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

by Orson Scott Card

  "The hive queen can have a ship as simple as this one built long before then," said Ender. "In a ship so small there's no chance of shuttling all the people and pequeninos off Lusitania before the fleet arrives, let alone before the ansible cut-off keeps Jane from being able to fly the ship. But there'll be time to take new, descolada-free pequenino communities— a brother, a wife, and many pregnant little mothers— to a dozen planets and establish them there. Time to take new hive queens in their cocoons, already fertilised to lay their first few hundred eggs, to a dozen worlds as well. If this works at all, if we don't just sit there like idiots in a cardboard box wishing we could fly, then we'll come back with peace for this world, freedom from the danger of the descolada, and safe dispersal for the genetic heritage of the other species of raman here. A week ago, it looked impossible. Now there's hope."

  "Gracas a deus," said the Bishop.

  Quara laughed.

  Everyone looked at her.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I was just thinking— I heard a prayer, not many weeks ago. A prayer to Os Venerados, Grandfather Gusto and Grandmother Cida. That if there wasn't a way to solve the impossible problems facing us, they would petition God to open up the way."

  "Not a bad prayer," said the Bishop. "And perhaps God has granted it."

  "I know," said Quara. "That's what I was thinking. What if all this stuff about Outspace and Inspace, what if it was never real before. What if it only came to be true because of that prayer?"

  "What of it?" asked the Bishop.

  "Well, don't you think that would be funny?"

  Apparently no one did.

  Chapter 16 — VOYAGE

  So the humans have their starship ready now, while the one you've been building for us is still incomplete.

  The one they wanted was a box with a door. No propulsion, no life support, no cargo space. Yours and ours are far more complicated. We haven't slacked, and they'll be ready soon.

  I'm really not complaining. I wanted Ender's ship to be ready first. It's the one that carries real hope.

  For us as well. We agree with Ender and his people that the descolada must never be killed here on Lusitania, unless the recolada can somehow be made. But when we send new hive queens to other worlds, we'll kill the descolada on the starship that takes them, so there's no chance of polluting our new home. So that we can live without fear of destruction from this artificial varelse.

  What you do on your ship is nothing to us.

  With any luck, none of this will matter. Their new starship will find its way Outside, return with the recolada, set you free and us as well, and then the new ship will shuttle us all to as many worlds as we desire.

  Will it work? The box you made for them?

  We know the place where they're going is real; we call our very selves from there. And the bridge we made, the one that Ender calls Jane, is such a pattern as we've never seen before. If it can be done, such a one as that can do it. We never could.

  Will you leave? If the new ship works?

  We'll make daughter-queens who'll take my memories with them to other worlds. But we ourselves will stay here. This place where I came forth from my cocoon, it's my home forever.

  So you're as rooted here as I am.

  That's what daughters are for. To go where we will never go, to carry our memory on to places that we'll never see.

  But we will see. Won't we? You said the philotic connection would remain.

  We were thinking of the voyage across time. We live a long time, we hives, you trees. But our daughters and their daughters will outlive us. Nothing changes that.

  Qing-jao listened to them as they laid the choice before her.

  "Why should I care what you decide?" she said, when they were finished. "The gods will laugh at you."

  Father shook his head. "No they won't, my daughter, Gloriously Bright. The gods care nothing more for Path than any other world. The people of Lusitania are on the verge of creating a virus that can free us all. No more rituals, no more bondage to the disorder in our brains. So I ask you again, if we can do it, should we? It would cause disorder here. Wang-mu and I have planned how we'll proceed, how we'll announce what we are doing so that people will understand it, so there'll be a chance that the god spoken won't be slaughtered, but can step down gently from their privileges."

  "Privileges are nothing," said Qing-jao. "You taught me that yourself. They're only the people's way of expressing their reverence for the gods."

  "Alas, my daughter, if only I knew that more of the god spoken shared that humble view of our station. Too many of them think that it's their right to be acquisitive and oppressive, because the gods speak to them and not to others."

  "Then the gods will punish them. I'm not afraid of your virus."

  "But you are, Qing-jao, I see it."

  "How can I tell my father that he does not see what he claims to see? I can only say that I must be blind."

  "Yes, my Qing-jao, you are. Blind on purpose. Blind to your own heart. Because you tremble even now. You have never been sure that I was wrong. From the time Jane showed us the true nature of the speaking of the gods, you've been unsure of what was true."

