Don't you ever feel like lashing out at somebody? I mean, don't you ever lose your temper?"
"Ela, after you've inadvertently killed a couple of people with your bare hands, either you learn to control your temper or you lose your humanity."
"You've done that?"
"Yes," he said. He thought for a moment that she was shocked.
"Do you think you could still do it?"
"Probably," he said.
"Good. It may be useful when all hell breaks loose."
Then she laughed. It was a joke. Ender was relieved. He even laughed, weakly, along with her.
"I'll go to Mother," said Ela, "but not because you told me to, or even for the reasons that you said."
"Fine, just so you go."
"Don't you want to know why I'm going to stick with her?"
"I already know why."
"Of course. She was wrong, wasn't she. You do know everything, don't you."
"You're going to go to your mother because it's the most painful thing you could do to yourself at this moment."
"You make it sound sick."
"It's the most painful good thing you could do. It's the most unpleasant job around. It's the heaviest burden to bear."
"Ela the martyr, certo? Is that what you'll say when you speak my death?"
"If I'm going to speak your death, I'll have to pre-record it. I intend to be dead long before you."
"So you're not leaving Lusitania?"
"Of course not."
"Even if Mother boots you out?"
"She can't. She has no grounds for divorce, and Bishop Peregrino knows us both well enough to laugh at any request for annulment based on a claim of nonconsummation."
"You know what I mean."
"I'm here for the long haul," said Ender. "No more phony immortality through time dilation. I'm through chasing around in space. I'll never leave the surface of Lusitania again."
"Even if it kills you? Even if the fleet comes?"
"If everybody can leave, then I'll leave," said Ender. "But I'll be the one who turns off all the lights and locks the door."
She ran to him and kissed him on the cheek and embraced him, just for a moment. Then she was out the door and he was, once again, alone.
I was so wrong about Novinha, he thought. It wasn't Valentine she was jealous of. It was Jane. All these years, she's seen me spea
king silently with Jane, all the time, saying things that she could never hear, hearing things that she could never say. I've lost her trust in me, and I never even realized I was losing it.
Even now, he must have been subvocalizing. He must have been talking to Jane out of a habit so deep that he didn't even know he was doing it. Because she answered him.
"I warned you," she said.
I suppose you did, Ender answered silently.
"You never think I understand anything about human beings."
I guess you're learning.
"She's right, you know. You are my puppet. I manipulate you all the time. You haven't had a thought of your own in years."
"Shut up," he whispered. "I'm not in the mood."
"Ender," she said, "if you think it would help you keep from losing Novinha, take the jewel out of your ear. I wouldn't mind."
"I would," he said.
"I was lying, so would I," she said. "But if you have to do it, to keep her, then do it."
"Thank you," he said. "But I'd be hard-pressed to keep someone that I've clearly lost already."
"When Quim comes back, everything will be fine."
Right, thought Ender. Right.
Please, God, take good care of Father Estevao.
They knew Father Estevao was coming. Pequeninos always did. The fathertrees told each other everything. There were no secrets. Not that they wanted it that way. There might be one fathertree that wanted to keep a secret or tell a lie. But they couldn't exactly go off by themselves. They never had private experiences. So if one fathertree wanted to keep something to himself, there'd be another close by who didn't feel that way. Forests always acted in unity, but they were still made up of individuals, and so stories passed from one forest to another no matter what a few fathertrees might wish.
That was Quim's protection, he knew. Because even though Warmaker was a bloodthirsty son of a bitch--though that was an epithet without meaning when it came to pequeninos--he couldn't do a thing to Father Estevao without first persuading the brothers of his forest to act as he wanted them to. And if he did that, one of the other fathertrees in his forest would know, and would tell. Would bear witness. If Warmaker broke the oath taken by all the fathertrees together, thirty years ago, when Andrew Wiggin sent Human into the third life, it could not be done secretly. The whole world would hear of it, and Warmaker would be known as an oathbreaker. It would be a shameful thing. What wife would allow the brothers to carry a mother to him then? What children would he ever have again as long as he lived?
Quim was safe. They might not heed him, but they wouldn't harm him.
Yet when he arrived at Warmaker's forest, they wasted no time listening to him. The brothers seized him, threw him to the ground, and dragged him to Warmaker.
"This wasn't necessary," he said. "I was coming here anyway."
A brother was beating on the tree with sticks. Quim listened to the changing music as Warmaker altered the hollows within himself, shaping the sound into words.
"You came because I commanded."
"You commanded. I came. If you want to think you caused my coming, so be it. But God's commands are the only ones I obey willingly."
"You're here to hear the will of God," said Warmaker.
"I'm hear to speak the will of God," said Quim. "The descolada is a virus, created by God in order to make the pequeninos into worthy children. But the Holy Ghost has no incarnation. The Holy Ghost is perpetually spirit, so he can dwell in our hearts."
"The descolada dwells in our hearts, and gives us life. When he dwells in your heart, what does he give you?"
"One God. One faith. One baptism. God doesn't preach one thing to humans and another to pequeninos."
"We are not 'little ones.' You will see who is mighty and who is small."
They forced him to stand with his back pressed against Warmaker's trunk. He felt the bark shifting behind him. They pushed on him. Many small hands, many snouts breathing on him. In all these years, he had never thought of such hands, such faces as belonging to enemies. And even now, Quim realized with relief that he didn't think of them as his own enemies. They were the enemies of God, and he pitied them. It was a great discovery for him, that even when he was being pushed into the belly of a murderous fathertree, he had no shred of fear or hatred in him.
