Xenocide, Page 4

  "Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew."

  "He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six."

  "Right."

  "And you're the oldest."

  "Yes."

  "That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right."

  Miro didn't like hearing this woman leap to conclusions about his mother. "She's nothing like you."

  "Of course not." She leaned forward in her seat. "Well, have you decided?"

  "Decided what?"

  "Are we working together or did you just unplug yourself from thirty years of human history for nothing?"

  "What do you want from me?"

  "Stories, of course. Facts I can get from the computer."

  "Stories about what?"

  "You. The piggies. You and the piggies. This whole business with the Lusitania Fleet began with you and the piggies, after all. It was because you interfered with them that--"

  "We helped them!"

  "Oh, did I use the wrong word again?"

  Miro glared at her. But even as he did, he knew that she was right--he was being oversensitive. The word interfered, when used in a scientific context, was almost value-neutral. It merely meant that he had introduced change into the culture he was studying. And if it did have a negative connotation, it was that he had lost his scientific perspective--he had stopped studying the pequeninos and started treating them as friends. Of that he was surely guilty. No, not guilty--he was proud of having made that transition. "Go on," he said.

  "All this began because you broke the law and piggies started growing amaranth."

  "Not anymore."

  "Yes, that's ironic, isn't it? The descolada virus has gotten in and killed every strain of amaranth that your sister developed for them. So your interference was in vain."

  "No it wasn't," said Miro. "They're learning."

  "Yes, I know. More to the point, they're choosing. What to learn, what to do. You brought them freedom. I approve wholeheartedly of what you decided to do. But my job is to write about you to the people out there in the Hundred Worlds and the colonies, and they won't necessarily see things that way. So what I need from you is the story of how and why you broke the law and interfered with the piggies, and why the government and people of Lusitania rebelled against Congress rather than send you off to be tried and punished for your crimes."

  "Andrew already told you that story."

  "And I've already written about it, in larger terms. Now I need the personal things. I want to be able to let other people know these so-called piggies as people. And you, too. I have to let them know you as a person. If it's possible, it would be nice if I could bring them to like you. Then the Lusitania Fleet will look like what it is--a monstrous overreaction to a threat that never existed."

  "The fleet is xenocide."

  "So I've said in my propaganda," said Valentine.

  He couldn't bear her self-certainty. He couldn't bear her unshakable faith in herself. So he had to contradict her, and the only way he could was to blurt out ideas that he had not yet thought out completely. Ideas that were still only half-formed doubts in his mind. "The fleet is also self-defense."

  It had the desired effect--it stopped her lecture and even made her raise her eyebrows, questioning him. The trouble was, now he had to explain what he meant.

  "The descolada," he said. "It's the most dangerous form of life anywhere."

  "The answer to that is quarantine. Not sending a fleet armed with the M.D. Device, so they have the capacity to turn Lusitania and everybody on it into microscopic interstellar dust."

  "You're so sure you're right?"

  "I'm sure that it's wrong for Starways Congress even to contemplate obliterating another sentient species."

  "The piggies can't live without the descolada," said Miro, "and if the descolada ever spreads to another planet, it will destroy all life there. It will."

  It was a pleasure to see that Valentine was capable of looking puzzled. "But I thought the virus was contained. It was your grandparents who found a way to stop it, to make it dormant in human beings."

  "The descolada adapts," said Miro. "Jane told me that it's already changed itself a couple of times. My mother and my sister Ela are working on it--trying to stay ahead of the descolada. Sometimes it even looks like the descolada is doing it deliberately. Intelligently. Finding strategies to get around the chemicals we use to contain it and stop it from killing people. It's getting into the Earthborn crops that humans need in order to survive on Lusitania. They have to spray them now. What if the descolada finds a way to get around all our barriers?"

  Valentine was silent. No glib answer now. She hadn't faced this question squarely--no one had, except Miro.

  "I haven't even told this to Jane," said Miro. "But what if the fleet is right? What if the only way to save humanity from the descolada is to destroy Lusitania now?"

  "No," said Valentine. "This has nothing to do with the purposes for which Starways Congress sent out the fleet. Their reasons all have to do with interplanetary politics, with showing the colonies who's boss. It has to do with a bureaucracy out of control and a military that--"

  "Listen to me!" said Miro. "You said you wanted to hear my stories, listen to this one: It doesn't matter what their reasons are. It doesn't matter if they're a bunch of murderous beasts. I don't care. What matters is--should they blow up Lusitania?"

  "What kind of person are you?" asked Valentine. He could hear both awe and loathing in her voice.

