Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"No, my Gloriously Bright. To persuade your father, you must show that you understand the truth."

"I understand the truth," said Qing-jao. "I understand that some enemy has stolen you from me. I understand that all I have left now is the gods, and Mother who is among them. I beg the gods to let me die and join her, so I don't have to suffer any more of the pain you cause me, but still they leave me here. I think that means they wish me still to worship them. Perhaps I'm not yet purified enough. Or perhaps they know that you will soon turn your heart around again, and come to me as you used to, speaking honorably of the gods and teaching me to be a true servant."

"That will never happen," said Han Fei-tzu.

"Once I thought you could someday be the god of Path. Now I see that, far from being the protector of this world, you are its darkest enemy."

Han Fei-tzu covered his face and left the room, weeping for his daughter. He could never persuade her as long as she heard the voice of the gods. But perhaps if they brought the virus, perhaps if the gods fell silent, she would listen to him then. Perhaps he could win her back to rationality.

They sat in the starship--more like two metal bowls, one domed over the other, with a door in the side. Jane's design, faithfully executed by the hive queen and her workers, included many instruments on the outside of the ship. But even bristling with sensors it didn't resemble any kind of starship ever seen before. It was far too small, and there was no visible means of propulsion. The only power that could carry this ship anywhere was the unseeable aiua that Ender carried on board with him.

They faced each other in a circle. There were six chairs, because Jane's design allowed for the chance that the ship would be used again, to carry more people from world to world. They had taken every other seat, so they formed a triangle: Ender, Miro, Ela.

The good-byes had all been said. Sisters and brothers, other kin and many friends had come. One, though, was most painful in her absence. Novinha. Ender's wife, Miro's and Ela's mother. She would have no part of this. That was the only real sorrow at the parting.

The rest was all fear and excitement, hope and disbelief. They might be moments away from death. They might be moments away from filling the vials on Ela's lap with the viruses that would mean deliverance on two worlds. They might be the pioneers of a new kind of starflight that would save the species threatened by the M.D. Device.

They might also be three fools who would sit on the ground, in a grassy field just outside the compound of the human colony on Lusitania, until at last it grew so hot and stuffy inside that they had to emerge. No one waiting there would laugh, of course, but there'd be laughter throughout the town. It would be the laughter of despair. It would mean that there was no escape, no liberty, only more and more fear until death came in one of its many possible guises.

"Are you with us, Jane?" asked Ender.

The voice in his ear was quiet. "While I do this, Ender, I'll have no part of me that I can spare to talk to you."

"So you'll be with us, but mute," said Ender. "How will I know you're there?"

She laughed softly in his ear. "Foolish boy, Ender. If you're still there, I'm still inside you. And if I'm not inside you, you will have no 'there' to be."

Ender imagined himself breaking into a trillion constituent parts, scattering through chaos. Personal survival depended not only on Jane holding the pattern of the ship, but also on him being able to hold the pattern of his mind and body. Only he had no idea whether his mind was really strong enough to maintain that pattern, once he was where the laws of nature were not in force.

"Ready?" asked Jane.

"She asks if we're ready," said Ender.

Miro was already nodding. Ela bowed her head. Then, after a moment, she crossed herself, took firm hold on the rack of vials on her lap, and nodded.

"If we go and come again, Ela," said Ender, "then this was not a failure, even if you didn't create the virus that you wanted. If the ship works well, we can return another time. Don't think that everything depends on what you're able to imagine today."

She smiled. "I won't be surprised at failure, but I'm also ready for success. My team is ready to release hundreds of bacteria into the world, if I return with the recolada and we can then remove the descolada. It will be chancy, but within fifty years the world will be a self-regulating gaialogy again. I see a vision of deer and cattle in the tall grass of Lusitania, and eagles in the sky." Then she looked down again at the vials in her lap. "I also said a prayer to the Virgin, for the same Holy Ghost that created God in her womb to come make life again here in these jars."

"Amen to the prayer," said Ender. "And now, Jane, if you're ready, we can go."

Outside the little starship, the others waited. What did they expect? That the ship would start to smoke and jiggle? That there would be a thunderclap, a flash of light?

The ship was there. It was there, and still there, unmoving, unchanged. And then it was gone.

They felt nothing inside the ship when it happened. There was no sound, no movement to hint of motion from Inspace into Outspace.

But they knew the moment it occurred, because there were no longer three of them, but six.

Ender found himself seated between two people, a young man and a young woman. But he had no time even to gl

ance at them, for all he could look at was the man seated in what had been the empty seat across from him.

"Miro," he whispered. For that was who it was. But not Miro the cripple, the damaged young man who had boarded the ship with him. That one was still sitting in the next chair to Ender's left. This Miro was the strong young man that Ender had first known. The man whose strength had been the hope of his family, whose beauty had been the pride of Ouanda's life, whose mind and whose heart had taken compassion on the pequeninos and refused to leave them without the benefits he thought that human culture might offer them. Miro, whole and restored.

Where had he come from?

"I should have known," said Ender. "We should have thought. The pattern of yourself that you hold in your mind, Miro--it isn't the way you are, it's the way you were."