So what could he do?
Stop them. Get control again. Stand in front of them and beg them to stop. They weren't setting off to burn the distant forest of the mad father tree Warmaker, they were going to slaughter pequeninos that he knew, even if he didn't like them much. He had to stop them, or their blood would be on his hands like sap that couldn't be washed or rubbed away, a stain that would stay with him forever.
So he ran, following the muddy swath of their footprints through the streets, where grass was trampled down into the mire. He ran until his side ached, through the place where they had stopped to break down the fence — where was the disruption field when we needed it? Why didn't someone turn it on? — and on to where already flames were leaping into the sky.
"Stop! Put the fire out!"
"Burn!"
"For Quim and Christ!"
"Die, pigs."
"There's one, getting away!"
"Kill it!"
"Burn it!"
"The trees aren't dry enough— the fire's not taking!"
"Yes it is!"
"Cut down the tree!"
"There's another!"
"Look, the little bastards are attacking!"
"Break them in half!"
"Give me that scythe if you aren't going to use it!"
"Tear the little swine apart!"
"For Quim and Christ!"
Blood sprays in a wide arc and spatters into Grego's face as he lunges forward, trying to stop them. Did I know this one? Did I know this pequenino's voice before it was torn into this cry of agony and death? I can't put this back together again, they've broken him. Her. Broken her. A wife. A never-seen wife. Then we must be near the middle of the forest, and that giant must be the mother tree.
"Here's a killer tree if I ever saw one!"
Around the perimeter of the clearing where the great tree stood, the lesser trees suddenly began to lean, then toppled down, broken off at the trunks. For a moment Grego thought that it was humans cutting them down, but now he realised that no one was near those trees. They were breaking off by themselves, throwing themselves down to their deaths in order to crush the murdering humans under their trunks and branches, trying to save the mother tree.
For a moment it worked. Men screamed in agony; perhaps a dozen or two were crushed or trapped or broken under the falling trees. But then all had fallen that could, and still the mother tree stood there, her trunk undulating strangely, as if some inner peristalsis were at work, swallowing deeply.
"Let it live!" cried Grego. "It's the mother tree! She's innocent!"
But he was drowned out by the cries of the injured and trapped, and by the terror as they realized that the forest could strike back, that this was not all a vengeful game of justice and retribution, but a real war, with both sides dangerous.
"Burn it! Burn it!" The chant was loud enough to drown out the cries of the dying. And now the leaves and branches of the fallen trees were stretched out toward the mother tree; they lighted those branches and they burned readily. A few men came to their senses enough to realise that a fire that burned the mother tree would also burn the men pinned under the fallen brother trees, and they began to try to rescue them. But most of the men were caught up in the passion of their success. To them the mother tree was Warmaker, the killer; to them it was everything alien in this world, the enemy who kept them inside a fence, the landlord who had arbitrarily restricted them to one small plot of land on a world so wide. The mother tree was all oppression and all authority, all strangeness and danger, and they had conquered it.
Grego recoiled from the screaming of the trapped men who watched the fire approaching, from the howls of the men the fire had reached, the triumphant chanting of the men who had done this murder. "For Quim and Christ! For Quim and Christ!" Almost Grego ran away, unable to bear what he could see and smell and hear, the bright orange flames, the smell of roasting man flesh, and the crackling of the living wood ablaze.
But he did not run. Instead he worked beside the others who dashed forward to the very edge of the flame to pry living men out from under the fallen trees. He was singed, and once his clothing caught on fire, but the hot pain of that was nothing, it was almost merciful, because it was the punishment that he deserved. He should die in this place. He might even have done it, might even have plunged himself so deeply into the fire that he could never come out until his crime was purged out of him and all that was left was bone and ash, but there were still broken people to pull out of the fire's reach, still lives to save. Besides, someone beat out the flames on his shoulder and helped him lift the tree so the boy who lay under it could wriggle free and how could he die when he was part of something like this, part of saving this child?
"For Quim and Christ!" the boy whimpered as he crab-crawled out of the way of the flames.
Here he was, the boy whose words had filled the silence and turned the crowd into this direction. You did it, thought Grego. You tore them away from me.
The boy looked up at him and recognised him. "Grego!" he cried, and lunged forward. His arms enfolded Grego around the thighs, his head pressed against Grego's hip. "Uncle Grego!"
It was Olhado's oldest boy, Nimbo.
