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

by Orson Scott Card

  And Miro, Grego, Quara, Ela, Olhado— aren't they my children, too? Can't I also claim to have helped create them, even if they came from Libo's love and Novinha's body, years before I even arrived in this place?

  It was full dark when he found young Val, though he couldn't understand why he was even looking for her. She was in Olhado's house, with Plikt; but while Plikt leaned against a shadowed wall, her face inscrutable, young Val was among Olhado's children, playing with them.

  Of course she's playing with them, thought Ender. She's still a child herself, however much experience she might have had thrust upon her out of my memories.

  But as he stood in the doorway, watching, he realised that she wasn't playing equally with all the children. It was Nimbo who really had her attention. The boy who had been burned, in more ways than one, the night of the mob. The game the children played was simple enough, but it kept them from talking to each other. Still, there was eloquent conversation between Nimbo and young Val. Her smile toward him was warm, not in the manner of a woman encouraging a lover, but rather as a sister gives her brother the silent message of love, of confidence, of trust.

  She's healing him, thought Ender. Just as Valentine, so many years ago, healed me. Not with words. Just with her company.

  Could I have created her with even that ability intact? Was there that much truth and power in my dream of her? Then maybe Peter also has everything within him that my real brother had— all that was dangerous and terrible, but also that which created a new order.

  Try as he might, Ender couldn't get himself to believe that story. Young Val might have healing in her eyes, but Peter had none of that in him. His was the face that, years before, Ender had seen looking back at him from a mirror in the Fantasy Game, in a terrible room where he died again and again before he could finally embrace the element of Peter within himself and go on.

  I embraced Peter and destroyed a whole people. I took him into myself and committed xenocide. I thought, in all these years since then, that I had purged him. That he was gone. But he'll never leave me.

  The idea of withdrawing from the world and entering into the order of the Children of the Mind of Christ— there was much to attract him in that. Perhaps there, Novinha and he together could purge themselves of the demons that had dwelt inside them all these years. Novinha has never been so much at peace, thought Ender, as she is tonight.

  Young Val noticed him, came to him as he stood in the doorway.

  "Why are you here?" she said.

  "Looking for you," he said.

  "Plikt and I are spending the night with Olhado's family," she said. She glanced at Nimbo and smiled. The boy grinned foolishly.

  "Jane says that you're going with the starship," Ender said softly.

  "If Peter can hold Jane within himself, so can I," she answered. "Miro is going with me. To find habitable worlds."

  "Only if you want to," said Ender.

  "Don't be foolish," she said. "Since when have you done only what you want to do? I'll do what must be done, that only I can do."

  He nodded.

  "Is that all you came for?" she asked.

  He nodded again. "I guess," he said.

  "Or did you come because you wish that you could be the child you were when you last saw a girl with this face?"

  The words stung— far worse than when Peter guessed what was in his heart. Her compassion was far more painful than his contempt.

  She must have seen the expression of pain on his face, and misunderstood it. He was relieved that she was capable of misunderstanding. I do have some privacy left.

  "Are you ashamed of me?" she asked.

  "Embarrassed," he said. "To have my unconscious mind made so public. But not ashamed. Not of you." He glanced toward Nimbo, then back to her. "Stay here and finish what you started."

  She smiled slightly. "He's a good boy who thought that he was doing something fine."

  "Yes," he said. "But it got away from him."

  "He didn't know what he was doing," she said. "When you don't understand the consequences of your acts, how can you be blamed for them?"

  He knew that she was talking as much about him, Ender the Xenocide, as about Nimbo. "You don't take the blame," he answered. "But you still take responsibility. For healing the wounds you caused."

  "Yes," she said. "The wounds you caused. But not all the wounds in the world."

  "Oh?" he asked. "And why not? Because you plan to heal them all yourself?"

  She laughed— a light, girlish laugh. "You haven't changed a bit, Andrew," she said. "Not in all these years."

  He smiled at her, hugged her lightly, and sent her back into the light of the room. He himself, though, turned back out into the darkness and headed home. There was light enough for him to find his way, yet he stumbled and got lost several times.

  "You're crying," said Jane in his ear.

  "This is such a happy day," he said.

  "It is, you know. You're just about the only person wasting any pity on you tonight."

