Speaker for the dead ew-2

by Orson Scott Card

  I would say, if I were less discreet, that you were a fool to interfere with this Speaker when you knew the law was on his side and when he had done nothing to harm us. Now he is provoked, and is far more dangerous than he would ever have been if you had simply ignored his coming.

  Dom Crist o smiled thinly and inclined his head. «I think that we should strike first to remove his power to harm us.»

  Those militant words took Bishop Peregrino by surprise. “Exactly,” he said. “But I never expected you to understand that.”

  «The Filhos are as ardent as any unordained Christian could hope to be,» said Dom Crist o. «But since we have no priesthood, we have to make do with reason and logic as poor substitutes for authority.»

  Bishop Peregrino suspected irony from time to time, but was never quite able to pin it down. He grunted, and his eyes narrowed. “So, then, Brother Amai, how do you propose to strike him?”

  “Well, Father Peregrino, the law is quite explicit. He has power over us only if we interfere with his performance of his ministerial duties. If we wish to strip him of the power to harm us, we have merely to cooperate with him.”

  The Bishop roared and struck the table before him with his fist. “Just the sort of sophistry I should have expected from you, Amai!”

  Dom Crist o smiled. «There's really no alternative– either we answer his questions, or he petitions with complete justice for inquisitorial status, and you board a starship for the Vatican to answer charges of religious persecution. We are all too fond of you, Bishop Peregrino, to do anything that would cause your removal from office.»

  “Oh, yes, I know all about your fondness.”

  “The Speakers for the Dead are really quite innocuous– they set up no rival organization, they perform no sacraments, they don't even claim that the Hive Queen and the Hegemon is a work of scripture. They only thing they do is try to discover the truth about the lives of the dead, and then tell everyone who will listen the story of a dead person's life as the dead one meant to live it.”

  “And you pretend to find that harmless?”

  “On the contrary. San Angelo founded our order precisely because the telling of truth is such a powerful act. But I think it is far less harmful then, say, the Protestant Reformation. And the revocation of our Catholic License on the grounds of religious persecution would guarantee the immediate authorization of enough non-Catholic immigration to make us represent no more than a third of the population.”

  Bishop Peregrino fondled his ring. “But would the Starways Congress actually authorize that? They have a fixed limit on the size of this colony– bringing in that many infidels would far exceed that limit.”

  “But you must know that they've already made provision for that. Why do you think two starships have been left in orbit around our planet? Since a Catholic License guarantees unrestricted population growth, they will simply carry off our excess population in forced emigration. They expect to do it in a generation or two– what's to stop them from beginning now?”

  “They wouldn't.”

  “Starways Congress was formed to stop the jihads and pogroms that were going on in half a dozen places all the time. An invocation of the religious persecution laws is a serious matter.”

  “It is entirely out of proportion! One Speaker for the Dead is called for by some half-crazed heretic, and suddenly we're confronted with forced emigration!”

  “My beloved father, this has always been the way of things between the secular authority and the religious. We must be patient, if for no other reason than this: They have all the guns.”

  Navio chuckled at that.

  “They may have the guns, but we hold the keys of heaven and hell,” said the Bishop.

  “And I'm sure that half of Starways Congress already writhes in anticipation. In the meantime, though, perhaps I can help ease the pain of this awkward time. Instead of your having to publicly retract your earlier remarks–” (your stupid, destructive, bigoted remarks) “–let it be known that you have instructed the Filhos da Mente de Cristo to bear the onerous burden of answering the questions of this infidel.”

  “You may not know all the answers that he wants,” said Navio.

  “But we can find out the answers for him, can't we? Perhaps this way the people of Milagre will never have to answer to the Speaker directly; instead they will speak only to harmless brothers and sisters of our order.”

  “In other words,” said Peregrino dryly, “the monks of your order will become servants of the infidel.”

  Dom Crist o silently chanted his name three times.

