Xenocide

"You're asking me to help you in your rebellion against the gods?"

Wang-mu remained bowed before her mistress-- her former mistress-- saying nothing. In her heart she had words she might have uttered. No, my mistress, I am asking you to help us in our struggle against the terrible bondage forced on the godspoken by Congress. No, my mistress, I'm asking you to remember your proper duty to your father, which even the godspoken may not ignore if they would be righteous. No, my mistress, I'm asking you to help us discover a way to save a decent and helpless people, the pequeninos, from xenocide.

But Wang-mu said nothing, because this was one of the first lessons she learned from Master Han. When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom, you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man. Qing-jao was not hungry for wisdom from Wang-mu, and never would be. So silence was all that Wang-mu could offer. She could only hope that Qing-jao would find her own road to proper obedience, compassionate decency, or the struggle for freedom.

Any motive would do, as long as Qing-jao's brilliant mind could be enlisted on their side. Wang-mu had never felt so useless in her life as now, watching Master Han labor over the questions that Jane had given him. In order to think about faster-than-light travel he was studying physics; how could Wang-mu help him, when she was only learning about geometry? To think about the descolada virus he was studying microbiology; Wang-mu was barely learning the concepts of gaialogy and evolution. And how could she be of any help when he contemplated the nature of Jane? She was a child of manual workers, and her hands, not her mind, held her future. Philosophy was as far above her as the sky was above the earth. "But the sky only seems to be far away from you," said Master Han, when she told him this. "Actually it is all around you. You breathe it in and you breathe it out, even when you labor with your hands in the mud. That is true philosophy." But she understood from this only that Master Han was kind, and wanted to make her feel better about her uselessness.

Qing-jao, though, would not be useless. So Wang-mu had handed her a paper with the project names and passwords on them.

"Does Father know you're giving these to me?"

Wang-mu said nothing. Actually, Master Han had suggested it, but Wangmu thought it might be better if Qing-jao didn't know at this point that Wang-mu came as an emissary from her father.

Qing-jao interpreted Wang-mu's silence as Wang-mu assumed she would-- that Wang-mu was coming secretly, on her own, to ask for Qingjao's help.

"If Father himself had asked me, I would have said yes, for that is my duty as a daughter," said Qing-jao.

But Wang-mu knew that Qing-jao wasn't listening to her father these days. She might say that she would be obedient, but in fact her father filled her with such distress that, far from saying yes, Qing-jao would have crumpled to the floor and traced lines all day because of the terrible conflict in her heart, knowing that her father wanted her to disobey the gods.

"I owe nothing to you," said Qing-jao. "You were a false and disloyal servant to me. Never was there a more unworthy and useless secret maid than you. To me your presence in this house is like the presence of dung beetles at the supper table."

Again, Wang-mu held her tongue. However, she also refrained from deepening her bow. She had assumed the humble posture of a servant at the beginning of this conversation, but she would not now humiliate herself in the desperate kowtow of a penitent. Even the humblest of us have our pride, and I know, Mistress Qing-jao, that I have caused you no harm, that I am more faithful to you now than you are to yourself.

Qing-jao turned back to her terminal and typed in the first project name, which was "UNGLUING," a literal translation of the word descolada. "This is all nonsense anyway," she said as she scanned the documents and charts that had been sent from Lusitania. "It is hard to believe that anyone would commit the treason of communicating with Lusitania only to receive nonsense like this. It is all impossible as science. No world could have developed only one virus that was so complex that it could include within it the genetic code for every other species on the planet. It would be a waste of time for me even to consider this."

"Why not?" asked Wang-mu. It was all right for her to speak now-- because even as Qing-jao declared that she was refusing to discuss the material, she was discussing it. "After all, evolution produced only one human race."

"But on Earth there were dozens of related species. There is no species without kin-- if you weren't such a stupid rebellious girl you would understand that. Evolution could never have produced a system as sparse as this one."

"Then how do you explain these documents from the people of Lusitania?"

"How do you know they actually come from there? You have only the word of this computer program. Maybe it thinks this is all. Or maybe the scientists there are very bad, with no sense of their duty to collect all possible information. There aren't two dozen species in this whole report-- and look, they're all paired up in the most absurd fashion. Impossible to have so few species."

"But what if they're right?"

"How can they be right? The people of Lusitania have been confined in a tiny compound from the beginning. They've only seen what these little pig-men have shown them-- how do they know the pig-men aren't lying to them?"

Calling them pig-men-- is that how you convince yourself, my mistress, that helping Congress won't lead to xenocide? If you call them by an animal name, does that mean that it's all right to slaughter them? If you accuse them of lying, does that mean that they're worthy of extinction? But Wang-mu said nothing of this. She only asked the same question again. "What if this is the true picture of the life forms of Lusitania, and how the descolada works within them?"

"If it were true, then I would have to read and study these documents in order to make any intelligent comment about them. But they aren't true. How far had I taken you in your learning, before you betrayed me? Didn't I teach you about gaialogy?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"Well, there you are. Evolution is the means by which the planetary organism adapts to changes in its environment. If there is more heat from the sun, then the life forms of the planet must be able to adjust their relative populations in order to compensate and lower the temperature. Remember the classic Daisyworld thought-experiment?"

"But that experiment had only a single species over the whole face of the planet," said Wang-mu. "When the sun grew too hot, then white daisies grew to reflect the light back into space, and when the sun grew too cool, dark daisies grew to absorb the light and hold it as heat." Wang-mu was proud that she could remember Daisyworld so clearly.

"No no no," said Qing-jao. "You have missed the point, of course. The point is that there must already have been dark daisies, even when the light daisies were dominant, and light daisies when the world was covered with darkness. Evolution can't produce new species on demand. It is creating new species constantly, as genes drift and are spliced and broken by radiation and passed between species by viruses. Thus no species ever 'breeds true.'"

Wang-mu didn't understand the connection yet, and her face must have revealed her puzzlement.

"Am I still your teacher, after all? Must I keep my side of the bargain, even though you have given up on yours?"

Please, said Wang-mu silently. I would serve you forever, if you would only help your father in this work.

"As long as the whole species is together, interbreeding constantly," said Qing-jao, "individuals never drift too far, genetically speaking; their genes are constantly being recombined with other genes in the same species, so the variations are spread evenly through the whole population with each new generation. Only when the environment puts them under such stress that one of those randomly drifting traits suddenly has survival value, only then will all those in that particular environment who lack that trait die out, until the new trait, instead of being an occasional sport, is now a universal definer of the new species. That's the fundamental tenet of gaialogy-- constant genetic drift is essential for the survival of life as a whole. According to these documents, Lusitania is a world with absurdly few species, and no possibility of genetic drift because these impossible viruses are constantly correcting any changes that might come up. Not only could such a system never evolve, but also it would be impossible for life to continue to exist-- they couldn't adapt to change."

"Maybe there are no changes on Lusitania."

