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

by Orson Scott Card

  Miro whispered, softly, so that only she could hear, "Didn't he send the fleet before the burning of the forest?"

  "Maybe the Lord counts only the arrival time, not the departure," Valentine suggested. At once, though, she regretted her flippancy. What was happening here today was a solemn thing; even if she wasn't a deep believer in Catholic doctrine, she knew that it was a holy thing when a community accepted responsibility for the evil it committed and did true penance for it.

  The Bishop spoke of those who had died in holiness— Os Venerados, who first saved humanity from the descolada plague; Father Estevao, whose body was buried under the floor of the chapel and who suffered martyrdom in the cause of defending truth against heresy; Planter, who died to prove that his people's soul was from God, and not from a virus; and the pequeninos who had died as innocent victims of slaughter. "All of these may be saints someday, for this is a time like the early days of Christianity, when great deeds and great holiness were much more needed, and therefore much more often achieved. This chapel is a shrine to all those who have loved their God with all their heart, might, mind and strength, and who have loved their neighbour as themself. Let all who enter here do it with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, so that holiness may also touch them."

  The homily wasn't long, because there were many more identical services scheduled for that day— the people were coming to the chapel in shifts, since it was far too small to accommodate the whole human population of Lusitania all at once. Soon enough they were done, and Valentine got up to leave. She would have followed close behind Plikt and Val, except that Miro caught at her arm.

  "Jane just told me," he said. "I thought you'd want to know."

  "What?"

  "She just tested the starship, without Ender in it."

  "How could she do that?" asked Valentine.

  "Peter," he said. "She took him Outside and back again. He can contain her aiua, if that's how this process is actually working."

  She gave voice to her immediate fear. "Did he—"

  "Create anything? No." Miro grinned— but with a hint of the twisted wryness that Valentine had thought was a product of his affliction. "He claims it's because his mind is much clearer and healthier than Andrew's."

  "Maybe so," said Valentine.

  "I say it's because none of the philotes out there were willing to be part of his pattern. Too twisted."

  Valentine laughed a little.

  The Bishop came up to them then. Since they were among the last to leave, they were alone at the front of the chapel.

  "Thank you for accepting a new baptism," said the Bishop.

  Miro bowed his head. "Not many men have a chance to be purified so far along in their sins," he said.

  "And Valentine, I'm sorry I couldn't receive your— namesake."

  "Don't worry, Bishop Peregrino. I understand. I may even agree with you."

  The Bishop shook his head. "It would be better if they could just—"

  "Leave?" offered Miro. "You get your wish. Peter will soon be gone— Jane can pilot a ship with him aboard. No doubt the same thing will be possible with young Val."

  "No," said Valentine. "She can't go. She's too—"

  "Young?" asked Miro. He seemed amused. "They were both born knowing everything that Ender knows. You can hardly call the girl a child, despite her body."

  "If they had been born," said the Bishop, "They wouldn't have to leave."

  "They're not leaving because of your wish," said Miro. "They're leaving because Peter's going to deliver Ela's new virus to Path, and young Val's ship is going to go off in search of planets where pequeninos and hive queens can be established."

  "You can't send her on such a mission," said Valentine.

  "I won't send her," said Miro. "I'll take her. Or rather, she'll take me. I want to go. Whatever risks there are, I'll take them. She'll be safe, Valentine."

  Valentine still shook her head, but she knew already that in the end she would be defeated. Young Val herself would insist on going, however young she might seem, because if she didn't go, only one starship could travel; and if Peter was the one doing the travelling, there was no telling whether the ship would be used for any good purpose. In the long run, Valentine herself would bow to the necessity. Whatever danger young Val might be exposed to, it was no worse than the risks already taken by others. Like Planter. Like Father Estevao. Like Glass.

  ***

  The pequeninos gathered at Planter's tree. It would have been Glass's tree, since he was the first to pass into the third life with the recolada, but almost his first words, once they were able to talk with him, were an adamant rejection of the idea of introducing the viricide and recolada into the world beside his tree. This occasion belonged to Planter, he declared, and the brothers and wives ultimately agreed with him.

  So it was that Ender leaned against his friend Human, whom he had planted in order to help him into the third life so many years before. It would have been a moment of complete joy to Ender, the liberation of the pequeninos from the descolada— except that he had Peter with him through it all.

