Quim came to the meeting without protest, though it might well set him back a full day in his journey. He had learned patience long ago. No matter how urgent he felt his mission to the heretics to be, he could accomplish little, in the long run, if he didn't have the support of the human colony behind him. So if Bishop Peregrino asked him to attend a meeting with Kovano Zeljezo, the mayor of Milagre and governor of Lusitania, Quim would go.
He was surprised to see that the meeting was also being attended by Ouanda Saavedra, Andrew Wiggin, and most of Quim's own family. Mother and Ela--their presence made sense, if the meeting were being called to discuss policy concerning the heretic pequeninos. But what were Quara and Grego doing here? There was no reason they should be involved in any serious discussions. They were too young, too ill-informed, too impetuous. From what he had seen of them, they still quarreled like little children. They weren't as mature as Ela, who was able to set aside her personal feelings in the interest of science. Of course, Quim worried sometimes that Ela did this far too well for her own good--but that was hardly the worry with Quara and Grego.
Especially Quara. From what Rooter had said, the whole trouble with these heretics really took off when Quara told the pequeninos about the various contingency plans for dealing with the descolada virus. The heretics wouldn't have found so many allies in so many different forests if it weren't for the fear among the pequeninos that the humans might unleash some virus, or poison Lusitania with a chemical that would wipe out the descolada and, with it, the pequeninos themselves. The fact that the humans would even consider the indirect extermination of the pequeninos made it seem like mere turnabout for the piggies to contemplate the extermination of humanity.
All because Quara couldn't keep her mouth shut. And now she was at a meeting where policy would be discussed. Why? What constituency in the community did she represent? Did these people actually imagine that government or church policy was now the province of the Ribeira family? Of course, Olhado and Miro weren't there, but that meant nothing--since both were cripples, the rest of the family unconsciously treated them like children, though Quim knew well that neither of them deserved to be so callously dismissed.
Still, Quim was patient. He could wait. He could listen. He could hear them out. Then he'd do something that would please both God and the Bishop. Of course, if that wasn't possible, pleasing God would do well enough.
"This meeting wasn't my idea," said Mayor Kovano. He was a good man, Quim knew. A better mayor than most people in Milagre realized. They kept reelecting him because he was grandfatherly and worked hard to help individuals and families who were having trouble. They didn't care much whether he also set good policies--that was too abstract for them. But it happened that he was as wise as he was politically astute. A rare combination that Quim was glad of. Perhaps God knew that these would be trying times, and gave us a leader who might well help us get through it all without too much suffering.
"But I'm glad to have you all together. There's more strain in the relationship between piggies and people than ever before, or at least since the Speaker here arrived and helped us make peace with them."
Wiggin shook his head, but everyone knew his role in those events and there was little point in his denying it. Even Quim had had to admit, in the end, that the infidel humanist had ended up doing good works on Lusitania. Quim had long since shed his deep hatred of the Speaker for the Dead; indeed, he sometimes suspected that he, as a missionary, was the only person in his family who really understood what it was that Wiggin had accomplished. It takes one evangelist to understand another.
"Of course, we owe no small part of our worries to the misbehavior of two very troublesome young hotheads, whom we have invited to this meeting so they can see some of the dangerous consequences of their stupid, self-willed behavior."
Quim almost laughed out loud. Of course, Kovano had said all this in such mild, pleasant tones that it took a moment for Grego and Quara to realize they had just been given a tongue-lashing. But Quim understood at once. I shouldn't have doubted you, Kovano; you would never have brought useless people to a meeting.
"As I understand it, there is a movement among the piggies to launch a starship in order to deliberately infect the rest of humanity with the descolada. And because of the contribution of our young parrot, here, many other forests are giving heed to this idea."
"If you expect me to apologize," Quara began.
"I expect you to shut your mouth--or is that impossible, even for ten minutes?" Kovano's voice had real fury in it. Quara's eyes grew wide, and she sat more rigidly in her chair.
"The other half of our problem is a young physicist who has, unfortunately, kept the common touch." Kovano raised an eyebrow at Grego. "If only you had become an aloof intellectual. Instead, you seem to have cultivated the friendship of the stupidest, most violent of Lusitanians."
"With people who disagree with you, you mean," said Grego.
"With people who forget that this world belongs to the pequeninos," said Quara.
"Worlds belong to the people who need them and know how to make them produce," said Grego.
"Shut your mouths, children, or you'll be expelled from this meeting while the adults make up their minds."
Grego glared at Kovano. "Don't you speak to me that way."
"I'll speak to you however I like," said Kovano. "As far as I'm concerned, you've both broken legal obligations of secrecy, and I should have you both locked up."
"On what charge?"
"I have emergency powers, you'll recall. I don't need any charges until the emergency is over. Do I make myself clear?"
"You won't do it. You need me," said Grego. "I'm the only decent physicist on Lusitania."
"Physics isn't worth a slug to us if we end up in some kind of contest with the pequeninos."