  "Fine, then," said Ender. "If I'm the only one, then at least there's one."

  "You've got me," she said. "And our relationship has been chaste all along."

  "I've really had enough of chastity in my life," he answered. "I wasn't hoping for more."

  "Everyone is chaste in the end. Everyone ends up out of the reach of all the deadly sins."

  "But I'm not dead," he said. "Not yet. Or am I?"

  "Does this feel like heaven?" she asked.

  He laughed, and not nicely.

  "Well, then, you can't be dead."

  "You forget," he said. "This could easily be hell."

  "Is it?" she asked him.

  He thought about all that had been accomplished. Ela's viruses. Miro's healing. Young Val's kindness to Nimbo. The smile of peace on Novinha's face. The pequeninos' rejoicing as their liberty began its passage through their world. Already, he knew, the viricide was cutting an ever-widening swath through the prairie of capim surrounding the colony; by now it must already have passed into other forests, the descolada, helpless now, giving way as the mute and passive recolada took its place. All these changes couldn't possibly take place in hell.

  "I guess I'm still alive," he said.

  "And so am I," she said. "That's something, too. Peter and Val, they're not the only people to spring from your mind."

  "No, they're not," he said.

  "We're both still alive, even if we have hard times coming."

  He remembered what lay in store for her, the mental crippling that was only weeks away, and he was ashamed of himself for having mourned his own losses. "Better to have loved and lost," he murmured, "than never to have loved at all."

  "It may be a cliché," said Jane, "but that doesn't mean it can't be true."

  Chapter 18 — THE GOD OF PATH

  I couldn't taste the changes in the descolada virus until it was gone.

  It was adapting to you?

  It was beginning to taste like myself. It had included most of my genetic molecules into its own structure

  Perhaps it was preparing to change you, as it changed us.

  But when it captured your ancestors, it paired them with the trees they lived in. Whom would we have been paired with?

  What other forms of life are there on Lusitania, except the ones that are already paired?

  Perhaps the descolada meant to combine us with an existing pair. Or replace one pair-member with us.

  Or perhaps it meant to pair you with the humans.

  It's dead now. It will never happen, whatever it planned.

  What sort of life would you have led? Mating with human males?

  This is disgusting.

  Or giving live births, perhaps, in the human manner?

  Stop this foulness.

  I was merely speculating.

  The descolada is gone. You're free of it.

  But never free of what we should have been. I believe that we were sentient before the descolada came.
I believe our history is older than the spacecraft that brought it here. I believe that somewhere in our genes is locked the secret of pequenino life when we were tree-dwellers, rather than the larval stage in the life of sentient trees.

  If you had no third life, Human, you would be dead now.

  Dead now, but while I lived I could have been, not a mere brother, but a father. While I lived I could have travelled anywhere, without worrying about returning to my forest if I ever hoped to mate. Never would I have stood day after day rooted to the same spot, living my life vicariously through the tales the brothers bring to me.

  It's not enough for you to be free of the descolada, then? You must be free of all its consequences or you won't be content?

  I'm always content. I am what I am, no matter how I got that way.

  But still not free.

  Males and females both, we still have to lose our lives in order to pass on our genes.

  Poor fool. Do you think that I, the hive queen, am free? Do you think that human parents, once they bear young, are ever truly free again? If life to you means independence, a completely unfettered freedom to do as you like, then none of the sentient creatures is alive. None of us is ever fully free.

  Put down roots, my friend, and then tell me how un-free you were when you were yet un-rooted.

  Wang-mu and Master Han waited together on the riverbank some hundred meters from their house, a pleasant walk through the garden. Jane had told them that someone would be coming to see them, someone from Lusitania. They both knew this meant that faster-than-light travel had been achieved, but beyond that they could only assume that their visitor must have come to an orbit around Path, shuttled down, and was now making his way stealthily toward them.

  Instead, a ridiculously small metal structure appeared on the riverbank in front of them. The door opened. A man emerged. A young man — large boned, Caucasian, but pleasant-looking anyway. He held a single glass tube in his hand.

  He smiled.

  Wang-mu had never seen such a smile. He looked right through her as if he owned her soul. As if he knew her, knew her better than she knew herself.

