Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

  "How do you know?"

  "I knew Mazer Rackham."

  Olhado whistled. "You're old. You're older than any of the trees."

  "I'm older than any of the human colonies. It doesn't make me wise, unfortunately."

  "Are you really Ender? The Ender?"

  "That's why it's my password."

  "It's funny. Before you got here, the Bishop tried to tell us all that you were Satan. Quim's the only one in the family that took him seriously. But if the Bishop had told us you were Ender, we would have stoned you to death in the praca the day you arrived."

  "Why don't you now?"

  "We know you now. That makes all the difference, doesn't it? Even Quim doesn't hate you now. When you really know somebody, you can't hate them."

  "Or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them."

  "Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes."

  "I don't think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It's just cause and effect. We never can sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause--knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."

  "Mother doesn't like it that you're Ender."

  "I know."

  "But she loves you anyway."

  "I know."

  "And Quim--it's really funny, but now that he knows you're Ender, he likes you better for it."

  "That's because he's a crusader, and I got my bad reputation by winning a crusade."

  "And me," said Olhado.

  "Yes, you," said Ender.

  "You killed more people than anybody in history."

  "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me."

  "But when you spoke for Father, you made me feel sorry for him. You make people love each other and forgive each other. How could you kill all those millions of people in the Xenocide?"

  "I thought I was playing games. I didn't know it was the real thing. But that's no excuse, Olhado. If I had known the battle was real, I would have done the same thing. We thought they wanted to kill us. We were wrong, but we had no way to know that." Ender shook his head. "Except that I knew better. I knew my enemy. That's how I beat her, the hive queen, I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. So I blew up her planet."

  "And today we found the place to bring her back to life." Olhado was very serious. "Are you sure she won't try to get even? Are you sure she won't try to wipe out humankind, starting with you?"

  "I'm as sure," said Ender, "as I am of anything."

  "Not absolutely sure," said Olhado.

  "Sure enough to bring her back to life," said Ender. "And that's as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it's true. When we're that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it."

  "I guess that's what you're doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is."

  "I'm more arrogant than that. I'm betting your life, too, and everybody else's, and I'm not so much as asking anyone else's opinion."

  "Funny," said Olhado. "If I asked somebody whether they'd trust Ender with a decision that might affect the future of the human race, they'd say, of course not. But if I asked them whether they'd trust the Speaker for the Dead, they'd say yes, most of them. And they wouldn't even guess that they were the same person."

  "Yeah," said Ender. "Funny."

  Neither of them laughed. Then, after a long time, Olhado spoke again. His thoughts had wandered to a subject that mattered more. "I don't want Miro to go away for thirty years."

  "You will be forty-two."

  "And he'll come back the age he is now. Twenty. Half my age. If there's ever a girl who wants to marry a guy with reflecting eyes, I might even be married and have kids then. He won't even know me. I won't be his little brother anymore." Olhado swallowed. "It'd be like him dying."

  "No," said Ender. "It'd be like him passing from his second life to his third."

  "That's like dying, too," said Olhado.

  "It's also like being born," said Ender. "As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes."

  Valentine called the next day. Ender's fingers trembled as he keyed instructions into the terminal. It wasn't just a message, either. It was a call, a full ansible voice communication. Incredibly expensive, but that wasn't a problem. It was the fact that ansible communications with the Hundred Worlds were supposedly cut off; for Jane to allow this call to come through meant that it was urgent. It occurred to Ender right away that Valentine might be in danger. That Starways Congress might have decided Ender was involved in the rebellion and traced his connection with her.

  She was older. The hologram of her face showed weather lines from many windy days on the islands, floes, and boats of Trondheim. But her smile was the same, and her eyes danced with the same light. Ender was silenced at first by the changes the years had wrought in his sister; she, too, was silenced, by the fact that Ender seemed unchanged, a vision coming back to her out of her past.

  "Ah, Ender," she sighed. "Was I ever so young?"

  "And will I age so beautifully?"

