Speaker for the dead ew-2

by Orson Scott Card

  «Since I don't need many amenities or much space, I'm sure it will be fine. And I look forward to meeting Dom Crist o. Where the followers of San Angelo are, the truth has friends.»

  Bosquinha sniffed and started the car again. As Ender intended, her preconceived notions of a Speaker for the Dead were now shattered. To think he had actually known San Angelo, and admired the Filhos. It was not what Bishop Peregrino had led them to expect.

  * * *

  The room was only thinly furnished, and if Ender had owned much he would have had trouble finding anywhere to put it. As always before, however, he was able to unpack from interstellar flight in only a few minutes. Only the bundled cocoon of the hive queen remained in his bag; he had long since given up feeling odd about the incongruity of stowing the future of a magnificent race in a duffel under his bed.

  “Maybe this will be the place,” he murmured. The cocoon felt cool, almost cold, even through the towels it was wrapped in.

 

  It was unnerving to have her so certain of it. There was no hint of pleading or impatience or any of the other feelings she had given him, desiring to emerge. Just absolute certainty.

  “I wish we could decide just like that,” he said. “It might be the place, but it all depends on whether the piggies can cope with having you here.”

 

  “It takes time. Give me a few months here.”

 

  “Who is it that you've found? I thought you told me that you couldn't communicate with anybody but me.”

 

  And then he lost the thread of her thought, felt it seep away like a dream that is forgotten upon waking, even as you try to remember it and keep it alive. Ender wasn't sure what the hive queen had found, but whatever it was, he would have to deal with the reality of Starways Code, the Catholic Church, young xenologists who might not even let him meet the piggies, a xenobiologist who had changed her mind about inviting him here, and something more, perhaps the most difficult thing of all: that if the hive queen stayed here, he would have to stay here. I've been disconnected from humanity for so many years, he thought, coming in to meddle and pry and hurt and heal, then going away again, myself untouched. How will I ever become a part of this place, if this is where I'll stay? The only things I've ever been a part of were an army of little boys in the Battle School, and Valentine, and both are gone now, both part of the past–

  “What, wallowing in loneliness?” asked Jane. “I can hear your heartrate falling and your breathing getting heavy. In a moment you'll either be asleep, dead, or lacrimose.”

  “I'm much more complex than that,” said Ender cheerfully. “Anticipated self-pity is what I'm feeling, about pains that haven't even arrived.”

  “Very good, Ender. Get an early start. That way you can wallow so much longer.” The terminal came alive, showing Jane as a piggy in a chorus line of leggy women, highkicking with exuberance. “Get a little exercise, you'll feel so much better. After all, you've unpacked. What are you waiting for?”

  “I don't even know where I am, Jane.”

  “They really don't keep a map of the city,” Jane explained. “Everybody knows where everything is. But they do have a map of the sewer system, divided into boroughs. I can extrapolate where all the buildings are.”

  “Show me, then.”

  A three-dimensional model of the town appeared over the terminal. Ender might not be particularly welcome there, and his room might be sparse, but they had shown courtesy in the terminal they provided for him. It wasn't a standard home installation, but rather an elaborate simulator. It was able to project holos into a space sixteen times larger than most terminals, with a resolution four times greater. The illusion was so real that Ender felt for a vertiginous moment that he was Gulliver, leaning over a Lilliput that had not yet come to fear him, that did not yet recognize his power to destroy.

  The names of the different boroughs hung in the air over each sewer district. “You're here,” said Jane. “Vila Velha, the old town. The praca is just through the block from you. That's where public meetings are held.”

  “Do you have any map of the piggy lands?”

  The village map slid rapidly toward Ender, the near features disappearing as new ones came into view on the far side. It was as if he were flying over it. Like a witch, he thought. The boundary of the town was marked by a fence.

  “That barrier is the only thing standing between us and the piggies,” mused Ender.

  “It generates an electric field that stimulates any pain-sensitive nerves that come within it,” said Jane. “Just touching it makes all your wetware go screwy– it makes you feel as though somebody were cutting off your fingers with a file.”

  “Pleasant thought. Are we in a concentration carrip? Or a zoo?”

  “It all depends on how you look at it,” said Jane. “It's the human side of the fence that's connected to the rest of the universe, and the piggy side that's trapped on its home world.”

  “The difference is that they don't know what they're missing.”

  “I know,” said Jane. “It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born homo sapiens.” Beyond the fence was a hillside, and along the top of the hill a thick forest began. “The xenologers have never gone deep into piggy lands. The piggy community that they deal with is less than a kilometer inside this wood. The piggies live in a log house, all the males together. We don't know about any other settlements except that the satellites have been able to confirm that every forest like this one carries just about all the population that a hunter-gatherer culture can sustain.”

  “They hunt?”

  “Mostly they gather.”

  “Where did Pipo and Libo die?”