"Don't be so foolish, Wang-mu. It makes me ashamed to think I ever tried to teach you. All stars fluctuate. All planets wobble and change in their orbits. We have been observing many worlds for three thousand years, and in that time we have learned what Earthbound scientists in the years before that could never learn-- which behaviors are common to all planets and stellar systems, and which are unique to the Earth and the Sol System. I tell you that it is impossible for a planet like Lusitania to exist for more than a few decades without experiencing life-threatening environmental change-- temperature fluctuations, orbital disturbances, seismic and volcanic cycles-- how would a system of really only a handful of species ever cope with that? If the world has only light daisies, how will it ever warm itself when the sun cools? If its lifeforms are all carbon dioxide users, how will they heal themselves when the oxygen in the atmosphere reaches poisonous levels? Your so-called friends in Lusitania are fools, to send you nonsense like this. If they were real scientists, they would know that their results are impossible."

Qing-jao pressed a key and the display over her terminal went blank. "You have wasted time that I don't have. If you have nothing better than this to offer, do not come to me again. You are less than nothing to me. You are a bug floating in my waterglass. You defile the whole glass, not just the place where you float. I wake up in pain, knowing you are in this house."

Then I'm hardly "nothing" to you, am I? said Wang-mu silently. It sounds to me as if I'm very important to you indeed. You may be very brilliant, Qing-jao, but you do not understand yourself any better than anybody else does.

"Because you are a stupid common girl, you do not understand me," said Qing-jao. "I have told you to leave."

"But your father is master of this house, and Master Han has asked me to stay."

"Little stupid-person, little sister-of-pigs, if I cannot ask you to leave the whole house, I have certainly implied that I would like you to leave my room."

Wang-mu bowed her head till it almost-- almost-- touched the floor. Then she backed out of the room, so as not to show her back parts to her mistress. If you treat me this way, then I will treat you like a great lord, and if you do not detect the irony in my actions, then who of the two of us is the fool?

Master Han was not in his room when Wang-mu returned. He might be at the toilet and return in a moment. He might be performing some ritual of the godspoken, in which case he could be gone for hours. Wang-mu was too full of questions to wait for him. She brought up the project documents on the terminal, knowing that Jane would be watching, monitoring her. That Jane had no doubt monitored all that happened in Qing-jao's room.

Still, Jane waited for Wang-mu to phrase the questions she had got from Qing-jao before she started trying to answer. And then Jane answered first the question of veracity.

"The documents from Lusitania are genuine enough," said Jane. "Ela and Novinha and Ouanda and all the others who have studied with them are deeply specialized, yes, but within their specialty they're very good. If Qing-jao had read The Life of Human, she would see how these dozen species-pairs function."

"But what she says is still hard for me to understand," said Wang-mu. "I've been trying to think how it could all be true-- that there are too few species for a real gaialogy to develop, and yet the planet Lusitania is still well-enough regulated to sustain life. Could it possibly be that there is no environmental stress on Lusitania?"

"No," said Jane. "I have access to all the astronomical data from the satellites there, and in the time humanity has been present in the Lusitania system, Lusitania and its sun have shown all the normal fluctuations. Right now there seems to be an overall trend of global cooling."

"Then how will the life forms on Lusitania respond?" asked Wang-mu. "The descolada virus won't let them evolve-- it tries to destroy anything strange, which is why it's going to kill the humans and the Hive Queen, if it can."

Jane, whose small image sat in lotus position in the air over Master Han's terminal, held up a hand. "One moment," she said.

Then she lowered her hand. "I have been reporting your questions to my friends, and Ela is very excited."

A new face appeared in the display, just behind and above the image of Jane. She was a dark-skinned, Negroid-looking woman; or some mix, perhaps, since she was not that dark, and her nose was narrow. This is Elanora, thought Wang-mu. Jane is showing me a woman on a world many lightyears away; is she also showing my face to her? What does this Ela make of me? Do I seem hopelessly stupid to her?

But Ela clearly was thinking nothing about Wang-mu at all. She was speaking, instead, of Wang-mu's questions. "Why doesn't the descolada virus permit variety? That should be a trait with negative survival value, and yet the descolada survives. Wang-mu must think I'm such an idiot, not to have thought of this before. But I'm not a gaialogist, and I grew up on Lusitania, so I never questioned it, I just figured that whatever the Lusitanian gaialogy was, it worked-- and then I kept studying the descolada. What does Wang-mu think?"

Wang-mu was appalled to hear these words from this stranger. What had Jane told Ela about her? How could Ela even imagine that Wang-mu would think Ela was an idiot, when she was a scientist and Wang-mu was only a servant girl?

"How can it matter what I think?" said Wang-mu.

"What do you think?" said Jane. "Even if you can't think why it might matter, Ela wants to know."

So Wang-mu told her speculations. "This is very stupid to think of, because it's only a microscopic virus, but the descolada must be doing it all. After all, it contains the genes of every species within it, doesn't it? So it must take care of evolution by itself. Instead of all that genetic drift, the descolada must do the drifting. It could, couldn't it? It could change the genes of a whole species, even while the species is still alive. It wouldn't have to wait for evolution."

There was a pause again, with Jane holding up her hand. She must be showing Wang-mu's face to Ela, letting her hear Wang-mu's words from her own lips.

"Nossa Senhora," whispered Ela. "On this world, the descolada is Gaia. Of course. That would explain everything, wouldn't it? So few species, because the descolada only permits the species that it has tamed. It turned a whole planetary gaialogy into something almost as simple as Daisyworld itself."

Wang-mu thought it was almost funny, to hear a highly-educated scientist like Ela refer back to Daisyworld, as if she were still a new student, a half-educated child like Wang-mu.

Another face appeared next to Ela's, this time an older Caucasian man, perhaps sixty years old, with whitening hair and a very quieting, peaceful look to his face. "But part of Wang-mu's question is still unanswered," said the man. "How could the descolada ever evolve? How could there have ever been proto-descolada viruses? Why would such a limited gaialogy have survival preference over the slow evolutionary model that every other world with life on it has had?"

"I never asked that question," said Wang-mu. "Qing-jao asked the first part of it, but the rest of it is his question."

"Hush," said Jane. "Qing-jao never asked the question. She used it as a reason not to study the Lusitanian documents. Only you really asked the question, and just because Andrew Wiggin understands your own question better than you do doesn't mean it isn't still yours."

So this was Andrew Wiggin, the Speaker for the Dead. He didn't look ancient and wise at all, not the way Master Han did. Instead this Wiggin looked foolishly surprised, the way all round-eyes did, and his face changed with every momentary mood, as if it were out of control. Yet there was that look of peace about him. Perhaps he had some of the Buddha in him. Buddha, after all, had found his own way onto the Path. Maybe this Andrew Wiggin had found a way onto the Path, even though he wasn't Chinese at all.

Wiggin was still asking the questions that he thought were Wang-mu's. "The odds against the natural occurrence of such a virus are-- unbelievable. Long before a virus evolved that could link species together and control a whole gaialogy, the proto-descoladas would have destroyed all life. There wasn't any time for evolution-- the virus is just too destructive. It would have killed everything in its earliest form, and then died out itself when it ran out of organisms to pillage."