"We did it!" cried Nimbo. "For Uncle Quim!"
The flames crackled. Grego picked up the boy and carried him, staggering out of the reach of the hottest flames, and then farther out, into the darkness, into a place where it was cool. All the men were driven this way, the flames herding them, the wind driving the flames. Most were like Grego, exhausted, frightened, in pain from the fire or helping someone else.
But some, many perhaps, were still untouched except by the inner fire that Grego and Nimbo had ignited in the square. "Burn them all!" The voices here and there, smaller mobs like tiny eddies in a larger stream, but they now held brands and torches from the fires raging in the forest's heart. "For Quim and Christ! For Libo and Pipo! No trees! No trees!"
Grego staggered onward.
"Set me down," said Nimbo.
And onward.
"I can walk."
But Grego's errand was too urgent. He couldn't stop for Nimbo, and he couldn't let the boy walk, couldn't wait for him and couldn't leave him behind. You don't leave your brother's son behind in a burning forest. So he carried him, and after awhile, exhausted, his legs and arms aching from the exertion, his shoulder a white sun of agony where he had been burned, he emerged from the forest into the grassy space before the old gate, where the path wound down from the wood to join the path from the xenobiology labs.
The mob had gathered here, many of them holding torches, but for some reason they were still a distance away from the two isolated trees that stood watch here: Human and Rooter. Grego pushed his way through the crowd, still holding Nimbo; his heart was racing, and he was filled with fear and anguish and yet a spark of hope, for he knew why the men with torches had stopped. And when he reached the edge of the mob, he saw that he was right.
There were gathered around those last two father trees perhaps two hundred pequenino brothers and wives, small and beleaguered, but with an air of defiance about them. They would fight to the death on this spot, rather than let these last two trees be burned— but burn they would, if the mob decided so, for there was no hope of pequeninos standing in the way of men determined to do murder.
But between the piggies and the men there stood Miro, like a giant compared to the pequeninos. He had no weapon, and yet he had spread his arms as if to protect the pequeninos, or perhaps to hold them back. And in his thick, difficult speech he was defying the mob.
"Kill me first!" he said. "You like murder! Kill me first! Just like they killed Quim! Kill me first!"
"Not you!" said one of the men holding torches. "But those trees are going to die. And all those piggies, too, if they haven't got the brains to run away."
"Me first," said Miro. "These are my brothers! Kill me first!"
He spoke loudly and slowly, so his sluggish speech could be understood. The mob
still had anger in it, some of them at least. Yet there were also many who were sick of it all, many who were already ashamed, already discovering in their hearts the terrible acts they had performed tonight, when their souls were given over to the will of the mob. Grego still felt it, that connection with the others, and he knew that they could go either way— the ones still hot with rage might start one last fire tonight; or the ones who had cooled, whose only inner heat was a blush of shame, they might prevail.
Grego had this one last chance to redeem himself, at least in part. And so he stepped forward, still carrying Nimbo.
"Me too," he said. "Kill me too, before you raise a hand against these brothers and these trees!"
"Out of the way, Grego, you and the cripple both!"
"How are you different from Warmaker, if you kill these little ones?"
Now Grego stood beside Miro.
"Out of the way! We're going to burn the last of them and have done." But the voice was less certain.
"There's a fire behind you," said Grego, "and too many people have already died, humans and pequeninos both." His voice was husky, his breath short from the smoke he had inhaled. But he could still be heard. "The forest that killed Quim is far away from here, and Warmaker still stands untouched. We haven't done justice here tonight. We've done murder and massacre."
"Piggies are piggies!"
"Are they? Would you like that if it went the other way?" Grego took a few steps toward one of the men who looked tired and unwilling to go on, and spoke directly to him, while pointing at the mob's spokesman. "You! Would you like to be punished for what he did?"
"No," muttered the man.
"If he killed someone, would you think it was right for somebody to come to your house and slaughter your wife and children for it?"
Several voices now. "No."
"Why not? Humans are humans, aren't we?"
"I didn't kill any children," said the spokesman. He was defending himself now. And the "we" was gone from his speech. He was an individual now, alone. The mob was fading, breaking apart.
"We burned the mother tree," said Grego.
Behind him there began a keening sound, several soft, high-pitched whines. For the brothers and surviving wives, it was the confirmation of their worst fears. The mother tree had burned.
"That giant tree in the middle of the forest— inside it were all their babies. All of them. This forest did us no harm, and we came and killed their babies."
