Xenocide

Chapter 10

Martyr

because you're here. You carry a fulcrum with you wherever you go.>

we can be friends.>

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 constituency 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 God and the Bishop. Of course, if that wasn't possible, pleasing God 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 God 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 Estevão," 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 Estevão on his mission to the heretics, and then ask Bishop Peregrino to pray. But Andrew assured 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."

"Bullshit," said Grego. "If that-- 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 hell."

"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."

"The Hive Queen doesn't think the way we do. Despite her best efforts, she doesn't take individual lives as seriously. If Lusitania is destroyed, she and the pequeninos will be at greatest risk--"

"The M.D. Device blows up the whole planet," Grego pointed out.

"At greatest risk of species annihilation," said Wiggin, unperturbed by Grego's interruption. "She'll not waste a ship on getting humans off Lusitania, because there are trillions of humans on a couple of hundred other worlds. We're not in danger of xenocide."

"We are if these heretic piggies get their way," said Grego.

"And that's another point," said Wiggin. "If we haven't found a way to neutralize the descolada, we can't in good conscience take the human population of Lusitania to another world. We'd only be doing exactly what the heretics want-- forcing other humans to deal with the descolada, and probably die. "

"Then there's no solution," said Ela. "We might as well roll over and die."

"Not quite," said Mayor Kovano. "It's possible-- perhaps likely-- that our own village of Milagre is doomed. But we can at least try to make it so that the pequenino colony ships don't carry the descolada to human worlds. There seem to be two approaches-- one biological, the other theological."

"We are so close," said Mother. "It's a matter of months or even weeks till Ela and I have designed a replacement species for the descolada."

"So you say," said Kovano. He turned to Ela. "What do you say?"

Quim almost groaned aloud. Ela will say that Mother's wrong, that there's no biological solution, and then Mother will say that she's trying to kill me by sending me out on my mission. This is all the family needs-- Ela and Mother in open war. Thanks to Kovano Zeljezo, humanitarian.

But Ela's answer wasn't what Quirn feared. "It's almost designed right now. It's the only approach that we haven't already tried and failed with, but we're on the verge of having the design for a version of the descolada virus that does everything necessary to maintain the life cycles of the indigenous species, but that is incapable of adapting to and destroying any new species."

"You're talking about a lobotomy for an entire species," said Quara bitterly. "How would you like it if somebody found a way to keep all humans alive, while removing our cerebrums?"

Of course Grego took up her gauntlet. "When these viruses can write a poem or reason from a theorem, I'll buy all this sentimental horseshit about how we ought to keep them alive."

"Just because we can't read them doesn't mean they don't have their epic poems!"

"Fechai as bocas!" growled Kovano.

Immediately they fell silent.

"Nossa Senhora," he said. "Maybe God wants to destroy Lusitania because it's the only way he can think of to shut you two up."

Bishop Peregrino cleared his throat.

"Or maybe not," said Kovano. "Far be it from me to speculate on God's motives."

The Bishop laughed, which allowed the others to laugh as well. The tension broke-- like an ocean wave, gone for the moment, but sure to return.

"So the anti-virus is almost ready?" Kovano asked Ela.

"No-- or yes, it is, the replacement virus is almost fully designed. But there are still two problems. The first one is delivery. We have to find a way to get the new virus to attack and replace the old one. That's still-- a long way off. "

"Do you mean it's a long way off, or you don't have the faintest idea how to do it?" Kovano was no fool-- he obviously had dealt with scientists before.

"Somewhere between those two," said Ela.

Mother shifted on her seat, visibly drawing away from Ela. My poor sister Ela, thought Quim. You may not be spoken to for the next several years.

"And the other problem?" asked Kovano.

"It's one thing to design the replacement virus. It's something else again to produce it."

"These are mere details," said Mother.

"You're wrong, Mother, and you know it," said Ela. "I can diagram what we want the new virus to be. But even working under ten degrees absolute, we can't cut up and recombine the descolada virus with enough precision. Either it dies, because we've left out too much, or it immediately repairs itself as soon as it returns to normal temperatures, because we didn't take out enough."

"Technical problems."

"Technical problems," said Ela sharply. "Like building an ansible without a philotic link."

"So we conclude--"

"We conclude nothing," said Mother.

"We conclude," continued Kovano, "that our xenobiologists are in sharp disagreement about the feasibility of taming the descolada virus itself. That brings us to the other approach-- persuading the pequeninos to send their colonies only to uninhabited worlds, where they can establish their own peculiarly poisonous ecology without killing human beings."

"Persuading them," said Grego. "As if we could trust them to keep their promises."

"They've kept more promises so far than you have," said Kovano. "So I wouldn't take a morally superior tone if I were you."

Finally things were at a point where Quim felt it would be beneficial for him to speak. "All of this discussion is interesting," said Quim. "It would be a wonderful thing if my mission to the heretics could be the means of persuading the pequeninos to refrain from causing harm to humankind. But even if we all came to agree that my mission has no chance of succeeding in that goal, I would still go. Even if we decided that there was a serious risk that my mission might make things worse, I'd go."