"Maybe the pillaging came later," said Ela. "Maybe it evolved in symbiosis with some other species that benefited from its ability to genetically transform all the individuals within it, all within a matter of days or weeks. It might only have extended to other species later."

"Maybe," said Andrew.

A thought occurred to Wang-mu. "The descolada is like one of the gods," she said. "It comes and changes everybody whether they like it or not."

"Except the gods have the decency to go away," said Wiggin.

He responded so quickly that Wang-mu realized that Jane must now be transmitting everything that was done or said instantaneously across the billions of kilometers of space between them. From what Wang-mu had learned about ansible costs, this sort of thing would be possible only for the military; a business that tried a realtime ansible linkup would pay enough money to provide housing for every poor person on an entire planet. And I'm getting this for free, because of Jane. I'm seeing their faces and they're seeing mine, even at the moment they speak.

"Do they?" asked Ela. "I thought the whole problem that Path was having is that the gods won't go away and leave them alone."

Wang-mu answered with bitterness. "The gods are like the descolada in every way. They destroy anything they don't like, and the people they do like they transform into something that they never were. Qing-jao was once a good and bright and funny girl, and now she's spiteful and angry and cruel, all because of the gods."

"All because of genetic alteration by Congress," said Wiggin. "A deliberate change introduced by people who were forcing you to fit their own plan."

"Yes," said Ela. "Just like the descolada."

"What do you mean?" asked Wiggin.

"A deliberate change introduced here by people who were trying to force Lusitania to fit their own plan."

"What people?" asked Wang-mu. "Who would do such a terrible thing?"

"It's been at the back of my mind for years," said Ela. "It bothered me that there were so few life forms on Lusitania-- you remember, Andrew, that was part of the reason we discovered that the descolada was involved in the pairing of species. We knew that there was a catastrophic change here that wiped out all those species and restructured the few survivors. The descolada was more devastating to most life on Lusitania than a collision with an asteroid. But we always assumed because we found the descolada here that it evolved here. I knew it made no sense-- just what Qing-jao said-- but since it had obviously happened, then it didn't matter whether it made sense or not. But what if it didn't happen? What if the descolada came from the gods? Not god gods, of course, but some sentient species that developed this virus artificially?"

"That would be monstrous," said Wiggin. "To create a poison like that and send it out to other worlds, not knowing or caring what you kill."

"Not a poison," said Ela. "If it really does handle planetary systems regulation, couldn't the descolada be a device for terraforming other worlds? We've never tried terraforming anything-- we humans and the buggers before us only settled on worlds whose native life forms had brought them to a stasis that was similar to the stasis of Earth. An oxygen-rich atmosphere that sucked out carbon dioxide fast enough to keep the planet temperate as the star burns hotter. What if there's a species somewhere that decided that in order to develop planets suitable for colonization, they should send out the descolada virus in advance-- thousands of years in advance, maybe-- to intelligently transform planets into exactly the conditions they need? And then when they arrive, ready to set up housekeeping, maybe they have the countervirus that switches off the descolada so that they can establish a real gaialogy."

"Or maybe they developed the virus so that it doesn't interfere with them or the animals they need," said Wiggin. "Maybe they destroyed all the nonessential life on every world."

"Either way, it explains everything. The problems I've been facing, that I can't make sense of the impossibly unnatural arrangements of molecules within the descolada-- they continue to exist only because the virus works constantly to maintain all those internal contradictions. But I could never conceive of how such a self-contradictory molecule evolved in the first place. All this is answered if I know that somehow it was designed and made. What Wang-mu said Qing-jao complained about, that the descolada couldn't evolve and Lusitania's gaialogy couldn't exist in nature. Well, it doesn't exist in nature. It's an artificial virus and an artificial gaialogy."

"You mean this actually helps?" asked Wang-mu.

Their faces showed that they had virtually forgotten she was still part of the conversation, in their excitement.

"I don't know yet," said Ela. "But it's a new way of looking at it. For one thing, if I can start with the assumption that everything in the virus has a purpose, instead of the normal jumble of switched-on and switched-off genes that occur in nature-- well, that'll help. And just knowing it was designed gives me hope that I can undesign it. Or redesign it."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," said Wiggin. "This is still just a hypothesis."

"It rings true," said Ela. "It has the feel of truth. It explains so much."

"I feel that way, too," said Wiggin. "But we have to try it out with the people who are most affected by it."

"Where's Planter?" asked Ela. "We can talk to Planter."

"And Human and Rooter," said Wiggin. "We have to try this idea with the fathertrees."

"This is going to hit them like a hurricane," said Ela. Then she seemed to realize the implications of her own words. "It is, really, not just a figure of speech, it's going to hurt. To find out that their whole world is a terraforming project."

"More important than their world," said Wiggin. "Themselves. The third life. The descolada gave them everything they are and the most fundamental facts of their life. Remember, our best guess is that they evolved as mammal-like creatures who mated directly, male to female, the little mothers sucking life from the male sexual organs, a half-dozen at a time. That's who they were. Then the descolada transformed them, and sterilized the males until after they died and turned into trees."

"Their very nature--"

"It was a hard thing for human beings to deal with, when we first realized how much of our behavior arose from evolutionary necessity," said Wiggin. "There are still numberless humans who refuse to believe it. Even if it turns out to be absolutely true, do you think that the pequeninos will embrace this idea as easily as they swallowed wonders like space travel? It's one thing to see creatures from another world. It's another thing to find out that neither God nor evolution created you-- that some scientist of another species did."

"But if it's true--"

"Who knows if it's true? All we'll ever know is if the idea is useful. And to the pequeninos, it may be so devastating that they refuse to believe it forever."

"Some will hate you for telling them," said Wang-mu. "But some will be glad for it."

They looked at her again-- or at least Jane's computer simulation showed them looking at her. "You would know, wouldn't you," said Wiggin. "You and Han Fei-tzu just found out that your people had been artificially enhanced."

"And shackled, all at once," said Wang-mu. "For me and Master Han, it was freedom. For Qing-jao ..."

"There'll be many like Qing-jao among the pequeninos," said Ela. "But Planter and Human and Rooter won't be among them, will they? They're very wise."

"So is Qing-jao!" said Wang-mu. She spoke more hotly than she meant to. But the loyalty of a secret maid dies slowly.

"We didn't mean to say she isn't," said Wiggin. "But she certainly isn't being wise about this, is she?"

"Not about this," said Wang-mu.

"That's all we meant. No one likes to find out that the story he always believed about his own identity is false. The pequeninos, many of them, believe that God made them something special, just as your godspoken believe."

"And we're not special, none of us!" cried Wang-mu. "We're all as ordinary as mud! There are no godspoken. There are no gods. They care nothing about us."

"If there aren't any gods," said Ela, mildly correcting her, "then they can hardly do any caring one way or another."