  "Wang-mu," he said, gently. "Royal Mother of the West. And Fei-tzu, the great teacher of the Path."

  He bowed. They bowed to him in return.

  "My business here is brief," he said. He held the vial out to Master Han. "Here is the virus. As soon as I've gone — because I have no desire for genetic alteration myself, thank you — drink this down. I imagine it tastes like pus or something equally disgusting, but drink it anyway. Then make contact with as many people as possible, in your house and the town nearby. You'll have about six hours before you start feeling sick. With any luck, at the end of the second day you'll have not a single symptom left. Of anything." He grinned. "No more little air-dances for you, Master Han, eh?"

  "No more servility for any of us," said Han Fei-tzu. "We're ready to release our messages at once."

  "Don't spring this on anybody until you've already spread the infection for a few hours."

  "Of course," said Master Han. "Your wisdom teaches me to be careful, though my heart tells me to hurry and proclaim the glorious revolution that this merciful plague will bring to us."

  "Yes, very nice," said the man. Then he turned to Wang-mu. "But you don't need the virus, do you?"

  "No, sir," said Wang-mu.

  "Jane says you're as bright a human being as she's ever seen."

  "Jane is too generous," said Wang-mu.

  "No, she showed me the data." He looked her up and down. She didn't like the way his eyes took possession of her whole body in that single long glance. "You don't need to be here for the plague. In fact, you'd be better off leaving before it happens."

  "Leaving?"

  "What is there for you here?" asked the man. "I don't care how revolutionary it gets here, you'll still be a servant and the child of low-class parents. In a place like this, you could spend your whole life overcoming it and you'd still be nothing but a servant with a surprisingly good mind. Come with me and you'll be part of changing history. Making history."

  "Come with you and do what?"

  "Overthrow Congress, of course. Cut them off at the knees and send them all crawling back home. Make all the colony worlds equal members of the polity, clean out the corruption, expose all the vile secrets, and call home the Lusitania Fleet before it can commit an atrocity. Establish the rights of all raman races. Peace and freedom."

  "And you intend to do all this?"

  "Not alone," he said.

  She was relieved.

  "I'll have you."

  "To do what?"

  "To write. To speak. To do whatever I need you to do."

  "But I'm uneducated, sir. Master Han was only beginning to teach me."

  "Who are you?" demanded Master Han. "How can you expect a modest girl like this to pick up and go with a stranger?"

  "A modest girl? Who gives her body to the foreman in order to get a chance to be close to a god spoken girl who might just hire her to be a secret maid? No, Master Han, she may be putting on the attitudes of a modest girl, but that's because she's a chameleon. Changing hides whenever she thinks it'll get her something."

  "I'm not a liar, sir," she said.

  "No, I'm sure you sincerely become whatever it is you're pretending to be. So now I'm saying, Pretend to be a revolutionary with me. You hate the bastards who did all this to your world. To Qing-jao."

  "How do you know so much about me?"

  He tapped his ear. For the first time she noticed the jewel there. "Jane keeps me informed about the people I need to know."

  "Jane will die soon," said Wang-mu.

  "Oh, she may get semi-stupid for a while," said the man, "but die she will not. You helped save her. And in the meantime, I'll have you."

  "I can't," she said. "I'm afraid."

  "All right then," he said. "I offered."

  He turned back to the door of his tiny craft.

  "Wait," she said.

  He faced her again.

  "Can't you at least tell me who you are?"

  "Peter Wiggin is my name," he said. "Though I imagine I'll use a false one for a while."

  "Peter Wiggin," she whispered. "That's the name of the —"

  "My name. I'll explain it to you later, if I feel like it. Let's just say that Andrew Wiggin sent me. Sent me off rather forcefully. I'm a man with a mission, and he figured I could only accomplish it on one of the worlds where Congress's power structures are most heavily concentrated. I was Hegemon once, Wang-mu, and I intend to have the job back, whatever the title might turn out to be when I get it. I'm going to break a lot of eggs and cause an amazing amount of trouble and turn this whole Hundred Worlds thing arse over tea kettle, and I'm inviting you to help me. But I really don't give a damn whether you do or not, because even though it'd be nice to have your brains and your company, I'll do the job one way or another. So are you coming or what?"