Finally things were at a point where Quim felt it would be beneficial for him to speak. "All of this discussion is interesting," said Quim. "It would be a wonderful thing if my mission to the heretics could be the means of persuading the pequeninos to refrain from causing harm to humankind. But even if we all came to agree that my mission has no chance of succeeding in that goal, I would still go. Even if we decided that there was a serious risk that my mission might make things worse, I'd go."
"Nice to know you plan to be cooperative," said Kovano acidly.
"I plan to cooperate with God and the church," said Quim. "My mission to the heretics is not to save humankind from the descolada or even to try to keep the peace between humans and pequeninos here on Lusitania. My mission to the heretics is in order to try to bring them back to faith in Christ and unity with the church. I am going to save their souls."
"Well of course," said Kovano. "Of course that's the reason you want to go."
"And it's the reason why I will go, and the only standard I'll use to determine whether or not my mission succeeds."
Kovano looked helplessly at Bishop Peregrino. "You said that Father Estevao was cooperative."
"I said he was perfectly obedient to God and the church," said the Bishop.
"I took that to mean that you could persuade him to wait on this mission until we knew more."
"I could indeed persuade him. Or I could simply forbid him to go," said Bishop Peregrino.
"Then do it," said Mother.
"I will not," said the Bishop.
"I thought you cared about the good of this colony," said Mayor Kovano.
"I care about the good of all the Christians placed under my charge," said Bishop Peregrino. "Until thirty years ago, that meant I cared only for the human beings of Lusitania. Now, however, I am equally responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Christian pequeninos of this planet. I send Father Estevao forth on his mission exactly as a missionary named Patrick was once sent to the island of Eire. He was extraordinarily successful, converting kings and nations. Unfortunately, the Irish church didn't always act the way the Pope might have wished. There was a great deal of— let us say it was controversy between them. Superficially it concerned the date of Easter, but at heart it was over the issue of obedience to the Pope. It even came to bloodshed now and then. But never for a moment did anyone imagine it would have been better if St. Patrick had never gone to Eire. Never did anyone suggest that it would be better if the Irish had remained pagan."
Grego stood up. "We've found the philote, the true indivisible atom. We've conquered the stars. We send messages faster than the speed of light. And yet we still live in the Dark Ages." He started for the door.
"Walk out that door before I tell you to," said Mayor Kovano, "and you won't see the sun for a year."
Grego walked to the door, but instead of going through it, he leaned against it and grinned sardonically. "You see how obedient I am."
"I won't keep you long," said Kovano. "Bishop Peregrino and Father Estevao speak as if they could make their decision independent of the rest of us, but of course they know they can't. If I decided that Father Estevao's mission to the piggies shouldn't happen, it wouldn't. Let us all be clear about that. I'm not afraid to put the Bishop of Lusitania under arrest, if the welfare of Lusitania requires it; and as for this missionary priest, you will only go out among the pequeninos when you have my consent."
"I have no doubt that you can interfere with God's work on Lusitania," said Bishop Peregrino icily. "You must have no doubt that I can send you to hell for doing it."
"I know you can," said Kovano. "I wouldn't be the first political leader to end up in hell at the end of a contest with the church. Fortunately, this time it won't come to that. I've listened to all of you and reached my decision. Waiting for the new anti-virus is too risky. And even if I knew, absolutely, that the anti-virus would be ready and usable in six weeks, I'd still allow this mission. Our best chance right now of salvaging something from this mess is Father Estevao's mission. Andrew tells me that the pequeninos have great respect and affection for this man— even the unbelievers. If he can persuade the pequenino heretics to drop their plan to annihilate humanity in the name of their religion, that will remove one heavy burden from us."
Quim nodded gravely. Mayor Kovano was a man of great wisdom. It was good that they wouldn't have to struggle against each other, at least for now.
"In the meantime, I expect the xenobiologists to continue to work on the anti-virus with all possible vigour. We'll decide, when the virus exists, whether or not to use it."
"We'll use it," said Grego.
"Only if I'm dead," said Quara.
"I appreciate your willingness to wait until we know more before you commit yourself to any course of action," said Kovano. "Which brings us to you, Grego Ribeira. Andrew Wiggin assures me that there is reason to believe that faster-than-light travel might be possible."
Grego looked coldly at the Speaker for the Dead. "And where did you study physics, Senhor Falante?"
"I hope to study it from you," said Wiggin. "Until you've heard my evidence, I hardly know whether there's any reason to hope for such a breakthrough."
