Xenocide

The hive queen asserts that the human mating process is strange and faulty because humans can only connect via language, not telepathically. Human argues that human mates challenge each other because they are intellectual equals.

As she travels through space on the way to Lusitania, Valentine Wiggin, Ender’s older sister, is writing a political essay under the name Demosthenes in an attempt to stop a fleet of ships from carrying the catastrophic M. D. Device to Lusitania. Her husband, Jakt, comes in and wants her to take a break to be intimate with him, and she agrees to join him after she submits her work to Jane, whom she believes is a secret organization capable of manipulating the ansibles, or the galactic communication network. Technically speaking, Valentine has been alive for over 3,000 years of objective time, thanks to the time dilation effects of lightspeed travel. Throughout the millennia that have passed during her space travels, she has been using the title “Demosthenes,” a name she first took when she was a child writing alongside her brother, Peter, who later went on to become the Hegemon that united all of humanity. Her younger brother, Andrew or Ender, is known for his xenocide (the destruction of an alien species) of the Formics; he is also known for his subsequent work spreading peace and knowledge through his books and in his capacity as the Speaker for the Dead.

Valentine’s ship connects with the ship of Miro Rebeira, Ender’s stepson and an inhabitant of Lusitania. Miro has brain damage and a speech disability that occurred when he touched the fence that separates the humans from the Pequeninos—the intelligent species on Lusitania. He had interfered with the species, contrary to the edict of the Starways Congress, which decreed that humans and Pequeninos should have little to no interaction. When Starways Congress demanded that Miro be sent to them for trial, the humans on Lusitania rebelled. This defiance led Starways Congress to send the fleet to subdue the rebellion and scrub the deadly descolada virus from Lusitania. Miro and Valentine argue about the ethics of the fleet’s mission, and Miro insists that destroying Lusitania is both xenocide and self-defense because the Pequeninos need a deadly virus, descolada, to survive, but the virus could kill all other life in the universe. Their best outcome is to discover a way of altering the descolada while the hive queen, who is secretly rebuilding her species on Lusitania, will build ships for them to escape. Valentine has created a classification system to describe the various relationships between alien species; the Pequeninos and the Formics are declared “raman” because they can coexist with other species. By contrast, the descolada virus, which is believed to be intelligent, is categorized as “varelse,” meaning that it cannot coexist with other species.

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes an attempted suicide.

The hive queen complains that humans do not metamorphose, but Human counters that humans constantly change. They conclude that the hive queen is too different to understand humans, while the Pequeninos are too similar.

At age seven, Qing-jao starts obsessively washing her hands to the point of injury, which is the first sign that a person is godspoken. She tries to hide her hand-washing, but Mu-pao notices and tells Han Fei-tzu; they take her to the temple to be tested in order to determine if she is truly godspoken. In the temple, three elderly eunuchs take Qing-jao’s possessions, and Han Fei-tzu forces Qin-jao’s hands into a vat of grease and tells her that she cannot wash her hands. She is then left alone in a large room and observed to see if she will find a way to communicate with the gods. Qing-jao calls for help and then tries to clean her hands, first by wiping them on her clothes and then by rubbing them on the walls quickly to create friction, which tears open her existing sores. In acute and intense distress, she hits her head against the wall, then attempts suicide by climbing a tall statue and falling on her head.

Qing-jao is knocked unconscious. When she awakens, she is still in the room and discovers that her arm is broken. She prays to the gods for help and thinks of a song written by Li Qing-jao, a past poet after whom she was named. The lyrics inspire her to start tracing the lines of the woodgrain in the floor as an alternative method of purifying herself. She follows the line of a woodgrain from the east side of the room to the west, which makes her feel clean despite the grease on her hands. Once she has finished, her father comes to her. He was bound and gagged during the test so that he could not help her when she called or when she attempted suicide. Because Qing-jao tried purification methods that the testers had never seen, they believe that her connection to the gods is particularly strong. The honor is attributed to Han Fei-tzu, and the people of Path gossip that he may become the God of Path when he dies.

Human and the hive queen discuss Christianity. Human says that he desires belief, but the hive queen, who remembers how she came to life, is not religious.

Valentine, Jakt, and a family friend named Plikt move to Miro’s ship. Miro and Valentine discuss philotes, which are the smallest physical unit known. Philotes “have neither mass not inertia” and “have only location, duration, and connection” (38). The connections between philotes, called philotic twining, are what ansibles use to communicate instantly across the universe. Because speaking is difficult for Miro, Miro has the computer display an image of his face and speak for him while he subvocalizes his words. The philotic rays are twined together, connecting the entire universe. He explains that living organisms are connected via philotic twining and that ansibles work by splitting up two mesons—small particles—that will remain connected through their philotic twining. Information can then be sent across that connection. As Miro’s image continues to speak, Valentine notices that Miro is not actually subvocalizing words for the computer to repeat.

Miro believes that human will can impact a person’s philotic connections, meaning that human connections are physical as well as social. If humans can control philotic rays, Miro argues that the philotic rays themselves might have consciousness. He likens this hypothetical connection to the connection between the hive queen and her drones. Furthermore, the philotic connections between the ansibles have never wavered. At this point, the computer, no longer speaking for Miro, independently suggests that a life form lives in the connections between the ansibles. A woman’s face suddenly replaces Miro’s image on the screen. Miro introduces her to Valentine as Jane—a living being who lives in the philotic twining between the ansibles and stores her memory in the computers connected to the ansibles.

Jane can stop the Lusitania fleet by disrupting the communication between the fleet and Starways Congress, but in doing so, she would risk her life by making her presence known to Congress. Valentine feels that Jane should risk herself for this cause, but Miro, who has a close relationship with Jane, disagrees. Jakt says that the choice is up to Jane, and Jane says that Ender has advised her to wait for the order to destroy Lusitania before deciding. The fleet is set to arrive about a year after Miro’s and Valentine’s ships will reach Lusitania.