Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 3 - Xenocide

by Orson Scott Card

  Quim was safe. They might not heed him, but they wouldn't harm him.

  Yet when he arrived at Warmaker's forest, they wasted no time listening to him. The brothers seized him, threw him to the ground, and dragged him to Warmaker.

  "This wasn't necessary," he said. "I was coming here anyway."

  A brother was beating on the tree with sticks. Quim listened to the changing music as Warmaker altered the hollows within himself, shaping the sound into words.

  "You came because I commanded."

  "You commanded. I came. If you want to think you caused my coming, so be it. But God's commands are the only ones I obey willingly."

  "You're here to hear the will of God," said Warmaker.

  "I'm here to speak the will of God," said Quim. "The descolada is a virus, created by God in order to make the pequeninos into worthy children. But the Holy Ghost has no incarnation. The Holy Ghost is perpetually spirit, so he can dwell in our hearts."

  "The descolada dwells in our hearts, and gives us life. When he dwells in your heart, what does he give you?"

  "One God. One faith. One baptism. God doesn't preach one thing to humans and another to pequeninos."

  "We are not 'little ones.' You will see who is mighty and who is small."

  They forced him to stand with his back pressed against Warmaker's trunk. He felt the bark shifting behind him. They pushed on him. Many small hands, many snouts breathing on him. In all these years, he had never thought of such hands, such faces as belonging to enemies. And even now, Quim realised with relief that he didn't think of them as his own enemies. They were the enemies of God, and he pitied them. It was a great discovery for him, that even when he was being pushed into the belly of a murderous father tree, he had no shred of fear or hatred in him.

  I really don't fear death. I never knew that.

  The brothers still beat on the outside of the tree with sticks. Warmaker reshaped the sound into the words of Father Tongue, but now Quim was inside the sound, inside the words.

  "You think I'm going to break the oath," said Warmaker.

  "It crossed my mind," said Quim. He was now fully pinned inside the tree, even though it remained open in front of him from head to toe. He could see, he could breathe easily— his confinement wasn't even claustrophobic. But the wood had formed so smoothly around him that he couldn't move an arm or a leg, couldn't begin to turn sideways to slide out of the gap before him. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to salvation.

  "We'll test," said Warmaker. It was harder to understand his words, now that Quim was hearing them from the inside. Harder to think. "Let God judge between you and me. We'll give you all you want to drink— the water from our stream. But of food you'll have none."

  "Starving me is—"

  "Starving? We have your food. We'll feed you again in ten days. If the Holy Ghost allows you to live for ten days, we'll feed you and set you free. We'll be believers in your doctrine then. We'll confess that we were wrong."

  "The virus will kill me before then."

  "The Holy Ghost will judge you and decide if you're worthy."

  "There is a test going on here," said Quim, "but not the one you think."

  "Oh?"

  "It's the test of the Last Judgement. You stand before Christ, and he says to those on his right hand, 'I was a stranger, and you took me in. Hungry, and you fed me. Enter into the joy of the Lord.' Then he says to those on his left hand, 'I was hungry, and you gave me nothing. I was a stranger, and you mistreated me.' And they all say to him, 'Lord, when did we do these things to you?' and he answers, 'If you did it to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.' All you brothers, gathered here— I am the least of your brothers. You will answer to Christ for what you do to me here."

  "Foolish man," said Warmaker. "We are doing nothing to you but holding you still. What happens to you is whatever God desires. Didn't Christ say, 'I do nothing but what I've seen the Father do'? Didn't Christ say, 'I am the way. Come follow me'? Well, we are letting you do what Christ did. He went without bread for forty days in the wilderness. We give you a chance to be one-fourth as holy. If God wants us to believe in your doctrine, he'll send angels to feed you. He'll turn stones into bread."

  "You're making a mistake," said Quim.

  "You made the mistake by coming here."

  "I mean that you're making a doctrinal mistake. You've got the lines down right— fasting in the wilderness, stones into bread, all of it. But didn't you think it might be a little too self-revelatory for you to give yourself Satan's part?"

  That was when Warmaker flew into a rage, speaking so rapidly that the movements within the wood began to twist and press on Quim until he was afraid he would be torn to bits within the tree.

  "You are Satan! Trying to get us to believe your lies long enough for you humans to figure out a way to kill the descolada and keep all the brothers from the third life forever! Do you think we don't see through you? We know all your plans, all of them! You have no secrets! And God keeps no secrets from us either! We're the ones who were given the third life, not you! If God loved you, he wouldn't make you bury your dead in the ground and then let nothing but worms come out of you!"