  * * *

  Not since he was a child in the military had Ender felt so clearly that he was in enemy territory. The path up the hill from the praqa was worn from the steps of many worshippers' feet, and the cathedral dome was so tall that except for a few moments on the steepest slope, it was visible all the way up the hill. The primary school was on his left hand, built in terraces up the slope; to the right was the Vila dos Professores, named for the teachers but in fact inhabited mostly by the groundskeepers, janitors, clerks, counselors, and other menials. The teachers that Ender saw all wore the grey robes of the Filhos, and they eyed him curiously as he passed.

  The enmity began when he reached the top of the hill, a wide, almost flat expanse of lawn and garden immaculately tended, with crushed ores from the smelter making neat paths. Here is the world of the Church, thought Ender, everything in its place and no weeds allowed. He was aware of the many watching him, but now the robes were black or orange, priests and deacons, their eyes malevolent with authority under threat. What do I steal from you by coming here? Ender asked them silently. But he knew that their hatred was not undeserved. He was a wild herb growing in the well-tended garden; wherever he stepped, disorder threatened, and many lovely flowers would die if he took root and sucked the life from their soil.

  Jane chatted amiably with him, trying to provoke him into answering her, but Ender refused to be caught by her game. The priests would not see his lips move; there was a considerable faction in the Church that regarded implants like the jewel in his ear as a sacrilege, trying to improve on a body that God had created perfect.

  “How many priests can this community support, Ender?” she said, pretending to marvel.

  Ender would have liked to retort that she already had the exact number of them in her files. One of her pleasures was to say annoying things when he was not in a position to answer, or even to publicly acknowledge that she was speaking in his ear.

  “Drones that don't even reproduce. If they don't copulate, doesn't evolution demand that they expire?” Of course she knew that the priests did most of the administrative and public service work of the community. Ender composed his answers to her as if he could speak them aloud. If the priests weren't there, then government or business or guilds or some other group would expand to take up the burden. Some sort of rigid hierarchy always emerged as the conservative force in a community, maintaining its identity despite the constant variations and changes that beset it. If there were no powerful advocate of orthodoxy, the community would inevitably disintegrate. A powerful orthodoxy is annoying, but essential to the community. Hadn't Valentine written about this in her book on Zanzibar? She compared the priestly class to the skeleton of vertebrates.

  Just to show him that she could anticipate his arguments even when he couldn't say them aloud, Jane supplied the quotation; teasingly, she spoke it in Valentine's own voice, which she had obviously stored away in order to torment him. “The bones are hard and by themselves seem dead and stony, but by rooting into and pulling against the skeleton, the rest of the body carries out all the motions of life.”

  The sound of Valentine's voice hurt him more than he expected, certainly more than Jane would have intended. His step slowed. He realized that it was her absence that made him so sensitive to the priests' hostility. He had bearded the Calvinist lion in its den, he had walked philosophically naked among the burning coals of Islam, and Shinto
fanatics had sung death threats outside his window in Kyoto. But always Valentine had been close– in the same city, breathing the same air, afflicted by the same weather. She would speak courage to him as he set out; he would return from confrontation and her conversation would make sense even of his failures, giving him small shreds of triumph even in defeat. I left her a mere ten days ago, and now, already, I feel the lack of her.

  “To the left, I think,” said Jane. Mercifully, she was using her own voice now. “The monastery is at the western edge of the hill, overlooking the Zenador's Station.”

  He passed alongside the faculdade, where students from the age of twelve studied the higher sciences. And there, low to the ground, the monastery lay waiting. He smiled at the contrast between the cathedral and the monastery. The Filhos were almost offensive in their rejection of magnificence. No wonder the hierarchy resented them wherever they went. Even the monastery garden made a rebellious statement– everything that wasn't a vegetable garden was abandoned to weeds and unmown grass.

