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

by Orson Scott Card

  But Qing-jao wrote her report. It stood as clear and simple in her mind as if the gods had given the words to her. "To Starways Congress: The seditious writer known as Demosthenes is a woman now on or near Lusitania. She has control of or access to a program that has infested all ansible computers, causing them to fail to report messages from the fleet and concealing the transmission of Demosthenes' own writings. The only solution to this problem is to extinguish the program's control over ansible transmissions by disconnecting all ansibles from their present computers and bringing clean new computers online, all at once. For the present I have neutralised the program, allowing me to send this message and probably allowing you to send your orders to all worlds; but that cannot be guaranteed now and certainly cannot be expected to continue indefinitely, so you must act quickly. I suggest you set a date exactly forty standard weeks from today for all ansibles to go off-line at once for a period of at least one standard day. All the new ansible computers, when they go online, must be completely unconnected to any other computer. From now on ansible messages must be manually re-entered at each ansible computer so that electronic contamination will never be possible again. If you retransmit this message immediately to all ansibles, using your code of authority, my report will become your orders; no further instructions will be needed and Demosthenes' influence will end. If you do not act immediately, I will not be responsible for the consequences."

  To this report Qing-jao affixed her father's name and the authority code he had given her; her name would mean nothing to Congress, but his name would be heeded, and the presence of his authority code would ensure that it was received by all the people who had particular interest in his statements.

  The message finished, Qing-jao looked up into the eyes of the apparition before her. With her left hand resting on Wang-mu's shuddering back, and her right hand over the transmit key, Qing-jao made her final challenge. "Will you stop me or will you allow this?"

  To which Jane answered, "Will you kill a raman who has done no harm to any living soul, or will you let me live?"

  Qing-jao pressed the transmit button. Jane bowed her head and disappeared.

  It would take several seconds for the message to be routed by the house computer to the nearest ansible; from there, it would go instantly to every Congress authority on every one of the Hundred Worlds and many of the colonies as well. On many receiving computers it would be just one more message in the queue; but on some, perhaps hundreds, Father's code would give it enough priority that already someone would be reading it, realizing its implications, and preparing a response. If Jane in fact had let the message through.

  So Qing-jao waited for a response. Perhaps the reason no one answered immediately was because they had to contact each other and discuss this message and decide, quickly, what had to be done. Perhaps that was why no reply came to the empty display above her terminal.

  The door opened. It would be Mu-pao with the game computer. "Put it in the corner by the north window," said Qing-jao without looking. "I may yet need it, though I hope not.

  "Qing-jao."

  It was Father, not Mu-pao at all. Qing-jao turned to him, knelt at once to show her respect— but also her pride. "Father, I've made your report to Congress. While you communed with the gods, I was able to neutralize the enemy program and send the message telling how to destroy it. I'm waiting for their answer."

  She waited for Father's praise.

  "You did this?" he asked. "Without waiting for me? You spoke directly to Congress and didn't ask for my consent?"

  "You were being purified, Father. I fulfilled your assignment."

  "But then— Jane will be killed."

  "That much is certain," said Qing-jao. "Whether contact with the Lusitania Fleet will be restored then or not, I can't be sure." Suddenly she thought of a flaw in her plans. "But the computers on the fleet will also be contaminated by this program! When contact is restored, the program can retransmit itself and— but then all we'll have to do is blank out the ansibles one more time ..."

  Father was not looking at her. He was looking at the terminal display behind her. Qing-jao turned to see.

  It was a message from Congress, with the official seal displayed. It was very brief, in the clipped style of the bureaucracy.

  Han: Brilliant work. Have transmitted your suggestions as our orders. Contact with the fleet already restored. Did daughter help per your note 14FE.3A? Medals for both if so.

  "Then it's done," murmured Father. "They'll destroy Lusitania, the pequeninos, all those innocent people."

  "Only if the gods wish it," said Qing-jao. She was surprised that Father sounded so morose.

  Wang-mu raised her head from Qing-jao's lap, her face red and wet with weeping. "And Jane and Demosthenes will be gone as well," she said.

