Xenocide Part 20

Beside him his wife, Novinha, stirred in her sleep. Jane heard her, felt the vibration of her movement, saw the changing shadows through the sensor that Ender wore in his ear. It was good that Jane had not yet learned to feel jealousy, or she might have hated Novinha for lying there, a warm body beside Ender's own. But Novinha, being human, was gifted at jealousy, and Jane knew how Novinha seethed whenever she saw Ender speaking to the woman who lived in the jewel in his ear. "Hush," said Jane. "Don't wake people up."

Ender answered by moving his lips and tongue and teeth, without letting anything louder than a breath pa.s.s his lips. "How fare our enemies in flight?" he said. He had greeted her this way for many years.

"Not well," said Jane.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have blocked them. We would have found a way. Valentine's writings--"

"Are about to have their true authorship uncovered."

"Everything's about to be uncovered." He didn't say: because of you.

"Only because Lusitania was marked for destruction," she answered. She also didn't say: because of you. There was plenty of blame to go around.

"So they know about Valentine?"

"A girl is finding out. On the world of Path."

"I don't know the place."

"A fairly new colony, a couple of centuries. Chinese. Dedicated to preserving an odd mix of old religions. The G.o.ds speak to them."

"I lived on more than one Chinese world," said Ender. "People believed in the old G.o.ds on all of them. G.o.ds are alive on every world, even here in the smallest human colony of all. They still have miracles of healing at the shrine of Os Venerados. Rooter has been telling us of a new heresy out in the hinterland somewhere. Some pequeninos who commune constantly with the Holy Ghost."

"This business with G.o.ds is something I don't understand," said Jane. "Hasn't anyone caught on yet that the G.o.ds always say what people want to hear?"

"Not so," said Ender. "The G.o.ds often ask us to do things we never desired, things that require us to sacrifice everything on their behalf. Don't underestimate the G.o.ds."

"Does your Catholic G.o.d speak to you?"

"Maybe he does. I never hear him, though. Or if I do, I never know that it's his voice I'm hearing."

"And when you die, do the G.o.ds of every people really gather them up and take them off somewhere to live forever?"

"I don't know. They never write."

"When I die, will there be some G.o.d to carry me away?"

Ender was still for a moment, and then he began to address her in his storytelling manner. "There's an old tale of a dollmaker who never had a son. So he made a puppet that was so lifelike that it looked like a real boy, and he would hold the wooden boy on his lap and talk to it and pretend it was his son. He wasn't crazy-- he still knew it was a doll-- he called it Pinehead. But one day a G.o.d came and touched the puppet and it came to life, and when the dollmaker spoke to it, Pinehead answered. The dollmaker never told anyone about this. He kept his wooden son at home, but he brought the boy every tale he could gather and news of every wonder under heaven. Then one day the dollmaker was coming home from the wharf with tales of a far-off land that had just been discovered, when he saw that his house was on fire. Immediately he tried to run into the house, crying out, 'My son! My son!' But his neighbors stopped him, saying, 'Are you mad? You have no son!' He watched the house burn to the ground, and when it was over he plunged into the ruins and covered himself with hot ashes and wept bitterly. He refused to be comforted. He refused to rebuild his shop. When people asked him why, he said his son was dead. He stayed alive by doing odd jobs for other people, and they pitied him because they were sure the fire had made him a lunatic. Then one day, three years later, a small orphan boy came to him and tugged on his sleeve and said, 'Father, don't you have a tale for me?'"

Jane waited, but Ender said no more. "That's the whole story?"

"Isn't it enough?"

"Why did you tell me this? It's all dreams and wishes. What does it have to do with me?"

"It was the story that came to mind."

"Why did it come to mind?"

"Maybe that's how G.o.d speaks to me," said Ender. "Or maybe I'm sleepy and I don't have what you want from me."

"I don't even know know what I want from you." what I want from you."

