Xenocide

by Orson Scott Card

  Yes, the tree was growing, and with great vigor, the leaves visibly rising as they watched. But it would still be many hours, days perhaps, before they knew if it was a fathertree, with Glass still alive and conscious within it. A time of waiting, in which Glass's tree must grow in perfect isolation.

  If only I could find a place, thought Ender, in which I could also be isolated, in which I could work out the strange things that have happened to me, without interference.

  But he was not a pequenino, and whatever unease he suffered from was not a virus that could be killed, or driven from his life. His disease was at the root of his identity, and he didn't know if he could ever be rid of it without destroying himself in the process. Perhaps, he thought, Peter and Val represent the total of who I am; perhaps if they were gone, there'd be nothing left. What part of my soul, what action in my life is there that can't be explained as one or the other of them, acting out his or her will within me?

  Am I the sum of my siblings? Or the difference between them? What is the peculiar arithmetic of my soul?

  Valentine tried not to be obsessed with this young girl that Ender had brought back with him from Outside. Of course she knew it was her younger self as he remembered her, and she even thought it was rather sweet of him to carry inside his heart such a powerful memory of her at that age. She alone, of all the people on Lusitania, knew why it was at that age that she lingered in his unconscious. He had been in Battle School till then, cut off completely from his family. Though he could not have known it, she knew that their parents had pretty much forgotten him. Not forgotten that he existed, of course, but forgotten him as a presence in their lives. He simply wasn't there, wasn't their responsibility anymore. Having given him away to the state, they were absolved. He would have been more a part of their lives if he had died; as it was, they didn't have even a grave to visit. Valentine didn't blame them for this--it proved that they were resilient and adaptable. But she wasn't able to mimic them. Ender was always with her, in her heart. And when, after being inwardly battered as he was forced to meet all the challenges they threw at him in Battle School, Ender now resolved to give up on the whole enterprise--when he, in effect, went on strike--the officer charged with turning him into a pliant tool came to her. Brought her to Ender. Gave them time together--the same man who had torn them apart and left such deep wounds in their hearts. She healed her brother then--enough that he could go back and save humanity by destroying the buggers.

  Of course he holds me in his memory at that age, more powerfully than any of our countless experiences together since. Of course when his unconscious mind brings forth its most intimate baggage, it is the girl I was then who lingers most deeply in his heart.

  She knew all this, she understood all this, she believed all this. Yet still it rankled, still it hurt that this almost mindlessly perfect creature was what he really thought of her all along. That the Valentine that Ender truly loved was a creature of impossible purity. It was for the sake of this imaginary Valentine that he was so close a companion to me all the years before I married Jakt. Unless it was because I married Jakt that he returned to this childish vision of me.

  Nonsense. There was nothing to be gained by trying to imagine what this young girl meant. Regardless of the manner of her creation, she was here now, and must be dealt with.

  Poor Ender--he seemed to understand nothing. He actually thought at first that he should keep young Val with him. "Isn't she my daughter, after a fashion?" he had asked.

  "After no fashion is she your daughter," she had answered. "If anything, she's mine. And it is certainly not proper for you to take her into your home, alone. Especially since Peter is there, and he isn't the most trustworthy co-guardian who ever lived." Ender still didn't fully agree--he would rather have got rid of Peter than Val--but he complied, and since then Val had lived in Valentine's house. Valentine's intention had been to become the girl's friend and mentor, but in the event she simply couldn't do it. She wasn't comfortable enough in Val's company. She kept finding reasons to leave home when Val was there; she kept feeling inordinately grateful when Ender came to let her tag along with him and Peter.

  What finally happened was that, as so often before, Plikt silently stepped in and solved the problem. Plikt became Val's primary companion and guardian in Valentine's house. When Val wasn't with Ender, she was with Plikt. And this morning Plikt had suggested setting up a house of her own--for her and Val. Perhaps I was too hasty in agreeing, thought Valentine. But it's probably as hard on Val to share a house with me as for me to share a house with her.

  Now, though, watching as Plikt and Val entered the new chapel on their knees and crawled forward--as all the other humans who entered had also crawled--to kiss Bishop Peregrino's ring before the altar, Valentine realized that she had done nothing for "Val's own good," whatever she might have told herself. Val was completely self-contained, unflappable, calm. Why should Valentine imagine that she could make young Val either more or less happy, more or less comfortable? I am irrelevant to this girl-child's life. But she is not irrelevant to mine. She is at once an affirmation and a denial of the most important relationship of my childhood, and of much of my adulthood as well. I wish that she had crumbled into nothingness Outside, like Miro's old crippled body did. I wish I had never had to face myself like this.

  And it was herself she was facing. Ela had run that test immediately. Young Val and Valentine were genetically identical.

  "But it makes no sense," Valentine protested. "Ender could hardly have memorized my genetic code. There couldn't possibly have been a pattern of that code in the starship with him."

  "Am I supposed to explain it?" asked Ela.

  Ender had suggested a possibility--that young Val's genetic code was fluid until she and Valentine actually met, and then the philotes of Val's body had formed themselves into the pattern they found in Valentine's.

