Ender ignored his mocking tone. "On the other hand, if they're trying to destroy us, and we can't find a way to communicate with them, then they're varelse— sentient aliens, but implacably hostile and dangerous. Varelse are aliens we can't live with. Varelse are aliens with whom we are naturally and permanently engaged in a war to the death, and at that time our only moral choice is to do all that's necessary to win."
"Right," said Grego.
Despite her brother's triumphant tone, Quara had listened to Ender's words, weighed them, and now gave a tentative nod. "As long as we don't start from the assumption that they're varelse," said Quara.
"And even then, maybe there's a middle way," said Ender. "Maybe Ela can find a way to replace all the descolada viruses without destroying this memory-and-language thing."
"No!" said Quara, once again fervent. "You can't— you don't even have the right to leave them their memories and take away their ability to adapt. That would be like them giving all of us frontal lobotomies. If it's war, then it's war. Kill them, but don't leave them their memories while stealing their will."
"It doesn't matter," said Ela. "It can't be done. As it is, I think I've set myself an impossible task. Operating on the descolada isn't easy. Not like examining and operating on an animal. How do I anaesthetise the molecule so that it doesn't heal itself while I'm halfway through the amputation? Maybe the descolada isn't much on physics, but it's a hell of a lot better than I am at molecular surgery."
"So far," said Ender.
"So far we don't know anything," said Grego. "Except that the descolada is trying as hard as it can to kill us all, while we're still trying to figure out whether we ought to fight back. I'll sit tight for a while longer, but not forever. "
"What about the piggies?" asked Quara. "Don't they have a right to vote on whether we transform the molecule that not only allows them to reproduce, but probably created them as a sentient species in the first place?"
"This thing is trying to kill us," said Ender. "As long as the solution Ela comes up with can wipe out the virus without interfering with the reproductive cycle of the piggies, then I don't think they have any right to object."
"Maybe they'd feel different about that."
"Then maybe they'd better not find out what we're doing," said Grego.
"We don't tell people— human or pequenino— about the research we're doing here," said Novinha sharply. "It could cause terrible misunderstandings that could lead to violence and death."
"So we humans are the judges of all other creatures," said Quara.
"No, Quara. We scientists are gathering information," said Novinha.
"Until we've gathered enough, nobody can judge anything. So the secrecy rule goes for everybody here. Quara and Grego both. You tell no one until I say so, and I won't say so until we know more."
"Until you say so," asked Grego impudently, "or until the Speaker for the Dead says so?"
"I'm the head xenobiologist," said Novinha. "The decision on when we know enough is mine alone. Is that understood?"
She waited for everyone there to assent. They all did.
Novinha stood up. The meeting was over. Quara and Grego left almost immediately; Novinha gave Ender a kiss on the cheek and then ushered him and Ela out of her office.
Ender lingered in the lab to talk to Ela. "Is there a way to spread your replacement virus throughout the entire population of every native species on Lusitania?"
"I don't know," said Ela. "That's less of a problem than how to get it to every cell of an individual organism fast enough that the descolada can't adapt or escape. I'll have to create some kind of carrier virus, and I'll probably have to model it partly on the descolada itself— the descolada is the only parasite I've seen that invades a host as quickly and thoroughly as I need the carrier virus to do it. Ironic— I'll learn how to replace the descolada by stealing techniques from the virus itself."
"It's not ironic," said Ender, "it's the way the world works. Someone once told me that the only teacher who's worth anything to you is your enemy."
"Then Quara and Grego must be giving each other advanced degrees," said Ela.
"Their argument is healthy," said Ender. "It forces us to weigh every aspect of what we're doing."
"It'll stop being healthy if one of them decides to bring it up outside the family," said Ela.
"This family doesn't tell its business to strangers," said Ender. "I of all people should know that."
"On the contrary, Ender. You of all people should know how eager we are to talk to a stranger— when we think our need is great enough to justify it."
Ender had to admit that she was right. Getting Quara and Grego, Miro and Quim and Olhado to trust him enough to speak to him, that had been hard when Ender first came to Lusitania. But Ela had spoken to him from the start, and so had all of Novinha's other children. So, in the end, had Novinha herself. The family was intensely loyal, but they were also strong-willed and opinionated and there wasn't a one of them who didn't trust his own judgement above anyone else's. Grego or Quara, either one of them, might well decide that telling somebody else was in the best interests of Lusitania or humanity or science, and there would go the rule of secrecy.