  The brothers sat around the opening in the trunk, enthralled by the argument.

  It went on for six days, doctrinal arguments worthy of any of the fathers of the church in any age. Not since the council at Nicaea were such momentous issues considered, weighed.

  The arguments were passed from brother to brother, from tree to tree, from forest to forest. Accounts of the dialogue between Warmaker and Father Estevao always reached Rooter and Human within a day. But the information wasn't complete. It wasn't until the fourth day that they realised that Quim was being held prisoner, without any of the food containing the descolada inhibitor.

  Then an expedition was mounted at once, Ender and Ouanda, Jakt and Lars and Varsam; Mayor Kovano sent Ender and Ouanda because they were widely known and respected among the piggies, and Jakt and his son and son-in-law because they weren't native-born Lusitanians. Kovano didn't dare to send any of the native-born colonists— if word of this got out, there was no telling what would happen. The five of them took the fastest car and followed the directions Rooter gave them. It was a three-day trip.

  On the sixth day the dialogue ended, because the descolada had so thoroughly invaded Quim's body that he had no strength to speak, and was often too fevered and delirious to say anything intelligible when he did speak.

  On the seventh day, he looked through the gap, upward, above the heads of the brothers who were still there, still watching. "I see the Savior sitting on the right hand of God," he whispered. Then he smiled.

  An hour later he was dead. Warmaker felt it, and announced it triumphantly to the brothers. "The Holy Ghost has judged, and Father Estevao has been rejected!"

  Some of the brothers rejoiced. But not as many as Warmaker had expected.

  ***

  At dusk, Ender's party arrived. There was no question now of the piggies capturing and testing them— they were too many, and the brothers were not all of one mind now anyway. Soon they stood before the split trunk of Warmaker and saw the haggard, disease-ravaged face of Father Estevao, barely visible in the shadows.

  "Open up and let my son come out to me," said Ender.

  The gap in the tree widened. Ender reached in and pulled out the body of Father Estevao. He was so light inside his robes that Ender thought for a moment he must be bearing some of his own weight, must be walking. But he wasn't walking. Ender laid him on the ground before the tree.

  A brother beat a rhythm on Warmaker's trunk.

  "He must belong to you indeed, Speaker for the Dead, because he is dead. The Holy Ghost has burned him up in the second baptism."

  "You broke the oath," said Ender. "You betrayed the word of the father trees."

  "No one harmed a hair of his head," said Warmaker.

  "Do you think anyone is deceived by your lies?" said Ender. "Anyone
knows that to withhold medicine from a dying man is an act of violence as surely as if you stabbed him in the heart. There is his medicine. At any time you could have given it to him."

  "It was Warmaker," said one of the brothers standing there.

  Ender turned to the brothers. "You helped Warmaker. Don't think you can give the blame to him alone. May none of you ever pass into the third life. And as for you, Warmaker, may no mother ever crawl on your bark."

  "No human can decide things like that," said Warmaker.

  "You decided it yourself, when you thought you could commit murder in order to win your argument," said Ender. "And you brothers, you decided it when you didn't stop him."

  "You're not our judge!" cried one of the brothers.

  "Yes I am," said Ender. "And so is every other inhabitant of Lusitania, human and father tree, brother and wife."

  They carried Quim's body to the car, and Jakt, Ouanda, and Ender rode with him. Lars and Varsam took the car that Quim had used. Ender took a few minutes to tell Jane a message to give to Miro back in the colony. There was no reason Novinha should wait three days to hear that her son had died at the hands of the pequeninos. And she wouldn't want to hear it from Ender's mouth, that was certain. Whether Ender would have a wife when he returned to the colony was beyond his ability to guess. The only certain thing was that Novinha would not have her son Estevao.

  "Will you speak for him?" asked Jakt, as the car skimmed over the capirn. He had heard Ender speak for the dead once on Trondheim.

  "No," said Ender. "I don't think so."

  "Because he's a priest?" asked Jakt.

  "I've spoken for priests before," said Ender. "No, I won't speak for Quim because there's no reason to. Quim was always exactly what he seemed to be, and he died exactly as he would have have chosen— serving God and preaching to the little ones. I have nothing to add to his story. He completed it himself."

  Chapter 11 — THE JADE OF MASTER HO

  So now the killing starts.

  Amusing that your people started it, not the humans.