"Nothing made us except for their own selfish purposes!" cried Wang-mu. "Whoever made the descolada-- the pequeninos are just part of their plan. And the godspoken, part of Congress's plan."

"As one whose birth was requested by the government," said Wiggin, "I sympathize with your point of view. But your reaction is too hasty. After all, my parents also wanted me. And from the moment of my birth, just like every other living creature, I had my own purpose in life. Just because the people of your world were wrong about their OCD behavior being messages from the gods doesn't mean that there are no gods. Just because your former understanding of the purpose of your life is contradicted doesn't mean that you have to decide there is no purpose."

"Oh, I know there's a purpose," said Wang-mu. "The Congress wanted slaves! That's why they created Qing-jao-- to be a slave for them. And she wants to continue in her slavery!"

"That was Congress's purpose," said Wiggin. "But Qing-jao also had a mother and father who loved her. So did I. There are many different purposes in this world, many different causes of everything. Just because one cause you believed in turned out to be false doesn't mean that there aren't other causes that can still be trusted."

"Oh I suppose so," said Wang-mu. She was now ashamed of her outbursts.

"Don't bow your head before me," said Wiggin. "Or are you doing that, Jane?"

Jane must have answered him, an answer that Wang-mu didn't hear.

"I don't care what her customs are," said Wiggin. "The only reason for such bowing is to humiliate one person before another, and I won't have her bow that way to me. She's done nothing to be ashamed of. She's opened up a way of looking at the descolada that might just lead to the salvation of a couple of species."

Wang-mu heard the tone of his voice. He believed this. He was honoring her, right from his own mouth.

"Not me," she protested. "Qing-jao. They were her questions."

"Qing-jao," said Ela. "She's got you totally boba about her, the way Congress has Qing-jao thinking about them."

"You can't be scornful because you don't know her," said Wang-mu. "But she is brilliant and good and I can never be like her."

"Gods again," said Wiggin.

"Always gods," said Ela.

"What do you mean?" said Wang-mu. "Qing-jao doesn't say that she's a god, and neither do I."

"Yes you do," said Ela. "'Qing-jao is wise and good,' you said."

"Brilliant and good," Wiggin corrected her.

"'And I can never be like her,'" Ela went on.

"Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them."

"Qing-jao wanted to teach me," said Wang-mu.

"But only as long as you obeyed and did what she wanted," said Jane.

"I'm not worthy," said Wang-mu. "I'm too stupid to ever learn to be as wise as her."

"And yet you knew I spoke the truth," said Jane, "when all Qing-jao could see were lies."

"Are you a god?" asked Wang-mu.

"What the godspoken and the pequeninos are only just about to learn about themselves, I've known all along. I was made."

"Nonsense," said Wiggin. "Jane, you've always believed you sprang whole from the head of Zeus."

"I am not Minerva, thanks," said Jane.

"As far as we know you just happened," said Wiggin. "Nobody planned you."

"How comforting," said Jane. "So while you can all name your creators-- or at least your parents or some paternalistic government agency-- I'm the one genuine accident in the universe."

"You can't have it both ways," said Wiggin. "Either somebody had a purpose for you or you were an accident. That's what an accident is-- something that happened without anyone purposing it. So are you going to be resentful either way? The people of Path are going to resent Congress like crazy, once they all find out what's been done to them. Are you going to be resentful because nobody did anything to you?"

"I can if I want," said Jane, but it was a mockery of childish spite.

"I'll tell you what I think," said Wiggin. "I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself."

Ender and Ela explained everything to Valentine first, probably just because she happened to come to the laboratory right then, looking for Ender about something entirely unrelated. It all rang true to her as it had to Ela and Ender. And, like them, Valentine knew they couldn't evaluate the hypothesis of the descolada as regulator of Lusitania's gaialogy until they had told the idea to the pequeninos and heard their response.

Ender proposed that they should try it out on Planter first, before they tried to explain anything to Human or Rooter. Ela and Valentine agreed with him. Neither Ela and Ender, who had talked with fathertrees for years, felt comfortable enough with their language to say anything easily. More important, though, was the unspoken fact that they simply felt more kinship with the mammal-like brothers than they ever could with a tree. How could they guess from looking at a tree what it was thinking or how it was responding to them? No, if they had to say something difficult to a pequenino, it would be first to a brother, not to a fathertree.

Of course, once they called Planter in to Ela's office, closed the door, and started to explain, Ender realized that talking to a brother was hardly an improvement. Even after thirty years of living and working with them, Ender still wasn't good at reading any but the crudest and most obvious of pequenino body language. Planter listened in seeming unconcern as Ender explained what they had thought of during the conversation with Jane and Wang-mu. He wasn't impassive. Rather he seemed to sit as restlessly in his chair as a small boy, constantly shifting, looking away from them, gazing off into space as if their words were unspeakably boring. Ender knew, of course, that eye contact didn't mean the same thing to the pequeninos that it did to humans; they neither sought it nor avoided it. Where you looked while you were listening was almost completely unimportant to them. But usually the pequeninos who worked closely with humans tried to act in ways that human beings would interpret as paying attention. Planter was good at it, but right now he wasn't even trying.

Not till they had explained it all did Ender realize how much self-restraint Planter had shown even to remain on the chair until they were done. The moment they told him they were finished, he bounded off the chair and began to run-- no, to scamper around the room, touching everything. Not striking it, not lashing out with violence as a human being might have, hitting things, throwing things. Rather he was stroking everything he found, feeling the textures. Ender stood, wanting to reach out to him, to offer some comfort-- for he knew enough of pequenino behavior to recognize this as such aberrant behavior that it could only mean great distress.

Planter ran until he was exhausted, and then he went on, lurching around the room drunkenly until at last he bumped into Ender and threw his arms around him, clinging to him. For a moment Ender thought to embrace him back, but then he remembered that Planter wasn't human. An embrace didn't call for an answering embrace. Planter was clinging to him as he would cling to a tree. Seeking the comfort of a trunk. A safe place to hold onto until the danger passed. There would be less, not more comfort if Ender responded like a human and hugged him back. This was a time when Ender had to answer like a tree. So he held still and waited. Waited and held still. Until at last the trembling stopped.

When Planter pulled away from him, both their bodies were covered with sweat. I guess there's a limit to how treelike I can be, thought Ender. Or do brothertrees and fathertrees give off moisture to the brothers who cling to them?

"This is very surprising," whispered Planter.

The words were so absurdly mild, compared to the scene that had just played out before them, that Ender couldn't help laughing aloud.

"Yes," said Ender. "I imagine it is."

"It's not funny to them," Ela said.

"He knows that," said Valentine.

"He mustn't laugh, then," she said. "You can't laugh when Planter's in so much pain." And then she burst into tears.

Valentine put a hand on her shoulder. "He laughs, you cry," she said. "Planter runs around and climbs trees. What strange animals we all are."

"Everything comes from the descolada," said Planter. "The third life, the mothertree, the fathertrees. Maybe even our minds. Maybe we were only tree rats when the descolada came and made false ramen out of us."