Just the way the rule of non-interference with the piggies had been broken before Ender ever got here.
How nice, thought Ender. One more possible source of disaster that is completely out of my power to control.
Leaving the lab, Ender wished, as he had many times before, that Valentine were here. She was the one who was good at sorting out ethical dilemmas. She'd be here soon— but soon enough? Ender understood and mostly agreed with the viewpoints put forward by Quara and Grego both. What stung most was the need for such secrecy that Ender couldn't even speak to the pequeninos, not even Human himself, about a decision that would affect them as much as it would affect any colonist from Earth. And yet Novinha was right. To bring the matter out into the open now, before they even knew what was possible— that would lead to confusion at best, anarchy and bloodshed at worst. The pequeninos were peaceful now— but the species' history was bloody with war.
As Ender emerged from the gate, heading back toward the experimental fields, he saw Quara standing beside the father tree Human, sticks in her hand, engaged in conversation. She hadn't actually beat on his trunk, or Ender would have heard it. So she must want privacy. That was all right. Ender would take a longer way around, so he wouldn't come close enough to overhear.
But when she saw Ender looking her way, Quara immediately ended her conversation with Human and took off at a brisk walk down the path toward the gate Of course this led her right by Ender.
"Telling secrets?" asked Ender. He had meant his remark as mere banter. Only when the words came out of his mouth and Quara got such a furtive look on her face did Ender realise exactly what secret it might have been that Quara had been telling. And her words confirmed his suspicion.
"Mother's idea of fairness isn't always mine," said Quara. "Neither is yours, for that matter."
He had known she might do this, but it never occurred to him she would do it so quickly after promising not to. "But is fairness always the most important consideration?" asked Ender.
"It is to me," said Quara.
She tried to turn away and go on through the gate, but Ender caught her arm.
"Let go of me."
"Telling Human is one thing," said Ender. "He's very wise. But don't tell anybody else. Some of the pequeninos, some of the males, they can be pretty aggressive if they think they have reason."
"They're not just males," said Quara. "They call themselves husbands. Maybe we should call them men." She smiled at Ender in triumph. "You're not half so open-minded as you like to think." Then she brushed past him and went on through the gate into Milagre.
Ender walked up to Human and stood before him. "What did she tell you, Human? Did she tell you that I'll die before I let anyone wipe out the descolada, if doing so would hurt you and your people?"
Still, he had to say something to help counteract the sort of thing he knew Quara would have said. "Human, we're doing all we can to save human beings and pequeninos, both. We'll even try to save the descolada virus, if we can. Ela and Novinha are very good at what they do. So are Grego and Quara, for that matter. But for now, please trust us and say nothing to anyone else. Please. If humans and pequeninos come to understand the danger we're in before we're ready to take steps to contain it, the results would be violent and terrible."
There was nothing else to say. Ender went back to the experimental fields. Before nightfall, he and Planter completed the measurements, then burned and flashed the entire field. No large molecules survived inside the disruption barrier. They had done all they could to ensure that whatever the descolada might have learned from this field was forgotten.
What they could never do was get rid of the viruses they carried within their own cells, human and pequenino alike. What if Quara was right? What if the descolada inside the barrier, before it died, managed to "tell" the viruses that Planter and Ender carried inside them about what had been learned from this new strain of potato? About the defences that Ela and Novinha had tried to build into it? About the ways this virus had found to defeat their tactics?
If the descolada were truly intelligent, with a language to spread information and pass behaviours from one individual to many others, then how could Ender— how could any of them— hope to be victorious in the end? In the long run, it might well be that the descolada was the most adaptable species, the one most capable of subduing worlds and eliminating rivals, stronger than humans or piggies or buggers or any other living creatures on any settled worlds. That was the thought that Ender took to bed with him that night, the thought that preoccupied him even as he made love with Novinha, so that she felt the need to comfort him as if he, not she, were the one burdened with the cares of a world. He tried to apologise but soon realised the futility of it. Why add to her worries by telling of his own?
***
Human listened to Ender's words, but he couldn't agree with what Ender asked of him. Silence? Not when the humans were creating new viruses that might well transform the life cycle of the pequeninos. Oh, Human wouldn't tell the immature males and females. But he could— and would— tell all the other father trees throughout Lusitania. They had a right to know what was going on, and then decide together what, if anything, to do.