  "Then I'm unsure of sunrise. I'm unsure of breath."

  "We're all unsure of breath, and the sun stays in its same place, day and night, neither rising nor falling. We are the ones who rise and fall."

  "Father, I fear nothing from this virus."

  "Then our decision is made. If the Lusitanians can bring us the virus, we'll use it."

  Han Fei-tzu got up to leave her room.

  But her voice stopped him before he reached the door. "Is this the disguise the punishment of the gods will take, then?"

  "What?" he asked.

  "When they punish Path for your iniquity in working against the gods who have given their mandate to Congress, will they disguise their punishment by making it seem to be a virus that silences them?"

  "I wish dogs had torn my tongue out before I taught you to think that way."

  "Dogs already are tearing at my heart," Qing-jao answered him. "Father, I beg you, don't do this. Don't let your rebelliousness provoke the gods into falling silent across the whole face of this world."

  "I will, Qing-jao, so no more daughters or sons have to grow up slaves as you have been. When I think of your face pressed close to the floor, tracing the wood grain, I want to cut the bodies of those who forced this thing upon you, cut them until their blood makes lines, which I will gladly trace, to know that they've been punished."

  She wept. "Father, I beg you, don't provoke the gods."

  "More than ever now I'm determined to release the virus, if it comes."

  "What can I do to persuade you? If I say nothing, you will do it, and when I speak to beg you, you will do it all the more surely."

  "Do you know how you could stop me? You could speak to me as if you knew the speaking of the gods is the product of a brain disorder, and then, when I know you see the world clear and true, you could persuade me with good arguments that such a swift, complete, and devastating change would be harmful, or whatever other argument you might raise."

  "So to persuade my father, I must lie to him?"

  "No, my Gloriously Bright. To persuade your father, you must show that you understand the truth."

  "I understand the truth," said Qing-jao. "I understand that some enemy has stolen you from me. I understand that all I have left now is the gods, and Mother who is among them. I beg the gods to let me die and join her, so I don't have to suffer any more of the pain you cause me, but still they leave me here. I think that means they wish me still to worship them. Perhaps I'm not yet purified enough. Or perhaps they know that you will soon turn your heart around again, and come to me as you used to, speaking honourably of the gods and teaching me to be a true servant."

  "That will never happen," said Han Fei-tzu.

  "Once I thought you could someday be the god of Path. Now I see that, far from being the protector of this world,
you are its darkest enemy."

  Han Fei-tzu covered his face and left the room, weeping for his daughter. He could never persuade her as long as she heard the voice of the gods. But perhaps if they brought the virus, perhaps if the gods fell silent, she would listen to him then. Perhaps he could win her back to rationality.

  ***

  They sat in the starship— more like two metal bowls, one domed over the other, with a door in the side. Jane's design, faithfully executed by the hive queen and her workers, included many instruments on the outside of the ship. But even bristling with sensors it didn't resemble any kind of starship ever seen before. It was far too small, and there was no visible means of propulsion. The only power that could carry this ship anywhere was the unseeable aiua that Ender carried on board with him.

  They faced each other in a circle. There were six chairs, because Jane's design allowed for the chance that the ship would be used again, to carry more people from world to world. They had taken every other seat, so they formed a triangle: Ender, Miro, Ela.

  The good-byes had all been said. Sisters and brothers, other kin and many friends had come. One, though, was most painful in her absence. Novinha. Ender's wife, Miro's and Ela's mother. She would have no part of this. That was the only real sorrow at the parting.

  The rest was all fear and excitement, hope and disbelief. They might be moments away from death. They might be moments away from filling the vials on Ela's lap with the viruses that would mean deliverance on two worlds. They might be the pioneers of a new kind of star flight that would save the species threatened by the M.D. Device.

  They might also be three fools who would sit on the ground, in a grassy field just outside the compound of the human colony on Lusitania, until at last it grew so hot and stuffy inside that they had to emerge. No one waiting there would laugh, of course, but there'd be laughter throughout the town. It would be the laughter of despair. It would mean that there was no escape, no liberty, only more and more fear until death came in one of its many possible guises.

  "Are you with us, Jane?" asked Ender.

  The voice in his ear was quiet. "While I do this, Ender, I'll have no part of me that I can spare to talk to you."

