As Ender emerged from the gate, heading back toward the experimental fields, he saw Quara standing beside the fathertree Human, sticks in her hand, engaged in conversation. She hadn’t actually beat on his trunk, or Ender would have heard it. So she must want privacy. That was all right. Ender would take a longer way around, so he wouldn’t come close enough to overhear.
But when she saw Ender looking her way, Quara immediately ended her conversation with Human and took off at a brisk walk down the path toward the gate. Of course this led her right by Ender.
“Telling secrets?” asked Ender. He had meant his remark as mere banter. Only when the words came out of his mouth and Quara got such a furtive look on her face did Ender realize exactly what secret it might have been that Quara had been telling. And her words confirmed his suspicion.
“Mother’s idea of fairness isn’t always mine,” said Quara. “Neither is yours, for that matter.”
He had known she might do this, but it never occurred to him she would do it so quickly after promising not to. “But is fairness always the most important consideration?” asked Ender.
“It is to me,” said Quara.
She tried to turn away and go on through the gate, but Ender caught her arm.
“Let go of me.”
“Telling Human is one thing,” said Ender. “He’s very wise. But don’t tell anybody else. Some of the pequeninos, some of the males, they can be pretty aggressive if they think they have reason.”
“They’re not just males,” said Quara. “They call themselves husbands. Maybe we should call them men.” She smiled at Ender in triumph. “You’re not half so open-minded as you like to think.” Then she brushed past him and went on through the gate into Milagre.
Ender walked up to Human and stood before him. “What did she tell you, Human? Did she tell you that I’ll die before I let anyone wipe out the descolada, if doing so would hurt you and your people?”
Of course Human had no immediate answer for him, for Ender had no intention of starting to beat on his trunk with the talking sticks used to produce Father Tongue; if he did, the pequenino males would hear and come running. There was no private speech between pequeninos and fathertrees. If a fathertree wanted privacy, he could always talk silently with the other fathertrees—they spoke to each other mind to mind, the way the hive queen spoke to the buggers that served as her eyes and ears and hands and feet. If only I were part of that communications network, thought Ender. Instantaneous speech consisting of pure thought, projected anywhere in the universe.
Still, he had to say something to help counteract the sort of thing he knew Quara would have said. “Human, we’re doing all we can to save human beings and pequeninos, both. We’ll even try to save the descolada virus, if we can. Ela and Novinha are very good at what they do. So are Grego and Quara, for that matter. But for now, please trust us and say nothing to anyone else. Please. If humans and pequeninos come to understand the danger we’re in before we’re ready to take steps to contain it, the results would be violent and terrible.”
There was nothing else to say. Ender went back to the experimental fields. Before nightfall, he and Planter completed the measurements, then burned and flashed the entire field. No large molecules survived inside the disruption barrier. They had done all they could to ensure that whatever the descolada might have learned from this field was forgotten.
What they could never do was get rid of the viruses they carried within their own cells, human and pequenino alike. What if Quara was right? What if the descolada inside the barrier, before it died, managed to “tell” the viruses that Planter and Ender carried inside them about what had been learned from this new strain of potato? About the defenses that Ela and Novinha had tried to build into it? About the ways this virus had found to defeat their tactics?
If the descolada were truly intelligent, with a language to spread information and pass behaviors from one individual to many others, then how could Ender—how could any of them—hope to be victorious in the end? In the long run, it might well be that the descolada was the most adaptable species, the one most capable of subduing worlds and eliminating rivals, stronger than humans or piggies or buggers or any other living creatures on any settled worlds. That was the thought that Ender took to bed with him that night, the thought that preoccupied him even as he made love with Novinha, so that she felt the need to comfort him as if he, not she, were the one burdened with the cares of a world. He tried to apologize but soon realized the futility of it. Why add to her worries by telling of his own?
Human listened to Ender’s words, but he couldn’t agree with what Ender asked of him. Silence? Not when the humans were creating new viruses that might well transform the life cycle of the pequeninos. Oh, Human wouldn’t tell the immature males and females. But he could—and would—tell all the other fathertrees throughout Lusitania. They had a right to know what was going on, and then decide together what, if anything, to do.
Before nightfall, every fathertree in every wood knew all that Human knew: of the human plans, and of his estimation of how much they could be trusted. Most agreed with him—we’ll let the human beings proceed for now. But in the meantime we’ll watch carefully, and prepare for a time that might come, even though we hope it won’t, when humans and pequeninos go to war against each other. We cannot fight and hope to win—but maybe, before they slaughter us, we can find a way for some of us to flee.
So, before dawn, they had made plans and arrangements with the hive queen, the only nonhuman source of high technology on Lusitania. By the next nightfall, the work of building a starship to leave Lusitania had already begun.
7
SECRET MAID
Sweat ran down Qing-jao’s face. Bent over as she was, the drops trickled along her cheeks, under her eyes, and down to the tip of her nose. From there her sweat dropped into the muddy water of the rice paddy, or onto the new rice plants that rose only slightly above the water’s surface.