"Nice to know you plan to be cooperative," said Kovano acidly.

"I plan to cooperate with God and the church," said Quim. "My mission to the heretics is not to save humankind from the descolada or even to try to keep the peace between humans and pequeninos here on Lusitania. My mission to the heretics is in order to try to bring them back to faith in Christ and unity with the church. I am going to save their souls."

"Well of course," said Kovano. "Of course that's the reason you want to go."

"And it's the reason why I will go, and the only standard I'll use to determine whether or not my mission succeeds."

Kovano looked helplessly at Bishop Peregrino. "You said that Father Estevão was cooperative."

"I said he was perfectly obedient to God and the church," said the Bishop.

"I took that to mean that you could persuade him to wait on this mission until we knew more."

"I could indeed persuade him. Or I could simply forbid him to go," said Bishop Peregrino.

"Then do it," said Mother.

"I will not," said the Bishop.

"I thought you cared about the good of this colony," said Mayor Kovano.

"I care about the good of all the Christians placed under my charge," said Bishop Peregrino. "Until thirty years ago, that meant I cared only for the human beings of Lusitania. Now, however, I am equally responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Christian pequeninos of this planet. I send Father Estevão forth on his mission exactly as a missionary named Patrick was once sent to the island of Eire. He was extraordinarily successful, converting kings and nations. Unfortunately, the Irish church didn't always act the way the Pope might have wished. There was a great deal of-- let us say it was controversy between them. Superficially it concerned the date of Easter, but at heart it was over the issue of obedience to the Pope. It even came to bloodshed now and then. But never for a moment did anyone imagine it would have been better if St. Patrick had never gone to Eire. Never did anyone suggest that it would be better if the Irish had remained pagan."

Grego stood up. "We've found the philote, the true indivisible atom. We've conquered the stars. We send messages faster than the speed of light. And yet we still live in the Dark Ages." He started for the door.

"Walk out that door before I tell you to," said Mayor Kovano, "and you won't see the sun for a year."

Grego walked to the door, but instead of going through it, he leaned against it and grinned sardonically. "You see how obedient I am."

"I won't keep you long," said Kovano. "Bishop Peregrino and Father Estevão speak as if they could make their decision independent of the rest of us, but of course they know they can't. If I decided that Father Estevão's mission to the piggies shouldn't happen, it wouldn't. Let us all be clear about that. I'm not afraid to put the Bishop of Lusitania under arrest, if the welfare of Lusitania requires it; and as for this missionary priest, you will only go out among the pequeninos when you have my consent."

"I have no doubt that you can interfere with God's work on Lusitania," said Bishop Peregrino icily. "You must have no doubt that I can send you to hell for doing it."

"I know you can," said Kovano. "I wouldn't be the first political leader to end up in hell at the end of a contest with the church. Fortunately, this time it won't come to that. I've listened to all of you and reached my decision. Waiting for the new anti-virus is too risky. And even if I knew, absolutely, that the anti-virus would be ready and usable in six weeks, I'd still allow this mission. Our best chance right now of salvaging something from this mess is Father Estevão's mission. Andrew tells me that the pequeninos have great respect and affection for this man-- even the unbelievers. If he can persuade the pequenino heretics to drop their plan to annihilate humanity in the name of their religion, that will remove one heavy burden from us."

Quim nodded gravely. Mayor Kovano was a man of great wisdom. It was good that they wouldn't have to struggle against each other, at least for now.

"In the meantime, I expect the xenobiologists to continue to work on the anti-virus with all possible vigor. We'll decide, when the virus exists, whether or not to use it."

"We'll use it," said Grego.

"Only if I'm dead," said Quara.

"I appreciate your willingness to wait until we know more before you commit yourself to any course of action," said Kovano. "Which brings us to you, Grego Ribeira. Andrew Wiggin assures me that there is reason to believe that faster-than-light travel might be possible."

Grego looked coldly at the Speaker for the Dead. "And where did you study physics, Senhor Falante?"

"I hope to study it from you," said Wiggin. "Until you've heard my evidence, I hardly know whether there's any reason to hope for such a breakthrough."

Quim smiled to see how easily Andrew turned away the quarrel that Grego wanted to pick. Grego was no fool. He knew he was being handled. But Wiggin hadn't left him any reasonable grounds for showing his disgruntlement. It was one of the most infuriating skills of the Speaker for the Dead.

"If there were a way to travel between worlds at ansible speeds," said Kovano, "we would need only one such ship to transport all the humans of Lusitania to another world. It's a remote chance--"

"A foolish dream," said Grego.

"But we'll pursue it. We'll study it, won't we?" said Kovano. "Or we'll find ourselves working in the foundry."

"I'm not afraid to work with my hands," said Grego. "So don't think you can terrify me into putting my mind at your service."