  "Weakness celebrates weakness," said Peter. "Planter failed, and here they are honouring him, while Glass succeeded, and there he stands, alone out there in the experimental field. And the stupidest thing is that it can't possibly mean anything to Planter, since his aiua isn't even here."

  "It may not mean anything to Planter," said Ender— a point he wasn't altogether sure of, anyway— "but it means something to the people here."

  "Yes," he said. "It means they're weak."

  "Jane says she took you Outside."

  "An easy trip," said Peter. "Next time, though, Lusitania won't be my destination. "

  "She says you plan to take Ela's virus to Path."

  "My first stop," Peter said. "But I won't be coming back here. Count on that, old boy."

  "We need the ship."

  "You've got that sweet little slip of a girl," said Peter, "and the bugger bitch can pop out starships for you by the dozen, if only you could spawn enough creatures like me and Valzinha to pilot them."

  "I'll be glad to see the last of you."

  "Aren't you curious what I intend to do?"

  "No," said Ender.

  But it was a lie, and of course Peter knew it. "I intend to do what you have neither the brains nor the stomach to do. I intend to stop the fleet."

  "How? Magically appear on the flagship?"

  "Well, if worse came to worst, dear lad, I could always deliver an M.D. Device to the fleet before they even knew I was there. But that wouldn't accomplish much, would it? To stop the fleet, I need to stop Congress. And to stop Congress, I need to get control."

  Ender knew at once what this meant. "So you think you can be Hegemon again? God help humanity if you succeed."

  "Why shouldn't I?" said Peter. "I did it once before, and I didn't do so badly. You should know— you wrote the book yourself."

  "That was the real Peter," said Ender. "Not you, the twisted version conjured up out of my hatred and fear."

  Did Peter have soul enough to resent these harsh words? Ender thought, for a moment at least, that Peter paused, that his face showed a moment of— what, hurt? Or simply rage?

  "I'm the real Peter now," he answered, after that momentary pause. "And you'd better hope that I have all the skill I had before. After all, you managed to give Valette the same genes as Valentine. Maybe I'm all that Peter ever was."

  "Maybe pigs have wings."

  Peter laughed. "They would, if you went Outside and believed hard enough."

  "Go, then," said Ender.

  "Yes, I know you'll be glad to get rid of me."

  "And sic you on the rest of humanity? Let that be punishment enough, for their having sent the fleet." Ender gripped Peter by the arm, pulled him close. "Don't think that this time you can manoeuvre me into helplessness. I'm not a little boy any more, and if you get out of hand, I'll destroy you."

  "You can't," said Peter. "You could mo
re easily kill yourself."

  The ceremony began. This time there was no pomp, no ring to kiss, no homily. Ela and her assistants simply brought several hundred sugar cubes impregnated with the viricide bacterium, and as many vials of solution containing the recolada. They were passed among the congregation, and each of the pequeninos took the sugar cube, dissolved and swallowed it, and then drank off the contents of the vial.

  "This is my body which is given for you," intoned Peter. "This do in remembrance of me."

  "Have you no respect for anything?" asked Ender.

  "This is my blood, which I shed for you. Drink in remembrance of me." Peter smiled. "This is a communion even I can take, unbaptised as I am."

  "I can promise you this," said Ender. "They haven't invented the baptism yet that can purify you."

  "I'll bet you've been saving up all your life, just to say that to me." Peter turned to him, so Ender could see the ear in which the jewel had been implanted, linking him to Jane. In case Ender didn't notice what he was pointing out, Peter touched the jewel rather ostentatiously. "Just remember, I have the source of all wisdom here. She'll show you what I'm doing, if you ever care. If you don't forget me the moment I'm gone."

  "I won't forget you," said Ender.

  "You could come along," said Peter.

  "And risk making more like you Outside?"

  "I could use the company."

  "I promise you, Peter, you'd soon get as sick of yourself as I am sick of you."

  "Never," said Peter. "I'm not filled with self-loathing the way you are, you poor guilt-obsessed tool of better, stronger men. And if you won't make more companions for me, why, I'll find my own along the way."

  "I have no doubt of it," said Ender.

  The sugar cubes and vials came to them; they ate, drank.

  "The taste of freedom," said Peter. "Delicious."

  "Is it?" said Ender. "We're killing a species that we never understood."

