60 pages • 2 hours read
Orson Scott CardXenocide
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Lusitania Fleet”
The hive queen tells Human she does not plan to be on Lusitania when the fleet arrives.
Ten years have passed since Qing-jao passed her test and joined the ranks of the godspoken, and she has been educated and physically trained for the role and has taught herself to delay satisfying her urge to purify herself. Qing-jao goes to her father to receive her first real-world task. They talk about the Lusitania fleet, and Qing-jao questions the ethics of Starways Congress, citing Demosthenes’s essays calling for the fleet to stop. Han Fei-tzu declares that Starways Congress has the mandate of the gods and that Demosthenes is the enemy of the gods. Qing-jao takes an oath to obey both Starways Congress and the gods. Han Fei-tzu now feels that he has fulfilled his promise to his wife. Han Fei-tzu shows Qing-jao the last known location of the fleet and explains that it has disappeared. Qing-jao’s task is to discover what happened to the fleet. She feels inadequate and worries that if the fleet destroys Lusitania, she will shoulder part of the blame; however, she accepts the task.
Jane has access to all the data on the computers connected to the ansible system, but she does not have sensory capabilities and cannot know information that is not stored in computers, such as gossip or conversations. Starways Congress sent the order to use the M. D. Device (a.k.a. the Little Doctor) on Lusitania, but Jane blocked the transmission and all other communication to the fleet, making it appear as if the fleet disappeared entirely. She did not leave evidence of her actions, but she worries that Qing-jao will figure out the truth and that such a discovery will lead to Jane’s death. Jane starts looking for ways to stop Qing-jao from researching the fleet’s apparent disappearance.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Varelse”
The hive queen explains that she was able to mentally connect with Ender by forming a bridge between herself and the ansible network. When Ender found the cocoon of the hive queen (an event that occurred at the conclusion of Ender’s Game), the bridge was no longer needed, and she does not know what happened to it.
The new potato strain created by Ela and Novinha—Ender’s stepdaughter and wife, respectively—succumbs to the descolada’s adaptations. The humans have viricides and their food is laced with descolada inhibitors, but these will eventually fail when the descolada evolves more quickly than they can produce new suppressants. The people living in the human village, Milagre, are kept from knowing the full extent of the danger because their fears would drive them to destroy the descolada, which would also result in the xenocide of the Pequeninos. Ender struggles with the internal conflict between his survival instincts and his knowledge that because Lusitania is the Pequeninos’ home world, they should be the priority. He asks Planter, a Pequenino and lab assistant, to destroy the failed crops, then walks toward the lab, passing Rooter and Human, two fathertrees. In the past, at Human’s request, Ender killed Human in his second life stage so that Human could then metamorphose into the fathertree he is today. (Fathertrees are sentient trees who can procreate.) By aiding Human’s transformation into a fathertree, Ender sealed the peace treaty between the humans and Pequeninos.
Novinha and three of her children, Quara, Ela, and Grego, are in the lab. Quara argues that they cannot kill the descolada virus because it is a sentient and intelligent species, but Grego aggressively disagrees. Ela takes a middle route and wants to create a modified version of the descolada to remove its ability to adapt, thereby protecting both humans and Pequeninos. Quara argues that the descolada can communicate and compares altering the virus to performing a lobotomy. They all agree to postpone their decision, and in the meantime, both Ela and Quara will continue their research. Quara wants to inform the Pequeninos, but Novinha, as head xenobiologist—alien biologist—says that no one else is to know.
Ender finds Quara telling Human of the conversation that took place in the lab. Ender tells Human that he will not let the humans kill the Pequeninos by killing the virus that keeps them alive, and Human tells the other fathertrees about the humans’ plans. The fathertrees talk to the hive queen, and the hive queen agrees to build spaceships so that she and the Pequeninos can both flee from Lusitania.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Secret Maid”
Human wonders if the future fathertrees who will grow on distant planets will be able to communicate with the fathertrees on Lusitania, and the hive queen assumes that they will.