"I stand rebuked," said Kovano. "It's your cooperation that I want, Grego. But if I can't have that, then I'll settle for your obedience."

Apparently Quara was feeling left out. She arose as Grego had a moment before. "So you can sit here and contemplate destroying a sentient species without even thinking of a way to communicate with them. I hope you all enjoy being mass murderers." Then, like Grego, she made as if to leave.

"Quara," said Kovano.

She waited.

"You will study ways to talk to the descolada. To see if you can communicate with these viruses."

"I know when I'm being tossed a bone," said Quara. "What if I tell you that they're pleading for us not to kill them? You wouldn't believe me anyway."

"On the contrary. I know you're an honest woman, even if you are hopelessly indiscreet," said Kovano. "But I have another reason for wanting you to understand the molecular language of the descolada. You see, Andrew Wiggin has raised a possibility that never occurred to me before. We all know that pequenino sentience dates from the time when the descolada virus first swept across this planet. But what if we've misunderstood cause and effect?"

Mother turned to Andrew, a bitter half-smile on her face. "You think the pequeninos caused the descolada?"

"No," said Andrew. "But what if the pequeninos are the descolada?"

Quara gasped.

Grego laughed. "You are full of clever ideas, aren't you, Wiggin?"

"I don't understand," said Quim.

"I just wondered," said Andrew. "Quara says that the descolada is complex enough that it might contain intelligence. What if descolada viruses are using the bodies of the pequeninos to express their character? What if pequenino intelligence comes entirely from the viruses inside their bodies?"

For the first time, Ouanda, the xenologer, spoke up. "You are as ignorant of xenology as you are of physics, Mr. Wiggin," she said.

"Oh, much more so," said Wiggin. "But it occurred to me that we've never been able to think of any other way that memories and intelligence are preserved as a dying pequenino passes into the third life. The trees don't exactly preserve the brain inside them. But if will and memory are carried by the descolada in the first place, the death of the brain would be almost meaningless in the transmission of personality to the fathertree."

"Even if there were a chance of this being true," said Ouanda, "there's no possible experiment we could decently perform to find out."

Andrew Wiggin nodded ruefully. "I know I couldn't think of one. I was hoping you would."

Kovano interrupted again. "Ouanda, we need you to explore this. If you don't believe it, fine-- figure out a way to prove it wrong, and you'll have done your job." Kovano stood up, addressed them all. "Do you all understand what I'm asking of you? We face some of the most terrible moral choices that humankind has ever faced. We run the risk of committing xenocide, or allowing it to be committed if we do nothing. Every known or suspected sentient species lives in the shadow of grave risk, and it's here, with us and with us alone, that almost all the decisions lie. Last time anything remotely similar happened, our human predecessors chose to commit xenocide in order, as they supposed, to save themselves. I am asking all of you to help us pursue every avenue, however unlikely, that shows us a glimmer of hope, that might provide us with a tiny shred of light to guide our decisions. Will you help?"

Even Grego and Quara and Ouanda nodded their assent, however reluctantly. For the moment, at least, Kovano had managed to transform all the self-willed squabblers in this room into a cooperative community. How long that would last outside the room was a matter for speculation. Quim decided that the spirit of cooperation would probably last until the next crisis-- and maybe that would be long enough.

Only one more confrontation was left. As the meeting broke up and everyone said their good-byes or arranged one-on-one consultations, Mother came to Quim and looked him fiercely in the eye.

"Don't go."

Quim closed his eyes. There was nothing to say to an outrageous statement like that.

"If you love me," she said.

Quim remembered the story from the New Testament, when Jesus' mother and brothers came to visit him, and wanted him to interrupt teaching his disciples in order to receive them.

"These are my mother and my brothers," murmured Quim.

She must have understood the reference, because when he opened his eyes, she was gone.

Not an hour later, Quim was also gone, riding on one of the colony's precious cargo trucks. He needed few supplies, and for a normal journey he would have gone on foot. But the forest he was bound for was so far away, it would have taken him weeks to get there without the car; nor could he have carried food enough. This was still a hostile environment-- it grew nothing edible to humans, and even if it did, Quirn would still need the food containing the descolada suppressants. Without it he would die of the descolada long before he starved to death.

As the town of Milagre grew small behind him, as he hurtled deeper and deeper into the meaningless open space of the prairie, Quim-- Father Estevão-- wondered what Mayor Kovano might have decided if he had known that the leader of the heretics was a fathertree who had earned the name Warmaker, and that Warmaker was known to have said that the only hope for the pequeninos was for the Holy Ghost-- the descolada virus-- to destroy all human life on Lusitania.

It wouldn't have mattered. God had called Quirn to preach the gospel of Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. Even the most warlike, bloodthirsty, hate-filled people might be touched by the love of God and transformed into Christians. It had happened many times in history. Why not now?

O Father, do a mighty work in this world. Never did your children need miracles more than we do.