  "I know what you mean," said Peter. "It's a lot more fun to destroy an opponent when he's able to understand how thoroughly you defeated him."

  Then, at last, Peter walked away.

  Ender stayed through the end of the ceremony, and spoke to many there: Human and Rooter, of course, and Valentine, Ela, Ouanda, and Miro.

  He had another visit to make, however. A visit he had made several times before, always to be rebuffed, sent away without a word. This time, though, Novinha came out to speak with him. And instead of being filled with rage and grief, she seemed quite calm.

  "I'm much more at peace," she said. "And I know, for what it's worth, that my rage at you was unrighteous."

  Ender was glad to hear the sentiment, but surprised at the terms she used. When had Novinha ever spoken of righteousness?

  "I've come to see that perhaps my boy was fulfilling the purposes of God," she said. "That you couldn't have stopped him, because God wanted him to go to the pequeninos to set in motion the miracles that have come since then." She wept. "Miro came to me. Healed," she said. "Oh, God is merciful after all. And I'll have Quim again in heaven, when I die."

  She's been converted, thought Ender. After all these years of despising the church, of taking part in Catholicism only because there was no other way to be a citizen of Lusitania Colony, these weeks with the Children of the Mind of Christ have converted her. I'm glad of it, he thought. She's speaking to me again.

  "Andrew," she said, "I want us to be together again."

  He reached out to embrace her, wanting to weep with relief and joy, but she recoiled from his touch.

  "You don't understand," she said. "I won't go home with you. This is my home now."

  She was right— he hadn't understood. But now he did. She hadn't just been converted to Catholicism. She had been converted to this order of permanent sacrifice, where only husbands and wives could join, and only together, to take vows of permanent abstinence in the midst of their marriage. "Novinha," he said, "I haven't the faith or the strength to be one of the Children of the Mind of Christ."

  "When you do," she said, "I'll be waiting for you here."

  "Is this the only hope I have of being with you?" he whispered. "To forswear loving your body as the only way to have your companionship?"

  "Andrew," she whispered, "I long for you. But my sin for so many years was adultery that my only hope of joy now is to deny the flesh and live in the spirit. I'll do it alone if I must. But with you— oh, Andrew, I miss you."

  And I miss you, he thought. "Like breath itself I miss you," he whispered. "But don't ask this of me. Live with me as my wife until the last of our youth is spent, and then when desire is slack we can come back here together. I could be happy then."

  "Don't you see?" she said. "I've made a covenant. I've made a promise."

  "You made one to me, too," he said.

  "Should I break a vow to God, so I can keep my vow with you?"

  "God would understand."

  "How easily those who never hear his voice declare what he would and would not want."

  "Do you hear his voice these days?"

  "I hear his song in my heart, the way the Psalmist did. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want."

  "The twenty-third. While the only song I hear is the twenty-second."

  She smiled wanly. "'Why hast thou forsaken me?'" she quoted.

  "And the part about the bulls of Bashan," said Ender. "I've always felt like I was surrounded by bulls."

  She laughed. "Come to me when you can," she said. "I'll be here, when you're ready."

  She almost left him then.

  "Wait."

  She waited.

  "I brought you the viricide and the recolada."

  "Ela's triumph," she said. "It was beyond me, you know. I cost you nothing, by abandoning my work. My time was past, and she had far surpassed me." Novinha took the sugar cube, let it melt for a moment, swallowed it.

  Then she held the vial up against the last light of evening. "With the red sky, it looks like it's all afire inside." She drank it— sipped it, really, so that the flavour would linger. Even though, as Ender knew, the taste was bitter, and lingered unpleasantly in the mouth long afterward.

  "Can I visit you?"

  "Once a month," she said. Her answer was so quick that he knew she had already considered the question and reached a decision that she had no intention of altering.

  "Then once a month I'll visit you," he said.

  "Until you're ready to join me," she said.

  "Until you're ready to return to me," he answered.

  But he knew that she would never bend. Novinha was not a person who could easily change her mind. She had set the bounds of his future.

  He should have been resentful, angry. He should have blustered about getting his freedom from a marriage to a woman who refused him. But he couldn't think what he might want his freedom for. Nothing is in my hands now, he realised. No part of the future depends on me. My work, such as it is, is done, and now my only influence on the future is what my children do— such as they are: the monster Peter, the impossibly perfect child Val.