"I know what you want," said Ender. "You want to be alive, with your own body, not dependent on the philotic web that binds the ansibles together. I'd give you that gift if I could. If you can figure out a way for me to do it, I'll do it for you. But Jane, you don't even know what you know what you want," said Ender. "You want to be alive, with your own body, not dependent on the philotic web that binds the ansibles together. I'd give you that gift if I could. If you can figure out a way for me to do it, I'll do it for you. But Jane, you don't even know what you are are. Maybe when you know how you came to exist, what makes you yourself, then maybe we can save you from the day when they shut down the ansibles to kill you. "

"So that's your story? Maybe I'll burn down with the house, but somehow my soul will end up in a three-year-old orphan boy?"

"Find out who you are, what what you are, your essence, and we'll see if we can move you somewhere safer until all this is over. We've got an ansible. Maybe we can put you back." you are, your essence, and we'll see if we can move you somewhere safer until all this is over. We've got an ansible. Maybe we can put you back."

"There aren't computers enough on Lusitania to contain me."

"You don't know that. You don't know what your self is."

"You're telling me to find my soul soul." She made her voice sound derisive as she said the word.

"Jane, the miracle wasn't that the doll was reborn as a boy. The miracle was the fact that the puppet ever came to life at all. Something happened to turn meaningless computer connections into a sentient being. Something created you. That's what makes no sense. After that one, the other part should be easy."

His speech was slurring. He wants me to go away so he can sleep, she thought. "I'll work on this."

"Good night," he murmured.

He dropped off to sleep almost at once. Jane wondered: Was he ever really awake? Will he remember in the morning that we talked?

Then she felt the bed shift. Novinha; her breathing was different. Only then did Jane realize: Novinha woke up while Ender and I were talking. She knows what those almost inaudible clicking and smacking noises always mean, that Ender was subvocalizing in order to talk with me. Ender may forget that we spoke tonight, but Novinha will not. As if she had caught him sharing a bed with a lover. If only she could think of me another way. As a daughter. As Ender's b.a.s.t.a.r.d daughter by a liaison long ago. His child by way of the fantasy game. Would she be jealous then?

Am I Ender's child?

Jane began to search back in her own past. She began to study her own nature. She began to try to discover who she was and why she was alive.

But because she was Jane, and not a human being, that was not all she was doing. She was also tracking Qing-jao's searches through the data dealing with Demosthenes, watching her come closer and closer to the truth.

Jane's most urgent activity, however, was searching for a way to make Qing-jao want to stop trying to find her. This was the hardest task of all, for despite all Jane's experience with human minds, despite all her conversations with Ender, individual human beings were still mysterious. Jane had concluded: No matter how well you know what a person has done and what he thought he was doing when he did it and what he now thinks of what he did, it is impossible to be certain of what he will do next. Yet she had no choice but to try. So she began to watch the house of Han Fei-tzu in a way that she had watched no one but Ender and, more recently, his stepson Miro. She could no longer wait for Qing-jao and her father to enter data into the computer and try to understand them from that. Now she had to take control of the house computer in order to use the audio and video receptors on the terminals in almost every room to be her ears and eyes. She watched them. Alone and apart, she devoted a considerable part of her attention to them, studying and a.n.a.lyzing their words, their actions, trying to discern what they meant to each other.

It did not take her long to realize that Qing-jao could best be influenced, not by confronting her with arguments, but rather by persuading her father first and then letting him persuade Qing-jao. That was more in harmony with the Path; Han Qing-jao would never disobey Starways Congress unless Han Fei-tzu told her to; and then she would be bound to do it.

In a way, this made Jane's task much easier. Persuading Qing-jao, a volatile and pa.s.sionate adolescent who did not yet understand herself at all, would be chancy at best. But Han Fei-tzu was a man of settled character, a rational man, yet a man of deep feeling; he could be persuaded by arguments, especially if Jane could convince him that opposing Congress was for the good of his world and of humanity at large. All she needed was the right information to let him reach that conclusion.

