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

by Orson Scott Card

  "Lauro," she said, "Andrew tells me that when you were younger, you were the brightest of all the Ribeira children. That you spoke to him of wild philosophical speculations. Right now, Lauro, my adoptive nephew, it is wild philosophy we need. Has your brain been on hold since you were a child? Or do you still think thoughts of great profundity?"

  "I have my thoughts," said Olhado. "But I don't even believe them myself."

  "We're working on faster-than-light flight, Lauro. We're working on discovering the soul of a computer entity. We're trying to rebuild an artificial virus that has self-defence capabilities built into it. We're working on magic and miracles. So I'd be glad of any insights you can give me on the nature of life and reality."

  "I don't even know what ideas Andrew was talking about," said Olhado. "I quit studying physics, I—"

  "If I want studies, I'll read books. So let me tell you what we told a very bright Chinese servant girl on the world of Path: Let me know your thoughts, and I'll decide for myself what's useful and what isn't."

  "How? You're not a physicist either."

  Valentine walked to the computer waiting quietly in the corner. "May I turn this on?"

  "Pois nao," he said. Of course.

  "Once it's on, Jane will be with us."

  "Ender's personal program."

  "The computer entity whose soul we're trying to locate."

  "Ah," he said. "Maybe you should be telling me things."

  "I already know what I know. So start talking. About those ideas you had as a child, and what has become of them since."

  ***

  Quara had a chip on her shoulder from the moment Miro entered the room. "Don't bother," she said.

  "Don't bother what?"

  "Don't bother telling me my duty to humanity or to the family— two separate, non-overlapping groups, by the way."

  "Is that what I came for?" asked Miro.

  "Ela sent you to persuade me to tell her how to castrate the descolada."

  Miro tried a little humour. "I'm no biologist. Is that possible?"

  "Don't be cute," said Quara. "If you cut out their ability to pass information from one virus to another, it's like cutting out their tongues and their memory and everything that makes them intelligent. If she wants to know this stuff, she can study what I studied. It only took me five years of work to get there."

  "There's a fleet coming."

  "So you are an emissary."

  "And the descolada may figure out how to—"

  She interrupted him, finished his sentence. "Circumvent all our strategies to control it, I know."

  Miro was annoyed, but he was used to people getting impatient with his slowness of speech and cutting him off. And at least she had guessed what he was driving at. "Any day," he said. "Ela feels time pressure."

  "Then she should help me learn to talk to the virus. Persuade it to leave us alone. Make a treaty, like Andrew did with the pequeninos. Instead, she's cut me off from the lab. Well, two can play that game. She cuts me off, I cut her off."

  "You were telling secrets to the pequeninos."

  "Oh, yes, Mother and Ela, the guardians of truth! They get to decide who knows what. Well, Miro, let me tell you a secret. You don't protect the truth by keeping other people from knowing it."

  "I know that," said Miro.

  "Mother completely screwed up our family because of her damned secrets. She wouldn't even marry Libo because she was determined to keep a stupid secret, which if he'd known might have saved his life."

  "I know," said Miro.

  This time he spoke with such vehemence that Quara was taken aback. "Oh, well, I guess that was a secret that bothered you more than it did me. But then you should be on my side in this, Miro. Your life would have been a lot better, all our lives would have been, if Mother had only married Libo and told him all her secrets. He'd still be alive, probably."

  Very neat solutions. Tidy little might-have-beens. And false as hell. If Libo had married Novinha, he wouldn't have married Bruxinha, Ouanda's mother, and thus Miro wouldn't have fallen unsuspectingly in love with his own half-sister because she would never had existed at all. That was far too much to say, however, with his halting speech. So he confined himself to saying "Ouanda wouldn't have been born," and hoped she would make the connections.

  She considered for a moment, and the connection was made. "You have a point," she said. "And I'm sorry. I was only a child then."

  "It's all past," said Miro.

  "Nothing is past," said Quara. "We're still acting it out, over and over again. The same mistakes, again and again. Mother still thinks that you keep people safe by keeping secrets from them."

  "And so do you," said Miro.

