“I know the words,” said Peter. “I also know what they mean.”
“You do?” asked young Val. Her voice, as always, was a surprise– soft, mild, and yet able to pierce the conversation. Ender remembered that Valentine's voice had always been that way. Impossible not to listen to, though she so rarely raised her voice.
“Right. Fair. Decent,” said Peter. The words sounded filthy in his mouth. “Either the person saying them believes in those concepts or not. If not, then those words mean that he's got somebody standing behind me with a knife in his hand. And if he does believe them, then those words mean that I'm going to win.”
“I'll tell you what they mean,” said Quara. “They mean that we're going to congratulate the pequeninos– and ourselves– for wiping out a sentient species that may exist nowhere else in the universe.”
“Don't kid yourself,” said Peter.
“Everybody's so sure that the descolada is a designed virus,” said Quara, “but nobody's considered the alternative– that a much more primitive, vulnerable version of the descolada evolved naturally, and then changed itself to its present form. It might be a designed virus, yes, but who did the designing? And now we're killing it without attempting conversation.”
Peter grinned at her, then at Ender. “I'm surprised that this weaselly little conscience is not your blood offspring,” he said. “She's as obsessed with finding reasons to feel guilty as you and Val.”
Ender ignored him and attempted to answer Quara. “We are killing it. Because we can't wait any longer. The descolada is trying to destroy us, and there's no time to dither. If we could, we would.”
“I understand all that,” said Quara. “I cooperated, didn't I? It just makes me sick to hear you talking as if the pequeninos were somehow brave about collaborating in an act of xenocide in order to save their own skin.”
“Us or them, kid,” said Peter. “Us or them.”
“You can't possibly understand,” said Ender, “how ashamed I am to hear my own arguments on his lips.”
Peter laughed. “Andrew pretends not to like me,” he said. “But the kid's a fraud. He admires me. He worships me. He always has. Just like his pretty little angel here.”
Peter poked at young Val. She didn't shy away. She acted instead as if she hadn't even felt his finger in the flesh of her upper arm.
“He worships us both. In his twisted little mind, she's the moral perfection that he can never achieve. And I am the power and genius that was always just out of poor little Andrew's reach. It was really quite modest of him, don't you think? For all these years, he's carried his betters with him inside his mind.”
Young Val reached out and took Quara's hand. “It's the worst thing you'll ever do in your life,” she said, “helping the people you love to do something that in your heart you believe is deeply wrong.”
Quara wept.
But it was not Quara that worried Ender. He knew that she was strong enough to hold the moral contradictions of her own actions, and still remain sane. Her ambivalence toward her own actions would probably mellow her, make her less certain from moment to moment that her judgment was absolutely correct, and that all who disagreed with her were absolutely wrong. If anything, at the end of this she would emerge more whole and compassionate and, yes, decent than she had been before in her hotheaded youth. And perhaps young Val's gentle touch– along with her words naming exactly the pain that Quara was feeling– would help her to heal all the sooner.
What worried Ender was the way Grego was looking at Peter with such admiration. Of all people, Grego should have learned what Peter's words could lead to. Yet here he was, worshiping Ender's walking nightmare. I have to get Peter out of here, thought Ender, or he'll have even more disciples on Lusitania than Grego had– and he'll use them far more effectively and, in the long run, the effect will be more deadly.
Ender had little hope that Peter would turn out to be like the real Peter, who grew to be a strong and worthy hegemon. This Peter, after all, was not a fully fleshed-out human being, full of ambiguity and surprise. Rather he had been created out of the caricature of attractive evil that lingered in the deepest recesses of Ender's unconscious mind. There would be no surprises here. Even as they prepared to save Lusitania from the descolada, Ender had brought a new danger to them, potentially just as destructive.
But not as hard to kill.