  "You're the moral philosopher," said Miro. "You tell me. Are we supposed to love the pequeninos so much that we allow the virus they carry to destroy all of humanity?"

  "Of course not. We simply have to find a way to neutralize the descolada."

  "And if we can't?"

  "Then we quarantine Lusitania. Even if all the human beings on the planet die--your family and mine--we still don't destroy the pequeninos."

  "Really?" asked Miro. "What about the hive queen?"

  "Ender told me that she was reestablishing herself, but--"

  "She contains within herself a complete industrialized society. She's going to build starships and get off the planet."

  "She wouldn't take the descolada with her!"

  "She has no choice. The descolada is in her already. It's in me."

  That was when he really got to her. He could see it in her eyes--the fear.

  "It'll be in you, too. Even if you run back to your ship and seal me off and keep yourself from infection, once you land on Lusitania the descolada will get into you and your husband and your children. They'll have to ingest the chemicals with their food and water, every day of their lives. And they can never go away from Lusitania again or they'll carry death and destruction with them."

  "I suppose we knew that was a possibility," said Valentine.

  "When you left, it was only a possibility. We thought that the descolada would soon be controlled. Now they aren't sure if it can ever be controlled. And that means that you can never leave Lusitania once you go there."

  "I hope we like the weather."

  Miro studied her face, the way she was processing the information he had given her. The initial fear was gone. She was herself again--thinking. "Here's what I think," said Miro. "I think that no matter how terrible Congress is, no matter how evil their plans might be, that fleet might be the salvation of humanity."

  Valentine answered thoughtfully, searching for words. Miro was glad to see that--she was a person who didn't shoot back without thinking. She was able to learn. "I can see that if events move down one possible path, there might be a time when--but it's very improbable. First of all, knowing all this, the hive queen is quite unlikely to build any starships that would carry the descolada away from Lusitania."

  "Do
you know the hive queen?" demanded Miro. "Do you understand her?"

  "Even if she would do such a thing," said Valentine, "your mother and sister are working on this, aren't they? By the time we reach Lusitania--by the time the fleet reaches Lusitania--they might have found a way to control the descolada once and for all."

  "And if they do," said Miro, "should they use it?"

  "Why shouldn't they?"

  "How could they kill all the descolada virus? The virus is an integral part of the pequenino life cycle. When the pequenino body-form dies, it's the descolada virus that enables the transformation into the tree-state, what the piggies call the third life--and it's only in the third life, as trees, that the pequenino males can fertilize the females. If the virus is gone, there can be no more passage into the third life, and this generation of piggies is the last."

  "That doesn't make it impossible, it only makes it harder. Your mother and sister have to find a way to neutralize the descolada in human beings and the crops we need to eat, without destroying its ability to enable the pequeninos to pass into adulthood."

  "And they have less than fifteen years to do it," said Miro. "Not likely."

  "But not impossible."

  "Yes. There's a chance. And on the strength of that chance, you want to get rid of the fleet?"

  "The fleet is being sent to destroy Lusitania whether we control the descolada virus or not."

  "And I say it again--the motive of the senders is irrelevant. No matter what the reason, the destruction of Lusitania may be the only sure protection for all the rest of humanity."

  "And I say you're wrong."

  "You're Demosthenes, aren't you? Andrew said you were."

  "Yes."

  "So you thought up the Hierarchy of Foreignness. Utlannings are Strangers from our own world. Framlings are strangers of our own species, but from another world. Ramen are strangers of another species, but capable of communication with us, capable of co-existence with humanity. Last are varelse--and what are they?"

  "The pequeninos are not varelse. Neither is the hive queen."

  "But the descolada is. Varelse. An alien life form that's capable of destroying all of humanity . . ."

  "Unless we can tame it . . ."

  ". . . Yet which we cannot possibly communicate with, an alien species that we cannot live with. You're the one who said that in that case war is unavoidable. If an alien species seems bent on destroying us and we can't communicate with them, can't understand them, if there's no possibility of turning them away from their course peacefully, then we are justified in any action necessary to save ourselves, including the complete destruction of the other species."

  "Yes," said Valentine.

  "But what if we must destroy the descolada, and yet we can't destroy the descolada without also destroying every living pequenino, the hive queen, and every human being on Lusitania?"

  To Miro's surprise, Valentine's eyes were awash with tears. "So this is what you have become."

  Miro was confused. "When did this conversation become a discussion of me?"

  "You've done all this thinking, you've seen all the possibilities for the future--good ones and bad ones alike--and yet the only one that you're willing to believe in, the imagined future that you seize upon as the foundation for all your moral judgments, is the only future in which everyone that you and I have ever loved and everything we've ever hoped for must be obliterated."

