Xenocide

But some, many perhaps, were still untouched except by the i

Grego staggered onward.

“Set me down,” said Nimbo.

And onward.

“I can walk.”

But Grego's errand was too urgent. He couldn't stop for Nimbo, and he couldn't let the boy walk, couldn't wait for him and couldn't leave him behind. You don't leave your brother's son behind in a burning forest. So he carried him, and after awhile, exhausted, his legs and arms aching from the exertion, his shoulder a white sun of agony where he had been burned, he emerged from the forest into the grassy space before the old gate, where the path wound down from the wood to join the path from the xenobiology labs.

The mob had gathered here, many of them holding torches, but for some reason they were still a distance away from the two isolated trees that stood watch here: Human and Rooter. Grego pushed his way through the crowd, still holding Nimbo; his heart was racing, and he was filled with fear and anguish and yet a spark of hope, for he knew why the men with torches had stopped. And when he reached the edge of the mob, he saw that he was right.

There were gathered around those last two fathertrees perhaps two hundred pequenino brothers and wives, small and beleaguered, but with an air of defiance about them. They would fight to the death on this spot, rather than let these last two trees be burned– but burn they would, if the mob decided so, for there was no hope of pequeninos standing in the way of men determined to do murder.

But between the piggies and the men there stood Miro, like a giant compared to the pequeninos. He had no weapon, and yet he had spread his arms as if to protect the pequeninos, or perhaps to hold them back. And in his thick, difficult speech he was defying the mob.

“Kill me first!” he said. “You like murder! Kill me first! Just like they killed Quim! Kill me first!”

“Not you!” said one of the men holding torches. “But those trees are going to die. And all those piggies, too, if they haven't got the brains to run away.”

“Me first,” said Miro. “These are my brothers! Kill me first!”

He spoke loudly and slowly, so his sluggish speech could be understood. The mob still had anger in it, some of them at least. Yet there were also many who were sick of it all, many who were already ashamed, already discovering in their hearts the terrible acts they had performed tonight, when their souls were given over to the will of the mob. Grego still felt it, that co

Grego had this one last chance to redeem himself, at least in part. And so he stepped forward, still carrying Nimbo.

“Me too,” he said. “Kill me too, before you raise a hand against these brothers and these trees!”

“Out of the way, Grego, you and the cripple both!”

“How are you different from Warmaker, if you kill these little ones?”

Now Grego stood beside Miro.

“Out of the way! We're going to burn the last of them and have done.” But the voice was less certain.

“There's a fire behind you,” said Grego, “and too many people have already died, humans and pequeninos both.” His voice was husky, his breath short from the smoke he had inhaled. But he could still be heard. “The forest that killed Quim is far away from here, and Warmaker still stands untouched. We haven't done justice here tonight. We've done murder and massacre.”

“Piggies are piggies!”

“Are they? Would you like that if it went the other way?” Grego took a few steps toward one of the men who looked tired and unwilling to go on, and spoke directly to him, while pointing at the mob's spokesman. “You! Would you like to be punished for what he did?”

“No,” muttered the man.

“If he killed someone, would you think it was right for somebody to come to your house and slaughter your wife and children for it?”

Several voices now. “No.”

“Why not? Humans are humans, aren't we?”

“I didn't kill any children,” said the spokesman. He was defending himself now. And the “we” was gone from his speech. He was an individual now, alone. The mob was fading, breaking apart.

“We burned the mothertree,” said Grego.

Behind him there began a keening sound, several soft, high-pitched whines. For the brothers and surviving wives, it was the confirmation of their worst fears. The mothertree had burned.

“That giant tree in the middle of the forest– inside it were all their babies. All of them. This forest did us no harm, and we came and killed their babies.”

Miro stepped forward, put his hand on Grego's shoulder. Was Miro leaning on him? Or helping him stand?

Miro spoke then, not to Grego, but to the crowd. “All of you. Go home.”

“Maybe we should try to put the fire out,” said Grego. But already the whole forest was ablaze.

“Go home,” Miro said again. “Stay inside the fence.”

There was still some anger left. “Who are you to tell us what to do?”

“Stay inside the fence,” said Miro. “Someone else is coming to protect the pequeninos now.”

“Who? The police?” Several people laughed bitterly, since so many of them were police, or had seen policemen among the crowd.

“Here they are,” said Miro.

A low hum could be heard, soft at first, barely audible in the roaring of the fire, but then louder and louder, until five fliers came into view, skimming the tops of the grass as they circled the mob, sometimes black in silhouette against the burning forest, sometimes shining with reflected fire when they were on the opposite side. At last they came to rest, all five of them sinking down onto the tall grass. Only then were the people able to distinguish one black shape from another, as six riders arose from each flying platform. What they had taken for shining machinery on the fliers was not machinery at all, but living creatures, not as large as men but not as small as pequeninos, either, with large heads and multi-faceted eyes. They made no threatening gesture, just formed lines before each flier; but no gestures were needed. The sight of them was enough, stirring memories of ancient nightmares and horror stories.

“Deus nos perdoe!” cried several. God forgive us. They were expecting to die.

“Go home,” said Miro. “Stay inside the fence.”

“What are they?” Nimbo's childish voice spoke for them all.

The answers came as whispers. “Devils.” “Destroying angels.” “Death.”

And then the truth, from Grego's lips, for he knew what they had to be, though it was unthinkable. “Buggers,” he said. “Buggers, here on Lusitania.”

They did not run from the place. They walked, watching carefully, shying away from the strange new creatures whose existence none of them had guessed at, whose powers they could only imagine, or remember from ancient videos they had studied once in school. The buggers, who had once come close to destroying all of humanity, until they were destroyed in turn by Ender the Xenocide. The book called the Hive Queen had said they were really beautiful and did not need to die. But now, seeing them, black shining exoskeletons, a thousand lenses in their shimmering green eyes, it was not beauty but terror that they felt. And when they went home, it would be in the knowledge that these, and not just the dwarfish, backward piggies, waited for them just outside the fence. Had they been in prison before? Surely now they were trapped in one of the circles of hell.

At last only Miro, Grego, and Nimbo were left, of all the humans. Around them the piggies also watched in awe– but not in terror, for they had no insect nightmares lurking in their limbic node the way the humans did. Besides, the buggers had come to them as saviors and protectors. What weighed on them most was not curiosity about these strangers, but rather grief at what they had lost.