Xenocide

by Orson Scott Card

  "And we're not special, none of us!" cried Wang-mu. "We're all as ordinary as mud! There are no godspoken. There are no gods. They care nothing about us."

  "If there aren't any gods," said Ela, mildly correcting her, "then they can hardly do any caring one way or another."

  "Nothing made us except for their own selfish purposes!" cried Wang-mu. "Whoever made the descolada--the pequeninos are just part of their plan. And the godspoken, part of Congress's plan."

  "As one whose birth was requested by the government," said Wiggin, "I sympathize with your point of view. But your reaction is too hasty. After all, my parents also wanted me. And from the moment of my birth, just like every other living creature, I had my own purpose in life. Just because the people of your world were wrong about their OCD behavior being messages from the gods doesn't mean that there are no gods. Just because your former understanding of the purpose of your life is contradicted doesn't mean that you have to decide there is no purpose."

  "Oh, I know there's a purpose," said Wang-mu. "The Congress wanted slaves! That's why they created Qing-jao--to be a slave for them. And she wants to continue in her slavery!"

  "That was Congress's purpose," said Wiggin. "But Qing-jao also had a mother and father who loved her. So did I. There are many different purposes in this world, many different causes of everything. Just because one cause you believed in turned out to be false doesn't mean that there aren't other causes that can still be trusted."

  "Oh I suppose so," said Wang-mu. She was now ashamed of her outbursts.

  "Don't bow your head before me," said Wiggin. "Or are you doing that, Jane?"

  Jane must have answered him, an answer that Wang-mu didn't hear.

  "I don't care what her customs are," said Wiggin. "The only reason for such bowing is to humiliate one person before another, and I won't have her bow that way to me. She's done nothing to be ashamed of. She's opened up a way of looking at the descolada that might just lead to the salvation of a couple of species."

  Wang-mu heard the tone of his voice. He believed this. He was honoring her, right from his own mouth.

  "Not me," she protested. "Qing-jao. They were her questions."

  "Qing-jao," said Ela. "She's got you totally boba about her, the way Congress has Qing-jao thinking about them."

  "You can't be scornful because you don't know her," said Wang-mu. "But she is brilliant and good and I can never be like her."

  "Gods again," said Wiggin.

  "Always gods," said Ela.

  "What do you mean?" said Wang-mu. "Qing-jao doesn't say that she's a god, and neither do I."

  "Yes you do," said Ela. " 'Qing-jao is wise and good,' you said."

  "Brilliant and good," Wiggin corrected her.

  " 'And I can never be like her,' " Ela went on.

  "Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them."

  "Qing-jao wanted to teach me," said Wang-mu.

  "But only as long as you obeyed and did what she wanted," said Jane.

  "I'm not worthy," said Wang-mu. "I'm too stupid to ever learn to be as wise as her."

  "And yet you knew I spoke the truth," said Jane, "when all Qing-jao could see were lies."

  "Are you a god?" asked Wang-mu.

  "What the godspoken and the pequeninos are only just about to learn about themselves, I've known all along. I was made."

  "Nonsense," said Wiggin. "Jane, you've always believed you sprang whole from the head of Zeus."

  "I am not Minerva, thanks," said Jane.

  "As far as we know you just happened," said Wiggin. "Nobody planned you."

  "How comforting," said Jane. "So while you can all name your creators--or at least your parents or some paternalistic government agency--I'm the one genuine accident in the universe."

  "You can't have it both ways," said Wiggin. "Either somebody had a purpose for you or you were an accident. That's what an accident is--something that happened without anyone purposing it. So are you going to be resentful either way? The people of Path are going to resent Congress like crazy, once they all find out what's been done to them. Are you going to be resentful because nobody did anything to you?"

  "I can if I want," said Jane, but it was a mockery of childish spite.

  "I'll tell you what I think," said Wiggin. "I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself."

  Ender and Ela explained everything to Valentine first, probably just because she happened to come to the laboratory right then, looking for Ender about something entirely unrelated. It all rang true to her as it had to Ela and Ender. And, like them, Valentine knew they couldn't evaluate the hypothesis of the descolada as regulator of Lusitania's gaialogy until they had told the idea to the pequeninos and heard their response.

  Ender proposed that they should try it out on Planter first, before they tried to explain anything to Human or Rooter. Ela and Valentine agreed with him. Neither Ela and Ender, who had talked with fathertrees for years, felt comfortable enough with their language to say anything easily. More important, though, was the unspoken fact that they simply felt more kinship with the mammal-like brothers than they ever could with a tree. How could they guess from looking at a tree what it was thinking or how it was responding to them? No, if they had to say something difficult to a pequenino, it would be first to a brother, not to a fathertree.