  "I didn't say I liked that future--"

  "I didn't say you liked it either," said Valentine. "I said that's the future you choose to prepare for. But I don't. I choose to live in a universe that has some hope in it. I choose to live in a universe where your mother and sister will find a way to contain the descolada, a universe in which Starways Congress can be reformed or replaced, a universe in which there is neither the power nor the will to destroy an entire species."

  "What if you're wrong?"

  "Then I'll still have plenty of time to despair before I die. But you--do you seek out every opportunity to despair? I can understand the impulse that might lead to that. Andrew tells me you were a handsome man--you still are, you know--and that losing the full use of your body has hurt you deeply. But other people have lost more than you have without getting such a black-hearted vision of the world."

  "This is your analysis of me?" asked Miro. "We've known each other half an hour, and now you understand everything about me?"

  "I know that this is the most depressing conversation I've ever had in my life."

  "And so you assume that it's because I am crippled. Well, let me tell you something, Valentine Wiggin. I hope the same things you hope. I even hope that someday I'll get more of my body back again. If I didn't have hope I'd be dead. The things I told you just now aren't because I despair. I said all that because these things are possible. And because they're possible we have to think of them so they don't surprise us later. We have to think of them so that if the worst does come, we'll already know how to live in that universe."

  Valentine seemed to be studying his face; he felt her gaze on him as an almost palpable thing, like a faint tickling under the skin, inside his brain. "Yes," she said.

  "Yes what?"

  "Yes, my husband and I will move over here and live on your ship." She got up from her seat and started toward the corridor leading back to the tube.

  "Why did you decide that?"

  "Because it's too crowded on our ship. And because you are definitely worth talking to. And not just to get material for the essays I have to write."

  "Oh, so I passed your test?"

  "Yes, you did," she said. "Did I pass yours?"

  "I wasn't testing you."

  "Like hell," she said. "But in case you didn't notice, I'll tell you--I did pass. Or you wouldn't have said to me all the things you said."

  She was gone. He could hear her shuffling down the corridor, and then the computer reported that she was passing through the tube between ships.

  He already missed her.

  Because she was right. She had passed his test. She had listened to him the way no one else did--without impatience, without finishing his sentences, without letting her gaze waver from his face. He had spoken to her, not with careful precision, but with great emotion. Much of the time his words must surely have been almost unintelligible. Yet she had listened so carefully and well that she had understood all his arguments and never once asked him to repeat something. He could talk to this woman as naturally as he ever talked to anyone before his brain was injured. Yes, she was opinionated, headstrong, bossy, and quick to reach conclusions. But she could also listen to an opposing view, change her mind when she needed to. She could listen, and so he could speak. Perhaps with her he could still be Miro.

  3

  CLEAN HANDS

 

 

 

 

 

  The gods first spoke to Han Qing-jao when she was seven years old. She didn't realize for a while that she was hearing the voice of a god. All she knew was that her hands were filthy, covered with some loathsome invisible slime, and she had to purify them.

  The first few times, a simple washing was enough, and she felt better for days. But as time passed, the feeling of filthiness returned sooner each time, and it took more an
d more scrubbing to remove the dirt, until she was washing several times a day, using a hard-bristled brush to stab at her hands until they bled. Only when the pain was unbearable did she feel clean, and then only for a few hours at a time.

  She told no one; she knew instinctively that the filthiness of her hands had to be kept secret. Everyone knew that handwashing was one of the first signs that the gods were speaking to a child, and most parents in the whole world of Path watched their children hopefully for signs of excessive concern with cleanliness. But what these people did not understand was the terrible self-knowledge that led to the washing: The first message from the gods was of the unspeakable filthiness of the one they spoke to. Qing-jao hid her handwashing, not because she was ashamed that the gods spoke to her, but because she was sure that if anyone knew how vile she was, they would despise her.

  The gods conspired with her in concealment. They allowed her to confine her savage scrubbing to the palms of her hands. This meant that when her hands were badly hurt, she could clench them into fists, or tuck them into the folds of her skirt as she walked, or lay them in her lap very meekly when she sat, and no one would notice them. They saw only a very well-behaved little girl.

  If her mother had been alive, Qing-jao's secret would have been discovered much sooner. As it was, it took months for a servant to notice. Fat old Mu-pao happened to notice a bloody stain on the small tablecloth from Qing-jao's breakfast table. Mu-pao knew at once what it meant--weren't bloody hands well known to be an early sign of the gods' attention? That was why many an ambitious mother and father forced a particularly promising child to wash and wash. Throughout the world of Path, ostentatious handwashing was called "inviting the gods."