Xenocide

by Orson Scott Card

  "If you can look beyond the tribe to the virus, then look beyond the virus to the world," said Ender. "The descolada is keeping this planet habitable. So the brothertree is sacrificing himself to save the whole world."

  "Very clever," said Planter. "But you forget--to save the planet, it doesn't matter which brothertrees give themselves, as long as a certain number do it."

  "True," said Valentine. "It doesn't matter to the descolada which brothertrees give their lives. But it matters to the brothertrees, doesn't it? And it matters to the brothers like you, who huddle into those houses to keep warm. You appreciate the noble gesture of the brothertrees who died for you, even if the descolada doesn't know one tree from another."

  Planter didn't answer. Ender hoped that meant they were making some headway.

  "And in the wars," said Valentine, "the descolada doesn't care who wins or loses, as long as enough brothers die and enough trees grow from the corpses. Right? But that doesn't change the fact that some brothers are noble and some are cowardly or cruel."

  "Planter," said Ender, "the descolada may cause you all to feel--to come more quickly to a murderous rage, for instance--so that disputes erupt into warfare instead of being settled among the fathertrees. But that doesn't erase the fact that some forests are fighting in self-defense and others are simply bloodthirsty. You still have your heroes."

  "I don't give a damn about heroes," said Ela. "Heroes tend to be dead, like my brother Quim. Where is he now, when we need him? I wish he hadn't been a hero." She swallowed hard, holding down the memory of recent grief.

  Planter nodded--a gesture he had learned in order to communicate with humans. "We live in Warmaker's world now," he said. "What is he, except a fathertree acting as the descolada instructs? The world is getting too warm. We need more trees. So he's filled with fervor to expand the forests. Why? The descolada makes him feel that way. That's why so many brothers and fathertrees listened to him--because he offered a plan to satisfy their hunger to spread out and grow more trees."

  "Does the descolada know that he was planning to put all these new trees on other planets?" said Valentine. "That wouldn't do much to cool Lusitania."

  "The descolada puts hunger in them," said Planter. "How can a virus know about starships?"

  "How can a virus know about mothertrees and fathertrees, brothers and wives, infants and little mothers?" said Ender. "This is a very bright virus."

  "Warmaker is the best example of my point," said Valentine. "His name suggests that he was deeply involved and successful in the last great war. Once again there's pressure to increase the number of trees. Yet Warmaker chose to turn this hunger to a new purpose, spreading new forests by reaching out to the stars instead of plunging into wars with other pequeninos."

  "We were going to do it no matter what Warmaker said or did," said Planter. "Look at us. Warmaker's group was preparing to spread out and plant new forests on other worlds. But when they killed Father Quim, the rest of us were so filled with rage that we planned to go and punish them. Great slaughter, and again, trees would grow. Still doing what the descolada demanded. And now that humans have burned our forest, Warmaker's people are going to prevail after all. One way or another, we must spread out and propagate. We'll snatch up any excuse we can find. The descolada will have its way with us. We're tools, pathetically trying to find some way to convince ourselves that our actions are our own idea."

  He sounded so hopeless. Ender couldn't think of anything to say that Valentine or he hadn't already said, to try to wean him away from his conclusion that pequenino life was unfree and meaningless.

  So it was Ela who spoke next, and in a tone of calm speculation that seemed incongruous, as if she had forgotten the terrible anxiety that Planter was experiencing. Which was probably the case, as all this discussion had led her back to her own specialty. "It's hard to know which side the descolada would be on, if it were aware of all this," said Ela.

  "Which side of what?" asked Valentine.

  "Whether to induce global cooling by having more forests planted here, or to use that same instinct for propagation to have the pequeninos take the descolada out to other worlds. I mean, which would the virus makers have wanted most? To spread the virus or regulate the planet?"

  "The virus probably wants both, and it's likely to get both," said Planter. "Warmaker's group will win control of the ships, no doubt. But either before or after, there'll be a war over it that leaves half the brothers dead. For all we know, the descolada is causing both things to happen."