By now Jane already understood as much of the social patterns of Path as any human knew, because she had absorbed every history, every anthropological report, and every doc.u.ment produced by the people of Path. What she learned was disturbing: the people of Path were far more deeply controlled by their G.o.ds than any other people in any other place or time. Furthermore, the way that the G.o.ds spoke to them was disturbing. It was clearly the well-known brain defect called obsessive-compulsive disorder-- OCD. Early in the history of Path-- seven generations before, when the world was first being settled-- the doctors had treated the disorder accordingly. But they discovered at once that the G.o.dspoken of Path did not respond at all to the normal drugs that in all other OCD patients restored the chemical balance of "enoughness," that sense in a person's mind that a job is completed and there is no need to worry about it anymore. The G.o.dspoken exhibited all the behaviors a.s.sociated with OCD, but the well-known brain defect was not present. There must be another, an unknown cause.

Now Jane explored more deeply into this story, and found doc.u.ments on other worlds, not on Path at all, that told more of the story. The researchers had immediately concluded that there must have been a new mutation that caused a related brain defect with similar results. But as soon as they issued their preliminary report, all the research ended and the researchers were a.s.signed to another world.

To another world world-- that was almost unthinkable. It meant uprooting them and disconnecting them from time, carrying them away from all friends and family that didn't go with them. And yet not one of them refused-- which surely meant that enormous pressure had been brought to bear on them. They all left Path and no one had pursued research along those lines in the years since then.

Jane's first hypothesis was that one of the government agencies on Path itself had exiled them and cut off their research; after all, the followers of the Path wouldn't want their faith to be disrupted by finding the physical cause of the speaking of the G.o.ds in their own brains. But Jane found no evidence that the local government had ever been aware of the full report. The only part of it that had ever circulated on Path was the general conclusion that the speaking of the G.o.ds was definitely not not the familiar, and treatable, OCD. The people of Path had learned only enough of the report to feel confirmed that the speaking of the G.o.ds had no known physical cause. Science had "proved" that the G.o.ds were real. There was no record of anyone on Path taking any action to cause further information or research to be suppressed. Those decisions had all come from outside. From Congress. the familiar, and treatable, OCD. The people of Path had learned only enough of the report to feel confirmed that the speaking of the G.o.ds had no known physical cause. Science had "proved" that the G.o.ds were real. There was no record of anyone on Path taking any action to cause further information or research to be suppressed. Those decisions had all come from outside. From Congress.

There had to be some key information hidden even from Jane, whose mind easily reached into every electronic memory that was connected with the ansible network. That would only happen if those who knew the secret had feared its discovery so much they kept it completely out of even the most top-secret and restricted computers of government.

Jane could not let that stop her. She would have to piece together the truth from the sc.r.a.ps of information that would have been left inadvertently in unrelated doc.u.ments and databases. She would have to find other events that helped fill in the missing parts of the picture. In the long run, human beings could never keep secrets from someone with Jane's unlimited time and patience. She would find out what Congress was doing with Path, and when she had the information, she would use it, if she could, to turn Han Qing-jao away from her destructive course. For Qing-jao, too, was opening up secrets-- older ones, secrets that had been hidden for three thousand years.

Chapter 10

Martyr

Ender says that we're at the fulcrum of history, here on Lusitania. That in the next few months or years this will be the place where either death or understanding came to every sentient species. How thoughtful of him, to bring us here just in time for our possible demise. You're teasing me, of course. If we knew how to tease, perhaps we'd do it to you. Lusitania is the fulcrum of history in part because because you're here. You carry a fulcrum with you wherever you go. you're here. You carry a fulcrum with you wherever you go. We discard it. We give it to you. It's yours. Wherever strangers meet is the fulcrum. Then let's not be strangers anymore. Humans insist on making strangers of us-- it's built into their genetic material. But we we can be friends. can be friends. This word is too strong. Say that we are fellow-citizens. At least as long as our interests coincide. As long as the stars shine, our interests will coincide. Maybe not so long. Maybe only as long as human beings are stronger and more numerous than we are. That will do for now.

Quim came to the meeting without protest, though it might well set him back a full day in his journey. He had learned patience long ago. No matter how urgent he felt his mission to the heretics to be, he could accomplish little, in the long run, if he didn't have the support of the human colony behind him. So if Bishop Peregrino asked him to attend a meeting with Kovano Zeljezo, the mayor of Milagre and governor of Lusitania, Quim would go.