Again he stifled the thought, though it had come up a dozen times since he first realized that it was Peter sitting at his left hand in the starship. I created him. He isn't real, just my nightmare. If I kill him, it wouldn't be murder, would it? It would be the moral equivalent of– what? Waking up? I have imposed my nightmare on the world, and if I killed him the world would just be waking up to find the nightmare gone, nothing more.
If it had been Peter alone, Ender might have talked himself into such a murder, or at least he thought he might. But it was young Val who stopped him. Fragile, beautiful of soul– if Peter could be killed, so could she. If he should be killed, then perhaps she ought to be as well– she had as little right to exist; she was as unnatural, as narrow and distorted in her creation. But he could never do that. She must be protected, not harmed. And if the one was real enough to remain alive, so must the other be. If harming young Val would be murder, so would harming Peter. They were spawned in the same creation.
My children, thought Ender bitterly. My darling little offspring, who leaped fully-formed from my head like Athena from the mind of Zeus. Only what I have here isn't Athena. More like Diana and Hades. The virgin huntress and the master of hell.
“We'd better go,” said Peter. “Before Andrew talks himself into killing me.”
Ender smiled wanly. That was the worst thing– that Peter and young Val seemed to have come into existence knowing more about his own mind than be knew himself. In time, he hoped, that intimate knowledge of him would fade. But in the meantime, it added to the humiliation, the way that Peter taunted him about thoughts that no one else would have guessed. And young Val– he knew from the way she looked at him sometimes that she also knew. He had no secrets anymore.
“I'll go home with you,” Val said to Quara.
“No,” Quara answered. “I've done what I've done. I'll be there to see Glass through to the end of his test.”
“We wouldn't want to miss our chance to suffer openly,” said Peter.
“Shut up, Peter,” said Ender.
Peter grinned. “Oh, come on. You know that Quara's just milking this for all it's worth. It's just her way of making herself the star of the show– everybody being careful and tender with her when they should be cheering for what Ela accomplished. Scene-stealing is so low, Quara– right up your alley.”
Quara might have answered, if Peter's words had not been so outrageous and if they had not contained a germ of truth that confused her. Instead it was young Val who fixed Peter with a cold glare and said, “Shut up, Peter.”
The same words Ender had said, only when young Val said them, they worked. He grinned at her, and winked– a conspiratorial wink, as if to say, I'll let you play your little game, Val, but don't think I don't know that you're sucking up to everybody by being so sweet. But he said no more as they left Grego in his cell.
Mayor Kovano joined them outside. “A great day in the history of humanity,” he said. “And by sheerest accident, I get to be in all the pictures.” The others laughed– especially Peter, who had struck up a quick and easy friendship with Kovano.
“It's no accident,” said Peter. “A lot of people in your position would have panicked and wrecked everything. It took an open mind and a lot of courage to let things move the way they have.”
Ender almost laughed aloud at Peter's obvious flattery. But flattery is never so obvious to the recipient. Oh, Kovano punched Peter in the arm and denied everything, but Ender could see that he loved hearing it, and that Peter had already earned more real influence with Kovano than Ender had. Don't these people see how Peter is cynically winning them a
ll over?
The only one who saw Peter with anything like Ender's fear and loathing was the Bishop– but in his case it was theological prejudice, not wisdom, that kept him from being sucked in. Within hours of their return from Outside, the Bishop had called upon Miro, urging him to accept baptism. “God has performed a great miracle in your healing,” he said, “but the way in which it was done– trading one body for another, instead of directly healing the old one– leaves us in the dangerous position that your spirit inhabits a body that has never been baptized. And since baptism is performed on the flesh, I fear that you may be unsanctified.” Miro wasn't very interested in the Bishop's ideas about miracles– he didn't see God as having much to do with his healing– but the sheer restoration of his strength and his speech and his freedom made him so ebullient that he probably would have agreed to anything. The baptism would take place early next week, at the first services to be held in the new chapel.