  Quara thought about that for a moment. "Ela was trying to keep the pequeninos from knowing that she was working on destroying the descolada. That's a secret that could have destroyed the whole pequenino society, and they weren't even being consulted. They were preventing the pequeninos from protecting themselves. But what I'm keeping secret is— maybe— a way to intellectually castrate the descolada— to make it half-alive."

  "To save humanity without destroying the pequeninos."

  "Humans and pequeninos, getting together to compromise on how to wipe out a helpless third species!"

  "Not exactly helpless."

  She ignored him. "Just the way Spain and Portugal got the Pope to divide up the world between their Catholic Majesties back in the old days right after Columbus. A line on a map, and poof— there's Brazil, speaking Portuguese instead of Spanish. Never mind that nine out of ten Indians had to die, and the rest lose all their rights and power for centuries, even their very languages—"

  It was Miro's turn to become impatient. "The descolada isn't the Indians."

  "It's a sentient species."

  "It isn't," said Miro.

  "Oh?" asked Quara. "And how are you so sure? Where's your certificate in microbiology and xenogenetics? I thought your studies were all in xenology. And thirty years out of date."

  Miro didn't answer. He knew that she was perfectly aware of how hard he had worked to bring himself up to speed since he got back here. It was an ad hominem attack and a stupid appeal to authority. It wasn't worth answering. So he sat there and studied her face. Waiting for her to get back into the realm of reasonable discussion.

  "All right," she said. "That was a low blow. But so is sending you to try to crack open my files. Trying to play on my sympathies."

  "Sympathies?" asked Miro.

  "Because you're a— because you're—"

  "Damaged," said Miro. He hadn't thought of the fact that pity complicated everything. But how could he help it? Whatever he did, it was a cripple doing it.

  "Well, yes."

  "Ela didn't send me," said Miro.

  "Mother, then."

  "Not Mother."

  "Oh, you're a freelance meddler? Or are you going to tell me that all of humanity has sent you? Or are you a delegate of an abstract value? 'Decency sent me.'"

  "If it did, it sent me to the wrong place."

  She reeled back as if she had been slapped.

  "Oh, am I the indecent one?"

  "Andrew sent me," said Miro.

  "Another manipulator."

  "He would have come himself."

  "But he was so busy, doing his own meddling. Nossa Senhora, he's a minister, mixing himself up in scientific matters that are so far above his head that—"

  "Shut up," said Miro.

  He spoke forcefully enough that she actually did fall silent— though she wasn't happy about it.

  "You know what Andrew is," Miro said. "He wrote the Hive Queen and—"

  "—the Hive Queen and the Hegemon and the Life of Human."

  "Don't tell me he doesn't know anything."

  "No. I know that isn't true," said Quara. "I just get so angry. I feel like everybody's against me."

  "Against what you're doing, yes," said Miro.

  "Why doesn't anybody see things my way?"


  "I see things your way," said Miro.

  "Then how can you—"

  "I also see things their way."

  "Yes. Mr. Impartial. Make me feel like you understand me. The sympathetic approach."

  "Planter is dying to try to learn information you probably already know."

  "Not true. I don't know whether pequenino intelligence comes from the virus or not."

  "A truncated virus could be tested without killing him."

  "Truncated— is that the word of choice? It'll do. Better than castrated. Cutting off all the limbs. And the head, too. Nothing but the trunk left. Powerless. Mindless. A beating heart, to no purpose."

  "Planter is—"

  "Planter's in love with the idea of being a martyr. He wants to die."

  "Planter is asking you to come and talk to him."

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Come on, Miro. They send a cripple to me. They want me to come talk to a dying pequenino. As if I'd betray a whole species because a dying friend— a volunteer, too— asks me with his dying breath."

  "Quara."

  "Yes, I'm listening."

  "Are you?"

  "Disse que sim!" she snapped. I said I am.

  "You might be right about all this."

  "How kind of you."

  "But so might they."

  "Aren't you the impartial one."

  "You say they were wrong to make a decision that might kill the pequeninos without consulting them. Aren't you—"

  "Doing the same thing? What should I do, do you think? Publish my viewpoint and take a vote? A few thousand humans, millions of pequeninos on your side— but there are trillions of descolada viruses. Majority rule. Case closed."