He was surprised to see that the meeting was also being attended by Ouanda Saavedra, Andrew Wiggin, and most of Quim's own family. Mother and Ela-- their presence made sense, if the meeting were being called to discuss policy concerning the heretic pequeninos. But what were Quara and Grego doing here? There was no reason they should be involved in any serious discussions. They were too young, too ill-informed, too impetuous. From what he had seen of them, they still quarreled like little children. They weren't as mature as Ela, who was able to set aside her personal feelings in the interest of science. Of course, Quim worried sometimes that Ela did this far too well for her own good-- but that was hardly the worry with Quara and Grego.

Especially Quara. From what Rooter had said, the whole trouble with these heretics really took off when Quara told the pequeninos about the various contingency plans for dealing with the descolada virus. The heretics wouldn't have found so many allies in so many different forests if it weren't for the fear among the pequeninos that the humans might unleash some virus, or poison Lusitania with a chemical that would wipe out the descolada and, with it, the pequeninos themselves. The fact that the humans would even consider the indirect extermination of the pequeninos made it seem like mere turnabout for the piggies to contemplate the extermination of humanity.

All because Quara couldn't keep her mouth shut. And now she was at a meeting where policy would be discussed. Why? What const.i.tuency in the community did she represent? Did these people actually imagine that government or church policy was now the province of the Ribeira family? Of course, Olhado and Miro weren't there, but that meant nothing-- since both were cripples, the rest of the family unconsciously treated them like children, though Quim knew well that neither of them deserved to be so callously dismissed.

Still, Quim was patient. He could wait. He could listen. He could hear them out. Then he'd do something that would please both G.o.d and the Bishop. Of course, if that that wasn't possible, pleasing G.o.d would do well enough. wasn't possible, pleasing G.o.d would do well enough.

"This meeting wasn't my idea," said Mayor Kovano. He was a good man, Quim knew. A better mayor than most people in Milagre realized. They kept reelecting him because he was grandfatherly and worked hard to help individuals and families who were having trouble. They didn't care much whether he also set good policies-- that was too abstract for them. But it happened that he was as wise as he was politically astute. A rare combination that Quim was glad of. Perhaps G.o.d knew that these would be trying times, and gave us a leader who might well help us get through it all without too much suffering.

"But I'm glad to have you all together. There's more strain in the relationship between piggies and people than ever before, or at least since the Speaker here arrived and helped us make peace with them."

Wiggin shook his head, but everyone knew his role in those events and there was little point in his denying it. Even Quim had had to admit, in the end, that the infidel humanist had ended up doing good works on Lusitania. Quim had long since shed his deep hatred of the Speaker for the Dead; indeed, he sometimes suspected that he, as a missionary, was the only person in his family who really understood what it was that Wiggin had accomplished. It takes one evangelist to understand another.

"Of course, we owe no small part of our worries to the misbehavior of two very troublesome young hotheads, whom we have invited to this meeting so they can see some of the dangerous consequences of their stupid, self-willed behavior."

Quim almost laughed out loud. Of course, Kovano had said all this in such mild, pleasant tones that it took a moment for Grego and Quara to realize they had just been given a tongue-lashing. But Quim understood at once. I shouldn't have doubted you, Kovano; you would never have brought useless people to a meeting.

"As I understand it, there is a movement among the piggies to launch a starship in order to deliberately infect the rest of humanity with the descolada. And because of the contribution of our young parrot, here, many other forests are giving heed to this idea."

"If you expect me to apologize," Quara began.

"I expect you to shut your mouth-- or is that impossible, even for ten minutes?" Kovano's voice had real fury in it. Quara's eyes grew wide, and she sat more rigidly in her chair.

"The other half of our problem is a young physicist who has, unfortunately, kept the common touch." Kovano raised an eyebrow at Grego. "If only you had become an aloof intellectual. Instead, you seem to have cultivated the friendship of the stupidest, most violent of Lusitanians."

"With people who disagree with you, you mean," said Grego.

"With people who forget that this world belongs to the pequeninos," said Quara.

"Worlds belong to the people who need them and know how to make them produce," said Grego.

"Shut your mouths, children, or you'll be expelled from this meeting while the adults make up their minds."