  Valentine kept her own opinion to herself, but she doubted that Ender's guess was right. Young Val had had Valentine's genes from the first moment, because any person who so perfectly fit Ender's vision of Valentine could not have any other genes; the natural law that Jane herself was helping to maintain within the starship would have required it. Or perhaps there was some force that shaped and gave order even to a place of such utter chaos. It hardly mattered, except that however annoyingly perfect and uncomplaining and unlike me this new pseudo-Val might be, Ender's vision of her had been true enough that genetically they were the same. His vision couldn't be much off the mark. Perhaps I really was that perfect then, and only got my rough edges during the years since then. Perhaps I really was that beautiful. Perhaps I really was so young.

  They knelt before the Bishop. Plikt kissed his ring, though she owed no part of the penance of Lusitania.

  When it came time for young Val to kiss the ring, however, the Bishop pulled away his hand and turned away. A priest came forward and told them to go to their seats.

  "How can I?" said young Val. "I haven't given my penance yet."

  "You have no penance," said the priest. "The Bishop told me before you came; you weren't here when the sin was committed, so you have no part in the penance."

  Young Val looked at him very sadly and said, "I was created by someone other than God. That's why the Bishop won't receive me. I'll never have communion while he lives."

  The priest looked very sad--it was impossible not to feel sorry for young Val, for her simplicity and sweetness made her seem fragile, and the person who hurt her therefore had to feel clumsy for having damaged such a tender thing. "Until the Pope can decide," he said. "All this is very hard."

  "I know," whispered young Val. Then she came and sat down between Plikt and Valentine.

  Our elbows touch, thought Valentine. A daughter who is perfectly myself, as if I had cloned her thirteen years ago.

  But I didn't want another daughter, and I certainly didn't want a duplicate of me. She knows that. She feels it. And so she suffers something that I never suffered--she fe
els unwanted and unloved by those who are most like her.

  How does Ender feel about her? Does he also wish that she would go away? Or does he yearn to be her brother, as he was my young brother so many years ago? When I was that age, Ender had not yet committed xenocide. But then, he had not yet spoken for the dead, either, the Hive Queen, The Hegemon, the Life of Human--all that was beyond him then. He was just a child, confused, despairing, afraid. How could Ender yearn for that time again?

  Miro soon came in, crawled to the altar, and kissed the ring. Though the Bishop had absolved him of any responsibility, he bore the penance with all others. Valentine noticed, of course, the many whispers as he moved forward. Everyone in Lusitania who had known him before his brain damage recognized the miracle that had been performed--a perfect restoration of the Miro who had lived so brightly among them all before.

  I didn't know you then, Miro, thought Valentine. Did you always have that distant, brooding air? Healed your body may be, but you're still the man who lived in pain for this time. Has it made you cold or more compassionate?

  He came and sat beside her, in the chair that would have been Jakt's, except that Jakt was still in space. With the descolada soon to be destroyed, someone had to bring to Lusitania's surface the thousands of frozen microbes and plant and animal species that had to be introduced in order to establish a self-regulating gaialogy and keep the planetary systems in order. It was a job that had been done on many other worlds, but it was being made trickier by the need not to compete too intensely with the local species that the pequeninos depended on. Jakt was up there, laboring for them all; it was a good reason to be gone, but Valentine still missed him--needed him badly, in fact, what with Ender's new creations causing her such turmoil. Miro was no substitute for her husband, especially because his own new body was such a sharp reminder of what had been done Outside.

  If I went out there, what would I create? I doubt that I'd bring back a person, because I fear there is no one soul at the root of my psyche. Not even my own, I fear. What else has my passionate study of history been, except a search for humanity? Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves.

  "The line's almost done," whispered Miro.

  So the service would begin soon.

  "Ready to have your sins purged?" whispered Valentine.

  "As the Bishop explained, he'll purge only the sins of this new body. I still have to confess and do penance for the sins I had left over from the old one. Not many carnal sins were possible, of course, but there's plenty of envy, spite, malice, and self-pity. What I'm trying to decide is whether I also have a suicide to confess. When my old body crumbled into nothing, it was answering the wish of my heart."

  "You should never have got your voice back," said Valentine. "You babble now just to hear yourself talk so prettily."

  He smiled and patted her arm.

  The Bishop began the service with prayer, giving thanks to God for all that had been accomplished in recent months. Conspicuous by omission was the creation of Lusitania's two newest citizens, though Miro's healing was definitely laid at God's door. He called Miro forward and baptized him almost at once, and then, because this was not a mass, the Bishop proceeded immediately to his homily.

  "God's mercy has an infinite reach," said the Bishop. "We can only hope he will choose to reach farther than we deserve, to forgive us for our terrible sins as individuals and as a people. We can only hope that, like Nineveh, which turned away destruction through repentance, we can convince our Lord to spare us from the fleet that he has permitted to come against us to punish us."

  Miro whispered, softly, so that only she could hear, "Didn't he send the fleet before the burning of the forest?"