But the Bishop's eagerness to baptize Miro was not echoed in his attitude toward Peter and young Val. “It's absurd to think of these monstrous things as people,” he said. “They can't possibly have souls. Peter is an echo of someone who already lived and died, with his own sins and repentances, his life's course already measured and his place in heaven or hell already assigned. And as for this– girl, this mockery of feminine grace– she cannot be who she claims to be, for that place is already occupied by a living woman. There can be no baptism for the deceptions of Satan. By creating them, Andrew Wiggin has built his own Tower of Babel, trying to reach into heaven to take the place of God. He cannot be forgiven until he takes them back to hell and leaves them there.”
Did Bishop Peregrino imagine for one moment that that was not exactly what he longed to do? But Jane was adamant about it, when Ender offered the idea. “That would be foolish,” she said. “Why do you think they would go, for one thing? And for another, what makes you think you wouldn't simply create two more? Haven't you ever heard the story of the sorcerer's apprentice? Taking them back there would be like cutting the brooms in half again– all you'd end up with is more brooms. Leave bad enough alone.”
So here they were, walking to the lab together– Peter, with Mayor Kovano completely in his pocket. Young Val, who had won over Quara no less completely, though her purpose was altruistic instead of exploitative. And Ender, their creator, furious and humiliated and afraid.
I made them– therefore I'm responsible for everything they do. And in the long run, they will both do terrible harm. Peter, because harm is his nature– at least the way I conceived him in the patterns of my mind. And young Val, despite her innate goodness, because her very existence is a deep injury to my sister Valentine.
“Don't let Peter goad you so,” whispered Jane in his ear.
“People think he belongs to me,” Ender subvocalized. “They figure that he must be harmless because I'm harmless. But I have no control over him.”
“I think they know that.”
“I've got to get him away from here.”
“I'm working on that,” said Jane.
“Maybe I should pack them up and take them off to some deserted planet somewhere. Do you know Shakespeare's play The Tempest?”
“Caliban and Ariel, is that what they are?”
“Exile, since I can't kill them.”
“I'm working on it,” said Jane. “After all, they're part of you, aren't they? Part of the pattern of your mind? What if I can use them in your place, to allow me to go Outside? Then we could have three starships, and not just one.”
“Two,” said Ender. “I'm never going Outside again.”
“Not even for a microsecond? If I take you out and then right back in again? There was no need to linger there.”
“It wasn't the lingering that did the harm,” said Ender. “Peter and young Val were there instantly. If I go Outside again, I'll create them again.”
“Fine,” she said. “Two starships, then. One with Peter, one with young Val. Let me figure it out, if I can. We can't just make that one voyage and then abandon faster-than-light flight forever.”
“Yes we can,” said Ender. “We got the recolada. Miro got himself a healthy body. That's enough– we'll work everything else out ourselves.”
“Wrong,” said Jane. “We still have to transport pequeninos and hive queens off this planet before the fleet comes. We still have to get the transformational virus to Path, to set those people free.”
“I won't go Outside again.”
“Even if I can't use Peter and young Val to carry my aiua? You'd let the pequeninos and the hive queen be destroyed because you're afraid of your own unconscious mind?”
“You don't understand how dangerous Peter is.”
“Perhaps not. But I do understand how dangerous the Little Doctor is. And if you weren't so wrapped up in your own misery, Ender, you'd know that even if we end up with five hundred little Peters and Vals running around, we've got to use this starship to carry pequeninos and the hive queen to other worlds.”
He knew she was right. He had known it all along. That didn't mean that he was prepared to admit it.
“Just work on trying to move yourself into Peter and young Val,” he subvocalized. “Though God help us if Peter is able to create things when he goes Outside.”
“I doubt he can,” said Jane. “He's not as smart as he thinks he is.”
“Yes he is,” said Ender. “And if you doubt it, you're not as smart as you think you are.”