  Qing-jao gripped Wang-mu by the shoulder, held her an arm's length away. "Demosthenes is a traitor," said Qing-jao. But Wang-mu only looked away from her, turning her gaze up to Han Fei-tzu. Qing-jao also looked to her father. "And Jane— Father, you saw what she was, how dangerous."

  "She tried to save us," said Father, "and we've thanked her by setting in motion her destruction."

  Qing-jao couldn't speak or move, could only stare at Father as he leaned over her shoulder and touched the save key, then the clear key.

  "Jane," said Father. "If you hear me. Please forgive me."

  There was no answer from the terminal.

  "May all the gods forgive me," said Father. "I was weak in the moment when I should have been strong, and so my daughter has innocently done evil in my name." He shuddered. "I must— purify myself." The word plainly tasted like poison in his mouth. "That will last forever, too, I'm sure."

  He stepped back from the computer, turned away, and left the room. Wang-mu returned to her crying. Stupid, meaningless crying, thought Qing-jao. This is a moment of victory. Except Jane has snatched the victory away from me so that even as I triumph over her, she triumphs over me. She has stolen my father. He no longer serves the gods in his heart, even as he continues to serve them with his body.

  Yet along with the pain of this realisation came a hot stab of joy: I was stronger. I was stronger than Father, after all. When it came to the test, it was I who served the gods, and he who broke, who fell, who failed. There is more to me than I ever dreamed of. I am a worthy tool in the hands of the gods; who knows how they might wield me now?

  Chapter 12 — GREGO'S WAR

  It's a wonder that human beings ever became intelligent enough to travel between worlds.

  Not really. I've been thinking about that lately. Star flight they learned from you. Ender says they didn't grasp the physics of it until your first colony fleet reached their star system.

  Should we have stayed at home for fear of teaching star flight to soft bodied four-limbed hairless slugs?

  You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually achieved intelligence.

  Clearly they have.

  I think not. I think they have found a way to take intelligence.

  Their starships fly. We haven't noticed any of yours racing the light waves through space.

  We're still very young, as a species. But look at us. Look at you. We both have evolved a very similar system. We each have four kinds of life in our species. The young, who are helpless grubs. The mates, who never achieve intelligence— with you, it's your drones, and with us, it's the little mothers. Then there's the many, many individuals who have enough intelligence to perform manual tasks— our wives and brothers, your workers. And finally the intelligent ones— we father trees, and you, the hive queen. We are the repository of the wisdom of the race, because we have the time to think, to contemplate. Ideation is our primary activity.

  While the humans are all running around as brothers and wives. As workers.

  Not just workers. Their young go through a helpless grub stage, too, which lasts longer than some of them think. And when it's time to reproduce, they all turn into drones or
little mothers, little machines that have only one goal in life: to have sex and die.

  They think they're rational through all those stages.

  Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual labourers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?

  Not one.

  They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.

  While collectively ...

  Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.

  So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals— and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.

  Exactly.

  If they're so stupid and we're so intelligent, why do we have only one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us? And why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance you make?

  Maybe intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be.

  Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.

  Quara was the last to arrive at Mother's house. It was Planter who fetched her, the pequenino who served as Ender's assistant in the fields. It was clear from the expectant silence in the living room that Miro had not actually told anyone anything yet. But they all knew, as surely as Quara knew, why he had called them together. It had to be Quim. Ender might have reached Quim by now, just barely; and Ender could talk to Miro by way of the transmitters they wore.

  If Quim were all right, they wouldn't have been summoned. They would simply have been told.

  So they all knew. Quara scanned their faces as she stood in the doorway. Ela, looking stricken. Grego, his face angry— always angry, the petulant fool. Olhado, expressionless, his eyes gleaming. And Mother. Who could read that terrible mask she wore? Grief, certainly, like Ela, and fury as hot as Grego's, and also the cold inhuman distance of Olhado's face. We all wear Mother's face, one way or another. What part of her is me? If I could understand myself, what would I then recognise in Mother's twisted posture in her chair?