Novinha wasn't speaking to Ender, and he was afraid. This wasn't petulance-- he had never seen Novinha be petulant. To Ender it seemed that her silence was not to punish him, but rather to keep from punishing him; that she was silent because if she spoke, her words would be too cruel ever to be forgiven.

So at first he didn't attempt to cajole words from her. He let her move like a shadow through the house, drifting past him without eye contact; he tried to stay out of her way and didn't go to bed until she was asleep.

It was Quim, obviously. His mission to the heretics-- it was easy to understand what she feared, and even though Ender didn't share the same fears, he knew that Quim's journey was not without risk. Novinha was being irrational. How could Ender have stopped Quim? He was the one of Novinha's children over whom Ender had almost no influence; they had come to a rapprochement a few years ago, but it was a declaration of peace between equals, nothing like the ur-fatherhood Ender had established with all the other children. If Novinha had not been able to persuade Quim to give up this mission, what more could Ender have accomplished?

Novinha probably knew this, intellectually. But like all other human beings, she did not always act according to her understanding. She had lost too many of the people that she loved; when she felt one more of them slipping away, her response was visceral, not intellectual. Ender had come into her life as a healer, a protector. It was his job to keep her from being afraid, and now she was afraid, and she was angry at him for having failed her.

However, after two days of silence Ender had had enough. This wasn't a good time for there to be a barrier between him and Novinha. He knew-- and so did Novinha-- that Valentine's coming might be a difficult time for them. He had so many old habits of communication with Valentine, so many connections with her, so many roads into her soul, that it was hard for him not to fall back into being the person he had been during the years-- the millennia-- they had spent together. They had experienced three thousand years of history as if seeing it through the same eyes. He had been with Novinha only thirty years. That was actually longer, in subjective time, than he had spent with Valentine, but it was so easy to slip back into his old role as Valentine's brother, as Speaker to her Demosthenes.

Ender had expected Novinha to be jealous when Valentine came, and he was prepared for that. He had warned Valentine that there would probably be few opportunities for them to be together at first. And she, too, understood-- Jakt had his worries, too, and both spouses would need reassurance. It was almost silly for Jakt and Novinha to be jealous of the bonds between brother and sister. There had never been the slightest hint of sexuality in Ender's and Valentine's relationship-- anyone who understood them at all would laugh at any such notion-- but it wasn't sexual unfaithfulness that Novinha and Jakt were wary of. Nor was it the emotional bond they shared-- Novinha had no reason to doubt Ender's love and devotion to her, and Jakt could not have asked for more than Valentine offered him, both in passion and in trust.

It was deeper than any of these things. It was the fact that even now, after all these years, as soon as they were together they once again functioned like a single person, helping each other without even having to explain what they were trying to accomplish. Jakt saw it and even to Ender, who had never known him before, it was obvious that the man felt devastated. As if he saw his wife and her brother together and realized: This is what closeness is. This is what it means for two people to be one. He had thought that he and Valentine had been as close as husband and wife can ever be, and perhaps they were. And yet now he had to confront the fact that it was possible for two people to be even closer. To be, in some sense, the same person.

Ender could see this in Jakt, and could admire how well Valentine was doing at reassuring him-- and at distancing herself from Ender so that her husband could grow used to the bond between them more gradually, in small doses.

What Ender could not have predicted was the way Novinha had reacted. He had come to know her first as the mother of her children; he had known only the fierce, unreasonable loyalty she had for them. He had supposed that if she felt threatened, she would become possessive and controlling, the way she was with the children. He was not at all prepared for the way she had withdrawn from him. Even before this silent treatment about Quim's mission, she had been distant from him. In fact, now that he thought back, he realized that it had already been beginning before Valentine arrived. It was as if Novinha had already started giving in to a new rival before the rival was even there.

It made sense, of course-- he should have seen it coming. Novinha had lost too many strong figures in her life, too many people she had depended on. Her parents. Pipo. Libo. Even Miro. She might be protective and possessive with her children, whom she thought of as needing her, but with the people she needed, she was the opposite. If she feared that they would be taken away from her, she withdrew from them; she stopped permitting herself to need them.

Not "them." Him. Ender. She was trying to stop needing him. And this silence, if she kept it up, would drive such a wedge between them that their marriage would never recover.

If that happened, Ender didn't know what he would do. It had never occurred to him that his marriage might be threatened. He had not entered into it lightly; he intended to die married to Novinha, and all these years together had been filled with the joy that comes from utter confidence in another person. Now Novinha had lost that confidence in him. Only it wasn't right. He was still her husband, faithful to her as no other man, no other person in her life had ever been. He didn't deserve to lose her over a ridiculous misunderstanding. And if he let things go as Novinha seemed determined, however unconsciously, to make them happen, she would be utterly convinced that she could never depend on any other person. That would be tragic because it would be false.

So Ender was already planning a confrontation of some kind with Novinha when Ela accidentally set it off.

"Andrew."