"Real ramen," said Valentine.

"We don't know it's true," said Ela. "It's a hypothesis."

"It's very very very very very true," said Planter. "Truer than truth."

"How do you know?"

"Everything fits. Planetary regulation-- I know about this, I studied gaialogy and the whole time I thought, how can this teacher tell us these things when every pequenino can look around and see that they're false? But if we know that the descolada is changing us, making us act to regulate the planetary systems--"

"What can the descolada possibly make you do that could regulate the planet?" said Ela.

"You haven't known us long enough," said Planter. "We haven't told you everything because we were afraid you'd think we were silly. Now you'll know that we aren't silly, we're just acting out what a virus tells us to do. We're slaves, not fools."

It startled Ender to realize that Planter had just confessed that the pequeninos still took some pains to try to impress human beings. "What behaviors of yours have anything to do with planetary regulation?"

"Trees," said Planter. "How many forests are there, all over the world? Transpiring constantly. Turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. When there's more of it in the atmosphere, the world gets warmer. So what would we do to make the world get cooler?"

"Plant more forests," said Ela. "To use up more CO₂ so that more heat could escape into space."

"Yes," said Planter. "But think about how we plant our trees."

The trees grow from the bodies of the dead, thought Ender. "War," he said.

"There are quarrels between tribes, and sometimes they make small wars," said Planter. "Those would be nothing on a planetary scale. But the great wars that sweep across the whole world-- millions and millions of brothers die in these wars, and all of them become trees. Within months the forests of the world could double in size and number. That would make a difference, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," said Ela.

"A lot more efficiently than anything that would happen through natural evolution," said Ender.

"And then the wars stop," said Planter. "We always think there are great causes for these wars, that they're struggles between good and evil. And now all the time they are nothing but planetary regulation."

"No," said Valentine. "The need to fight, the rage, that might come from the descolada, but it doesn't mean the causes you fought for are--"

"The cause we fight for is planetary regulation," said Planter. "Everything fits. How do you think we help with warming the planet?"

"I don't know," said Ela. "Even trees eventually die of old age."

"You don't know because you've come during a warm time, not a cold one. But when the winters get bad, we build houses. The brothertrees give themselves to us to make houses. All of us, not just the ones who live in cold places. We all build houses, and the forests are reduced by half, by three-quarters. We thought this was a great sacrifice the brothertrees made for the sake of the tribe, but now I see that it's the descolada, wanting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to warm the planet."

"It's still a great sacrifice," said Ender.

"All our great epics," said Planter. "All our heroes. Just brothers acting out the will of the descolada."

"So what?" said Valentine.

"How can you say that? I learn that our lives are nothing, that we're only tools used by a virus to regulate the global ecosystem, and you call it nothing?"

"Yes, I call it nothing," said Valentine. "We human beings are no different. It may not be a virus, but we still spend most of our time acting out our genetic destiny. Take the differences between males and females. Males naturally tend toward a broadcast strategy of reproduction. Since males make an almost infinite supply of sperm and it costs them nothing to deploy it--"

"Not nothing," said Ender.

"Nothing," said Valentine, "just to deploy it. Their most sensible reproductive strategy is to deposit it in every available female-- and to make special efforts to deposit it in the healthiest females, the ones most likely to bring their offspring to adulthood. A male does best, reproductively, if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible."

"I've done the wandering," said Ender. "Somehow I missed out on the copulating."

"I'm speaking of overall trends," said Valentine. "There are always strange individuals who don't follow the norms. The female strategy is just the opposite, Planter. Instead of millions and millions of sperm, they only have one egg a month, and each child represents an enormous investment of effort. So females need stability. They need to be sure there'll always be plenty of food. We also spend large amounts of time relatively helpless, unable to find or gather food. Far from being wanderers, we females need to establish and stay. If we can't get that, then our next best strategy is to mate with the strongest and healthiest possible males. But best of all is to get a strong healthy male who'll stay and provide, instead of wandering and copulating at will.

"So there are two pressures on males. The one is to spread their seed, violently if necessary. The other is to be attractive to females by being stable providers-- by suppressing and containing the need to wander and the tendency to use force. Likewise, there are two pressures on females. The one is to get the seed of the strongest, most virile males so their infants will have good genes, which would make the violent, forceful males attractive to them. The other is to get the protection of the most stable males, nonviolent males, so their infants will be protected and provided for and as many as possible will reach adulthood.

"Our whole history, all that I've ever found in all my wanderings as an itinerant historian before I finally unhooked myself from this reproductively unavailable brother of mine and had a family-- it can all be interpreted as people blindly acting out those genetic strategies. We get pulled in those two directions.

"Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting, where a woman can count on stability; our legal and moral codes that try to abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and enforce contracts-- those represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male.

"And the tribes of wandering barbarians outside the reach of civilization, those follow the mainly male strategy. Spread the seed. Within the tribe, the strongest, most dominant males take possession of the best females, either through formal polygamy or spur-of-the-moment copulations that the other males are powerless to resist. But those low-status males are kept in line because the leaders take them to war and let them rape and pillage their brains out when they win a victory. They act out sexual desirability by proving themselves in combat, and then kill all the rival males and copulate with their widowed females when they win. Hideous, monstrous behavior-- but also a viable acting-out of the genetic strategy."

Ender found himself very uncomfortable, hearing Valentine talk this way. He knew all this was true as far as it went, and he had heard it all before, but it still, in a small way, made him as uncomfortable as Planter was to learn similar things about his own people. Ender wanted to deny it all, to say, Some of us males are naturally civilized. But in his own life, hadn't he performed the acts of dominance and war? Hadn't he wandered? In that context, his decision to stay on Lusitania was really a decision to abandon the male-dominant social model that had been engrained in him as a young soldier in battle school, and become a civilized man in a stable family.

Yet even then, he had married a woman who turned out to have little interest in having more children. A woman with whom marriage had turned out to be anything but civilized, in the end. If I follow the male model, then I'm a failure. No child anywhere who carries on my genes. No woman who accepts my rule. I'm definitely atypical.

But since I haven't reproduced, my atypical genes will die with me, and thus the male and female social models are safe from such an in-between person as myself.

Even as Ender made his own private evaluations of Valentine's interpretation of human history, Planter showed his own response by lying back in his chair, a gesture that spoke of scorn. "I'm supposed to feel better because humans are also tools of some genetic molecule?"

"No," said Ender. "You're supposed to realize that just because a lot of behavior can be explained as responses to the needs of some genetic molecule, it doesn't mean that all pequenino behavior is meaningless."

"Human history can be explained as the struggle between the needs of women and the needs of men," said Valentine, "but my point is that there are still heroes and monsters, great events and noble deeds."

"When a brothertree gives his wood," said Planter, "it's supposed to mean that he sacrifices for the tribe. Not for a virus."