"It's the descolada we have to confront," said Grego.
"We're wasting time," said Novinha.
Quim looked at his mother for the first time since the meeting began. She seemed very nervous. Fearful. He hadn't seen her like that in many years.
"We're here about this insane mission of Quim's," said Novinha.
"He is called Father Estevao," said Bishop Peregrino. He was a stickler for giving proper dignity to church offices.
"He's my son," said Novinha. "I'll call him what I please."
"What a testy group of people we have here today," said Mayor Kovano.
Things were going very badly. Quim had deliberately avoided telling Mother any details about his mission to the heretics, because he was sure she'd oppose the idea of him going straight to piggies who openly feared and hated human beings. Quim was well aware of the source of her dread of close contact with the pequeninos. As a young child she had lost her parents to the descolada. The xenologer Pipo became her surrogate father--and then became the first human to be tortured to death by the pequeninos. Novinha then spent twenty years trying to keep her lover, Libo--Pipo's son, and the next xenologer--from meeting the same fate. She even married another man to keep Libo from getting a husband'
s right of access to her private computer files, where she believed the secret that had led the piggies to kill Pipo might be found. And in the end, it all came to nothing. Libo was killed just as Pipo was.
Even though Mother had since learned the true reason for the killing, even though the pequeninos had undertaken solemn oaths not to undertake any violent act against another human being, there was no way Mother would ever be rational about her loved ones going off among the piggies. And now here she was at a meeting that had obviously been called, no doubt at her instigation, to decide whether Quim should go on his missionary journey. It was going to be an unpleasant morning. Mother had years of practice at getting her own way. Being married to Andrew Wiggin had softened and mellowed her in many ways. But when she thought one of her children was at risk, the claws came out, and no husband was going to have much gentling influence on her.
Why had Mayor Kovano and Bishop Peregrino allowed this meeting to take place?
As if he had heard Quim's unspoken question, Mayor Kovano began to explain. "Andrew Wiggin has come to me with new information. My first thought was to keep all of it secret, send Father Estevao on his mission to the heretics, and then ask Bishop Peregrino to pray. But Andrew assured me that as our danger increases, it's all the more important that all of you act from the most complete possible information. Speakers for the dead apparently have an almost pathological reliance on the idea that people behave better when they know more. I've been a politician too long to share his confidence--but he's older than I am, he claims, and I deferred to his wisdom."
Quim knew, of course, that Kovano deferred to no one's wisdom. Andrew Wiggin had simply persuaded him.
"As relations between pequeninos and humans are getting more, um, problematical, and as our unseeable cohabitant, the hive queen, apparently comes closer to launching her starships, it seems that matters offplanet are getting more urgent as well. The Speaker for the Dead informs me from his offplanet sources that someone on a world called Path is very close to discovering our allies who have managed to keep Congress from issuing orders to the fleet to destroy Lusitania."
Quim noted with interest that Andrew had apparently not told Mayor Kovano about Jane. Bishop Peregrino didn't know, either; did Grego or Quara? Did Ela? Mother certainly did. Why did Andrew tell me, if he held it back from so many others?
"There is a very strong chance that within the next few weeks--or days--Congress will reestablish communications with the fleet. At that point, our last defense will be gone. Only a miracle will save us from annihilation."
"Bullshit," said Grego. "If that--thing--out on the prairie can build a starship for the piggies, it can build some for us, too. Get us off this planet before it gets blown to hell."
"Perhaps," said Kovano. "I suggested something like that, though in less colorful terms. Perhaps, Senhor Wiggin, you can tell us why Grego's eloquent little plan won't work."
"The hive queen doesn't think the way we do. Despite her best efforts, she doesn't take individual lives as seriously. If Lusitania is destroyed, she and the pequeninos will be at greatest risk--"
"The M.D. Device blows up the whole planet," Grego pointed out.
"At greatest risk of species annihilation," said Wiggin, unperturbed by Grego's interruption. "She'll not waste a ship on getting humans off Lusitania, because there are trillions of humans on a couple of hundred other worlds. We're not in danger of xenocide."
"We are if these heretic piggies get their way," said Grego.
"And that's another point," said Wiggin. "If we haven't found a way to neutralize the descolada, we can't in good conscience take the human population of Lusitania to another world. We'd only be doing exactly what the heretics want--forcing other humans to deal with the descolada, and probably die."
"Then there's no solution," said Ela. "We might as well roll over and die."
"Not quite," said Mayor Kovano. "It's possible--perhaps likely--that our own village of Milagre is doomed. But we can at least try to make it so that the pequenino colony ships don't carry the descolada to human worlds. There seem to be two approaches--one biological, the other theological."
"We are so close," said Mother. "It's a matter of months or even weeks till Ela and I have designed a replacement species for the descolada."
"So you say," said Kovano. He turned to Ela. "What do you say?"