  Jane brightened a patch of grassy ground on the hillside leading up to the trees. A large tree grew in isolation nearby, with two smaller ones not far off.

  “Those trees,” said Ender. “I don't remember any being so close in the holos I saw on Trondheim.”

  “It's been twenty-two years. The big one is the tree the piggies planted in the corpse of the rebel called Rooter, who was executed before Pipo was murdered. The other two are more recent piggy executions.”

  “I wish I knew why they plant trees for piggies, and not for humans.”

  “The trees are sacred,” said Jane. “Pipo recorded that many of the trees in the forest are named. Libo speculated that they might be named for the dead.”

  “And humans simply aren't part of the pattern of treeworship. Well, that's likely enough. Except that I've found that rituals and myths don't come from nowhere. There's usually some reason for it that's tied to the survival of the community.”

  “Andrew Wiggin, anthropologist?”

  “The proper study of mankind is man.”

  “Go study some men, then, Ender. Novinha's family, for instance. B
y the way, the computer network has officially been barred from showing you where anybody lives.”

  Ender grinned. “So Bosquinha isn't as friendly as she seems.”

  “If you have to ask where people live, they'll know where you're going. If they don't want you to go there, no one will know where they live.”

  “You can override their restriction, can't you?”

  «I already have.» A light was blinking near the fence line, behind the observatory hill. It was as isolated a spot as was possible to find in Milagre. Few other houses had been built where the fence would be visible all the time. Ender wondered whether Novinha had chosen to live there to be near the fence or to be far from neighbors. Perhaps it had been Marc o's choice.

  The nearest borough was Vila Atras, and then the borough called As Fabricas stretched down to the river. As the name implied, it consisted mostfy of small factories that worked the metals and plastics and processed the foods and fibers that Milagre used. A nice, tight, self-contained economy. And Novinha had chosen to live back behind everything, out of sight, invisible. It was Novinha who chose it, too, Ender was sure of that now. Wasn't it the pattern of her life? She had never belonged to Milagre. It was no accident that all three calls for a Speaker had come from her and her children. The very act of calling a Speaker was defiant, a sign that they did not think they belonged among the devout Catholics of Lusitania.

  “Still,” said Ender, “I have to ask someone to lead me there. I shouldn't let them know right away that they can't hide any of their information from me.”

  The map disappeared, and Jane's face appeared above the terminal. She had neglected to adjust for the greater size of this terminal, so that her head was many times human size. She was quite imposing. And her simulation was accurate right down to the pores on her face. “Actually, Andrew, it's me they can't hide anything from.”

  Ender sighed. “You have a vested interest in this, Jane.”

  “I know.” She winked. “But you don't.”

  “Are you telling me you don't trust me?”

  “You reek of impartiality and a sense of justice. But I'm human enough to want preferential treatment, Andrew.”

  “Will you promise me one thing, at least?”

  “Anything, my corpuscular friend.”

  “When you decide to hide something from me, will you at least tell me that you aren't going to tell me?”

  “This is getting way too deep for little old me.” She was a caricature of an overfeminine woman.

  “Nothing is too deep for you, Jane. Do us both a favor. Don't cut me off at the knees.”

  “While you're off with the Ribeira family, is there anything you'd like me to be doing?”

  “Yes. Find every way in which the Ribeiras are significantly different from the rest of the people of Lusitania. And any points of conflict between them and the authorities.”

  “You speak, and I obey.” She started to do her genie disappearing act.

  “You maneuvered me here, Jane. Why are you trying to unnerve me?”

  “I'm not. And I didn't.”

  “I have a shortage of friends in this town.”

  “You can trust me with your life.”

  “It isn't my life I'm worried about.”

  * * *

  The praqa was filled with children playing football. Most of them were stunting, showing how long they could keep the ball in the air using only their feet and heads. Two of them, though, had a vicious duel going. The boy would kick the ball as hard as he could toward the girl, who stood not three meters away. She would stand and take the impact of the ball, not flinching no matter how hard it struck her. Then she would kick the ball back at him, and he would try not to flinch. A little girl was tending the ball, fetching it each time it rebounded from a victim.

  Ender tried asking some of the boys if they knew where the Ribeira family's house was. Their answer was invariably a shrug; when he persisted some of them began moving away, and soon most of the children had retreated from the praqa. Ender wondered what the Bishop had told everybody about Speakers.

  The duel, however, continued unabated. And now that the praqa was not so crowded, Ender saw that another child was involved, a boy of about twelve. He was not extraordinary from behind, but as Ender moved toward the middle of the praqa, he could see that there was something wrong with the boy's eyes. It took a moment, but then he understood. The boy had artificial eyes. Both looked shiny and metallic, but Ender knew how they worked. Only one eye was used for sight, but it took four separate visual scans and then separated the signals to feed true binocular vision to the brain. The other eye contained the power supply, the computer control, and the external interface. When he wanted to, he could record short sequences of vision in a limited photo memory, probably less than a trillion bits. The duelists were using him as their judge; if they disputed a point, he could replay the scene in slow motion and tell them what had happened.