Quim smiled to see how easily Andrew turned away the quarrel that Grego wanted to pick. Grego was no fool. He knew he was being handled. But Wiggin hadn't left him any reasonable grounds for showing his disgruntlement. It was one of the most infuriating skills of the Speaker for the Dead.
"If there were a way to travel between worlds at ansible speeds," said Kovano, "we would need only one such ship to transport all the humans of Lusitania to another world. It's a remote chance—"
"A foolish dream," said Grego.
"But we'll pursue it. We'll study it, won't we?" said Kovano. "Or we'll find ourselves working in the foundry."
"I'm not afraid to work with my hands," said Grego. "So don't think you can terrify me into putting my mind at your service."
"I stand rebuked," said Kovano. "It's your cooperation that I want, Grego. But if I can't have that, then I'll settle for your obedience."
Apparently Quara was feeling left out. She arose as Grego had a moment before. "So you can sit here and contemplate destroying a sentient species without even thinking of a way to communicate with them. I hope you all enjoy being mass murderers." Then, like Grego, she made as if to leave.
"Quara," said Kovano.
She waited.
"You will study ways to talk to the descolada. To see if you can communicate with these viruses."
"I know when I'm being tossed a bone," said Quara. "What if I tell you that they're pleading for us not to kill them? You wouldn't believe me anyway."
"On the contrary. I know you're an honest woman, even if you are hopelessly indiscreet," said Kovano. "But I have another reason for wanting you to understand the molecular language of the descolada. You see, Andrew Wiggin has raised a possibility that never occurred to me before. We all know that pequenino sentience dates from the time when the descolada virus first swept across this planet. But what if we've misunderstood cause and effect?"
Mother turned to Andrew, a bitter half-smile on her face. "You think the pequeninos caused the descolada?"
"No," said Andrew. "But what if the pequeninos are the descolada?"
Quara gasped.
Grego laughed. "You are full of clever ideas, aren't you, Wiggin?"
"I don't understand," said Quim.
"I just wondered," said Andrew. "Quara says that the descolada is complex enough that it might contain intelligence. What if descolada viruses are using the bodies of the pequeninos to express their character? What if pequenino intelligence comes entirely from the viruses inside their bodies?"
For the first time, Ouanda, the xenologer, spoke up. "You are as ignorant of xenology as you are of physics, Mr. Wiggin," she said.
"Oh, much more so," said Wiggin. "But it occurred to me that we've never been able to think of any other way that memories and intelligence are pr
eserved as a dying pequenino passes into the third life. The trees don't exactly preserve the brain inside them. But if will and memory are carried by the descolada in the first place, the death of the brain would be almost meaningless in the transmission of personality to the father tree."
"Even if there were a chance of this being true," said Ouanda, "there's no possible experiment we could decently perform to find out."
Andrew Wiggin nodded ruefully. "I know I couldn't think of one. I was hoping you would."
Kovano interrupted again. "Ouanda, we need you to explore this. If you don't believe it, fine— figure out a way to prove it wrong, and you'll have done your job." Kovano stood up, addressed them all. "Do you all understand what I'm asking of you? We face some of the most terrible moral choices that humankind has ever faced. We run the risk of committing xenocide, or allowing it to be committed if we do nothing. Every known or suspected sentient species lives in the shadow of grave risk, and it's here, with us and with us alone, that almost all the decisions lie. Last time anything remotely similar happened, our human predecessors chose to commit xenocide in order, as they supposed, to save themselves. I am asking all of you to help us pursue every avenue, however unlikely, that shows us a glimmer of hope, that might provide us with a tiny shred of light to guide our decisions. Will you help?"
Even Grego and Quara and Ouanda nodded their assent, however reluctantly. For the moment, at least, Kovano had managed to transform all the self-willed squabblers in this room into a cooperative community. How long that would last outside the room was a matter for speculation. Quim decided that the spirit of cooperation would probably last until the next crisis— and maybe that would be long enough.
Only one more confrontation was left. As the meeting broke up and everyone said their good-byes or arranged one-on-one consultations, Mother came to Quim and looked him fiercely in the eye.
"Don't go."
Quim closed his eyes. There was nothing to say to an outrageous statement like that.
"If you love me," she said.
Quim remembered the story from the New Testament, when Jesus' mother and brothers came to visit him, and wanted him to interrupt teaching his disciples in order to receive them.
"These are my mother and my brothers," murmured Quim.
She must have understood the reference, because when he opened his eyes, she was gone.
Not an hour later, Quim was also gone, riding on one of the colony's precious cargo trucks. He needed few supplies, and for a normal journey he would have gone on foot. But the forest he was bound for was so far away, it would have taken him weeks to get there without the car; nor could he have carried food enough. This was still a hostile environment— it grew nothing edible to humans, and even if it did, Quim would still need the food containing the descolada suppressants. Without it he would die of the descolada long before he starved to death.