  "For all we know," said Ender.

  "For all we know," said Planter, "we may be the descolada."

  So, thought Ender, they are aware of that concern, despite our decision not to broach it with the pequeninos yet.

  "Have you been talking to Quara?" demanded Ela.

  "I talk to her every day," said Planter. "But what does she have to do with this?"

  "She had the same idea. That maybe pequenino intelligence comes from the descolada."

  "Do you think after all your talk about the descolada being intelligent that it hasn't occurred to us to wonder that?" said Planter. "And if it's true, what will you do then? Let all of your species die so that we can keep our little second-rate brains?"

  Ender protested at once. "We've never thought of your brains as--"

  "Haven't you?" said Planter. "Then why did you assume that we would only think of this possibility if some human told us?"

  Ender had no good answer. He had to confess to himself that he had been thinking of the pequeninos as if they were children in some ways, to be protected. Worries had to be kept as secrets from them. It hadn't occurred to him that they were perfectly capable of discovering all the worst horrors on their own.

  "And if our intelligence does come from the descolada, and you found a way to destroy it, what would we become then?" Planter looked at them, triumphant in his bitter victory. "Nothing but tree rats," he said.

  "That's the second time you've used that term," said Ender. "What are tree rats?"

  "That's what they were shouting," said Planter, "some of the men who killed the mothertree."

  "There's no such animal," said Valentine.

  "I know," said Planter. "Grego explained it to me. 'Tree rat' is a slang name for squirrels. He showed me a holo of one on his computer in jail."

  "You went to visit Grego?" Ela was plainly horrified.

  "I had to ask him why he tried to kill us all, and then why he tried to save us," said Planter.

  "There!" cried Valentine triumphantly. "You can't tell me that what Grego and Miro did that night, stopping the mob from burning Rooter and Human--you can't tell me that that was just the acting out of genetic forces!"

  "But I never said that human behavior was meaningless," said Planter. "It's you that tried to comfort me with that idea. We know that you humans have your heroes. We pequeninos are the ones who are only tools of a gaialogical virus."

  "No," said Ender. "There are pequenino heroes, too. Rooter and Human, for instance."

  "Heroes?" said Planter. "They acted as they did in order to win what they achieved--their status as fathertrees. It was the hunger to reproduce. They might have looked like heroes to you humans, who only die once, but the death they suffered was really birth. There was no sacrifice."

  "Your whole forest was heroic, then," said Ela. "You broke free from all the old channels and made a treaty with us that required you to change some of your most deeply-rooted customs."

  "We wanted the knowledge and the machines and the power you humans had. What's heroic about a treaty in which all we have to do is stop killing you, and in return you give us a thousand-year boost in our technological development?"

  "You aren't going to listen to any positive conclusion, are you," said Valentine.

  Planter went on, ignoring her. "The only heroes in that story were Pipo and Libo, the humans who acted so bravely, even though they knew they would die. They had won their freedom from their genetic heritage. What
piggy has ever done that on purpose?"

  It stung Ender more than a little, to hear Planter use the term piggy for himself and his people. In recent years the term had stopped being quite as friendly and affectionate as it was when Ender first came; often it was used now as a demeaning word, and the people who worked with them usually used the term pequenino. What sort of self-hatred was Planter resorting to, in response to what he'd learned today?

  "The brothertrees give their lives," said Ela, helpfully.

  But Planter answered in scorn. "The brothertrees are not alive the way fathertrees are. They can't talk. They only obey. We tell them what to do, and they have no choice. Tools, not heroes."

  "You can twist anything with the right story," said Valentine. "You can deny any sacrifice by claiming that it made the sufferer feel so good to do it that it really wasn't a sacrifice at all, but just another selfish act."

  Suddenly Planter jumped from his chair. Ender was prepared for a replay of his earlier behavior, but he didn't circle the room. Instead he walked to Ela where she sat in her chair, and placed both his hands on her knees.

  "I know a way to be a true hero," said Planter. "I know a way to act against the descolada. To reject it and fight it and hate it and help destroy it."