Ela was standing in the doorway. If she had clapped hands outside, asking for admittance, Ender hadn't heard her. But then, she would hardly need to clap for entrance to her mother's house.

"Novinha's in our room," said Ender.

"I came to talk to you," said Ela.

"I'm sorry, you can't have an advance on your allowance."

Ela laughed as she came to sit beside him, but the laughter died quickly. She was worried.

"Quara," she said.

Ender sighed and smiled. Quara was born contrary, and nothing in her life had made her more compliant. Still, Ela had always been able to get along with her better than anyone.

"It's not just the normal," said Ela. "In fact, she's less trouble than usual. Not a quarrel."

"A dangerous sign?"

"You know she's trying to communicate with the descolada."

"Molecular language."

"Well, what she's doing is dangerous, and it won't establish communication even if it succeeds. Especially if it succeeds, because then there's a good chance that we'll all be dead."

"What's she doing?"

"She's been raiding my files-- which isn't hard, because I didn't think I needed to block them off from a fellow xenobiologist. She's been constructing the inhibitors I've been trying to splice into plants-- easy enough, because I've laid out exactly how it's done. Only instead of splicing it into anything, she's giving it directly to the descolada."

"What do you mean, giving it?"

"Those are her messages. That's what she's sending them on their precious little message carriers. Now, whether those carriers are language or not isn't going to be settled by a non-experiment like that. But sentient or not, we know that the descolada is a hell of a good adapter-- and she might well be helping them adapt to some of my best strategies for blocking them."

"Treason."

"Right. She's feeding our military secrets to the enemy."

"Have you talked to her about this?"

"'Sta brincando. Claro que falei. Ela quase me matou." You're joking-- of course I talked to her. She nearly killed me.

"Has she successfully trained any viruses?"

"She's not even testing for that. It's like she's run to the window and hollered, 'They're coming to kill you!' She's not doing science, she's doing interspecies politics, only we don't know that the other side even has politics, we only know that with her help it might just kill us faster than we ever imagined."

"Nossa Senhora," murmured Ender. "It's too dangerous. She can't play around with something like this."

"It may already be too late-- I can't guess whether she's done damage or not."

"Then we've got to stop her."

"How, break her arms?"

"I'll talk to her, but she's too old-- or too young-- to listen to reason. I'm afraid it'll end up with the Mayor, not with us."

Only when Novinha spoke did Ender realize that his wife had entered the room. "In other words, jail," said Novinha. "You plan to have my daughter locked up. When were you going to inform me?"

"Jail didn't occur to me," said Ender. "I expected he'd shut off her access to--"

"That isn't the Mayor's job," said Novinha. "It's mine. I'm the head xenobiologist. Why didn't you come to me, Elanora? Why to him?"

Ela sat there in silence, looking at her mother steadily. It was how she handled conflict with her mother, with passive resistance.

"Quara's out of control, Novinha," said Ender. "Telling secrets to the fathertrees was bad enough. Telling them to the descolada is insane."

"Es psicologista, agora?" Now you're a psychologist?

"I'm not planning to lock her up."

"You're not planning anything," said Novinha. "Not with my children."

"That's right," said Ender. "I'm not planning to do anything with children. I do have a responsibility, however, to do something about an adult citizen of Milagre who is recklessly endangering the survival of every human being on this planet, and maybe every human being everywhere."

"And where did you get that noble responsibility, Andrew? Did God come down to the mountain and carve your license to rule people on tablets of stone?"

"Fine," said Ender. "What do you suggest?"

"I suggest you stay out of business that doesn't concern you. And frankly, Andrew, that includes pretty much everything. You're not a xenobiologist. You're not a physicist. You're not a xenologer. In fact, you're not much of anything, are you, except a professional meddler in other people's lives."

Ela gasped. "Mother!"

"The only thing that gives you any power anywhere is that damned jewel in your ear. She whispers secrets to you, she talks to you at night when you're in bed with your wife, and whenever she wants something, there you are in a meeting where you have no business, saying whatever it was she told you to say. You talk about Quara committing treason-- as far as I can tell, you're the one who's betraying real people in favor of an overgrown piece of software!"

"Novinha," said Ender. It was supposed to be the beginning of an attempt to calm her.

But she wasn't interested in dialogue. "Don't you dare to try to deal with me, Andrew. All these years I thought you loved me--"

"I do."

"I thought you had really become one of us, part of our lives-"

"I am."

"I thought it was real--"

"It is."

"But you're just what Bishop Peregrino warned us you were from the start. A manipulator. A controller. Your brother once ruled all of humanity, isn't that the story? But you aren't so ambitious. You'll settle for a little planet."

"In the name of God, Mother, have you lost your mind? Don't you know this man?"

"I thought I did!" Novinha was weeping now. "But no one who loved me would ever let my son go out and face those murderous little swine--"

"He couldn't have stopped Quim, Mother! Nobody could!"

"He didn't even try. He approved!"