As the town of Milagre grew small behind him, as he hurtled deeper and deeper into the meaningless open space of the prairie, Quim— Father Estevao— wondered what Mayor Kovano might have decided if he had known that the leader of the heretics was a father tree who had earned the name Warmaker, and that Warmaker was known to have said that the only hope for the pequeninos was for the Holy Ghost— the descolada virus— to destroy all human life on Lusitania.
It wouldn't have mattered. God had called Quim to preach the gospel of Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. Even the most warlike, bloodthirsty, hate-filled people might be touched by the love of God and transformed into Christians. It had happened many times in history. Why not now?
O Father, do a mighty work in this world. Never did your children need miracles more than we do.
***
Novinha wasn't speaking to Ender, and he was afraid. This wasn't petulance— he had never seen Novinha be petulant. To Ender it seemed that her silence was not to punish him, but rather to keep from punishing him; that she was silent because if she spoke, her words would be too cruel ever to be forgiven.
So at first he didn't attempt to cajole words from her. He let her move like a shadow through the house, drifting past him without eye contact; he tried to stay out of her way and didn't go to bed until she was asleep.
It was Quim, obviously. His mission to the heretics— it was easy to understand what she feared, and even though Ender didn't share the same fears, he knew that Quim's journey was not without risk. Novinha was being irrational. How could Ender have stopped Quim? He was the one of Novinha's children over whom Ender had almost no influence; they had come to a rapprochement a few years ago, but it was a declaration of peace between equals, nothing like the ur-fatherhood Ender had established with all the other children. If Novinha had not been able to persuade Quim to give up this mission, what more could Ender have accomplished?
Novinha probably knew this, intellectually. But like all other human beings, she did not always act according to her understanding. She had lost too many of the people that she loved; when she felt one more of them slipping away, her response was visceral, not intellectual. Ender had come into her life as a healer, a protector. It was his job to keep her from being afraid, and now she was afraid, and she was angry at him for having failed her.
However, after two days of silence Ender had had enough. This wasn't a good time for there to be a barrier between him and Novinha. He knew— and so did Novinha— that Valentine's coming might be a difficult time for them. He had so many old habits of communication with Valentine, so many connections with her, so many roads into her soul, that it was hard for him not to fall back into being the person he had been during the years— the millennia— they had spent together. They had experienced three thousand years of history as if seeing it through the same eyes. He had been with Novinha only thirty years. That was actually longer, in subjective time, than he had spent with Valentine, but it was so easy to slip back into his old role as Valentine's brother, as Speaker to her Demosthenes.
Ender had expected Novinha to be jealous when Valentine came, and he was prepared for that. He had warned Valentine that there would probably be few opportunities for them to be together at first. And she, too, understood— Jakt had his worries, too, and both spouses would need reassurance. It was almost silly for Jakt and Novinha to be jealous of the bonds between brother and sister. There had never been the slightest hint of sexuality in Ender's and Valentine's relationship— anyone who understood them at all would laugh at any such notion— but it wasn't sexual unfaithfulness that Novinha and Jakt were wary of. Nor was it the emotional bond they shared— Novinha had no reason to doubt Ender's love and devotion to her, and Jakt could not have asked for more than Valentine offered him, both in passion and in trust.
It was deeper than any of these things. It was the fact that even now, after all these years, as soon as they were together they once again functioned like a single person, helping each other without even having to explain what they were trying to accomplish. Jakt saw it and even to Ender, who had never known him before, it was obvious that the man felt devastated. As if he saw his wife and her brother together and realised: This is what closeness is. This is what it means for two people to be one. He had thought that he and Valentine had been as close as husband and wife can ever be, and perhaps they were. And yet now he had to confront the fact that it was possible for two people to be even closer. To be, in some sense, the same person.
Ender could see this in Jakt, and could admire how well Valentine was doing at reassuring him— and at distancing herself from Ender so that her husband could grow used to the bond between them more gradually, in small doses.
What Ender could not have predicted was the way Novinha had reacted. He had come to know her first as the mother of her children; he had known only the fierce, unreasonable loyalty she had for them. He had supposed that if she felt threatened, she would become possessive and controlling, the way she was with the children. He was not at all prepared for the way she had withdrawn from him. Even before this silent treat
ment about Quim's mission, she had been distant from him. In fact, now that he thought back, he realised that it had already been beginning before Valentine arrived. It was as if Novinha had already started giving in to a new rival before the rival was even there.
Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 3 - Xenocide Page 27