  "So do I," said Ela.

  "An experiment," said Planter.

  She nodded. "To see if pequenino intelligence is really centered in the descolada, and not in the brain."

  "I'll do it," said Planter.

  "I would never ask you to."

  "I know you wouldn't ask," said Planter. "I demand it for myself."

  Ender was surprised to realize that in their own way, Ela and Planter were as close as Ender and Valentine, able to know each other's thoughts without explaining. Ender hadn't imagined that this would be possible between two people of different species; and yet, why shouldn't it be? Particularly when they worked together so closely in the same endeavor.

  It had taken Ender a few moments to grasp what Planter and Ela were deciding between them; Valentine, who had not been working with them for years as Ender had, still didn't understand. "What's happening?" she asked. "What are they talking about?"

  It was Ela who answered. "Planter is proposing that we purge one pequenino of all copies of the descolada virus, put him in a clean space where he can't be contaminated, and then see if he still has a mind."

  "That can't be good science," said Valentine. "There are too many other variables. Aren't there? I thought the descolada was involved in every part of pequenino life."

  "Lacking the descolada would mean that Planter would immediately get sick and then eventually die. What having the descolada did to Quim, lacking it will do to Planter."

  "You can't mean to let him do it," said Valentine. "It won't prove anything. He might lose his mind because of illness. Fever makes people delirious."

  "What else can we do?" asked Planter. "Wait until Ela finds a way to tame the virus, and only then find out that without it in its intelligent, virulent form, we are not pequeninos at all, but merely piggies? That we were only given the power of speech by the virus within us, and that when it was controlled, we lost everything and became nothing more than brothertrees? Do we find that out when you loose the virus-killer?"

  "But it's not a serious experiment with a control--"

  "It's a serious experiment, all right," said Ender. "The kind of experiment you perform when you don't give a damn about getting funding, you just need results and you need them now. The kind of experiment you perform when you have no idea what the results will be or even if you'll know how to interpret them, but there are a bunch of crazy pequeninos planning to get in starships and spread a planet-killing disease all over the galaxy so you've got to do something."

  "It's the kind of experiment you perform," said Planter, "when you need a hero."

  "When we need a hero?" asked Ender. "Or when you need to be a hero?"

  "I wouldn't talk if I were you," said Valentine dryly. "You've done a few stints as a hero yourself over the centuries."

  "It may not be necessary anyway," said Ela. "Quara knows a lot more about the descolada than she's telling. She may already know whether the intelligent adaptability of the descolada can be separated from its life-sustaining functions. If we could make a virus like that, we could test the effect of the descolada on pequenino intelligence without threatening the life of the subject."

  "The trouble is," said Valentine, "Quara isn't any more likely to believe our story that the descolada is an artifact created by another species than Qing-jao was able to believe that the voice of her gods was just a genetically-caused obsessive-compulsive disorder."

  "I'll do it," said Planter. "I will begin immediately because we have no time. Put me in a sterile environment tomorrow, and then kill all the descolada in my body using the chemicals you've got hidden away. The ones you mean to use on humans when the descolada adapts to the current suppressant you're using."

  "You realize that it may be wasted," said Ela.

  "Then it would truly be a sacrifice," said Planter.

  "If you start to lose your mind in a way that clearly isn't related to your body's illness," said Ela, "we'll stop the experiment because we'll have the answer."

  "Maybe," said Planter.

  "You might well recover at that point."

  "I don't care whether I recover," said Planter.

  "We'll also stop it," said Ender, "if you start to lose your mind in a way that is related to your body's illness, because then we'll know that the experiment is useless and we wouldn't learn anything from it anyway."

  "Then if I'm a coward, all I have to do is pretend to be mentally failing and my life will be saved," said Planter. "No, I forbid you to stop the experiment, no matter what. And if I keep my mental functions, you must let me continue to the end, to the death, because only if I keep my mind to the end will we know that our soul is not just an artifact of the descolada. Promise me!"

