Xenocide

Quara shoved herself between them, facing Grego. “If Miro hasn't earned the right to speak in this family, then we aren't a family!”

“You said it,” murmured Olhado.

“Get out of my way,” said Grego. Quara had heard him speak threateningly before, a thousand times at least. But this time, standing so close to him, his breath in her face, she realized that he was out of control. That the news of Quim's death had hit him hard, that maybe at this moment he wasn't quite sane.

“I'm not in your way,” said Quara. “Go ahead. Knock a woman down. Shove a cripple. It's in your nature, Grego. You were born to destroy things. I'm ashamed to belong to the same species as you, let alone the same family.”

Only after she spoke did she realize that maybe she was pushing Grego too far. After all these years of sparring between them, this time she had drawn blood. His face was terrifying.

But he didn't hit her. He stepped around her, around Miro, and stood in the doorway, his hands on the doorframe. Pushing outward, as if he were trying to press the walls out of his way. Or perhaps he was clinging to the walls, hoping they could hold him in.

“I'm not going to let you make me angry at you, Quara,” said Grego. “I know who my enemy is.”

Then he was gone, out the door into the new darkness.

A moment later, Miro followed, saying nothing more.

Ela spoke as she also walked to the door. “Whatever lies you may be telling yourself, Mother, it wasn't Ender or anyone else who destroyed our family here tonight. It was you.” Then she was gone.

Olhado got up and left, wordlessly. Quara wanted to slap him as he passed her, to make him speak. Have you recorded everything in your computer eyes, Olhado? Have you got all the pictures etched in memory? Well, don't be too proud of yourself. I may have only a brain of tissues to record this wonderful night in the history of the Ribeira family, but I'll bet my pictures are every bit as clear as yours.

Mother looked up at Quara. Mother's face was streaked with tears. Quara couldn't remember– had she ever seen Mother weep before?

“So you're all that's left,” said Mother.

“Me?” said Quara. “I'm the one you cut off from access to the lab, remember? I'm the one you cut off from my life's work. Don't expect me to be your friend.”

Then Quara, too, left. Walked out into the night air feeling invigorated. Justified. Let the old hag think about that one for a while, see if she likes feeling cut off, the way she made me feel.

It was maybe five minutes later, when Quara was nearly to the gate, when the glow of her riposte had faded, that she began to realize what she had done to her mother. What they all had done. Left Mother alone. Left her feeling that she had lost, not just Quim, but her entire family. That was a terrible thing to do to her, and Mother didn't deserve it.

Quara turned at once and ran back to the house. But as she came through the door, Ela also entered the living room from the other door, the one that led back farther into the house.

“She isn't here,” said Ela.

“Nossa Senhora,” said Quara. “I said such awful things to her.”

“We all did.”

“She needed us. Quim is dead, and all we could do–”

“When she hit Miro like that, it was …”

To her surprise, Quara found herself weeping, clinging to her older sister. Am I still a child, then, after all? Yes, I am, we all are, and Ela is still the only one who knows how to comfort us. “Ela, was Quim the only one who held us together? Aren't we a family anymore, now that he's gone?”

“I don't know,” said Ela.

“What can we do?”

In answer, Ela took her hand and led her out of the house. Quara asked where they were going, but Ela wouldn't answer, just held her hand and led her along. Quara went willingly– she had no good idea of what to do, and it felt safe somehow, just to follow Ela. At first she thought Ela was looking for Mother, but no– she didn't head for the lab or any other likely place. Where they ended up surprised her even more.

They stood before the shrine that the people of Lusitania had erected in the middle of the town. The shrine to Gusto and Cida, their grandparents, the xenobiologists who had first discovered a way to contain the descolada virus and thus saved the human colony on Lusitania. Even as they found the drugs that would stop the descolada from killing people, they themselves had died, too far gone with the infection for their own drug to save them.

The people adored them, built this shrine, called them Os Venerados even before the church beatified them. And now that they were only one step away from canonization as saints, it was permitted to pray to them.

To Quara's surprise, that was why Ela had come here. She knelt before the shrine, and even though Quara really wasn't much of a believer, she knelt beside her sister.

“Grandfather, Grandmother, pray to God for us. Pray for the soul of our brother Estevao. Pray for all our souls. Pray to Christ to forgive us.”

That was a prayer in which Quara could join with her whole heart.

“Protect your daughter, our mother, protect her from… from her grief and anger and make her know that we love her and that you love her and that… God loves her, if he does– oh, please, tell God to love her and don't let her do anything crazy.”

Quara had never heard anyone pray like this. It was always memorized prayers, or written-down prayers. Not this gush of words. But then, Os Venerados were not like any other saints or blessed ones. They were Grandmother and Grandfather, even though we never met them in our lives.

“Tell God that we've had enough of this,” said Ela. “We have to find a way out of all this. Piggies killing humans. This fleet that's coming to destroy us. The descolada trying to wipe everything out. Our family hating each other. Find us a way out of this, Grandfather, Grandmother, or if there isn't a way then get God to open up a way because this can't go on.”

Then an exhausted silence, both Ela and Quara breathing heavily.

“Em nome do Pai e do Filho e do Espirito Santo,” said Ela. “Amem.”

“Amem,” whispered Quara.

Then Ela embraced her sister and they wept together in the night.

Valentine was surprised to find that the Mayor and the Bishop were the only other people at the emergency meeting. Why was she there? She had no constituency, no claim to authority.

Mayor Kovano Zeljezo pulled up a chair for her. All the furniture in the Bishop's private chamber was elegant, but the chairs were designed to be painful. The seat was so shallow from front to back that to sit at all, you had to keep your buttocks right up against the back. And the back itself was ramrod straight, with no allowances at all for the shape of the human spine, and it rose so high that your head was pushed forward. If you sat on one for any length of time, the chair would force you to bend forward, to lean your arms on your knees.

Perhaps that was the point, thought Valentine. Chairs that make you bow in the presence of God.

Or perhaps it was even more subtle. The chairs were designed to make you so physically uncomfortable that you longed for a less corporeal existence. Punish the flesh so you'll prefer to live in the spirit.

“You look puzzled,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“I can see why the two of you would confer in an emergency,” said Valentine. “Did you need me to take notes?”

“Sweet humility,” said Peregrino. “But we have read your writings, my daughter, and we would be fools not to seek out your wisdom in a time of trouble.”

“Whatever wisdom I have I'll give you,” said Valentine, “but I wouldn't hope for much.”

With that, Mayor Kovano plunged into the subject of the meeting. “There are many long-term problems,” he said, “but we won't have much chance to solve those if we don't solve the immediate one. Last night there was some kind of quarrel at the Ribeira house–”