“Why don’t you wipe your face, holy one?”
Qing-jao looked up to see who was near enough to speak to her. Usually the others on her righteous labor crew did not work close by—it made them too nervous, being with one of the godspoken.
It was a girl, younger than Qing-jao, perhaps fourteen, boyish in the body, with her hair cropped very short. She was looking at Qing-jao with frank curiosity. There was an openness about her, an utter lack of shyness, that Qing-jao found strange and a little displeasing. Her first thought was to ignore the girl.
But to ignore her would be arrogant; it would be the same as saying, Because I am godspoken, I do not need to answer when I am spoken to. No one would ever suppose that the reason she didn’t answer was because she was so preoccupied with the impossible task she had been given by the great Han Fei-tzu that it was almost painful to think of anything else.
So she answered—but with a question. “Why should I wipe my face?”
“Doesn’t it tickle? The sweat, dripping down? Doesn’t it get in your eyes and sting?”
Qing-jao lowered her face to her work for a few moments, and this time deliberately noticed how it felt. It did tickle, and the sweat in her eyes did sting. In fact it was quite
uncomfortable and annoying. Carefully, Qing-jao unbent herself to stand straight—and now she noticed the pain of it, the way her back protested against the change of posture. “Yes,” she said to the girl. “It tickles and stings.”
“Then wipe it,” the girl said. “With your sleeve.”
Qing-jao looked at her sleeve. It was already soaked with the sweat of her arms. “Does wiping help?” she asked.
Now it was the girl’s turn to discover something she hadn’t thought about. For a moment she looked thoughtful; then she wiped her forehead with her sleeve.
She grinned. “No, holy one. It doesn’t help a bit.”
Qing-jao nodded gravely and bent down again to her work. Only now the tickling of the sweat, the stinging of her eyes, the pain in her back, it all bothered her very much. Her discomfort took her mind off her thoughts, instead of the other way around. This girl, whoever she was, had just added to her misery by pointing it out—and yet, ironically, by making Qing-jao aware of the misery of her body, she had freed her from the hammering of the questions in her mind.
Qing-jao began to laugh.
“Are you laughing at me, holy one?” asked the girl.
“I’m thanking you in my own way,” said Qing-jao. “You’ve lifted a great burden from my heart, even if only for a moment.”
“You’re laughing at me for telling you to wipe your forehead even though it doesn’t help.”
“I say that is not why I’m laughing,” said Qing-jao. She stood again and looked the girl in the eye. “I don’t lie.”
The girl looked abashed—but not half so much as she should have. When the godspoken used the tone of voice Qing-jao had just used, others immediately bowed and showed respect. But this girl only listened, sized up Qing-jao’s words, and then nodded.
There was only one conclusion Qing-jao could reach. “Are you also godspoken?” she asked.
The girl’s eyes went wide. “Me?” she said. “My parents are both very low people. My father spreads manure in the fields and my mother washes up in a restaurant.”
Of course that was no answer at all. Though the gods most often chose the children of the godspoken, they had been known to speak to some whose parents had never heard the voice of the gods. Yet it was a common belief that if your parents were of very low status, the gods would have no interest in you, and in fact it was very rare for the gods to speak to those whose parents were not well educated.
“What’s your name?” asked Qing-jao.
“Si Wang-mu,” said the girl.
Qing-jao gasped and covered her mouth, to forbid herself from laughing. But Wang-mu did not look angry—she only grimaced and looked impatient.
“I’m sorry,” said Qing-jao, when she could speak. “But that is the name of—”
“The Royal Mother of the West,” said Wang-mu. “Can I help it that my parents chose such a name for me?”
“It’s a noble name,” said Qing-jao. “My ancestor-of-the-heart was a great woman, but she was only mortal, a poet. Yours is one of the oldest of the gods.”
“What good is that?” asked Wang-mu. “My parents were too presumptuous, naming me for such a distinguished god. That’s why the gods will never speak to me.”
It made Qing-jao sad, to hear Wang-mu speak with such bitterness. If only she knew how eagerly Qing-jao would trade places with her. To be free of the voice of the gods! Never to have to bow to the floor and trace the grain of the wood, never to wash her hands except when they got dirty …
Yet Qing-jao couldn’t explain this to the girl. How could she understand? To Wang-mu, the godspoken were the privileged elite, infinitely wise and unapproachable. It would sound like a lie if Qing-jao explained that the burdens of the godspoken were far greater than the rewards.
Except that to Wang-mu, the godspoken had not been unapproachable—she had spoken to Qing-jao, hadn’t she? So Qing-jao decided to say what was in her heart after all. “Si Wang-mu, I would gladly live the rest of my life blind, if only I could be free of the voice of the gods.”
Wang-mu’s mouth opened in shock, her eyes widened.