  The abbot was called Dom Crist o, of course; it would have been Dona Crist o had the abbot been a woman. In this place, because there was only one escola baixa and one faculdade, there was only one principal; with elegant simplicity, the husband headed the monastery and his wife the schools, enmeshing all the affairs of the order in a single marriage. Ender had told San Angelo right at the beginning that it was the height of pretension, not humility at all, for the leaders of the monasteries and schools to be called «Sir Christian» or «Lady Christian,» arrogating to themselves a title that should belong to every follower of Christ impartially. San Angelo had only smiled– because, of course, that was precisely what he had in mind. Arrogant in his humility, that's what he was, and that was one of the reasons that I loved him.

  Dom Crist o came out into the courtyard to greet him instead of waiting for him in his escritorio– part of the discipline of the order was to inconvenience yourself deliberately in favor of those you serve. «Speaker Andrew!» he cried. «Dom Ceifeiro!» Ender called in return. Ceifeiro– reaper– was the order's own title for the office of abbot; school principals were called Aradores, plowmen, and teaching monks were Semeadores, sowers.

  The Ceifeiro smiled at the Speaker's rejection of his common title, Dom Crist o. He knew how manipulative it was to require other people to call the Filhos by their titles and made-up names. As San Angelo said, «When they call you by your title, they admit you are a Christian; when they call you by your name, a sermon comes from their own lips.» He took Ender by the shoulders, smiled, and said, «Yes, I'm the Ceifeiro. And what are you to us– our infestation of weeds?»

  “I try to be a blight wherever I go.”

  “Beware, then, or the Lord of the Harvest will burn you with the tares.”

  “I know– damnation is only a breath away, and there's no hope of getting me to repent.”

  “The priests do repentance. Our job is teaching the mind. It was good of you to come.”

  “It was good of you to invite me here. I had been reduced to the crudest sort of bludgeoning in order to get anyone to converse with me at all.”

  The Ceifeiro understood, of course, that the Speaker knew the invitation had come only because of his inquisitorial threat. But Brother Amai preferred to keep the discussion cheerful. “Come, now, is it true you knew San Angelo? Are you the very one who Spoke his death?”

  Ender gestured toward the tall weeds peering over the top of the courtyard wall. “He would have approved of the disarray of your garden. He loved provoking Cardinal Aquila, and no doubt your Bishop Peregrino also curls his nose in disgust at your shoddy groundskeeping.”

  Dom Crist o winked. «You know too many of our secrets. If we help you find answers to your questions, will you go away?»

  “There's hope. The longest I've stayed anywhere since I began serving as a Speaker was the year and a half I lived in Reykjavik, on Trondheim.”

  “I wish you'd promise us a similar brevity here. I ask, not for myself, but for the peace of mind of those who wear much heavier robes than mine.”

  Ender gave the only sincere answer that might help set the Bishop's mind at ease. “I promise that if I ever find a place to settle down, I'll shed my title of Speaker and become a productive citizen.”

  “In a place like this, that would include conversion to Catholicism.”

  “San Angelo made me promise years ago that if I ever got religion, it would be his.”

  “Somehow that does not sound like a sincere protestation of faith.”

  “That's because I haven't any.”

  The Ceifeiro laughed as if he knew better, and insisted on showing Ender around the monastery and the schools before getting to Ender's questions. Ender didn't mind– he wanted to see how far San Angelo's ideas had come in the centuries since his death. The schools seemed pleasant enough, and the quality of education was high; but it was dark before the Ceifeiro led him back to the monastery and into the small cell that he and his wife, the Aradora, shared.

  Dona Crist was already there, creating a series of grammatical exercises on the terminal between the beds. They waited until she found a stopping place before addressing her.

  The Ceifeiro introduced him as Speaker Andrew. «But he seems to find it hard to call me Dom Crist o.»

  "So does the Bishop," said his wife. "My true name is Detestai o Pecado e Fazei o Direito." Hate Sin and Do the Right, Ender translated. "My husband's name lends itself to a lovely shortening– Amai, love ye. But mine? Can you imagine shouting to a friend, Oi! Detestai! " They all laughed. "Love and Loathing, that's who we are, husband and wife. What will you call me, if the name Christian is too good for me?"