  "So you'll be with us, but mute," said Ender. "How will I know you're there?"

  She laughed softly in his ear. "Foolish boy, Ender. If you're still there, I'm still inside you. And if I'm not inside you, you will have no 'there' to be."

  Ender imagined himself breaking into a trillion constituent parts, scattering through chaos. Personal survival depended not only on Jane holding the pattern of the ship, but also on him being able to hold the pattern of his mind and body. Only he had no idea whether his mind was really strong enough to maintain that pattern, once he was where the laws of nature were not in force.

  "Ready?" asked Jane.

  "She asks if we're ready," said Ender.

  Miro was already nodding. Ela bowed her head. Then, after a moment, she crossed herself, took firm hold on the rack of vials on her lap, and nodded.

  "If we go and come again, Ela," said Ender, "then this was not a failure, even if you didn't create the virus that you wanted. If the ship works well, we can return another time. Don't think that everything depends on what you're able to imagine today."

  She smiled. "I won't be surprised at failure, but I'm also ready for success. My team is ready to release hundreds of bacteria into the world, if I return with the recolada and we can then remove the descolada. It will be chancy, but within fifty years the world will be a self-regulating gaialogy again. I see a vision of deer and cattle in the tall grass of Lusitania, and eagles in the sky." Then she looked down again at the vials in her lap. "I also said a prayer to the Virgin, for the same Holy Ghost that created God in her womb to come make life again here in these jars."

  "Amen to the prayer," said Ender. "And now, Jane, if you're ready, we can go."

  Outside the little starship, the others waited. What did they expect? That the ship would start to smoke and jiggle? That there would be a thunderclap, a flash of light?

  The ship was there. It was there, and still there, unmoving, unchanged. And then it was gone.

  They felt nothing inside the ship when it happened. There was no sound, no movement to hint of motion from Inspace into Outspace.

  But they knew the moment it occurred, because there were no longer three of them, but six.

  Ender found himself seated between two people, a young man and a young woman. But he had no time even to glance at them, for all he could look at was the man seated in what had been the empty seat across from him.

  "Miro," he whispered. For that was who it was. But not Miro the cripple, the damaged young man who had boarded the ship with him. That one was still sitting in the next chair to Ender's left. This Miro was the strong young man that Ender had first known. The man whose strength had been the hope of his family, whose beauty had been the pride of Ouanda's life, whose mind and whose heart had taken compassion on the pequeninos and refused to leave them without the benefits he thought that human culture might offer them. Miro, whole and restored.

  Where had he come from?

  "I should have known," said Ender. "We should have thought. The pattern of yourself that you hold in your mind, Miro— it isn't the way you are, it's the way you were. "

  The new Miro, the young Miro, he raised his head and smiled to Ender. "I thought of it," he said, and his speech was clear and beautiful, the words rolling easily off his tongue. "I hoped for it. I begged Jane to take me with her because of it. And it came true. Exactly as I longed for it."

  "But now there are two of you," said Ela. She sounded horrified.

  "No," said the new Miro. "Just me. Just the real me."

  "But that one's still there," she said.

  "Not for long, I think," said Miro. "That old shell is empty now."

  And it was true. The old Miro slumped within his seat like a dead man. Ender knelt in front of him, touched him. He pressed his fingers to Miro's neck, feeling for a pulse.

  "Why should the heart beat now?" said Miro. "I'm the place where Miro's aiua dwells."

  When Ender took his fingers away from the old Miro's throat, the skin came away in a small puff of dust. Ender shied back. The head dropped forward off the shoulders and landed in the corpse's lap. Then it dissolved into a whitish liquid. Ender jumped to his feet, backed away. He stepped on someone's toe.

  "Ow," said Valentine.

  "Watch where you're going," said a man.

  Valentine isn't on this ship, thought Ender. And I know the man's voice, too.

  He turned to face them, the man and woman who had appeared in the empty seats beside him.

  Valentine. Impossibly young. The way she had looked when, as a young teenager, she had swum beside him in a lake on a private estate on Earth. The way she had looked when he loved her and needed her most, when she was the only reason he could think of to go on with his military training; when she was the only reason he could think of why the world might be worth the trouble of saving it.

  "You can't be real," he said.

  "Of course I am," she said. "You stepped on my foot, didn't you?"