  She laughed. Then she cried. He did not; how could he? He had missed her for a couple of months. She had missed him for twenty-two years.

  "I suppose you've heard," he said, "about our trouble getting along with Congress."

  "I imagine that you were at the thick of it."

  "Stumbled into the situation, really," said Ender. "But I'm glad I was here. I'm going to stay."

  She nodded, drying her eyes. "Yes. I thought so. But I had to call and make sure. I didn't want to spend a couple of decades flying to meet you, and have you gone when I arrive."

  "Meet me?" he said.

  "I got much too excited about your revolution there, Ender. After twenty years of raising a family, teaching my students, loving my husband, living at peace with myself, I thought I'd never resurrect Demosthenes again. But then the story came about illegal contact with the piggies, and right away the news that Lusitania was in revolt, and suddenly people were saying the most ridiculous things, and I saw it was the beginning of the same old hate. Remember the videos about the buggers? How terrifying and awful they were? Suddenly we were seeing videos of the bodies they found, of the xenologers, I can't remember their names, but grisly pictures everywhere you looked, heating us up to war fever. And then stories about the Descolada, how if anyone ever went from Lusitania to another world it would destroy everything--the most hideous plague imaginable--"

  "It's true," said Ender, "but we're working on it. Trying to find ways to keep the Descolada from spreading when we go to other worlds."

  "True or not, Ender, it's all leading to war. I remember war--nobody else does. So I revived Demosthenes. I stumbled across some memos and reports. Their fleet is carrying the Little Doctor, Ender. If they decide to, they can blow Lusitania to bits. Just like--"

  "Just like I did before. Poetic justice, do you think, for me to end the same way? He who lives by the sword--"

  "Don't joke with me, Ender! I'm a middle-aged matron now, and I've lost my patience with silliness. At least for now. I wrote some very ugly truths about what Starways Congress is doing, and published them as Demosthenes. They're looking for me. Treason is what they're calling it."

  "So you're coming here?"

  "Not just me. Dear Jakt is turning the fleet over to his brothers and sisters. We've already bought a starship. There's apparently some kind of resistance movement that's helping us--someone named Jane has jimmied the computers to cover our tracks."

  "I know Jane," said E
nder.

  "So you do have an organization here! I was shocked when I got a message that I could call you. Your ansible was supposedly blown up."

  "We have powerful friends."

  "Ender, Jakt and I are leaving today. We're bringing our three children."

  "Your first one--"

  "Yes, Syfte, the one who was making me fat when you left, she's almost twenty-two now. A very lovely girl. And a good friend, the children's tutor, named Plikt."

  "I have a student by that name," said Ender, thinking back to conversations only a couple of months ago.

  "Oh, yes, well, that was twenty-two years ago, Ender. It's not an emergency--you have twenty-two years to prepare for me. Actually longer, more like thirty years. We're taking the voyage in several hops, the first few in the wrong direction, so that nobody can be sure we're going to Lusitania."

  Coming here. Thirty years from now. I'll be older than she is now. Coming here. By then I'll have my family, too. Novinha's and my children, if we have any, all grown, like hers.

  And then, thinking of Novinha, he remembered Miro, remembered what Olhado had suggested several days ago, the day they found the nesting place for the hive queen.

  "Would you mind terribly," said Ender, "if I sent someone to meet you on the way?"

  "Meet us? In deep space? No, don't send someone to do that, Ender--it's too terrible a sacrifice, to come so far when the computers can guide us in just fine--"

  "It's not really for you, though I want him to meet you. He's one of the xenologers. He was badly injured in an accident. Some brain damage; like a bad stroke. He's--he's the smartest person in Lusitania, says someone whose judgment I trust, but he's lost all his connections with our life here. Yet we'll need him later. When you arrive. He's a very good man, Val. He can make the last week of your voyage very educational."

  "Can your friend arrange to get us course information for such a rendezvous? We're navigators, but only on the sea."

  "Jane will have the revised navigational information in your ship's computer when you leave."