  Of course, once they called Planter in to Ela's office, closed the door, and started to explain, Ender realized that talking to a brother was hardly an improvement. Even after thirty years of living and working with them, Ender still wasn't good at reading any but the crudest and most obvious of pequenino body language. Planter listened in seeming unconcern as Ender explained what they had thought of during the conversation with Jane and Wang-mu. He wasn't impassive. Rather he seemed to sit as restlessly in his chair as a small boy, constantly shifting, looking away from them, gazing off into space as if their words were unspeakably boring. Ender knew, of course, that eye contact didn't mean the same thing to the pequeninos that it did to humans; they neither sought it nor avoided it. Where you looked while you were listening was almost completely unimportant to them. But usually the pequeninos who worked closely with humans tried to act in ways that human beings would interpret as paying attention. Planter was good at it, but right now he wasn't even trying.

  Not till they had explained it all did Ender realize how much self-restraint Planter had shown even to remain on the chair until they were done. The moment they told him they were finished, he bounded off the chair and began to run--no, to scamper around the room, touching everything. Not striking it, not lashing out with violence as a human being might have, hitting things, throwing things. Rather he was stroking everything he found, feeling the textures. Ender stood, wanting to reach out to him, to offer some comfort--for he knew enough of pequenino behavior to recognize this as such aberrant behavior that it could only mean great distress.

  Planter ran until he was exhausted, and then he went on, lurching around the room drunkenly until at last he bumped into Ender and threw his arms around him, clinging to him. For a moment Ender thought to embrace him back, but then
he remembered that Planter wasn't human. An embrace didn't call for an answering embrace. Planter was clinging to him as he would cling to a tree. Seeking the comfort of a trunk. A safe place to hold onto until the danger passed. There would be less, not more comfort if Ender responded like a human and hugged him back. This was a time when Ender had to answer like a tree. So he held still and waited. Waited and held still. Until at last the trembling stopped.

  When Planter pulled away from him, both their bodies were covered with sweat. I guess there's a limit to how treelike I can be, thought Ender. Or do brothertrees and fathertrees give off moisture to the brothers who cling to them?

  "This is very surprising," whispered Planter.

  The words were so absurdly mild, compared to the scene that had just played out before them, that Ender couldn't help laughing aloud.

  "Yes," said Ender. "I imagine it is."

  "It's not funny to them," Ela said.

  "He knows that," said Valentine.

  "He mustn't laugh, then," she said. "You can't laugh when Planter's in so much pain." And then she burst into tears.

  Valentine put a hand on her shoulder. "He laughs, you cry," she said. "Planter runs around and climbs trees. What strange animals we all are."

  "Everything comes from the descolada," said Planter. "The third life, the mothertree, the fathertrees. Maybe even our minds. Maybe we were only tree rats when the descolada came and made false ramen out of us."

  "Real ramen," said Valentine.

  "We don't know it's true," said Ela. "It's a hypothesis."

  "It's very very very very very true," said Planter. "Truer than truth."

  "How do you know?"

  "Everything fits. Planetary regulation--I know about this, I studied gaialogy and the whole time I thought, how can this teacher tell us these things when every pequenino can look around and see that they're false? But if we know that the descolada is changing us, making us act to regulate the planetary systems--"

  "What can the descolada possibly make you do that could regulate the planet?" said Ela.

  "You haven't known us long enough," said Planter. "We haven't told you everything because we were afraid you'd think we were silly. Now you'll know that we aren't silly, we're just acting out what a virus tells us to do. We're slaves, not fools."

  It startled Ender to realize that Planter had just confessed that the pequeninos still took some pains to try to impress human beings. "What behaviors of yours have anything to do with planetary regulation?"

  "Trees," said Planter. "How many forests are there, all over the world? Transpiring constantly. Turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. When there's more of it in the atmosphere, the world gets warmer. So what would we do to make the world get cooler?"

  "Plant more forests," said Ela. "To use up more CO2 so that more heat could escape into space."

  "Yes," said Planter. "But think about how we plant our trees."

  The trees grow from the bodies of the dead, thought Ender. "War," he said.

  "There are quarrels between tribes, and sometimes they make small wars," said Planter. "Those would be nothing on a planetary scale. But the great wars that sweep across the whole world--millions and millions of brothers die in these wars, and all of them become trees. Within months the forests of the world could double in size and number. That would make a difference, wouldn't it?"

  "Yes," said Ela.

  "A lot more efficiently than anything that would happen through natural evolution," said Ender.

  "And then the wars stop," said Planter. "We always think there are great causes for these wars, that they're struggles between good and evil. And now all the time they are nothing but planetary regulation."

  "No," said Valentine. "The need to fight, the rage, that might come from the descolada, but it doesn't mean the causes you fought for are--"

  "The cause we fight for is planetary regulation," said Planter. "Everything fits. How do you think we help with warming the planet?"

  "I don't know," said Ela. "Even trees eventually die of old age."

