Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

tribe, surrounded by their sons. They would be lonely trees with no forest of their own, the sole monuments to the work they had lived for: bringing humans and pequeninos together.
    As for the rage against Warmaker, that had ended. The fathertrees of Lusitania all agreed that whatever moral debt had been incurred by the death of Father Estevão, it was paid and overpaid by the slaughter of the forest of Rooter and Human. Indeed, Warmaker had won many new converts to his heresy-- for hadn't the humans proved that they were unworthy of the gospel of Christ? It was pequeninos, said Warmaker, who were chosen to be vessels of the Holy Ghost, while human beings plainly had no part of God in them. We have no need to kill any more human beings, he said. We only have to wait, and the Holy Ghost will kill them all. In the meantime, God has sent us the Hive Queen to build us starships. We will carry the Holy Ghost with us to judge every world we visit. We will be the destroying angel. We will be Joshua and the Israelites, purging Canaan to make way for God's chosen people.
    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 innocent forest. To many pequeninos there was nothing more to learn from humanity. God had no more use for human beings.
    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 beginning of her answer."
    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