"Yes," said Ender. "I thought your son was acting nobly and bravely, and I approved of that. He knew that while the danger wasn't great, it was real, and yet he still chose to go-- and I approved of that. It's exactly what you would have done, and I hope that it's what I would do in the same place. Quim is a man, a good man, maybe a great one. He doesn't need your protection and he doesn't want it. He has decided what his life's work is and he's doing it. I honor him for that, and so should you. How dare you suggest that either of us should have stood in his way!"

Novinha was silent at last, for the moment, anyway. Was she measuring Ender's words? Was she finally realizing how futile and, yes, cruel it was for her to send Quim away with her anger instead of her hope? During that silence, Ender still had some hope.

Then the silence ended. "If you ever meddle in the lives of my children again, I'm done with you," said Novinha. "And if anything happens to Quim-- anything-- I will hate you till you die, and I'll pray for that day to come soon. You don't know everything, you bastard, and it's about time you stopped acting as if you did."

She stalked to the door, but then thought better of the theatrical exit. She turned back to Ela and spoke with remarkable calm. "Elanora, I will take immediate steps to block Quara from access to records and equipment that she could use to help the descolada. And in the future, my dear, if I ever hear you discussing lab business with anyone, especially this man, I will bar you from the lab for life. Do you understand?"

Again Ela answered her with silence.

"Ah," said Novinha. "I see that he has stolen more of my children from me than I thought."

Then she was gone.

Ender and Ela sat in stunned silence. Finally Ela stood up, though she didn't take a single step.

"I really ought to go do something," said Ela, "but I can't for the life of me think what."

"Maybe you should go to your mother and show her that you're still on her side."

"But I'm not," said Ela. "In fact, I was thinking maybe I should go to Mayor Zeljezo and propose that he remove Mother as head xenobiologist because she has clearly lost her mind."

"No she hasn't," said Ender. "And if you did something like that, it would kill her."

"Mother? She's too tough to die."

"No," said Ender. "She's so fragile right now that any blow might kill her. Not her body. Her-- trust. Her hope. Don't give her any reason to think you're not with her, no matter what."

Ela looked at him with exasperation. "Is this something you decide, or does it just come naturally to you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Mother just said things to you that should have made you furious or hurt or-- something, anyway-- and you just sit there trying to think of ways to help her. Don't you ever feel like lashing out at somebody? I mean, don't you ever lose your temper?"

"Ela, after you've inadvertently killed a couple of people with your bare hands, either you learn to control your temper or you lose your humanity."

"You've done that?"

"Yes," he said. He thought for a moment that she was shocked.

"Do you think you could still do it?"

"Probably," he said.

"Good. It may be useful when all hell breaks loose."

Then she laughed. It was a joke. Ender was relieved. He even laughed, weakly, along with her.

"I'll go to Mother," said Ela, "but not because you told me to, or even for the reasons that you said."

"Fine, just so you go."

"Don't you want to know why I'm going to stick with her?"

"I already know why."

"Of course. She was wrong, wasn't she. You do know everything, don't you."

"You're going to go to your mother because it's the most painful thing you could do to yourself at this moment."

"You make it sound sick."

"It's the most painful good thing you could do. It's the most unpleasant job around. It's the heaviest burden to bear."

"Ela the martyr, certo? Is that what you'll say when you speak my death?"

"If I'm going to speak your death, I'll have to pre-record it. I intend to be dead long before you. "

"So you're not leaving Lusitania?"

"Of course not."

"Even if Mother boots you out?"

"She can't. She has no grounds for divorce, and Bishop Peregrino knows us both well enough to laugh at any request for annulment based on a claim of nonconsummation."

"You know what I mean."

"I'm here for the long haul," said Ender. "No more phony immortality through time dilation. I'm through chasing around in space. I'll never leave the surface of Lusitania again."

"Even if it kills you? Even if the fleet comes?"

"If everybody can leave, then I'll leave," said Ender. "But I'll be the one who turns off all the lights and locks the door."

She ran to him and kissed him on the cheek and embraced him, just for a moment. Then she was out the door and he was, once again, alone.

I was so wrong about Novinha, he thought. It wasn't Valentine she was jealous of. It was Jane. All these years, she's seen me speaking silently with Jane, all the time, saying things that she could never hear, hearing things that she could never say. I've lost her trust in me, and I never even realized I was losing it.

Even now, he must have been subvocalizing. He must have been talking to Jane out of a habit so deep that he didn't even know he was doing it. Because she answered him.

"I warned you," she said.

I suppose you did, Ender answered silently.

"You never think I understand anything about human beings."

I guess you're learning.

"She's right, you know. You are my puppet. I manipulate you all the time. You haven't had a thought of your own in years."

"Shut up," he whispered. "I'm not in the mood."

"Ender," she said, "if you think it would help you keep from losing Novinha, take the jewel out of your ear. I wouldn't mind."

"I would," he said.

"I was lying, so would I," she said. "But if you have to do it, to keep her, then do it."