It had been a mistake to speak. Qing-jao regretted it at once. “I was joking,” said Qing-jao.
“No,” said Wang-mu. “Now you’re lying. Then you were telling the truth.” She came closer, slogging carelessly through the paddy, trampling rice plants as she came. “All my life I’ve seen the godspoken borne to the temple in their sedan chairs, wearing their bright silks, all people bowing to them, every computer open to them. When they speak their language is music. Who wouldn’t want to be such a one?”
Qing-jao could not answer openly, could not say: Every day the gods humiliate me and make me do stupid, meaningless tasks to purify myself, and the next day it starts again. “You won’t believe me, Wang-mu, but this life, out here in the fields, this is better.”
“No!” cried Wang-mu. “You have been taught everything. You know all that there is to know! You can speak many languages, you can read every kind of word, you can think of thoughts that are as far above mine as my thoughts are above the thoughts of a snail.”
“You speak very clearly and well,” said Qing-jao. “You must have been to school.”
“School!” said Wang-mu scornfully. “What do they care about school for children like me? We learned to read, but only enough to read prayers and street signs. We learned our numbers, but only enough to do the shopping. We memorized sayings of the wise, but only the ones that taught us to be content with our place in life and obey those who are wiser than we are.”
Qing-jao hadn’t known that schools could be like that. She thought that children in school learned the same things that she had learned from her tutors. But she saw at once that Si Wang-mu must be telling the truth—one teacher with thirty students couldn’t possibly teach all the things that Qing-jao had learned as one student with many teachers.
“My parents are very low,” said Wang-mu. “Why should they waste time teaching me more than a servant needs to know? Because that’s my highest hope in life, to be washed very clean and become a servant in a rich man’s house They were very careful to teach me how to clean a floor.”
Qing-jao thought of the hours she had spent on the floors of her house, tracing woodgrains from wall to wall. It had neer once occurred to her how much work it was for the servants to keep the floors so clean and polished that Qing-jao’s gowns never got visibly dirty, despite all her crawling.
“I know something about floors,” said Qing-jao.
“You know something about everything,” said Wang-mu bitterly. “So don’t tell me how hard it is to be godspoken. The gods have never given a thought to me, and I tell you that is worse!”
“Why weren’t you afraid to speak to me?” asked Qing-jao.
“I decided not to be afraid of anything,” said Wang-mu. “What could you do to me that’s worse than my life will already be anyway?”
I could make you wash your hands until they bleed every day of your life.
But then something turned around in Qing-jao’s mind, and she saw that this girl might not think that was worse. Perhaps Wang-mu would gladly wash her hands until there was nothing left but a bloody fringe of tattered skin on the stumps of her wrists, if only she could learn all that Qing-jao knew. Qing-jao had felt so oppressed by the impossibility of the task her father had set for her, yet it was a task that, succeed or fail, would change history. Wang-mu would live her whole life and never be set a single task that would not need to be done again the next day; all of Wang-mu’s life would be spent doing work that would only be noticed or spoken of if she did it badly. Wasn’t the work of a servant almost as fruitless, in the end, as the rituals of purification?
“The life of a servant must be hard,” said Qing-jao. “I’m glad for your sake that you haven’t been hired out yet.”
“My parents are waiting in the hope that I’ll be pretty when I become a woman. Then they’ll get a better hiring bonus for putting me out for service. Perhaps a rich man�
�s bodyservant will want me for his wife; perhaps a rich lady will want me for her secret maid.”
“You’re already pretty,” said Qing-jao.
Wang-mu shrugged. “My friend Fan-liu is in service, and she says that the ugly ones work harder, but the men of the house leave them alone. Ugly ones are free to think their own thoughts. They don’t keep having to say pretty things to their ladies.”
Qing-jao thought of the servants in her father’s house. She knew her father would never bother any of the serving women. And nobody had to say pretty things to her. “It’s different in my house,” she said.
“But I don’t serve in your house,” said Wang-mu.
Now, suddenly, the whole picture became clear. Wang-mu had not spoken to her by impulse. Wang-mu had spoken to her in hopes of being offered a place as a servant in the house of a godspoken lady. For all she knew, the gossip in town was all about the young godspoken lady Han Qing-jao who was through with her tutors and had embarked on her first adult task—and how she still had neither a husband nor a secret maid. Si Wang-mu had probably wangled her way onto the same righteous labor crew as Qing-jao in order to have exactly this conversation.
For a moment Qing-jao was angry. Then she thought: Why shouldn’t Wang-mu do exactly as she has done? The worst that could happen to her is that I’d guess what she was doing, become angry, and not hire her. Then she’d be no worse off than before. And if I didn’t guess what she was doing, and so started to like her and hired her, she’d be secret maid to a godspoken lady. If I were in her place, wouldn’t I do the same?
The Ender Quintet (Omnibus) Page 88