  Your people started it, too, when you had your wars with the humans.

  We started it, but they ended it.

  How do they manage it, these humans— beginning each time so innocently, yet always ending up with the most blood on their hands?

  Wang-mu watched the words and numbers moving through the display above her mistress's terminal. Qing-jao was asleep, breathing softly on her mat not far away. Wang-mu had also slept for a time, but something had wakened her. A cry, not far off; a cry of pain perhaps. It had been part of Wang-mu's dream, but when she awoke she heard the last of the sound in the air. It was not Qing-jao's voice. A man perhaps, though the sound was high. A wailing sound. It made Wang-mu think of death.

  But she did not get up and investigate. It was not her place to do that; her place was with her mistress at all times, unless her mistress sent her away. If Qing-jao needed to hear the news of what had happened to cause that cry, another servant would come and waken Wang-mu, who would then waken her mistress— for once a woman had a secret maid, and until she had a husband, only the hands of the secret maid could touch her without invitation.

  So Wang-mu lay awake, waiting to see if someone came to tell Qing-jao why a man had wailed in such anguish, near enough to be heard in this room at the back of the house of Han Fei-tzu. While she waited, her eyes were drawn to the moving display as the computer performed the searches Qing-jao had programmed.

  The display stopped moving. Was there a problem? Wang-mu rose up to lean on one arm; it brought her close enough to read the most recent words of the display. The search was completed. And this time the report was not one of the curt messages of failure: NOT FOUND. NO INFORMATION. NO CONCLUSION. This time the message was a report.

  Wang-mu got up and stepped to the terminal. She did as Qing-jao had taught her, pressing the key that logged all current information so the computer would guard it no matter what happened. Then she went to Qing-jao and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  Qing-jao came awake almost at once; she slept alertly. "The search has found something," said Wang-mu.

  Qing-jao shed her sleep as easily as she might shrug off a loose jacket. In a moment she was at the terminal taking in the words there.

  "I've found Demosthenes," she said.

  "Where is he?" asked Wang-mu, breathless. The great Demosthenes— no, the terrible Demosthenes. My mistress wishes me to think of him as an enemy. But the Demosthenes, in any case, the one whose words had stirred her so when she heard her father reading them aloud. "As long as one being gets others to bow to him because he has the power to destroy them and all they have and all they love, then all of us must be afraid together." Wang-mu had overheard those words almost in her infancy— she was only three years old— but she remembered them because they had made such a picture in her mind. When her father read those words, she had remembered a scene: her mother spoke and Father grew angry. He didn't strike her, but he did tense his shoulder and his arm jerked a bit, as if his body had meant to strike and he had only with difficulty contained it. And when he did that, though no violent act was committed, Wang-mu's mother bowed her head and murmured something, and the tension eased. Wang-mu knew that she had seen what Demosthenes described: Mother had bowed to Father because he had the power to hurt her. And Wang-mu had been afraid, both at the time and again when she remembered; so as she heard the words of Demosthenes she knew that they were true, and marvelled that her father could say those words and even agree with them and not realise that he had acted them out himself. That was why Wang-mu had always listened with great interest to all the words of the great— the terrible— Demosthenes, because great or terrible, she knew that he told the truth.

  "Not he," said Qing-jao. "Demosthenes is a woman."

  The idea took Wang-mu's breath away. So! A woman all along. No wonder I heard such sympathy in Demosthenes; she is a woman, and knows what it is to be ruled by others every waking moment. She is a woman, and so she dreams of freedom, of an hour in which there is no duty waiting to be done. No wonder there is revolution burning in her words, and yet they remain always words and never violence. But why doesn't Qing-jao see this? Why has Qing-jao decided we must both hate Demosthenes?

  "A woman named Valentine," said Qing-jao; and then, with awe in her voice, "Valentine Wiggin, born on Earth more than three— more than three thousand years ago."

  "Is she a god, to live so long?"

  "Journeys. She travels from world to world, never staying anywhere more than a few months. Long enough to write a book. All the great histories under the name Demosthenes were written by that same woman, and yet nobody knows it. How can she not be famous?"

  "She must want to hide," said Wang-mu, understanding very well why a woman might want to hide behind a man's name. I'd do it too, if I could, so that I could also journey from world to world and see a thousand places and live ten thousand years.

  "Subjectively she's only in her fifties. Still young. She stayed on one world for many years, married and had children. But now she's gone again. To—" Qing-jao gasped.

  "Where?" asked Wang-mu.