Qing-jao performs “righteous labor” where she works in the rice paddies. While in the rice paddies, Qing-jao meets Si Wang-mu, a servant girl who speaks openly to her. Qing-jao complains about being godspoken, and Wang-mu, who has been oppressed because of her social class, is upset. Wang-mu is not afraid to speak bluntly because she feels there is nothing that can happen that is worse than her life. Qing-jao realizes that Wang-mu has bribed the supervisor with sexual favors in order to gain a chance to meet Qing-jao and become her secret maid. Qing-jao confronts Wang-mu and agrees to take Wang-mu on as her secret servant. She will teach Wang-mu, and in return, Wang-mu will treat Qing-jao as an equal while they are alone together and will keep all information between them secret.
Qing-jao brings Wang-mu home, where Wang-mu completes the application process and a security check. Qing-jao purifies herself by tracing woodgrains because she feels guilty that she did not check with Han Fei-tzu before hiring Wang-mu. Afterward, she researches information about the missing fleet. She determines that the gods made the fleet disappear, but when she goes to tell her father, she gets stuck in the doorway and must reaffirm her faith in the gods before she is given a set of movements to make that will release her from the door.
Han Fei-tzu approves of Wang-mu’s intelligence and honesty. Qing-jao tells her father that the gods made the fleet disappear and that Starways Congress has lost the mandate of the gods. Han Fei-tzu agrees that the gods made the fleet disappear but reasons that Starways Congress still has the mandate of the gods, for if they did not, they could not have sent the fleet. He tells her, “The gods are the cause of everything that happens, but they never act except in disguise” (99). Han Fei-tzu clarifies that her task is to find the disguise the gods used. Qing-jao returns to her room with Wang-mu, and she has a strong urge to purify. She needs to trace one line of woodgrain on each board in the room, and she asks Wang-mu to watch but stay out of the way. Wang-mu understands that the life of a godspoken is difficult, and Qing-jao feels better having a friend present.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Miracles”
Ender has asked the hive queen to brainstorm ways to travel faster than the speed of light, which she does not think is possible. Ender believes that reality is made of information transmitted by philotes. Human says that Rooter agrees but adds that the message transmitted is a message from the philotes to God.
Miro’s and Valentine’s ships reach Lusitania, where 30 years have passed although only a month has passed for Miro. Miro, now 20 years old, was the oldest of Novinha’s children, but because of the distortions of space travel, his younger siblings are now older. Between Miro’s disability and the changes that have taken place in the last 30 years on Lusitania, the siblings no longer relate to one another. Ela is now in her forties, Grego and Quara are uncomfortable with Miro, Olhado has mechanical eyes and is a father and husband, and Quim is a priest. Miro’s half sister, Ouanda, is not present. (They had dated in their youth before they discovered that they have the same father.)
Valentine can tell something is troubling Ender because he is distracted. She asks Ender to take her to meet the hive queen. Plikt and Miro join the excursion.
The hive queen’s city is filled with industrial pollution caused by the spaceships that she is building. Ender and his companions enter the underground city of the hive queen and are led to a room in which the hive queen is making future queens. Valentine is afraid and disturbed by the process of making new hive queens. In this process, the hive queen lays an egg inside of a drone from which she has bitten the legs. The hive queen communicates telepathically with her visitors, and Ender advises the others to clear their minds to make the process easier. The hive queen admits that she once tried to control Ender like a drone, but he was too strong. Ender’s feelings toward the hive queen are passed through the philotic communications, and Valentine and the others better understand Ender’s love for the hive queen. The hive queen says that she will find a way to kill the descolada on her ship so that she does not spread it to other worlds. Valentine does not want the queen to build a ship for the Pequeninos, but the hive queen argues that they have a right to live.