  "Maybe the Lord counts only the arrival time, not the departure," Valentine suggested. At once, though, she regretted her flippancy. What was happening here today was a solemn thing; even if she wasn't a deep believer in Catholic doctrine, she knew that it was a holy thing when a community accepted responsibility for the evil it committed and did true penance for it.

  The Bishop spoke of those who had died in holiness--Os Venerados, who first saved humanity from the descolada plague; Father Estevao, whose body was buried under the floor of the chapel and who suffered martyrdom in the cause of defending truth against heresy; Planter, who died to prove that his people's soul was from God, and not from a virus; and the pequeninos who had died as innocent victims of slaughter. "All of these may be saints someday, for this is a time like the early days of Christianity, when great deeds and great holiness were much more needed, and therefore much more often achieved. This chapel is a shrine to all those who have loved their God with all their heart, might, mind and strength, and who have loved their neighbor as themself. Let all who enter here do it with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, so that holiness may also touch them."

  The homily wasn't long, because there were many more identical services scheduled for that day--the people were coming to the chapel in shifts, since it was far too small to accommodate the whole human population of Lusitania all at once. Soon enough they were done, and Valentine got up to leave. She would have followed close behind Plikt and Val, except that Miro caught at her arm.

  "Jane just told me," he said. "I thought you'd want to know."

  "What?"

  "She just tested the starship, without Ender in it."

  "How could she do that?" asked Valentine.

  "Peter," he said. "She took him Outside and back again. He can contain her aiua, if that's how this process is actually working."

  She gave voice to her immediate fear. "Did he--"

  "Create anything? No." Miro grinned--but with a hint of the twisted wryness that Valentine had thought was a product of his affliction. "He claims it's because his mind is much clearer and healthier than Andrew's."

  "Maybe so," said Valentine.

  "I say it's because none of the philotes out there were willing to be part of his pattern. Too twisted."

  Valentine laughed a little.

  The Bishop came up to them then. Since they were among the last to leave, they were alone at the front of the chapel.

  "Thank you for accepting a new baptism," said the Bishop.

  Miro bowed his head. "Not many men have a chance to be purified so far along in their sins," he said.

  "And Valentine, I'm sorry I couldn't receive your--namesake."

  "Don't worry, Bishop Peregrino. I understand. I may even agree with you."

  The Bishop shook his head. "It would be better if they could just--"

  "Leave?" offered Miro. "You get your wish. Peter will soon be gone--Jane can pilot a ship with him aboard. No doubt the same thing will be possible with young Val."

  "No," said Valentine. "She can't go. She's too--"

  "Young?" asked Miro. He seemed amused. "They were both born knowing everything that Ender knows. You can hardly call the girl a child, despite her body."

  "If they had been born," said the Bishop, "They wouldn't have to leave."

  "They're not leaving because of your wish," said Miro. "They're leaving because Peter's going to deliver Ela's new virus to Path, and young Val's ship is going to go off in search of planets where pequeninos and hive queens can be established."

  "You can't send her on such a mission," said Valentine.

  "I won't send her," said Miro. "I'll take her. Or rather, she'll take me. I want to go. Whatever risks there are, I'll take them. She'll be safe, Valentine."

  Valentine still shook her head, but she knew already that in the end she would be defeated. Young Val herself would insist on going, however young she might seem, because if she didn't go, only one starship could travel; and if Peter was the one doing the traveling, there was no telling whether the ship would be used for any good purpose. In the long run, Valentine herself would bow to the necessity. Whatever danger young Val might be exposed to, it was no worse than the risks already taken by others. Like Planter. Like Fat
her Estevao. Like Glass.

  The pequeninos gathered at Planter's tree. It would have been Glass's tree, since he was the first to pass into the third life with the recolada, but almost his first words, once they were able to talk with him, were an adamant rejection of the idea of introducing the viricide and recolada into the world beside his tree. This occasion belonged to Planter, he declared, and the brothers and wives ultimately agreed with him.

  So it was that Ender leaned against his friend Human, whom he had planted in order to help him into the third life so many years before. It would have been a moment of complete joy to Ender, the liberation of the pequeninos from the descolada--except that he had Peter with him through it all.

  "Weakness celebrates weakness," said Peter. "Planter failed, and here they are honoring him, while Glass succeeded, and there he stands, alone out there in the experimental field. And the stupidest thing is that it can't possibly mean anything to Planter, since his aiua isn't even here."

  "It may not mean anything to Planter," said Ender--a point he wasn't altogether sure of, anyway--"but it means something to the people here."

  "Yes," he said. "It means they're weak."

  "Jane says she took you Outside."

  "An easy trip," said Peter. "Next time, though, Lusitania won't be my destination."

  "She says you plan to take Ela's virus to Path."

  "My first stop," Peter said. "But I won't be coming back here. Count on that, old boy."

  "We need the ship."

  "You've got that sweet little slip of a girl," said Peter, "and the bugger bitch can pop out starships for you by the dozen, if only you could spawn enough creatures like me and Valzinha to pilot them."