"If you can look beyond the tribe to the virus, then look beyond the virus to the world," said Ender. "The descolada is keeping this planet habitable. So the brothertree is sacrificing himself to save the whole world."

"Very clever," said Planter. "But you forget-- to save the planet, it doesn't matter which brothertrees give themselves, as long as a certain number do it."

"True," said Valentine. "It doesn't matter to the descolada which brothertrees give their lives. But it matters to the brothertrees, doesn't it? And it matters to the brothers like you, who huddle into those houses to keep warm. You appreciate the noble gesture of the brothertrees who died for you, even if the descolada doesn't know one tree from another."

Planter didn't answer. Ender hoped that meant they were making some headway.

"And in the wars," said Valentine, "the descolada doesn't care who wins or loses, as long as enough brothers die and enough trees grow from the corpses. Right? But that doesn't change the fact that some brothers are noble and some are cowardly or cruel."

"Planter," said Ender, "the descolada may cause you all to feel-- to come more quickly to a murderous rage, for instance-- so that disputes erupt into warfare instead of being settled among the fathertrees. But that doesn't erase the fact that some forests are fighting in self-defense and others are simply bloodthirsty. You still have your heroes."

"I don't give a damn about heroes," said Ela. "Heroes tend to be dead, like my brother Quim. Where is he now, when we need him? I wish he hadn't been a hero." She swallowed hard, holding down the memory of recent grief.

Planter nodded-- a gesture he had learned in order to communicate with humans. "We live in Warmaker's world now," he said. "What is he, except a fathertree acting as the descolada instructs? The world is getting too warm. We need more trees. So he's filled with fervor to expand the forests. Why? The descolada makes him feel that way. That's why so many brothers and fathertrees listened to him-- because he offered a plan to satisfy their hunger to spread out and grow more trees."

"Does the descolada know that he was planning to put all these new trees on other planets?" said Valentine. "That wouldn't do much to cool Lusitania."

"The descolada puts hunger in them," said Planter. "How can a virus know about starships?"

"How can a virus know about mothertrees and fathertrees, brothers and wives, infants and little mothers?" said Ender. "This is a very bright virus."

"Warmaker is the best example of my point," said Valentine. "His name suggests that he was deeply involved and successful in the last great war. Once again there's pressure to increase the number of trees. Yet Warmaker chose to turn this hunger to a new purpose, spreading new forests by reaching out to the stars instead of plunging into wars with other pequeninos."

"We were going to do it no matter what Warmaker said or did," said Planter. "Look at us. Warmaker's group was preparing to spread out and plant new forests on other worlds. But when they killed Father Quim, the rest of us were so filled with rage that we planned to go and punish them. Great slaughter, and again, trees would grow. Still doing what the descolada demanded. And now that humans have burned our forest, Warmaker's people are going to prevail after all. One way or another, we must spread out and propagate. We'll snatch up any excuse we can find. The descolada will have its way with us. We're tools, pathetically trying to find some way to convince ourselves that our actions are our own idea."

He sounded so hopeless. Ender couldn't think of anything to say that Valentine or he hadn't already said, to try to wean him away from his conclusion that pequenino life was unfree and meaningless.

So it was Ela who spoke next, and in a tone of calm speculation that seemed incongruous, as if she had forgotten the terrible anxiety that Planter was experiencing. Which was probably the case, as all this discussion had led her back to her own specialty. "It's hard to know which side the descolada would be on, if it were aware of all this," said Ela.

"Which side of what?" asked Valentine.

"Whether to induce global cooling by having more forests planted here, or to use that same instinct for propagation to have the pequeninos take the descolada out to other worlds. I mean, which would the virus makers have wanted most? To spread the virus or regulate the planet?"

"The virus probably wants both, and it's likely to get both," said Planter. "Warmaker's group will win control of the ships, no doubt. But either before or after, there'll be a war over it that leaves half the brothers dead. For all we know, the descolada is causing both things to happen."

"For all we know," said Ender.

"For all we know," said Planter, "we may be the descolada."

So, thought Ender, they are aware of that concern, despite our decision not to broach it with the pequeninos yet.

"Have you been talking to Quara?" demanded Ela.

"I talk to her every day," said Planter. "But what does she have to do with this?"

"She had the same idea. That maybe pequenino intelligence comes from the descolada."

"Do you think after all your talk about the descolada being intelligent that it hasn't occurred to us to wonder that?" said Planter. "And if it's true, what will you do then? Let all of your species die so that we can keep our little second-rate brains?"

Ender protested at once. "We've never thought of your brains as--"

"Haven't you?" said Planter. "Then why did you assume that we would only think of this possibility if some human told us?"

Ender had no good answer. He had to confess to himself that he had been thinking of the pequeninos as if they were children in some ways, to be protected. Worries had to be kept as secrets from them. It hadn't occurred to him that they were perfectly capable of discovering all the worst horrors on their own.

"And if our intelligence does come from the descolada, and you found a way to destroy it, what would we become then?" Planter looked at them, triumphant in his bitter victory. "Nothing but tree rats," he said.

"That's the second time you've used that term," said Ender. "What are tree rats?"

"That's what they were shouting," said Planter, "some of the men who killed the mothertree."

"There's no such animal," said Valentine.

"I know," said Planter. "Grego explained it to me. 'Tree rat' is a slang name for squirrels. He showed me a holo of one on his computer in jail."

"You went to visit Grego?" Ela was plainly horrified.

"I had to ask him why he tried to kill us all, and then why he tried to save us," said Planter.

"There!" cried Valentine triumphantly. "You can't tell me that what Grego and Miro did that night, stopping the mob from burning Rooter and Human-- you can't tell me that that was just the acting out of genetic forces!"

"But I never said that human behavior was meaningless," said Planter. "It's you that tried to comfort me with that idea. We know that you humans have your heroes. We pequeninos are the ones who are only tools of a gaialogical virus."

"No," said Ender. "There are pequenino heroes, too. Rooter and Human, for instance."

"Heroes?" said Planter. "They acted as they did in order to win what they achieved-- their status as fathertrees. It was the hunger to reproduce. They might have looked like heroes to you humans, who only die once, but the death they suffered was really birth. There was no sacrifice."

"Your whole forest was heroic, then," said Ela. "You broke free from all the old channels and made a treaty with us that required you to change some of your most deeply-rooted customs."

"We wanted the knowledge and the machines and the power you humans had. What's heroic about a treaty in which all we have to do is stop killing you, and in return you give us a thousand-year boost in our technological development?"

"You aren't going to listen to any positive conclusion, are you," said Valentine.

Planter went on, ignoring her. "The only heroes in that story were Pipo and Libo, the humans who acted so bravely, even though they knew they would die. They had won their freedom from their genetic heritage. What piggy has ever done that on purpose?"

It stung Ender more than a little, to hear Planter use the term piggy for himself and his people. In recent years the term had stopped being quite as friendly and affectionate as it was when Ender first came; often it was used now as a demeaning word, and the people who worked with them usually used the term pequenino. What sort of self-hatred was Planter resorting to, in response to what he'd learned today?