The humans return to the surface. Ender is pleased with how the meeting went, and he is surprised that Valentine felt violated during their philotic communication. Miro contemplates his own discomfort with the hive queen. He is a xenologer, meaning that he works with alien species and knows the hive queen to be raman, but he struggles to accept her and her drones. He goes to the cathedral to attend Mass and is approached by Ouanda, who is now married with children. She tries to talk with Miro, but he is upset and leaves to sit with Rooter and Human. Quim, who now goes by Father Estevao, comes to speak with Rooter, and Miro apologizes for making a scene. They discuss faith and miracles, and Quim tells Miro that he has not gotten a miracle because he does not have faith. Quim calls Miro “hostile,” “self-pitying,” and “abusive,” and Miro attacks him, then lies on Quim and cries while Quim holds his troubled brother and prays for him. They stand, and Quim says that he needs to speak with Rooter because there is trouble in one of the forests. A fathertree named Warmaker is spreading the idea that the descolada is a manifestation of the Holy Ghost and that the Pequeninos have a divine mission to spread the deadly virus to other worlds. Quim is searching for the location of the forest so that he can speak with Warmaker in an attempt to end the heretical movement.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Wang-mu and Qing-jao simultaneously relate to each other and are jealous of each other. They are both intelligent and want to make their families proud, and they both feel oppressed, which brings them together. Furthermore, Qing-jao appreciates Wang-mu’s honest and blunt nature because it is a refreshing change from the deference everyone else has shown her since she was declared godspoken. While both girls are oppressed in different ways, they are plagued by opposite forces. Qing-jao is oppressed by her intense urges for purification and by the heavy weight of her responsibilities. Not only must she honor herself, but she knows that her actions reflect directly on her father, who will be judged based on her performance. By contrast, Wang-mu is oppressed by the culture of Path because she was born into a low-ranking family. She resents her social position largely due to the combination of her advanced intelligence and her lack of access to education. By hiring Wang-mu as her secret servant, Qing-jao hopes to help herself and Wang-mu to reduce the oppression they feel.
The Power of Religion is further developed by Qing-jao’s revelation that the gods made the Lusitania fleet. To solidify his daughter’s faith in the gods, Han Fei-tzu confirms that the gods caused the fleet’s disappearance and asserts that they cause everything but always act in disguise. As a result of this conversation, Qing-jao’s faith in the gods becomes unshakable, and she attributes everything to the gods; with this mindset, she no longer questions their intentions. While learning this idea does help her to find peace, conviction, and motivation to continue working on her task, it also halts her ability to accept and incorporate new information as she learns it. Han Fei-tzu’s decision to invoke such rigid religious zeal in his daughter will later become a significant issue when he learns that rather than enjoying the favor of the gods, he and the other godspoken on Path have an engineered neurological disability. As the novel progresses, Qing-jao will personally demonstrate a more controversial aspect of The Power of Religion by refusing outright to accept the empirical evidence that she is not godspoken and cannot hear the gods.
This section of the novel also clarifies the evolving relationship between Valentine and Ender. Although the two siblings have always been close, they have drifted further apart during their long separation. While Valentine can sense that something is wrong with Ender, she does not understand what the specific problem is. She looks for the cause of his emotional distance, thinking that it might stem from his family or from feeling disconnected from the others in the village. However, the true causes of Ender’s worry and distance are the moral dilemmas that he is facing. He feels intense conflict between his desire to keep his family and his species safe from the descolada virus, while also feeling responsible for the safety of the Pequeninos and the hive queen. Although Ender requests the help of others in seeking a solution, he takes the lead and makes all the final decisions. He knows that he cannot work alone, yet he feels that he should shoulder the full responsibility, for he does not want others to make difficult choices that might result in xenocide; he alone in the universe fully understands the implications of such an action.
Ender’s sense of responsibility combines with his fears of violence to compel him to keep many secrets from those around him. For example, he hides the existence of the hive queen from the humans and the Pequeninos alike because he wants to keep the hive queen safe, thereby mitigating his intense guilt over having once been the direct cause of the entire species’ downfall. He also hides the descolada research from the Pequeninos because he knows that if he “told the whole truth there would be fear, hatred, brutality, murder, war” (76). Ender’s fears are not presumptuous, and his assessment proves correct when Quara notifies the fathertrees that the descolada virus is sentient and that the humans are researching ways to alter and kill it. The fathertrees spread the information with the intention that the Pequeninos will rationally approach the idea, but Warmaker’s forest combines the new information with their existing Christian beliefs to create the idea that they have a religious obligation to spread the descolada virus across the galaxy. Quim, who is well-respected as a religious leader, hopes that he can assuage the distant forest by speaking with Warmaker and the others and helping them reinterpret the recent discoveries. When Quara breaks the secrecy agreement, she acts as the catalyst that eventually leads to violence between the Pequeninos and humans. These plot points develop the theme of Cross-Species Understanding and Coexistence by demonstrating the role that fear plays in cross-species relationships. Ender wants to build trust between the various species, but each group fears betrayal by the other in the name of self-preservation.
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