Miro stepped forward, put his hand on Grego's shoulder. Was Miro leaning on him? Or helping him stand?
Miro spoke then, not to Grego, but to the crowd. "All of you. Go home."
"Maybe we should try to put the fire out," said Grego. But already the whole forest was ablaze.
"Go home," Miro said again. "Stay inside the fence."
There was still some anger left. "Who are you to tell us what to do?"
"Stay inside the fence," said Miro. "Someone else is coming to protect the pequeninos now."
"Who? The police?" Several people laughed bitterly, since so many of them were police, or had seen policemen among the crowd.
"Here they are," said Miro.
A low hum could be heard, soft at first, barely audible in the roaring of the fire, but then louder and louder, until five fliers came into view, skimming the tops of the grass as they circled the mob, sometimes black in silhouette against the burning forest, sometimes shining with reflected fire when they were on the opposite side. At last they came to rest, all five of them sinking down onto the tall grass. Only then were the people able to distinguish one black shape from another, as six riders arose from each flying platform. What they had taken for shining machinery on the fliers was not machinery at all, but living creatures, not as large as men but not as small as pequeninos, either, with large heads and multi-faceted eyes. They made no threatening gesture, just formed lines before each flier; but no gestures were needed. The sight of them was enough, stirring memories of ancient nightmares and horror stories.
"Deus nos perdoe!" cried several. God forgive us. They were expecting to die.
"Go home," said Miro. "Stay inside the fence."
"What are they?" Nimbo's childish voice spoke for them all.
The answers came as whispers. "Devils." "Destroying angels." "Death."
And then the truth, from Grego's lips, for he knew what they had to be, though it was unthinkable. "Buggers," he said. "Buggers, here on Lusitania."
They did not run from the place. They walked, watching carefully, shying away from the strange new creatures whose existence none of them had guessed at, whose powers they could only imagine, or remember from ancient videos they had studied once in school. The buggers, who had once come close to destroying all of humanity, until they were destroyed in turn by Ender the Xenocide. The book called the Hive Queen had said they were really beautiful and did not need to die. But now, seeing them, black shining exoskeletons, a thousand lenses in their shimmering green eyes, it was not beauty but terror that they felt. And when they went home, it would be in the knowledge that these, and not just the dwarfish, backward piggies, waited for them just outside the fence. Had they been in prison before? Surely now they were trapped in one of the circles of hell.
At last only Miro, Grego, and Nimbo were left, of all the humans. Around them the piggies also watched in awe— but not in terror, for they had no insect nightmares lurking in their limbic node the way the humans did. Besides, the buggers had come to them as saviours and protectors. What weighed on them most was not curiosity about these strangers, but rather grief at what they had lost.
"Human begged the hive queen to help them, but she said she couldn't kill humans," said Miro. "Then Jane saw the fire from the satellites in the sky, and told Andrew Wiggin. He spoke to the hive queen and told her what to do. That she wouldn't have to kill anybody."
"They aren't going to kill us?" asked Nimbo.
Grego realised that Nimbo had spent these last few minutes expecting to die. Then it occurred to him that so, too, had he— that it was only now, with Miro's explanation, that he was sure that they hadn't come to punish him and Nimbo for what they set in motion tonight. Or rather, for what Grego had set in motion, ready for the single small nudge that Nimbo, in all innocence, had given.
Slowly Grego knelt and set the boy down. His arms barely responded to his will now, and the pain in his shoulder was unbearable. He began to cry. But it wasn't for the pain that he was weeping.
The buggers moved now, and moved quickly. Most stayed on the ground, jogging away to take up watch positions around the perimeter of the city. A few remounted the fliers, one to each machine, and took them back up into the air, flying over the burning forest, the flaming grass, spraying them with something that blanketed the fire and slowly put it out.
***
Bishop Peregrino stood on the low foundation wall that had been laid only that morning. The people of Lusitania, all of them, were gathered, sitting in the grass. He used a small amplifier, so that no one could miss his words. But he probably would not have needed it- -all were silent, even the little children, who seemed to catch the sombre mood.
Behind the Bishop was the forest, blackened but not utterly lifeless— a few of the trees were greening again. Before him lay the blanket-covered bodies, each beside its grave. The nearest of them was the corpse of Quim— Father Estevao. The other bodies were the humans who had died two nights before, under the trees and in the fire.
Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 3 - Xenocide Page 37