  The ball went straight for the boy's crotch. He winced elaborately, but the girl was not impressed. “He swiveled away, I saw his hips move!”

  “Did not! You hurt me, I didn't dodge at all!”

  “Reveja! Reveja!” They had been speaking Stark, but the girl now switched into Portuguese.

  The boy with metal eyes showed no expression, but raised a hand to silence them. “Mudou,” he said with finality. He moved, Ender translated.

  “Sabia!” I knew it!

  “You liar, Olhado!”

  The boy with metal eyes looked at him with disdain. “I never lie. I'll send you a dump of the scene if you want. In fact, I think I'll post it on the net so everybody can watch you dodge and then lie about it.”

  “Mentiroso! Filho de punta! Fode-bode!”

  Ender was pretty sure what the epithets meant, but the boy with metal eyes took it calmly.

  “Da,” said the girl. “Da-me.” Give it here.

  The boy furiously took off his ring and threw it on the ground at her feet. “Viada!” he said in a hoarse whisper. Then he took off running.

  “Poltrao!” shouted the girl after him. Coward!

  «C o!» shouted the boy, not even looking over his shoulder.

  It was not the girl he was shouting at this time. She turned at once to look at the boy with metal eyes, who stiffened at the name. Almost at once the girl looked at the ground. The little one, who had been doing the ball-fetching, walked to the boy with metal eyes and whispered something. He looked up, noticing Ender for the first time.

  The older girl was apologizing. “Desculpa, Olhado, nao queria que–”

  “Nao ha problema, Michi.” He did not look at her.

  The girl started to go on, but then she, too, noticed Ender and fell silent.

  “Porque esta olhando-nos?” asked the boy. Why are you looking at us?

  Ender answered with a question. “Voce e arbitro?” You're the artiber here? The word could mean “umpire,” but it could also mean “magistrate.”

  “De vez em quando.” Sometimes.

  Ender switched to Stark– he wasn't sure he knew how to say anything complex in Portuguese. “Then tell me, arbiter, is it fair to leave a stranger to find his way around without help?”

  “Stranger? You mean utlanning, framling, or ramen?”

  “No, I think I mean infidel.”

  “O Senhor e descrente?” You're an unbeliever?

  “So descredo no incrivel.” I only disbelieve the unbelievable.

  The boy grinned. “Where do you want to go, Speaker?”

  “The house of the Ribeira family.”

  The little girl edged closer to the boy with metal eyes. “Which Ribeira family?”

  “The widow Ivanova.”

  “I think I can find it,” said the boy.

  “Everybody in town can find it,” said Ender. “The point is, will you take me there?”

  “Why do you want to go there?”

  “I ask people questions and try to find out true stories.”

  “Nobody at the
Ribeira house knows any true stories.”

  “I'd settle for lies.”

  “Come on then.” He started toward the low-mown grass of the main road. The little girl was whispering in his ear. He stopped and turned to Ender, who was following close behind.

  “Quara wants to know. What's your name?”

  “Andrew. Andrew Wiggin.”

  “She's Quara.”

  “And you?”

  “Everybody calls me Olhado. Because of my eyes.” He picked up the little girl and put her on his shoulders. “But my real name's Lauro. Lauro Suleimdo Ribeira.” He grinned, then turned around and strode off.

  Ender followed. Ribeira. Of course.

  Jane had been listening, too, and spoke from the jewel in his ear. “Lauro Suleimdo Ribeira is Novinha's fourth child. He lost his eyes in a laser accident. He's twelve years old. Oh, and I found one difference between the Ribeira family and the rest of the town. The Ribeiras are willing to defy the Bishop and lead you where you want to go.”

  I noticed something, too, Jane, he answered silently. This boy enjoyed deceiving me, and then enjoyed even more letting me see how I'd been fooled. I just hope you don't take lessons from him.

  * * *

  Miro sat on the hillside. The shade of the trees made him invisible to anyone who might be watching from Milagre, but he could see much of the town from here– certainly the cathedral and the monastery on the highest hill, and then the observatory on the next hill to the north. And under the observatory, in a depression in the hillside, the house where he lived, not very far from the fence.

  “Miro,” whispered Leaf-eater. “Are you a tree?”

  It was a translation from the pequeninos' idiom. Sometimes they meditated, holding themselves motionless for hours. They called this “being a tree.”

  “More like a blade of grass,” Miro answered.

  Leaf-eater giggled in the high, wheezy way he had. It never sounded natural– the pequeninos had learned laughter by rote, as if it were simply another word in Stark. It didn't arise out of amusement, or at least Miro didn't think it did.