Chapter 12 – GREGO'S WAR
<It's a wonder that human beings ever became intelligent enough to travel between worlds.>
<Not really. I've been thinking about that lately. Starflight they learned from you. Ender says they didn't grasp the physics of it until your first colony fleet reached their star system.>
<Should we have stayed at home for fear of teaching starflight to softbodied four-limbed hairless slugs?>
<You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually achieved intelligence.>
<Clearly they have.>
<I think not. I think they have found a way to take intelligence.>
<Their starships fly. We haven't noticed any of yours racing the lightwaves through space.>
<We're still very young, as a species. But look at us. Look at you. We both have evolved a very similar system. We each have four kinds of life in our species. The young, who are helpless grubs. The mates, who never achieve intelligence– with you, it's your drones, and with us, it's the little mothers. Then there's the many, many individuals who have enough intelligence to perform manual tasks– our wives and brothers, your workers. And finally the intelligent ones– we fathertrees, and you, the hive queen. We are the repository of the wisdom of the race, because we have the time to think, to contemplate. Ideation is our primary activity.>
<While the humans are all running around as brothers and wives. As workers.>
<Not just workers. Their young go through a helpless grub stage, too, which lasts longer than some of them think. And when it's time to reproduce, they all turn into drones or little mothers, little machines that have only one goal in life: to have sex and die.>
<They think they're rational through all those stages.>
<Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual laborers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?>
<Not one.>
<They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo– knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.>
<While collectively …>
<Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.>
<So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals– and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.>
<Exactly.>
<If they're so stupid and we're so intelligent, why do we have only one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us? And why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance you make?>
<Maybe intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be.>
<Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.>
Quara was the last to arrive at Mother's house. It was Planter who fetched her, the pequenino who served as Ender's assistant in the fields. It was clear from the expectant silence in the living room that Miro had not actually told anyone anything yet. But they all knew, as surely as Quara knew, why he had called them together. It had to be Quim. Ender might have reached Quim by now, just barely; and Ender could talk to Miro by way of the transmitters they wore.
If Quim were all right, they wouldn't have been summoned. They would simply have been told.
So they all knew. Quara scanned their faces as she stood in the doorway. Ela, looking stricken. Grego, his face angry– always angry, the petulant fool. Olhado, expressionless, his eyes gleaming. And Mother. Who could read that terrible mask she wore? Grief, certainly, like Ela, and fury as hot as Grego's, and also the cold inhuman distance of Olhado's face. We all wear Mother's face, one way or another. What part of her is me? If I could understand myself, what would I then recognize in Mother's twisted posture in her chair?
“He died of the descolada,” Miro said. “This morning. Andrew got there just now.”
“Don't say that name,” Mother said. Her voice was husky with ill-contained grief.
“He died as a martyr,” said Miro. “He died as he would have wanted to.”
Mother got up from her chair, awkwardly– for the first time, Quara realized that Mother was getting old. She walked with uncertain steps until she stood right in front of Miro, straddling his knees. Then she slapped him with all her strength across the face.
It was an unbearable moment. An adult woman striking a helpless cripple, that was hard enough to see; but Mother striking Miro, the one who had been their strength and salvation all through their childhood, that could not be endured. Ela and Grego leaped to their feet and pulled her away, dragged her back to her chair.
“What are you trying to do!” cried Ela. “Hitting Miro won't bring Quim back to us!”
“Him and that jewel in his ear!” Mother shouted. She lunged toward Miro again; they barely held her back, despite her seeming feebleness. “What do you know about the way people want to die!”
Quara had to admire the way Miro faced her, unabashed, even though his cheek was red from her blow. “I know that death is not the worst thing in this world,” said Miro.
“Get out of my house,” said Mother.
Miro stood up. “You aren't grieving for him,” he said. “You don't even know who he was.”
“Don't you dare say that to me!”
“If you loved him you wouldn't have tried to stop him from going,” said Miro. His voice wasn't loud, and his speech was thick and hard to understand. They listened, all of them, in silence. Even Mother, in anguished silence, for his words were terrible. “But you don't love him. You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you'll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat, Mother. You're the one who uses our love for you to try to control us.”
“Miro,” said Ela. Quara recognized the tone in Ela's voice. It was as if they were all little children again, with Ela trying to calm Miro, to persuade him to soften his judgment. Quara remembered hearing Ela speak to him that way once when Father had just beaten Mother, and Miro said, “I'll kill him. He won't live out this night.” This was the same thing. Miro was saying vicious things to Mother, words that had the power to kill. Only Ela couldn't stop him in time, not now, because the words had already been said. His poison was in Mother now, doing its work, seeking out her heart to burn it up.
“You heard Mother,” said Grego. “Get out of here.”
“I'm going,” said Miro. “But I said only the truth.”
Grego strode toward Miro, took him by the shoulders, and bodily propelled him toward the door. “You're not one of us!” said Grego. “You've got no right to say anything to us!”