I really don't fear death. I never knew that.
The brothers still beat on the outside of the tree with sticks. Warmaker reshaped the sound into the words of Father Tongue, but now Quim was inside the sound, inside the words.
"You think I'm going to break the oath," said Warmaker.
"It crossed my mind," said Quim. He was now fully pinned inside the tree, even though it remained open in front of him from head to toe. He could see, he could breathe easily--his confinement wasn't even claustrophobic. But the wood had formed so smoothly around him that he couldn't move an arm or a leg, couldn't begin to turn sideways to slide out of the gap before him. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to salvation.
"We'll test," said Warmaker. It was harder to understand his words, now that Quim was hearing them from the inside. Harder to think. "Let God judge between you and me. We'll give you all you want to drink--the water from our stream. But of food you'll have none."
"Starving me is--"
"Starving? We have your food. We'll feed you again in ten days. If the Holy Ghost allows you to live for ten days, we'll feed you and set you free. We'll be believers in your doctrine then. We'll confess that we were wrong."
"The virus will kill me before then."
"The Holy Ghost will judge you and decide if you're worthy."
"There is a test going on here," said Quim, "but not the one you think."
"Oh?"
"It's the test of the Last Judgment. You stand before Christ, and he says to those on his right hand, 'I was a stranger, and you took me in. Hungry, and you fed me. Enter into the joy of the Lord.' Then he says to those on his left hand, 'I was hungry, and you gave me nothing. I was a stranger, and you mistreated me.' And they all say to him, 'Lord, when did we do these things to you?' and he answers, 'If you did it to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.' All you brothers, gathered here--I am the least of your brothers. You will answer to Christ for what you do to me here."
"Foolish man," said Warmaker. "We are doing nothing to you but holding you still. What happens to you is whatever God desires. Didn't Christ say, 'I do nothing but what I've seen the Father do'? Didn't Christ say, 'I am the way. Come follow me'? Well, we are letting you do what Christ did. He went without bread for forty days in the wilderness. We give you a chance to be one-fourth as holy. If God wants us to believe in your doctrine, he'll send angels to feed you. He'll turn stones into bread."
"You're making a mistake," said Quim.
"You made the mistake by coming here."
"I mean that you're making a doctrinal mistake. You've got the lines down right--fasting in the wilderness, stones into bread, all of it. But didn't you think it might be a little too self-revelatory for you to give yourself Satan's part?"
That was when Warmaker flew into a rage, speaking so rapidly that the movements within the wood began to twist and press on Quim until he was afraid he would be torn to bits within the tree.
"You are Satan! Trying to get us to believe your lies long enough for you humans to figure out a way to kill the descolada and keep all the brothers from the third life forever! Do you think we don't see through you? We know all your plans, all of them! You have no secrets! And God keeps no secrets from us either! We're the ones who were given the third life, not you! If God loved you, he wouldn't make you bury your dead in the ground and then let nothing but worms come out of you!"
The brothers sat around the opening in the trunk, enthralled by the argument.
It went on for six days, doctrinal arguments worthy of any of the fathers of the church in any age. Not since the council at Nicaea were such momentous issues considered, weighed.
The arguments were passed from brother to brother, from tree to tree, from forest to forest. Accounts of the dialogue between Warmaker and Father Estevao always reached Rooter and Human within a day. But the information wasn't complete. It wasn't until the fourth day that they realized that Quim was being held prisoner, without any of the food containing the descolada inhibitor.
Then an expedition was mounted at once, Ender and Ouanda, Jakt and Lars and Varsam; Mayor Kovano sent Ender and Ouanda because they were widely known and respected among the piggies, and Jakt and his son and son-in-law because they weren't native-born Lusitanians. Kovano didn't dare to send any of the native-born colonists--if word of this got out, there was no telling what would happen. The five of them took the fastest car and followed the directions Rooter gave them. It was a three-day trip.
On the sixth day the dialogue ended, because the descolada had so thoroughly invaded Quim's body that he had no strength to speak, and was often too fevered and delirious to say anything intelligible when he did speak.
On the seventh day, he looked through the gap, upward, above the heads of the brothers who were still there, still watching. "I see the Savior sitting on the right hand of God," he whispered. Then he smiled.
An hour later he was dead. Warmaker felt it, and announced it triumphantly to the brothers. "The Holy Ghost has judged, and Father Estevao has been rejected!"
Some of the brothers rejoiced. But not as many as Warmaker had expected.
At dusk, Ender's party arrived. There was no question now of the piggies capturing and testing them--they were too many, and the brothers were not all of one mind now anyway. Soon they stood before the split trunk of Warmaker and saw the haggard, disease-ravaged face of Father Estevao, barely visible in the shadows.
"Open up and let my son come out to me," said Ender.
The gap in the tree widened. Ender reached in and pulled out the body of Father Estevao. He was so light inside his robes that Ender thought for a moment he must be bearing some of his own weight, must be walking. But he wasn't walking. Ender laid him on the ground before the tree.
A brother beat a rhythm on Warmaker's trunk.
"He must belong to you indeed, Speaker for the Dead, because he is dead. The Holy Ghost has burned him up in the second baptism."
"You broke the oath," said Ender. "You betrayed the word of the fathertrees."
"No one harmed a hair of his head," said Warmaker.
Xenocide Page 25