  "Ender--for you it'll be thirty years, but for me--I'll see you in only a few weeks." She started to cry.

  "Maybe I'll come with Miro to meet you."

  "Don't!" she said. "I want you to be as old and crabbed as possible when I arrive. I couldn't put up with you as the thirty-year-old brat I see on my terminal."

  "Thirty-five."

  "You'll be there when I arrive!" she demanded.

  "I will," he said. "And Miro, the boy I'm sending to you. Think of him as my son."

  She nodded gravely. "These are such dangerous times, Ender. I only wish we had Peter."

  "I don't. If he were running our little rebellion, he'd end up Hegemon of all the Hundred Worlds. We just want them to leave us alone."

  "It may not be possible to get the one without the other," said Val. "But we can quarrel about that later. Good-bye, my dear brother."

  He didn't answer. Just looked at her and looked at her until she smiled wryly and switched off the connection.

  Ender didn't have to ask Miro to go; Jane had already told him everything.

  "Your sister is Demosthenes?" asked Miro. Ender was used to his slurred speech now. Or maybe his speech was clearing a little. It wasn't as hard to understand, anyway.

  "We were a talented family," said Ender. "I hope you like her."

  "I hope she likes me." Miro smiled, but he looked afraid.

  "I told her," said Ender, "to think of you as my son."

  Miro nodded. "I know," he said. And then, almost defiantly, "She showed me your conversation with her."

  Ender felt cold inside.

  Jane's voice came into his ear. "I should have asked you," she said. "But you know you would have said yes."

  It wasn't the invasion of privacy that Ender minded. It was the fact that Jane was so very close to Miro. Get used to it, he told himself. He's the one she's looking out for now.

  "We'll miss you," said Ender.

  "Those who will miss me, miss me already," said Miro, "because they already think of me as dead."

  "We need you alive," said Ender.

  "When I come back, I'll still be only nineteen. And brain-damaged."

  "You'll still be Miro, and brilliant, and trusted, and loved. You started this rebellion, Miro. The fence came down for you. Not for some great cause, but for you. Don't let us down."

  Miro smiled, but Ender couldn't tell if the twist in his smile was because of his paralysis, or because it was a bitter, poisonous smile.

  "Tell me something," said Miro.

  "If I won't," said Ender, "she will."

  "It isn't hard. I just want to know what it was that Pipo and Libo died for. What it was the piggies honored them for."

  Ender understood better than Miro knew: He understood why the boy cared so much about the question. Miro had learned that he was really Libo's son only hours before he crossed the fence and lost his future. Pipo, then Libo, then Miro; father, son, grandson; the three xenologers who had lost their futures for the piggies' sake. Miro hoped that in understanding why his forebears died, he might make more sense of his own sacrifice.

  The trouble was that the truth might well leave Miro feeling that none of the sacrifices meant anything at all. So Ender answered with a question. "Don't you already know why?"

  Miro spoke slowly and carefully, so that Ender could understand his slurred speech. "I know that the piggies thought they were doing them an honor. I know that Mandachuva and Leaf-eater could have died in their places. With Libo, I even know the occasion. It was when the first amaranth harvest came, and there was plenty of food. They were rewarding him for that. Except why not earlier? Why not when we taught them to use merdona root? Why not when we taught them to make pots, or shoot arrows?"

  "The truth?" said Ender.

  Miro knew from Ender's tone that the truth would not be easy. "Yes," he said.

  "Neither Pipo nor Libo really deserved the honor. It wasn't the amaranth that the wives were rewarding. It was the fact that Leaf-eater had persuaded them to let a whole generation of infants be conceived and born even though there wasn't enough food for them to eat once they left the mothertree. It was a terrible risk to take, and if he had been wrong, that whole generation of young piggies would have died. Libo brought the harvest, but Leaf-eater was the one who had, in a sense, brought the population to a point where they needed the grain."

  Miro nodded. "Pipo?"