  Ender looked at her face, beginning to wrinkle enough that someone more critical than he might call her old. Still, there was laughter in her smile and a vigor in her eyes that made her seem much younger, even younger than Ender. “I would call you Beleza, but your husband would accuse me of flirting with you.”

  «No, he would call me Beladona– from beauty to poison in one nasty little joke. Wouldn't you, Dom Crist o?»

  “It's my job to keep you humble.”

  “Just as it's my job to keep you chaste,” she answered.

  At that, Ender couldn't help looking from one bed to the other.

  “Ah, another one who's curious about our celibate marriage,” said the Ceifeiro.

  “No,” said Ender. “But I remember San Angelo urging husband and wife to share a single bed.”

  “The only way we could do that,” said the Aradora, “is if one of us slept at night and the other in the day.”

  “The rules must be adapted to the strength of the Filhos da Mente,” the Ceifeiro explained. “No doubt there are some that can share a bed and remain celibate, but my wife is still too beautiful, and the lusts of my flesh too insistent.”

  “That was what San Angelo intended. He said that the marriage bed should be the constant test of your love of knowledge. He hoped that every man and woman in the order would, after a time, choose to reproduce themselves in the flesh as well as in the mind.”

  “But the moment we do that,” said the Ceifeiro, “then we must leave the Filhos.”

  “It's the thing our dear San Angelo did not understand, because there was never a true monastery of the order during his life,” said the Aradora. “The monastery becomes our family, and to leave it would be as painful as divorce. Once the roots go down, the plant can't come up again without great pain and tearing. So we sleep in separate beds, and we have just enough strength to remain in our beloved order.”

  She spoke with such contentment that quite against his will, Ender's eyes welled with tears. She saw it, blushed, looked away. “Don't weep for us, Speaker Andrew. We have far more joy than suffering.”

  “You misunderstand,” said Ender. “My tears weren't for pity, but for beauty.”

  “No,” said the Ceifeiro, “even the celibate priests think that our chastity in marriage is, at best, eccentric.”
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br />   “But I don't,” said Ender. For a moment he wanted to tell them of his long companionship with Valentine, as close and loving as a wife, and yet chaste as a sister. But the thought of her took words away from him. He sat on the Ceifeiro's bed and put his face in his hands.

  “Is something wrong?” asked the Aradora. At the same time, the Ceifeiro's hand rested gently on his head.

  Ender lifted his head, trying to shake off the sudden attack of love and longing for Valentine. “I'm afraid that this voyage has cost me more than any other. I left behind my sister, who traveled with me for many years. She married in Reykjavik. To me, it seems only a week or so since I left her, but I find that I miss her more than I expected. The two of you–”

  “Are you telling us that you are also celibate?” asked the Ceifeiro.

  “And widowed now as well,” whispered the Aradora.

  It did not seem at all incongruous to Ender to have his loss of Valentine put in those terms.

  Jane murmured in his ear. “If this is part of some master plan of yours, Ender, I admit it's much too deep for me.”

  But of course it wasn't part of a plan at all. It frightened Ender to feel himself losing control like this. Last night in the Ribeira house he was the master of the situation; now he felt himself surrendering to these married monks with as much abandonment as either Quara or Grego had shown.

  “I think,” said the Ceifeiro, “that you came here seeking answers to more questions than you knew.”

  “You must be so lonely,” said the Aradora. “Your sister has found her resting place. Are you looking for one, too?”

  “I don't think so,” said Ender. “I'm afraid I've imposed on your hospitality too much. Unordained monks aren't supposed to hear confessions.”

  The Aradora laughed aloud. “Oh, any Catholic can hear the confession of an infidel.”

  The Ceifeiro did not laugh, however. “Speaker Andrew, you have obviously given us more trust than you ever planned, but I can assure you that we deserve that trust. And in the process, my friend, I have come to believe that I can trust you. The Bishop is afraid of you, and I admit I had my own misgivings, but not anymore. I'll help you if I can, because I believe you will not knowingly cause harm to our little village.”