  "Is this science or a suicide pact?" asked Ender. "Are you so despondent over discovering the probable role of the descolada in pequenino history that you simply want to die?"

  Planter rushed to Ender, climbed his body, and pressed his nose against Ender's. "You liar!" he shouted.

  "I just asked a question," whispered Ender.

  "I want to be free!" shouted Planter. "I want the descolada out of my body and I never want it to come back! I want to use this to help free all the piggies so that we can be pequeninos in fact and not in name!"

  Gently Ender pried him back. His nose ached from the violence of Planter's pressing.

  "I want to make a sacrifice that proves that I'm free," said Planter, "not just acting out my genes. Not just trying for the third life."

  "Even the martyrs of Christianity and Islam were willing to accept rewards in heaven for their sacrifice," said Valentine.

  "Then they were all selfish pigs," said Planter. "That's what you say about pigs, isn't it? In Stark, in your common speech? Selfish pigs. Well, it's the right name for us piggies, isn't it! Our heroes were all trying to become fathertrees. Our brothertrees were failures from the start. The only thing we serve outside ourselves is the descolada. For all we know, the descolada might be ourselves. But I will be free. I will know what I am, without the descolada or my genes or anything except me."

  "What you'll be is dead," said Ender.

  "But free first," said Planter. "And the first of my people to be free."

  After Wang-mu and Jane had told Master Han all that had transpired that day, after he had conversed with Jane about his own day's work, after the house had fallen silent in the darkness of the night, Wang-mu lay awake on her mat in the corner of Master Han's room, listening to his soft but insistent snoring as she thought over all that had been said that day.

  There were so many ideas, and most of them were so far above her that she despaired of truly understanding them. Especially what Wiggin said about purposes. They were giving her credit for having come up with the
solution to the problem of the descolada virus, and yet she couldn't take the credit because she hadn't meant to do it; she had thought she was just repeating Qing-jao's questions. Could she take credit for something she did by accident?

  People should only be blamed or praised for what they meant to do. Wang-mu had always believed this instinctively; she didn't remember anyone ever telling it to her in so many words. The crimes that she was blaming Congress for were all deliberate--genetically altering the people of Path to create the godspoken, and sending the M.D. Device to destroy the haven of the only other sentient species that they knew existed in the universe.

  But was that what they meant to do, either? Maybe some of them, at least, thought that they were making the universe safe for humanity by destroying Lusitania--from what Wang-mu had heard about the descolada, it could mean the end of all Earthborn life if it ever started spreading world to world among human beings. Maybe some of Congress, too, had decided to create the godspoken of Path in order to benefit all of humanity, but then put the OCD in their brains so that they couldn't get out of control and enslave all the inferior, "normal" humans. Maybe they all had good purposes in mind for the terrible things they did.

  Certainly Qing-jao had a good purpose in mind, didn't she? So how could Wang-mu condemn her for her actions, when she thought she was obeying the gods?

  Didn't everybody have some noble purpose in mind for their own actions? Wasn't everybody, in their own eyes, good?

  Except me, thought Wang-mu. In my own eyes, I'm foolish and weak. But they spoke of me as if I were better than I ever thought. Master Han praised me, too. And those others spoke of Qing-jao with pity and scorn--and I've felt those feelings toward her, too. Yet isn't Qing-jao acting nobly, and me basely? I betrayed my mistress. She has been loyal to her government and to her gods, which are real to her, though I no longer believe in them. How can I tell the good people from the bad, if the bad people all have some way of convincing themselves that they're trying to do good even though they're doing something terrible? And the good people can believe that they're actually very bad even though they're doing something good?

  Maybe you can only do good if you think you're bad, and if you think you're good then you can only do bad.

  But that paradox was too much for her. There'd be no sense in the world if you had to judge people by the opposite of how they tried to seem. Wasn't it possible for a good person also to try to seem good? And just because somebody claimed to be scum didn't mean that he wasn't scum. Was there any way to judge people, if you can't judge even by their purpose?