Before nightfall, every father tree in every wood knew all that Human knew: of the human plans, and of his estimation of how much they could be trusted. Most agreed with him— we'll let the human beings proceed for now. But in the meantime we'll watch carefully, and prepare for a time that might come, even though we hope it won't, when humans and pequeninos go to war against each other. We cannot fight and hope to win— but maybe, before they slaughter us, we can find a way for some of us to flee.
So, before dawn, they had made plans and arrangements with the hive queen, the only non-human source of high technology on Lusitania. By the next nightfall, the work of building a starship to leave Lusitania had already begun.
Chapter 7 — SECRET MAID
Is it true that in the old days, when you sent out your starships to settle many worlds, you could always talk to each other as if you stood in the same forest?
We assume that it will be the same for you. When the new father trees have grown, they'll be present with you. The philotic connections are unaffected by distance.
But will we be connected? We'll be sending no trees on the voyage. Only brothers, a few wives, and a hundred little mothers to give birth to new generations. The voyage will last decades at least. As soon as they arrive, the best of the brothers will be sent on to the third life, but it will take at least a year before the first of the father trees grows old enough to sire young ones. How will the first father on that new world know how to speak to us? How can we greet him, when we don't know where he is?
Sweat ran down Qing-jao's face. Bent over as she was, the drops trickled along her cheeks, under her eyes, and down to the tip of her nose. From there her sweat dropped into the muddy water of the rice paddy, or onto the new rice plants that rose only slightly above the water's surface.
"Why don't you wipe your face, holy one?"
Qing-jao looked up to see who was near enough to speak to her. Usually the others on her righteous labour crew did not work close by— it made them too nervous, being with one of the god spoken.
It was a girl, younger than Qing-jao, perhaps fourteen, boyish in the body, with her hair cropped very short. She was looking at Qing-jao with frank curiosity. There was an openness about her, an utter lack of shyness, that Qing-jao found strange and a little displeasing. Her first thought was to ignore the girl.
But to ignore her would be arrogant; it would be the same as saying, Because I am god spoken, I do not need to answer when I am spoken to. No one would ever suppose that the reason she didn't answer was because she was so preoccupied with the impossible task she had been given by the great Han Fei-tzu that it was almost painful to think of anything else.
So she answered— but with a question. "Why should I wipe my face?"
"Doesn't it tickle? The sweat, dripping down? Doesn't it get in your eyes and sting?"
Qing-jao lowered her face to her work for a few moments, and this time deliberately noticed how it felt. It did tickle, and the sweat in her eyes did sting. In fact it was quite uncomfortable and annoying. Carefully, Qing-jao unbent herself to stand straight— and now she noticed the pain of it, the way her back protested against the change of posture. "Yes," she said to the girl. "It tickles and stings."
"Then wipe it," the girl said. "With your sleeve."
Qing-jao looked at her sleeve. It was already soaked with the sweat of her arms. "Does wiping help?" she asked.
Now it was the girl's turn to discover something she hadn't thought about. For a moment she looked thoughtful; then she wiped her forehead with her sleeve.
She grinned. "No, holy one. It doesn't help a bit."
Qing-jao nodded gravely and bent down again to her work. Only now the tickling of the sweat, the stinging of her eyes, the pain in her back, it all bothered her very much. Her discomfort took her mind off her thoughts, instead of the other way around. This girl, whoever she was, had just added to her misery by pointing it out— and yet, ironically, by making Qing-jao aware of the misery of her body, she had freed her from the hammering of the questions in her mind.
Qing-jao began to laugh.
"Are you laughing at me, holy one?" asked the girl.
"I'm thanking you in my own way," said Qing-jao. "You've lifted a great burden from my heart, even if only for a moment."
"You're laughing at me for telling you to wipe your forehead even though it doesn't help."
"I say that is not why I'm laughing," said Qing-jao. She stood again and looked the girl in the eye. "I don't lie."
The girl looked abashed— but not half so much as she should have. When the god spoken used the tone of voice Qing-jao had just used, others immediately bowed and showed respect. But this girl only listened, sized up Qing-jao's words, and then nodded.
There was only one conclusion Qing-jao could reach. "Are you also god spoken?" she asked.
The girl's eyes went wide. "Me?" she said. "My parents are both very low people. My father spreads manure in the fields and my mother was
hes up in a restaurant."
Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 3 - Xenocide Page 14
