Xenocide

“I am not human,” said Jane, “even when I choose to wear a human face. How do you know, Wang-mu, what I will and will not do? Buggers and piggies both have killed human beings without a second thought.”

“Because they didn't understand what death meant to us. You understand. You said it yourself– you don't want to die.”

“Do you think you know me, Si Wang-mu?”

“I think I know you,” said Wang-mu, “because you wouldn't have any of these troubles if you had been content to let the fleet destroy Lusitania.”

The bugger in the display was joined by the piggy, and then by the face that represented Jane herself. In silence they looked at Wang-mu, at Qing-jao, and said nothing.

“Ender,” said the voice in his ear.

Ender had been listening in silence, riding on the car that Varsam was driving. For the last hour Jane had been letting him listen in on her conversation with these people of Path, translating for him whenever they spoke in Chinese instead of Stark. Many kilometers of prairie had passed by as he listened, but he had not seen it; before his mind's eye were these people as he imagined them. Han Fei-tzu– Ender well knew that name, tied as it was to the treaty that ended his hope that a rebellion of the colony worlds would put an end to Congress, or at least turn its fleet away from Lusitania. But now Jane's existence, and perhaps the survival of Lusitania and all its peoples, hinged on what was thought and said and decided by two young girls in a bedroom on an obscure colony world.

Qing-jao, I know you well, thought Ender. You are such a bright one, but the light you see by comes entirely from the stories of your gods. You are like the pequenino brothers who sat and watched my stepson die, able at any time to save him by walking a few dozen steps to fetch his food with its anti-descolada agents; they weren't guilty of murder. Rather they were guilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story and their inmost heart. But for these brothers– and for you, Qing-jao– the terrible lie has become the self-story, the tale that you must believe if you are to remain yourself. How can I blame you for wanting us all to die? You are so filled with the largeness of the gods, how can you have compassion for such small concerns as the lives of three species of raman? I know you, Qing-jao, and I expect you to behave no differently from the way you do. Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it.

But you, Wang-mu, you are owned by no story. You trust nothing but your own judgment. Jane has told me what you are, how phenomenal your mind must be, to learn so many things so quickly, to have such a deep understanding of the people around you. Why couldn't you have been just one bit wiser? Of course you had to realize that Jane could not possibly act in such a way as to cause the destruction of Path– but why couldn't you have been wise enough to say nothing, wise enough to leave Qing-jao ignorant of that fact? Why couldn't you have left just enough of the truth unspoken that Jane's life might have been spared? If a would-be murderer, his sword drawn, had come to your door demanding that you tell him the whereabouts of his i

“What can I do?” asked Jane.

Ender subvocalized his response. “Why are you asking me a question that only you can answer?”

“If you tell me to do it,” said Jane, “I can block all their messages, and save us all.”

“Even if it led to the destruction of Path?”

“If you tell me to,” she pleaded.

“Even though you know that in the long run you'll probably be discovered anyway? That the fleet will probably not be turned away from us, in spite of all you can do?”

“If you tell me to live, Ender, then I can do what it takes to live.”

“Then do it,” said Ender. “Cut off Path's ansible communications.”

Did he detect a tiny fraction of a second in which Jane hesitated? She could have had many hours of inward argument during that micropause.

“Command me,” said Jane.

“I command you.”

Again that tiny hesitation. Then: “Make me do it,” she insisted.

“How can I make you do it, if you don't want to?”

“I want to live,” she said.

“Not as much as you want to be yourself,” said Ender.

“Any animal is willing to kill in order to save itself.”

“Any animal is willing to kill the Other,” said Ender. “But the higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last there is no Other. Until the needs of others are more important than any private desires. The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.”

“I would risk hurting Path,” said Jane, “if I thought it would really save Lusitania.”

“But it wouldn't.”

"I'd try to drive Qing-jao into helpless madness, if I thought it could save the hive queen and the pequeninos. She's very close to losing her mind– I could do it. "

“Do it,” said Ender. “Do what it takes.”

“I can't,” said Jane. “Because it would only hurt her, and wouldn't save us in the end.”

“If you were a slightly lower animal,” said Ender, “you'd have a much better chance of coming out of this thing alive.”

“As low as you were, Ender the Xenocide?”

“As low as that,” said Ender. “Then you could live.”

“Or perhaps if I were as wise as you were then.”

“I have my brother Peter inside me, as well as my sister Valentine,” said Ender. “The beast as well as the angel. That's what you taught me, back when you were nothing but the program we called the Fantasy Game.”

“Where is the beast inside me?”

“You don't have one,” said Ender.

“Maybe I'm not really alive at all,” said Jane. “Maybe because I never passed through the crucible of natural selection, I lack the will to survive.”

“Or maybe you know, in some secret place within yourself, that there's another way to survive, a way that you simply haven't found yet.”

“That's a cheerful thought,” said Jane. “I'll pretend to believe in that.”

“Peco que deus te abencoe,” said Ender.

“Oh, you're just getting sentimental,” said Jane.

For a long time, several minutes, the three faces in the display gazed in silence at Qing-jao, at Wang-mu. Then at last the two alien faces disappeared, and all that remained was the face named Jane. “I wish I could do it,” she said. “I wish I could kill your world to save my friends.”

Relief came to Qing-jao like the first strong breath to a swimmer who nearly drowned. “So you can't stop me,” she said triumphantly. “I can send my message!”

Qing-jao walked to the terminal and sat down before Jane's watching face. But she knew that the image in the display was an illusion. If Jane watched, it was not with those human eyes, it was with the visual sensors of the computer. It was all electronics, infinitesimal machinery but machinery nonetheless. Not a living soul. It was irrational to feel ashamed under that illusionary gaze.

“Mistress,” said Wang-mu.

“Later,” said Qing-jao.

“If you do this, Jane will die. They'll shut down the ansibles and kill her.”

“What doesn't live ca

“The only reason you have the power to kill her is because of her compassion.”

“If she seems to have compassion it's an illusion– she was programmed to simulate compassion, that's all.”