"Thank you," he said. "But I'd be hard-pressed to keep someone that I've clearly lost already."

"When Quim comes back, everything will be fine."

Right, thought Ender. Right.

Please, God, take good care of Father Estevão.

They knew Father Estevão was coming. Pequeninos always did. The fathertrees told each other everything. There were no secrets. Not that they wanted it that way. There might be one fathertree that wanted to keep a secret or tell a lie. But they couldn't exactly go off by themselves. They never had private experiences. So if one fathertree wanted to keep something to himself, there'd be another close by who didn't feel that way. Forests always acted in unity, but they were still made up of individuals, and so stories passed from one forest to another no matter what a few fathertrees might wish.

That was Quim's protection, he knew. Because even though Warmaker was a bloodthirsty son of a bitch-- though that was an epithet without meaning when it came to pequeninos-- he couldn't do a thing to Father Estevão without first persuading the brothers of his forest to act as he wanted them to. And if he did that, one of the other fathertrees in his forest would know, and would tell. Would bear witness. If Warmaker broke the oath taken by all the fathertrees together, thirty years ago, when Andrew Wiggin sent Human into the third life, it could not be done secretly. The whole world would hear of it, and Warmaker would be known as an oathbreaker. It would be a shameful thing. What wife would allow the brothers to carry a mother to him then? What children would he ever have again as long as he lived?

Quirn was safe. They might not heed him, but they wouldn't harm him.

Yet when he arrived at Warmaker's forest, they wasted no time listening to him. The brothers seized him, threw him to the ground, and dragged him to Warmaker.

"This wasn't necessary," he said. "I was coming here anyway."

A brother was beating on the tree with sticks. Quim listened to the changing music as Warmaker altered the hollows within himself, shaping the sound into words.

"You came because I commanded."

"You commanded. I came. If you want to think you caused my coming, so be it. But God's commands are the only ones I obey willingly."

"You're here to hear the will of God," said Warmaker.

"I'm hear to speak the will of God," said Quim. "The descolada is a virus, created by God in order to make the pequeninos into worthy children. But the Holy Ghost has no incarnation. The Holy Ghost is perpetually spirit, so he can dwell in our hearts."

"The descolada dwells in our hearts, and gives us life. When he dwells in your heart, what does he give you?"

"One God. One faith. One baptism. God doesn't preach one thing to humans and another to pequeninos."

"We are not 'little ones'. You will see who is mighty and who is small."

They forced him to stand with his back pressed against Warmaker's trunk. He felt the bark shifting behind him. They pushed on him. Many small hands, many snouts breathing on him. In all these years, he had never thought of such hands, such faces as belonging to enemies. And even now, Quim realized with relief that he didn't think of them as his own enemies. They were the enemies of God, and he pitied them. It was a great discovery for him, that even when he was being pushed into the belly of a murderous fathertree, he had no shred of fear or hatred in him.

I really don't fear death. I never knew that.

The brothers still beat on the outside of the tree with sticks. Warmaker reshaped the sound into the words of Father Tongue, but now Quim was inside the sound, inside the words.

"You think I'm going to break the oath," said Warmaker.

"It crossed my mind," said Quim. He was now fully pinned inside the tree, even though it remained open in front of him from head to toe. He could see, he could breathe easily-- his confinement wasn't even claustrophobic. But the wood had formed so smoothly around him that he couldn't move an arm or a leg, couldn't begin to turn sideways to slide out of the gap before him. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to salvation.

"We'll test," said Warmaker. It was harder to understand his words, now that Quim was hearing them from the inside. Harder to think. "Let God judge between you and me. We'll give you all you want to drink-- the water from our stream. But of food you'll have none."

"Starving me is--"

"Starving? We have your food. We'll feed you again in ten days. If the Holy Ghost allows you to live for ten days, we'll feed you and set you free. We'll be believers in your doctrine then. We'll confess that we were wrong."

"The virus will kill me before then."

"The Holy Ghost will judge you and decide if you're worthy."

"There is a test going on here," said Quim, "but not the one you think."

"Oh?"

"It's the test of the Last Judgment. You stand before Christ, and he says to those on his right hand, 'I was a stranger, and you took me in. Hungry, and you fed me. Enter into the joy of the Lord.' Then he says to those on his left hand, 'I was hungry, and you gave me nothing. I was a stranger, and you mistreated me.' And they all say to him, 'Lord, when did we do these things to you?' and he answers, 'If you did it to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.' All you brothers, gathered here-- I am the least of your brothers. You will answer to Christ for what you do to me here."

"Foolish man," said Warmaker. "We are doing nothing to you but holding you still. What happens to you is whatever God desires. Didn't Christ say, 'I do nothing but what I've seen the Father do'? Didn't Christ say, 'I am the way. Come follow me'? Well, we are letting you do what Christ did. He went without bread for forty days in the wilderness. We give you a chance to be one-fourth as holy. If God wants us to believe in your doctrine, he'll send angels to feed you. He'll turn stones into bread."