"The brothertrees give their lives," said Ela, helpfully.

But Planter answered in scorn. "The brothertrees are not alive the way fathertrees are. They can't talk. They only obey. We tell them what to do, and they have no choice. Tools, not heroes."

"You can twist anything with the right story," said Valentine. "You can deny any sacrifice by claiming that it made the sufferer feel so good to do it that it really wasn't a sacrifice at all, but just another selfish act."

Suddenly Planter jumped from his chair. Ender was prepared for a replay of his earlier behavior, but he didn't circle the room. Instead he walked to Ela where she sat in her chair, and placed both his hands on her knees.

"I know a way to be a true hero," said Planter. "I know a way to act against the descolada. To reject it and fight it and hate it and help destroy it."

"So do I," said Ela.

"An experiment," said Planter.

She nodded. "To see if pequenino intelligence is really centered in the descolada, and not in the brain."

"I'll do it," said Planter.

"I would never ask you to."

"I know you wouldn't ask," said Planter. "I demand it for myself."

Ender was surprised to realize that in their own way, Ela and Planter were as close as Ender and Valentine, able to know each other's thoughts without explaining. Ender hadn't imagined that this would be possible between two people of different species; and yet, why shouldn't it be? Particularly when they worked together so closely in the same endeavor.

It had taken Ender a few moments to grasp what Planter and Ela were deciding between them; Valentine, who had not been working with them for years as Ender had, still didn't understand. "What's happening?" she asked. "What are they talking about?"

It was Ela who answered. "Planter is proposing that we purge one pequenino of all copies of the descolada virus, put him in a clean space where he can't be contaminated, and then see if he still has a mind."

"That can't be good science," said Valentine. "There are too many other variables. Aren't there? I thought the descolada was involved in every part of pequenino life."

"Lacking the descolada would mean that Planter would immediately get sick and then eventually die. What having the descolada did to Quim, lacking it will do to Planter."

"You can't mean to let him do it," said Valentine. "It won't prove anything. He might lose his mind because of illness. Fever makes people delirious."

"What else can we do?" asked Planter. "Wait until Ela finds a way to tame the virus, and only then find out that without it in its intelligent, virulent form, we are not pequeninos at all, but merely piggies? That we were only given the power of speech by the virus within us, and that when it was controlled, we lost everything and became nothing more than brothertrees? Do we find that out when you loose the virus-killer?"

"But it's not a serious experiment with a control--"

"It's a serious experiment, all right," said Ender. "The kind of experiment you perform when you don't give a damn about getting funding, you just need results and you need them now. The kind of experiment you perform when you have no idea what the results will be or even if you'll know how to interpret them, but there are a bunch of crazy pequeninos planning to get in starships and spread a planet-killing disease all over the galaxy so you've got to do something."

"It's the kind of experiment you perform," said Planter, "when you need a hero."

"When we need a hero?" asked Ender. "Or when you need to be a hero?"

"I wouldn't talk if I were you," said Valentine dryly. "You've done a few stints as a hero yourself over the centuries."

"It may not be necessary anyway," said Ela. "Quara knows a lot more about the descolada than she's telling. She may already know whether the intelligent adaptability of the descolada can be separated from its life-sustaining functions. If we could make a virus like that, we could test the effect of the descolada on pequenino intelligence without threatening the life of the subject."

"The trouble is," said Valentine, "Quara isn't any more likely to believe our story that the descolada is an artifact created by another species than Qing-jao was able to believe that the voice of her gods was just a genetically-caused obsessive-compulsive disorder."

"I'll do it," said Planter. "I will begin immediately because we have no time. Put me in a sterile environment tomorrow, and then kill all the descolada in my body using the chemicals you've got hidden away. The ones you mean to use on humans when the descolada adapts to the current suppressant you're using."

"You realize that it may be wasted," said Ela.

"Then it would truly be a sacrifice," said Planter.

"If you start to lose your mind in a way that clearly isn't related to your body's illness," said Ela, "we'll stop the experiment because we'll have the answer."

"Maybe," said Planter.

"You might well recover at that point."

"I don't care whether I recover," said Planter.

"We'll also stop it," said Ender, "if you start to lose your mind in a way that is related to your body's illness, because then we'll know that the experiment is useless and we wouldn't learn anything from it anyway."

"Then if I'm a coward, all I have to do is pretend to be mentally failing and my life will be saved," said Planter. "No, I forbid you to stop the experiment, no matter what. And if I keep my mental functions, you must let me continue to the end, to the death, because only if I keep my mind to the end will we know that our soul is not just an artifact of the descolada. Promise me!"

"Is this science or a suicide pact?" asked Ender. "Are you so despondent over discovering the probable role of the descolada in pequenino history that you simply want to die?"

Planter rushed to Ender, climbed his body, and pressed his nose against Ender's. "You liar!" he shouted.

"I just asked a question," whispered Ender.

"I want to be free!" shouted Planter. "I want the descolada out of my body and I never want it to come back! I want to use this to help free all the piggies so that we can be pequeninos in fact and not in name!"

Gently Ender pried him back. His nose ached from the violence of Planter's pressing.

"I want to make a sacrifice that proves that I'm free," said Planter, "not just acting out my genes. Not just trying for the third life."

"Even the martyrs of Christianity and Islam were willing to accept rewards in heaven for their sacrifice," said Valentine.

"Then they were all selfish pigs," said Planter. "That's what you say about pigs, isn't it? In Stark, in your common speech? Selfish pigs. Well, it's the right name for us piggies, isn't it! Our heroes were all trying to become fathertrees. Our brothertrees were failures from the start. The only thing we serve outside ourselves is the descolada. For all we know, the descolada might be ourselves. But I will be free. I will know what I am, without the descolada or my genes or anything except me."

"What you'll be is dead," said Ender.

"But free first," said Planter. "And the first of my people to be free."

After Wang-mu and Jane had told Master Han all that had transpired that day, after he had conversed with Jane about his own day's work, after the house had fallen silent in the darkness of the night, Wang-mu lay awake on her mat in the corner of Master Han's room, listening to his soft but insistent snoring as she thought over all that had been said that day.

There were so many ideas, and most of them were so far above her that she despaired of truly understanding them. Especially what Wiggin said about purposes. They were giving her credit for having come up with the solution to the problem of the descolada virus, and yet she couldn't take the credit because she hadn't meant to do it; she had thought she was just repeating Qing-jao's questions. Could she take credit for something she did by accident?

People should only be blamed or praised for what they meant to do. Wang-mu had always believed this instinctively; she didn't remember anyone ever telling it to her in so many words. The crimes that she was blaming Congress for were all deliberate-- genetically altering the people of Path to create the godspoken, and sending the M.D. Device to destroy the haven of the only other sentient species that they knew existed in the universe.