  "Pipo told the piggies about his discovery. That the Descolada, which killed humans, was part of their normal physiology. That their bodies could handle transformations that killed us. Mandachuva told the wives that this meant that humans were not godlike and all-powerful. That in some ways we were even weaker than the Little Ones. That what made humans stronger than piggies was not something inherent in us--our size, our brains, our language--but rather the mere accident that we were a few thousand years ahead of them in learning. If they could acquire our knowledge, then we humans would have no more power over them. Mandachuva's discovery that piggies were potentially equal to humans--that was what they rewarded, not the information Pipo gave that led to that discovery."

  "So both of them--"

  "The piggies didn't want to kill either Pipo or Libo. In both cases, the crucial achievement belonged to a pequenino. The only reason Pipo and Libo died was because they couldn't bring themselves to take a knife and kill a friend."

  Miro must have seen the pain in Ender's face, despite his best effort to conceal it. Because it was Ender's bitterness that he answered. "You," said Miro, "you can kill anybody."

  "It's a knack I was born with," said Ender.

  "You killed Human because you knew it would make him live a new and better life," said Miro.

  "Yes."

  "And me," said Miro.

  "Yes," said Ender. "Sending you away is very much like killing you."

  "But will I live a new and better life?"

  "I don't know. Already you get around bet
ter than a tree."

  Miro laughed. "So I've got one thing on old Human, don't I--at least I'm ambulatory. And nobody has to hit me with a stick so I can talk." Then Miro's expression grew sour again. "Of course, now he can have a thousand children."

  "Don't count on being celibate all your life," said Ender. "You may be disappointed."

  "I hope so," said Miro.

  And then, after a silence: "Speaker?"

  "Call me Ender."

  "Ender, did Pipo and Libo die for nothing, then?" Ender understood the real question: Am I also enduring this for nothing?

  "There are worse reasons to die," Ender answered, "than to die because you cannot bear to kill."

  "What about someone," said Miro, "who can't kill, and can't die, and can't live, either?"

  "Don't deceive yourself," said Ender. "You'll do all three someday."

  Miro left the next morning. There were tearful good-byes. For weeks afterward, it was hard for Novinha to spend any time in her own house, because Miro's absence was so painful to her. Even though she had agreed wholeheartedly with Ender that it was right for Miro to go, it was still unbearable to lose her child. It made Ender wonder if his own parents felt such pain when he was taken away. He suspected they had not. Nor had they hoped for his return. He already loved another man's children more than his parents had loved their own child. Well, he'd get fit revenge for their neglect of him. He'd show them, three thousand years later, how a father should behave. Bishop Peregrino married them in his chambers.

  Before the marriage, though, there were two days of note. On a day in summer, Ela, Ouanda, and Novinha presented him with the results of their research and speculation: as completely as possible, the life cycle and community structure of the piggies, male and female, and a likely reconstruction of their patterns of life before the Descolada bonded them forever to the trees that, till then, had been no more to them than habitat. Ender had reached his own understanding of who the pequeninos were, and especially who Human was before his passage to the life of light.

  He lived with the piggies for a week while he wrote the Life of Human. Mandachuva and Leaf-eater read it carefully, discussed it with him; he revised and reshaped; finally it was ready. On that day he invited everyone who was working with the piggies--all the Ribeira family, Ouanda and her sisters, the many workmen who had brought technological miracles to the piggies, the scholar-monks of the Children of the Mind, Bishop Peregrino, Mayor Bosquinha--and read the book to them. It wasn't long, less than an hour to read. They had gathered on the hillside near where Human's seedling tree reached upward, now more than three meters high, and where Rooter overshadowed them in the afternoon sunlight. "Speaker," said the Bishop, "almost thou persuadest me to become a humanist." Others, less trained to eloquence, found no words to say, not then or ever. But they knew from that day forward who the piggies were, just as the readers of the Hive Queen had understood the buggers, and the readers of the Hegemon had understood humankind in its endless quest for greatness in a wilderness of separation and suspicion. "This was why I called you here," said Novinha. "I dreamed once of writing this book. But you had to write it."