Xenocide

Many pequeninos believed him now. Warmaker no longer sounded crazy to them; they had witnessed the first stirrings of apocalypse in the flames of an i

Here, though, in this clearing in the forest, their feet ankle-deep in ash, the brothers and wives who kept vigil over their new mothertree had no belief in Warmaker's doctrine. They who knew human beings best of all even chose to have humans present as witnesses and helpers in their attempt to be reborn.

“Because,” said Planter, who was now the spokesman for the surviving brothers, “we know that not all humans are alike, just as not all pequeninos are alike. Christ lives in some of you, and not in others. We are not all like Warmaker's forest, and you are not all murderers either.”

So it was that Planter held hands with Miro and Valentine on the morning, just before dawn, when the new mothertree managed to open a crevice in her slender trunk, and the wives tenderly transferred the weak and starving bodies of the surviving infants into their new home. It was too soon to tell, but there was cause for hope: The new mothertree had readied herself in only a day and a half, and there were more than three dozen infants who lived to make the transition. As many as a dozen of them might be fertile females, and if even a quarter of those lived to bear young, the forest might thrive again.

Planter was trembling. “Brothers have never seen this before,” said Planter, “not in all the history of the world.”

Several of the brothers were kneeling and crossing themselves. Many had been praying throughout the vigil. It made Valentine think of something Ouara had told her. She stepped close to Miro and whispered, “Ela prayed, too.”

“Ela?”

“Before the fire. Quara was there at the shrine of the Venerados. She prayed for God to open up a way for us to solve all our problems.”

“That's what everybody prays for.”

Valentine thought of what had happened in the days since Ela's prayer. “I imagine that she's rather disappointed at the answer God gave her.”

“People usually are.”

“But maybe this– the mothertree opening so quickly– maybe this is the begi

Miro looked at Valentine in puzzlement. “Are you a believer?”

“Let's say I'm a suspecter. I suspect there may be someone who cares what happens to us. That's one step better than merely wishing. And one step below hoping.”

Miro smiled slightly, but Valentine wasn't sure whether it meant he was pleased or amused. “So what will God do next, to answer Ela's prayer?”

“Let's wait and see,” said Valentine. “Our job is to decide what we'll do next. We have only the deepest mysteries of the universe to solve.”

“Well, that should be right up God's alley,” said Miro.

Then Ouanda arrived; as xenologer, she had also been involved in the vigil, and though this wasn't her shift, news of the opening of the mothertree had been taken to her at once. Her coming had usually meant Miro's swift departure. But not this time. Valentine was pleased to see that Miro's gaze didn't seem either to linger on Ouanda or to avoid her; she was simply there, working with the pequeninos, and so was he. No doubt it was all an elaborate pretense at normality, but in Valentine's experience, normality was always a pretense, people acting out what they thought were their expected roles. Miro had simply reached a point where he was ready to act out something like a normal role in relation to Ouanda, no matter how false it might be to his true feelings. And maybe it wasn't so false, after all. She was twice his age now. Not at all the girl he had loved.

They had loved each other, but never slept together. Valentine had been pleased to hear it when Miro told her, though he said it with angry regret. Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and cha

She had feared, when she first met Miro, that he was a self-pitying weakling or a self-centered predator resentful of his confinement. Neither was so. He might now regret his chastity in adolescence– it was natural for him to wish he had coupled with Ouanda when he was still strong and they were both of an age– but Valentine did not regret it. It showed that Miro had i

It was also predictable that Miro and Ouanda would now make the great effort to pretend that they were simply two people doing their jobs– that all was normal between them. I

Novinha met him in the doorway of the school. She leaned on the arm of Dona Crista, the fourth principal of the Children of the Mind of Christ since Ender had come to Lusitania.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Novinha said. “We're still married under the law, but that's all.”

“I didn't kill your son,” he said.

“You didn't save him, either,” she answered.

“I love you,” Ender said.

“As much as you're capable of love,” she said. “And then only when you've got a little time left over from looking after everybody else. You think you're some kind of guardian angel, with responsibility for the whole universe. All I asked you to do was take responsibility for my family. You're good at loving people by the trillion, but not so good at dozens, and you're a complete failure at loving one.”

It was a harsh judgment, and he knew it wasn't true, but he didn't come to argue. “Please come home,” he said. “You love me and need me as much as I need you.”

“This is home now. I've stopped needing you or anybody. And if this is all you came to say, you're wasting my time and yours.”

“No, it's not all.”

She waited.

“The files in the laboratory. You've sealed them all. We have to find a solution to the descolada before it destroys us all.”

She gave him a withering, bitter smile. “Why did you bother me with this? Jane can get past my passwords, can't she?”

“She hasn't tried,” he said.

«No doubt to spare my sensibilities. But she can, n‚?»

“Probably.”

“Then have her do it. She's all you need now. You never really needed me, not when you had her.”

“I've tried to be a good husband to you,” said Ender. “I never said I could protect you from everything, but I did all I could.”

“If you had, my Estevao would be alive.”

She turned away, and Dona Crista escorted her back inside the school. Ender watched her until she turned a corner. Then he turned away from the door and left the school. He wasn't sure where he was going, only that he had to get there.

“I'm sorry,” said Jane softly.

“Yes,” he said.

“When I'm gone,” she said, “maybe Novinha will come back to you.”

“You won't be gone if I can help it,” he said.

“But you can't. They're going to shut me down in a couple of months.”