  "You don't know because you've come during a warm time, not a cold one. But when the winters get bad, we build houses. The brothertrees give themselves to us to make houses. All of us, not just the ones who live in cold places. We all build houses, and the forests are reduced by half, by three-quarters. We thought this was a great sacrifice the brothertrees made for the sake of the tribe, but now I see that it's the descolada, wanting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to warm the planet."

  "It's still a great sacrifice," said Ender.

  "All our great epics," said Planter. "All our heroes. Just brothers acting out the will of the descolada."

  "So what?" said Valentine.

  "How can you say that? I learn that our lives are nothing, that we're only tools used by a virus to regulate the global ecosystem, and you call it nothing?"

  "Yes, I call it nothing," said Valentine. "We human beings are no different. It may not be a virus, but we still spend most of our time acting out our genetic destiny. Take the differences between males and females. Males naturally tend toward a broadcast strategy of reproduction. Since males make an almost infinite supply of sperm and it costs them nothing to deploy it--"

  "Not nothing," said Ender.

  "Nothing," said Valentine, "just to deploy it. Their most sensible reproductive strategy is to deposit it in every available female--and to make special efforts to deposit it in the healthiest females, the ones most likely to bring their offspring to adulthood. A male does best, reproductively, if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible."

  "I've done the wandering," said Ender. "Somehow I missed out on the copulating."

  "I'm speaking of overall trends," said Valentine. "There are always strange individuals who don't follow the norms. The female strategy is just the opposite, Planter. Instead of millions and millions of sperm, they only have one egg a month, and each child represents an enormous investment of effort. So females need stability. They need to be sure there'll always be plenty of food. We also spend large amounts of time relatively helpless, unable to find or gather food. Far from being wanderers, we females need to establish and stay. If we can't get that, then our next best strategy is to mate with the strongest and healthiest possible males. But best of all is to get a strong healthy male who'll stay and provide, instead of wandering and copulating at will.

  "So there are two pressures on males. The one is to spread their seed, violently if necessary. The other is to be attractive to females by being stable providers--by suppressing and containing the need to wander and the tendency to use force. Likewise, there are two pressures on females. The one is to get the seed of the strongest, most virile males so their infants will have good genes, which would make the violent, forceful males attractive to them. The other is to get the protection of the most stable males, nonviolent males, so their infants will be protected and provided for and as many as possible will reach adulthood.

  "Our whole history, all that I've ever found in all my wanderings as an itinerant historian before I finally unhooked myself from this reproductively unavailable brother of mine and had a family--it can all be interpreted as people blindly acting out those genetic strategies. We get pulled in those two directions.

  "Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting, where a woman can count on stability; our legal and moral codes that try to abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and enforce contracts--those represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male.

  "And the tribes of wandering barbarians outside the reach of civilization, those follow the mainly male strategy. Spread the seed. Within the tribe, the strongest, most dominant males take possession of the best females, either through formal polygamy or spur-of-the-moment copulations that the other males are powerless to resist. But those low-status males are kept in line because the leaders take them to war and let them rape and pillage th
eir brains out when they win a victory. They act out sexual desirability by proving themselves in combat, and then kill all the rival males and copulate with their widowed females when they win. Hideous, monstrous behavior--but also a viable acting-out of the genetic strategy."

  Ender found himself very uncomfortable, hearing Valentine talk this way. He knew all this was true as far as it went, and he had heard it all before, but it still, in a small way, made him as uncomfortable as Planter was to learn similar things about his own people. Ender wanted to deny it all, to say, Some of us males are naturally civilized. But in his own life, hadn't he performed the acts of dominance and war? Hadn't he wandered? In that context, his decision to stay on Lusitania was really a decision to abandon the male-dominant social model that had been engrained in him as a young soldier in battle school, and become a civilized man in a stable family.

  Yet even then, he had married a woman who turned out to have little interest in having more children. A woman with whom marriage had turned out to be anything but civilized, in the end. If I follow the male model, then I'm a failure. No child anywhere who carries on my genes. No woman who accepts my rule. I'm definitely atypical.

  But since I haven't reproduced, my atypical genes will die with me, and thus the male and female social models are safe from such an in-between person as myself.

  Even as Ender made his own private evaluations of Valentine's interpretation of human history, Planter showed his own response by lying back in his chair, a gesture that spoke of scorn. "I'm supposed to feel better because humans are also tools of some genetic molecule?"

  "No," said Ender. "You're supposed to realize that just because a lot of behavior can be explained as responses to the needs of some genetic molecule, it doesn't mean that all pequenino behavior is meaningless."

  "Human history can be explained as the struggle between the needs of women and the needs of men," said Valentine, "but my point is that there are still heroes and monsters, great events and noble deeds."

  "When a brothertree gives his wood," said Planter, "it's supposed to mean that he sacrifices for the tribe. Not for a virus."