"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?"