  "He died of the descolada," Miro said. "This morning. Andrew got there just now."

  "Don't say that name," Mother said. Her voice was husky with ill-contained grief.

  "He died as a martyr," said Miro. "He died as he would have wanted to."

  Mother got up from her chair, awkwardly— for the first time, Quara realised that Mother was getting old. She walked with uncertain steps until she stood right in front of Miro, straddling his knees. Then she slapped him with all her strength across the face.

  It was an unbearable moment. An adult woman striking a helpless cripple, that was hard enough to see; but Mother striking Miro, the one who had been their strength and salvation all through their childhood, that could not be endured. Ela and Grego leaped to their feet and pulled her away, dragged her back to her chair.

  "What are you trying to do!" cried Ela. "Hitting Miro won't bring Quim back to us!"

  "Him and that jewel in his ear!" Mother shouted. She lunged toward Miro again; they barely held her back, despite her seeming feebleness. "What do you know about the way people want to die!"

  Quara had to admire the way Miro faced her, unabashed, even though his cheek was red from her blow. "I know that death is not the worst thing in this world," said Miro.

  "Get out of my house," said Mother.

  Miro stood up. "You aren't grieving for him," he said. "You don't even know who he was."

  "Don't you dare say that to me!"

  "If you loved him you wouldn't have tried to stop him from going," said Miro. His voice wasn't loud, and his speech was thick and hard to understand. They listened, all of them, in silence. Even Mother, in anguished silence, for his words were terrible. "But you don't love him. You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you'll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat, Mother. You're the one who uses our love for you to try to control us."

  "Miro," said Ela. Quara recognised the tone in Ela's voice. It was as if they were all little children again, with Ela trying to calm Miro, to persuade him to soften his judgement. Quara remembered hearing Ela speak to him that way once when Father had just beaten Mother, and Miro said, "I'll kill him. He won't live out this night." This was the same thing. Miro was saying vicious things to Mother, words that had the power to kill. Only Ela couldn't stop him in time, not now, because the words had already been said. His poison was in Mother now, doing its work, seeking out her heart to burn it up.

  "You heard Mother," said Grego. "Get out of here."

  "I'm going," said Miro. "But I said only the truth."

  Grego strode toward Miro, took him by the shoulders, and bodily propelled him toward the door. "You're not one of us!" said Grego. "You've got no right to say anything to us!"

  Quara shoved herself between them, facing Grego. "If Miro hasn't earned the right to speak in this family, then we aren't a family!"

  "You said it," murmured Olhado.

  "Get out of my way," said Grego. Quara had heard him speak threateningly before, a thousand times at least. But this time, standing so close to him, his breath in her face, she realised that he was out of control. That the news of Quim's death had hit him hard, that maybe at this moment he wasn't quite sane.

  "I'm not in your way," said Quara. "Go ahead. Knock a woman down. Shove a cripple. It's in your nature, Grego. You were born to destroy things. I'm ashamed to belong to the same species as you, let alone the same family."

  Only after she spoke did she realise that maybe she was pushing Grego too far. After all these years of sparring between them, this time she had drawn blood. His face was terrifying.

  But he didn't hit her. He stepped around her, around Miro, and stood in the doorway, his hands on the doorframe. Pushing outward, as if he were trying to press the walls out of his way. Or perhaps he was clinging to the walls, hoping they could hold him in.

  "I'm not going to let you make me angry at you, Quara," said Grego. "I know who my enemy is."

  Then he was gone, out the door into the new darkness.

  A moment later, Miro followed, saying nothing more.

  Ela spoke as she also walked to the door. "Whatever lies you may be telling yourself, Mother, it wasn't Ender or anyone else who destroyed our family here tonight. It was you." Then she was gone.

  Olhado got up and left, wordlessly. Quara wanted to slap him as he passed her, to make him speak. Have you recorded everything in your computer eyes, Olhado? Have you got all the pictures etched in memory? Well, don't be too proud of yourself. I may have only a brain of tissues to record this wonderful night in the history of the Ribeira family, but I'll bet my pictures are every bit as clear as yours.