* * *
Ela was not the only one who prepared for Glass's final test by going to visit Planter. His mute tree was still only a sapling, hardly a balance to Rooter's and Human's sturdy trunks. But it was around that sapling that the surviving pequeninos had gathered. And, like Ela, they had gathered to pray. It was a strange and silent kind of prayer service. The pequenino priests offered no pomp, no ceremony. They simply knelt with the others, and they murmured in their several languages. Some prayed in Brothers' Language, some in tree language. Ela supposed that what she was hearing from the wives gathered there was their own regular language, though it might as easily be the holy language they used to speak to the mothertree. And there were also human languages coming from pequenino lips– Stark and Portuguese alike, and there might even have been some ancient Church Latin from one of the pequeninos priests. It was a virtual Babel, and yet she felt great unity. They prayed at the martyr's tomb– all that was left of himself– for the life of the brother who was following after him. If Glass died utterly today, he would only echo Planter's sacrifice. And if he passed into the third life, it would be a life owed to Planter's courage and example.
Because it was Ela who had brought back the recolada from Outside, they honored her with a brief time alone at the very trunk of Planter's tree. She wrapped her hand around the slender wooden pole, wishing there were more of his life in it. Was Planter's aiua lost now, wandering in the wherelessness of Outside? Or had God in fact taken it as his very soul and brought it into heaven, where Planter now communed with the saints?
Planter, pray for us. Intercede for us. As my venerated grandparents carried my prayer to the Father, go now to Christ for us and plead with him to have mercy on all your brothers and sisters. Let the recolada carry Glass into the third life, so that we can, in good conscience, spread the recolada through the world to replace the murderous descolada. Then the lion can lie down with the lamb indeed, and there can be peace in this place.
Not for the first time, though, Ela had her doubts. She was certain that their course was the right one– she had none of Quara's qualms about destroying the descolada throughout Lusitania. But what she wasn't sure of was whether she should have based the recolada on the oldest samples of the descolada they had collected. If in fact the descolada had caused recent pequenino belligerence, their hunger to spread to new places, then she could consider herself as restoring the pequeninos to their previous “natural” condition. But then, the previous condition was just as much a product of the descolada'
s gaialogical balancing act– it only seemed more natural because it was the condition the pequeninos were in when humans arrived. So she could just as easily see herself as causing a behavioral modification of an entire species, conveniently removing much of their aggressiveness so that there would be less likelihood of conflict with humans in the future. I am making good Christians of them now, whether they like it or not. And the fact that Human and Rooter both approve of this doesn't remove the onus from me, if this should turn out ultimately to the pequeninos' harm.
O God, forgive me for playing God in the lives of these children of yours. When Planter's aiua comes before you to plead for us, grant the prayer he carries on our behalf– but only if it is your will to have his species altered so. Help us do good, but stop us if we would unwittingly cause harm. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
She took a tear from her cheek onto her finger, and pressed it against the smooth bark of Planter's trunk. You aren't there to feel this, Planter, not inside the tree. But you feel it all the same, I do believe that. God would not let such a noble soul as yours be lost in darkness.
It was time to go. Gentle brothers' hands touched her, pulled at her, drew her onward to the lab where Glass was waiting in isolation for his passage into the third life.
* * *
When Ender had visited with Planter, he had been surrounded with medical equipment, lying on a bed. It was very different now inside the isolation chamber. Glass was in perfect health, and though he was wired up to all the monitoring devices, he was not bed-bound. Playful and happy, he could scarcely contain his eagerness to proceed.
And now that Ela and the other pequeninos had come, it could begin.
The only wall maintaining his isolation now was the disruptor field; outside it, the pequeninos who had gathered to watch his passage could see all that transpired. They were the only ones who watched in the open, however. Perhaps out of a sense of delicacy for pequenino feelings, or perhaps so they could have a wall between them and the brutality of this pequenino ritual, the humans had all gathered inside the lab, where only a window and the monitors let them see what would actually happen to Glass.
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