Quim almost groaned aloud. Ela will say that Mother's wrong, that there's no biological solution, and then Mother will say that she's trying to kill me by sending me out on my mission. This is all the family needs--Ela and Mother in open war. Thanks to Kovano Zeljezo, humanitarian.
But Ela's answer wasn't what Quim feared. "It's almost designed right now. It's the only approach that we haven't already tried and failed with, but we're on the verge of having the design for a version of the descolada virus that does everything necessary to maintain the life cycles of the indigenous species, but that is incapable of adapting to and destroying any new species."
"You're talking about a lobotomy for an entire species," said Quara bitterly. "How would you like it if somebody found a way to keep all humans alive, while removing our cerebrums?"
Of course Grego took up her gauntlet. "When these viruses can write a poem or reason from a theorem, I'll buy all this sentimental horseshit about how we ought to keep them alive."
"Just because we can't read them doesn't mean they don't have their epic poems!"
"Fechai as bocas!" growled Kovano.
Immediately they fell silent.
"Nossa Senhora," he said. "Maybe God wants to destroy Lusitania because it's the only way he can think of to shut you two up."
Bishop Peregrino cleared his throat.
"Or maybe not," said Kovano. "Far be it from me to speculate on God's motives."
The Bishop laughed, which allowed the others to laugh as well. The tension broke--like an ocean wave, gone for the moment, but sure to return.
"So the anti-virus is almost ready?" Kovano asked Ela.
"No--or yes, it is, the replacement virus is almost fully designed. But there are still two problems. The first one is delivery. We have to find a way to get the new virus to attack and replace the old one. That's still--a long way off."
"Do you mean it's a long way off, or you don't have the faintest idea how to do it?" Kovano was no fool--he obviously had dealt with scientists before.
"Somewhere between those two," said Ela.
Mother shifted on her seat, visibly drawing away from Ela. My poor sister Ela, thought Quim. You may not be spoken to for the next several years.
"And the other problem?" asked Kovano.
"It's one thing to design the replacement virus. It's something else again to produce it."
"These are mere details," said Mother.
"You're wrong, Mother, and you know it," said Ela. "I can diagram what we want the new virus to be. But even working under ten degrees absolute, we can't cut up and recombine the descolada virus with enough precision. Either it dies, because we've left out too much, or it immediately repairs itself as soon as it returns to normal temperatures, because we didn't take out enough."
"Technical problems."
"Technical problems," said Ela sharply. "Like building an ansible without a philotic link."
"So we conclude--"
"We conclude nothing," said Mother.
"We conclude," continued Kovano, "that our xenobiologists are in sharp disagreement about the feasibility of taming the descolada virus itself. That brings us to the other approach--persuading the pequeninos to send their colonies only to uninhabited worlds, where they can establish their own peculiarly poisonous ecology without killing human beings."
"Persuading them," said Grego. "As if we could trust them to keep their promises."
"They've kept more promises so far than you have," said Kovano. "So I wouldn't take a morally superior tone if I were you."
Finally things were at a point where Quim felt it would be beneficial for him to speak. "All of
this discussion is interesting," said Quim. "It would be a wonderful thing if my mission to the heretics could be the means of persuading the pequeninos to refrain from causing harm to humankind. But even if we all came to agree that my mission has no chance of succeeding in that goal, I would still go. Even if we decided that there was a serious risk that my mission might make things worse, I'd go."
"Nice to know you plan to be cooperative," said Kovano acidly.
"I plan to cooperate with God and the church," said Quim. "My mission to the heretics is not to save humankind from the descolada or even to try to keep the peace between humans and pequeninos here on Lusitania. My mission to the heretics is in order to try to bring them back to faith in Christ and unity with the church. I am going to save their souls."
"Well of course," said Kovano. "Of course that's the reason you want to go"
"And it's the reason why I will go, and the only standard I'll use to determine whether or not my mission succeeds."
Kovano looked helplessly at Bishop Peregrino. "You said that Father Estevao was cooperative."
"I said he was perfectly obedient to God and the church," said the Bishop.
"I took that to mean that you could persuade him to wait on this mission until we knew more."
"I could indeed persuade him. Or I could simply forbid him to go," said Bishop Peregrino.
"Then do it," said Mother.
"I will not," said the Bishop.
"I thought you cared about the good of this colony," said Mayor Kovano.
"I care about the good of all the Christians placed under my charge," said Bishop Peregrino. "Until thirty years ago, that meant I cared only for the human beings of Lusitania. Now, however, I am equally responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Christian pequeninos of this planet. I send Father Estevao forth on his mission exactly as a missionary named Patrick was once sent to the island of Eire. He was extraordinarily successful, converting kings and nations. Unfortunately, the Irish church didn't always act the way the Pope might have wished. There was a great deal of--let us say it was controversy between them. Superficially it concerned the date of Easter, but at heart it was over the issue of obedience to the Pope. It even came to bloodshed now and then. But never for a moment did anyone imagine it would have been better if St. Patrick had never gone to Eire. Never did anyone suggest that it would be better if the Irish had remained pagan."