  "The descolada is not sentient," said Miro.

  "For your information," said Quara, "I know all about this latest ploy. Ela sent me the transcripts. Some Chinese girl on a backwater colony planet who doesn't know anything about xenogenetics comes up with a wild hypothesis, and you all act as if it were already proved."

  "So— prove it false."

  "I can't. I've been shut out of the lab. You prove it true."

  "Occam's razor proves it true. Simplest explanation that fits the facts."

  "Occam was a medieval old fart. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is always, God did it. Or maybe— that old woman down the road is a witch. She did it. That's all this hypothesis is— only you don't even know where the witch is."

  "The descolada is too sudden."

  "It didn't evolve, I know. Had to come from somewhere else. Fine. Even if it's artificial, that doesn't mean it isn't sentient now."

  "It's trying to kill us. It's varelse, not raman."

  "Oh, yes, Valentine's hierarchy. Well, how do I know that the descolada is the varelse, and we're the raman? As far as I can tell, intelligence is intelligence. Varelse is just the term Valentine invented to mean Intelligence - that - we've - decided - to - kill, and raman means Intelligence - that - we - haven't - decided - to - kill - yet."

  "It's an unreasoning, uncompassionate enemy."

  "Is there another kind?"

  "The descolada doesn't have respect for any other life. It wants to kill us. It already rules the pequeninos. All so it can regulate this planet and spread to other worlds."

  For once, she had let him finish a long statement. Did it mean she was actually listening to him?

  "I'll grant you part of Wang-mu's hypothesis," said Quara. "It does make sense that the descolada is regulating the gaialogy of Lusitania. In fact, now that I think about it, it's obvious. It explains most of the conversations I've observed— the information— passing from one virus to another. I figure it should take only a few months for a message to get to every virus on the planet— it would work. But just because the descolada is running the gaialogy doesn't mean that you've proved it's not sentient. In fact, it could go the other way— the descolada, by taking responsibility for regulating the gaialogy of a whole world, is showing altruism. And protectiveness, too— if we saw a mother lion lashing out at an intruder in order to protect her young, we'd admire her. That's all the descolada is doing— lashing out against humans in order to protect her precious responsibility. A living planet."

  "A mother lion protecting her cubs."

  "I think so."

  "Or a rabid dog, devouring our babies."

  Quara paused. Thought for a moment. "Or both. Why can't it be both? The descolada's trying to regulate a planet here. But humans are getting more and more dangerous. To her, we're the rabid dog. We root out the plants that are part of her control system, and we plant our own, unresponsive plants. We make some of the pequeninos behave strangely and disobey her. We burn a forest at a time when she's trying to build more. Of course she wants to get rid of us!"

  "So she's out to destroy us."

  "It's her privilege to try! When will you see that the descolada has rights?"

  "Don't we? Don't the pequeninos?"

  Again she paused. No immediate counterargument. It gave him hope that she might actually be listening.

  "You know something, Miro?"

  "What?"

  "They were right to send you."

  "Were they?"

  "Because you're not one of them."

  That's true enough, thought Miro. I'll never be "one of" anything again.

  "Maybe we can't talk to the descolada. And maybe it really is just an artifact. A biological robot acting out its programming. But maybe it isn't. And they're keeping me from finding out."

  "What if they open the lab to you?"

  "They won't," said Quara. "If you think they will, you don't know Ela and Mother. They've decided that I'm not to be trusted, and so that's that. Well, I've decided they're not to be trusted, either."

  "Thus whole species die for family pride."

  "Is that all you think this is, Miro? Pride? I'm holding out because of nothing nobler than a petty quarrel?"

  "Our family has a lot of pride."

  "Well, no matter what you think, I'm doing this out of conscience, no matter whether you want to call it pride or stubbornness or anything else."

  "I believe you," said Miro.

  "But do I believe you when you say that you believe me? We're in such a tangle." She turned back to her terminal. "Go away now, Miro. I told you I'd think about it, and I will.