But was that what they meant to do, either? Maybe some of them, at least, thought that they were making the universe safe for humanity by destroying Lusitania-- from what Wang-mu had heard about the descolada, it could mean the end of all Earthborn life if it ever started spreading world to world among human beings. Maybe some of Congress, too, had decided to create the godspoken of Path in order to benefit all of humanity, but then put the OCD in their brains so that they couldn't get out of control and enslave all the inferior, "normal" humans. Maybe they all had good purposes in mind for the terrible things they did.

Certainly Qing-jao had a good purpose in mind, didn't she? So how could Wang-mu condemn her for her actions, when she thought she was obeying the gods?

Didn't everybody have some noble purpose in mind for their own actions? Wasn't everybody, in their own eyes, good?

Except me, thought Wang-mu. In my own eyes, I'm foolish and weak. But they spoke of me as if I were better than I ever thought. Master Han praised me, too. And those others spoke of Qing-jao with pity and scornand I've felt those feelings toward her, too. Yet isn't Qing-jao acting nobly, and me basely? I betrayed my mistress. She has been loyal to her government and to her gods, which are real to her, though I no longer believe in them. How can I tell the good people from the bad, if the bad people all have some way of convincing themselves that they're trying to do good even though they're doing something terrible? And the good people can believe that they're actually very bad even though they're doing something good?

Maybe you can only do good if you think you're bad, and if you think you're good then you can only do bad.

But that paradox was too much for her. There'd be no sense in the world if you had to judge people by the opposite of how they tried to seem. Wasn't it possible for a good person also to try to seem good? And just because somebody claimed to be scum didn't mean that he wasn't scum. Was there any way to judge people, if you can't judge even by their purpose?

Was there any way for Wang-mu to judge even herself?

Half the time I don't even know the purpose of what I do. I came to this house because I was ambitious and wanted to be a secret maid to a rich godspoken girl. It was pure selfishness on my part, and pure generosity that led Qing-jao to take me in. And now here I am helping Master Han commit treason-- what is my purpose in that? I don't even know why I do what I do. How can I know what other people's true purposes are? There's no hope of ever knowing good from bad.

She sat up in lotus position on her mat and pressed her face into her hands. It was as if she felt herself pressed against a wall, but it was a wall that she made herself, and if she could only find a way to move it aside-- the way she could move her hands away from her face whenever she wanted-- then she could easily push through to the truth.

She moved her hands away. She opened her eyes. There was Master Han's terminal, across the room. There, today, she had seen the faces of Elanora Ribeira von Hesse and Andrew Wiggin. And Jane's face.

She remembered Wiggin telling her what the gods would be like. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them. Why would he say such a thing? How could he know what a god would be?

Somebody who wants to teach you how to know everything that they know and do everything that they do-- what he was really describing was parents, not gods.

Only there were plenty of parents who didn't do that. Plenty of parents who tried to keep their children down, to control them, to make slaves of them. Where she had grown up, Wang-mu had seen plenty of that.

So what Wiggin was describing wasn't parents, really. He was describing good parents. He wasn't telling her what the gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness.

What were the gods, then? They would want everyone else to know and have and be all good things. They would teach and share and train, but never force.

Like my parents, thought Wang-mu. Clumsy and stupid sometimes, like all people, but they were good. They really did look out for me. Even sometimes when they made me do hard things because they knew it would be good for me. Even sometimes when they were wrong, they were good. I can judge them by their purpose after all. Everybody calls their purpose good, but my parents' purposes really were good, because they meant all their acts toward me to help me grow wiser and stronger and better. Even when they made me do hard things because they knew I had to learn from them. Even when they caused me pain.

That was it. That's what the gods would be, if there were gods. They would want everyone else to have all that was good in life, just like good parents. But unlike parents or any other people, the gods would actually know what was good and have the power to cause good things to happen, even when nobody else understood that they were good. As Wiggin said, real gods would be smarter and stronger than anybody else. They would have all the intelligence and power that it was possible to have.

But a being like that-- who was someone like Wang-mu to judge a god? She couldn't understand their purposes even if they told her, so how could she ever know that they were good? Yet the other approach, to trust in them and believe in them absolutely-- wasn't that what Qing-jao was doing?

No. If there were gods, they would never act as Qing-jao thought they acted-- enslaving people, tormenting and humiliating them.

Unless torment and humiliation were good for them...

No! She almost cried aloud, and once again pressed her face into her hands, this time to keep silence.

I can only judge by what I understand. If as far as I can see, the gods that Qing-jao believes in are only evil, then yes, perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps I can't comprehend the great purpose they accomplish by making the godspoken into helpless slaves, or destroying whole species. But in my heart I have no choice but to reject such gods, because I can't see any good in what they're doing. Perhaps I'm so stupid and foolish that I will always be the enemy of the gods, working against their high and incomprehensible purposes. But I have to live my life according to what I understand, and what I understand is that there are no such gods as the ones the godspoken teach us about. If they exist at all, they take pleasure in oppression and deception, humiliation and ignorance. They act to make other people smaller and themselves larger. Those would not be gods, then, even if they existed. They would be enemies. Devils.

The same with the beings, whoever they are, who made the descolada virus. Yes, they would have to be very powerful to make a tool like that. But they would also have to be heartless, selfish, arrogant beings, to think that all life in the universe was theirs to manipulate as they saw fit. To send the descolada out into the universe, not caring who it killed or what beautiful creatures it destroyed-- those could not be gods, either.

Jane, now-- Jane might be a god. Jane knew vast amounts of information and had great wisdom as well, and she was acting for the good of others, even when it would take her life-- even now, after her life was forfeit. And Andrew Wiggin, he might be a god, so wise and kind he seemed, and not acting for his own benefit but for the pequeninos. And Valentine, who called herself Demosthenes, she had worked to help other people find the truth and make wise decisions of their own. And Master Han, who was trying to do the right thing always, even when it cost him his daughter. Maybe even Ela, the scientist, even though she had not known all that she ought to have known-- for she was not ashamed to learn truth from a servant girl.

Of course they were not the sort of gods who lived off in the Infinite West, in the Palace of the Royal Mother. Nor were they gods in their own eyes-- they would laugh at her for even thinking of it. But compared to her, they were gods indeed. They were so much wiser than Wang-mu, and so much more powerful, and as far as she could understand their purposes, they were trying to help other people become as wise and powerful as possible. Even wiser and more powerful than they were themselves. So even though Wang-mu might be wrong, even though she might truly understand nothing at all about anything, nevertheless she knew that her decision to work with these people was the right one for her to make.

She could only do good as far as she understood what goodness was. And these people seemed to her to be doing good, while Congress seemed to be doing evil. So even though in the long run it might destroy her-- for Master Han was now an enemy of Congress, and might be arrested and killed, and her along with him-- still she would do it. She would never see real gods, but she could at least work to help those people who were as close to being gods as any real person could ever be.

And if the gods don't like it, they can poison me in my sleep or catch me on fire as I'm walking in the garden tomorrow or just make my arms and legs and head drop off my body like crumbs off a cake. If they can't manage to stop a stupid little servant girl like me, they don't amount to much anyway.