"You're making a mistake," said Quim.

"You made the mistake by coming here."

"I mean that you're making a doctrinal mistake. You've got the lines down right-- fasting in the wilderness, stones into bread, all of it. But didn't you think it might be a little too self-revelatory for you to give yourself Satan's part?"

That was when Warmaker flew into a rage, speaking so rapidly that the movements within the wood began to twist and press on Quim until he was afraid he would be torn to bits within the tree.

"You are Satan! Trying to get us to believe your lies long enough for you humans to figure out a way to kill the descolada and keep all the brothers from the third life forever! Do you think we don't see through you? We know all your plans, all of them! You have no secrets! And God keeps no secrets from us either! We're the ones who were given the third life, not you! If God loved you, he wouldn't make you bury your dead in the ground and then let nothing but worms come out of you!"

The brothers sat around the opening in the trunk, enthralled by the argument.

It went on for six days, doctrinal arguments worthy of any of the fathers of the church in any age. Not since the council at Nicaea were such momentous issues considered, weighed.

The arguments were passed from brother to brother, from tree to tree, from forest to forest. Accounts of the dialogue between Warmaker and Father Estevão always reached Rooter and Human within a day. But the information wasn't complete. It wasn't until the fourth day that they realized that Quim was being held prisoner, without any of the food containing the descolada inhibitor.

Then an expedition was mounted at once, Ender and Ouanda, Jakt and Lars and Varsam; Mayor Kovano sent Ender and Ouanda because they were widely known and respected among the piggies, and Jakt and his son and son-in-law because they weren't native-born Lusitanians. Kovano didn't dare to send any of the native-born colonists-- if word of this got out, there was no telling what would happen. The five of them took the fastest car and followed the directions Rooter gave them. It was a three-day trip.

On the sixth day the dialogue ended, because the descolada had so thoroughly invaded Quim's body that he had no strength to speak, and was often too fevered and delirious to say anything intelligible when he did speak.

On the seventh day, he looked through the gap, upward, above the heads of the brothers who were still there, still watching. "I see the Savior sitting on the right hand of God," he whispered. Then he smiled.

An hour later he was dead. Warmaker felt it, and announced it triumphantly to the brothers. "The Holy Ghost has judged, and Father Estevão has been rejected!"

Some of the brothers rejoiced. But not as many as Warmaker had expected.

At dusk, Ender's party arrived. There was no question now of the piggies capturing and testing them-- they were too many, and the brothers were not all of one mind now anyway. Soon they stood before the split trunk of Warmaker and saw the haggard, disease-ravaged face of Father Estevão, barely visible in the shadows.

"Open up and let my son come out to me," said Ender.

The gap in the tree widened. Ender reached in and pulled out the body of Father Estevão. He was so light inside his robes that Ender thought for a moment he must be bearing some of his own weight, must be walking. But he wasn't walking. Ender laid him on the ground before the tree.

A brother beat a rhythm on Warmaker's trunk.

"He must belong to you indeed, Speaker for the Dead, because he is dead. The Holy Ghost has burned him up in the second baptism."

"You broke the oath," said Ender. "You betrayed the word of the fathertrees."

"No one harmed a hair of his head," said Warmaker.

"Do you think anyone is deceived by your lies?" said Ender. "Anyone knows that to withhold medicine from a dying man is an act of violence as surely as if you stabbed him in the heart. There is his medicine. At any time you could have given it to him."

"It was Warmaker," said one of the brothers standing there.

Ender turned to the brothers. "You helped Warmaker. Don't think you can give the blame to him alone. May none of you ever pass into the third life. And as for you, Warmaker, may no mother ever crawl on your bark."

"No human can decide things like that," said Warmaker.

"You decided it yourself, when you thought you could commit murder in order to win your argument," said Ender. "And you brothers, you decided it when you didn't stop him."

"You're not our judge!" cried one of the brothers.

"Yes I am," said Ender. "And so is every other inhabitant of Lusitania, human and fathertree, brother and wife."

They carried Quim's body to the car, and Jakt, Ouanda, and Ender rode with him. Lars and Varsam took the car that Quim had used. Ender took a few minutes to tell Jane a message to give to Miro back in the colony. There was no reason Novinha should wait three days to hear that her son had died at the hands of the pequeninos. And she wouldn't want to hear it from Ender's mouth, that was certain. Whether Ender would have a wife when he returned to the colony was beyond his ability to guess. The only certain thing was that Novinha would not have her son Estevão.

"Will you speak for him?" asked Jakt, as the car skimmed over the capim. He had heard Ender speak for the dead once on Trondheim.

"No," said Ender. "I don't think so."

"Because he's a priest?" asked Jakt.

"I've spoken for priests before," said Ender. "No, I won't speak for Quim because there's no reason to. Quim was always exactly what he seemed to be, and he died exactly as he would have have chosen-- serving God and preaching to the little ones. I have nothing to add to his story. He completed it himself."