Grego glared at Kovano. "Don't you speak to me that way."

"I'll speak to you however I like," said Kovano. "As far as I'm concerned, you've both broken legal obligations of secrecy, and I should have you both locked up."

"On what charge?"

"I have emergency powers, you'll recall. I don't need any charges until the emergency is over. Do I make myself clear?"

"You won't do it. You need me," said Grego. "I'm the only decent physicist on Lusitania."

"Physics isn't worth a slug to us if we end up in some kind of contest with the pequeninos."

"It's the descolada we have to confront," said Grego.

"We're wasting time," said Novinha.

Quim looked at his mother for the first time since the meeting began. She seemed very nervous. Fearful. He hadn't seen her like that in many years.

"We're here about this insane mission of Quim's," said Novinha.

"He is called Father Estevo," said Bishop Peregrino. He was a stickler for giving proper dignity to church offices.

"He's my son," said Novinha. "I'll call him what I please."

"What a testy group of people we have here today," said Mayor Kovano.

Things were going very badly. Quim had deliberately avoided telling Mother any details about his mission to the heretics, because he was sure she'd oppose the idea of him going straight to piggies who openly feared and hated human beings. Quim was well aware of the source of her dread of close contact with the pequeninos. As a young child she had lost her parents to the descolada. The xenologer Pipo became her surrogate father-- and then became the first human to be tortured to death by the pequeninos. Novinha then spent twenty years trying to keep her lover, Libo-- Pipo's son, and the next xenologer-- from meeting the same fate. She even married another man to keep Libo from getting a husband's right of access to her private computer files, where she believed the secret that had led the piggies to kill Pipo might be found. And in the end, it all came to nothing. Libo was killed just as Pipo was.

Even though Mother had since learned the true reason for the killing, even though the pequeninos had undertaken solemn oaths not to undertake any violent act against another human being, there was no way Mother would ever be rational about her loved ones going off among the piggies. And now here she was at a meeting that had obviously been called, no doubt at her instigation, to decide whether Quim should go on his missionary journey. It was going to be an unpleasant morning. Mother had years of practice at getting her own way. Being married to Andrew Wiggin had softened and mellowed her in many ways. But when she thought one of her children was at risk, the claws came out, and no husband was going to have much gentling influence on her.

Why had Mayor Kovano and Bishop Peregrino allowed this meeting to take place?

As if he had heard Quim's unspoken question, Mayor Kovano began to explain. "Andrew Wiggin has come to me with new information. My first thought was to keep all of it secret, send Father Estevo on his mission to the heretics, and then ask Bishop Peregrino to pray. But Andrew a.s.sured me that as our danger increases, it's all the more important that all of you act from the most complete possible information. Speakers for the dead apparently have an almost pathological reliance on the idea that people behave better when they know more. I've been a politician too long to share his confidence-- but he's older than I am, he claims, and I deferred to his wisdom."

Quim knew, of course, that Kovano deferred to no one's wisdom. Andrew Wiggin had simply persuaded him.

"As relations between pequeninos and humans are getting more, um, problematical, and as our unseeable cohabitant, the Hive Queen, apparently comes closer to launching her starships, it seems that matters offplanet are getting more urgent as well. The Speaker for the Dead informs me from his offplanet sources that someone on a world called Path is very close to discovering our allies who have managed to keep Congress from issuing orders to the fleet to destroy Lusitania."

Quim noted with interest that Andrew had apparently not told Mayor Kovano about Jane. Bishop Peregrino didn't know, either; did Grego or Quara? Did Ela? Mother certainly did. Why did Andrew tell me, if he held it back from so many others?

"There is a very strong chance that within the next few weeks-- or days-- Congress will reestablish communications with the fleet. At that point, our last defense will be gone. Only a miracle will save us from annihilation."

"Bulls.h.i.t," said Grego. "If that-- thing thing-- out on the prairie can build a starship for the piggies, it can build some for us, too. Get us off this planet before it gets blown to h.e.l.l."

"Perhaps," said Kovano. "I suggested something like that, though in less colorful terms. Perhaps, Senhor Wiggin, you can tell us why Grego's eloquent little plan won't work."