Speaker for the dead ew-2

by Orson Scott Card

  “Oh, the human race kicked me out a long time ago. That's how I got to be a Speaker for the Dead.”

  With that they arrived at the piggies' clearing.

  * * *

  Mother wasn't at dinner and neither was Miro. That was fine with Ela. When either one of them was there, Ela was stripped of her authority; she couldn't keep control over the younger children. And yet neither Miro nor Mother took Ela's place, either. Nobody obeyed Ela and nobody else tried to keep order. So it was quieter, easier when they stayed away.

  Not that the little ones were particularly well-behaved even now. They just resisted her less. She only had to yell at Grego a couple of times to keep him from poking and kicking Quara under the table. And today both Quim and Olhado were keeping to themselves. None of the normal bickering.

  Until the meal was over.

  Quim leaned back in his chair and smiled maliciously at Olhado. “So you're the one who taught that spy how to get into Mother's files.”

  Olhado turned to Ela. “You left Quim's face open again, Ela. You've got to learn to be tidier.” It was Olhado's way of appealing, through humor, for Ela's intervention.

  Quim did not want Olhado to have any help. "Ela's not on your side this time, Olhado. Nobody's on your side. You helped that sneaking spy get into Mother's files, and that makes you as guilty as he is. He's the devil's servant, and so are you. "

  Ela saw the fury in Olhado's body; she had a momentary image in her mind of Olhado flinging his plate at Quim. But the moment passed. Olhado calmed himself. “I'm sorry,” Olhado said. “I didn't mean to do it.”

  He was giving in to Quim. He was admitting Quim was right.

  “I hope,” said Ela, “that you mean that you're sorry that you didn't mean to do it. I hope you aren't apologizing for helping the Speaker for the Dead.”

  “Of course he's apologizing for helping the spy,” said Quim.

  “Because,” said Ela, “we should all help Speaker all we can.”

  Quim jumped to his feet, leaned across the table to shout in her face. “How can you say that! He was violating Mother's privacy, he was finding out her secrets, he was–”

  To her surprise Ela found herself also on her feet, shoving him back across the table, shouting back at him, and louder. “Mother's secrets are the cause of half the poison in this house! Mother's secrets are what's making us all sick, including her! So maybe the only way to make things right here is to steal all her secrets and get them out in the open where we can kill them!” She stopped shouting. Both Quim and Ohado stood before her, pressed against the far wall as if her words were bullets and they were being executed. Quietly, intensely, Ela went on. “As far as I'm concerned, the Speaker for the Dead is the only chance we have to become a family again. And Mother's secrets are the only barrier standing in his way. So today I told him everything I knew about what's in Mother's files, because I want to give him every shred of truth that I can find.”

  “Then you're the worst traitor of all,” said Quim. His voice was trembling. He was about to cry.

  “I say that helping the Speaker for the Dead is an act of loyalty,” Ela answered. “The only real treason is obeying Mother, because what she wants, what she has worked for all her life, is her own self-destruction and the destruction of this family.”

  To Ela's surprise, it was not Quim but Olhado who wept. His tear glands did not function, of course, having been removed when his eyes were installed. So there was no moistening of his eyes to warn of the onset of crying. Instead he doubled over with a sob, then sank down along the wall until he sat on the floor, his head between his knees, sobbing and sobbing. Ela understood why. Because she had told him that his love for the Speaker was not disloyal, that he had not sinned, and he believed her when she told him that, he knew that it was true.

  Then she looked up from Olhado to see Mother standing in the doorway. Ela felt herself go weak inside, trembling at the thought of what Mother must have overheard.

  But Mother did not seem angry. Just a little sad, and very tired. She was looking at Olhado.

  Quim's outrage found his voice. “Did you hear what Ela was saying?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Mother, never taking her eyes from Olhado. “And for all I know she might be right.”

  Ela was no less unnerved than Quim.

  “Go to your rooms, children,” Mother said quietly. “I need to talk to Olhado.”

  Ela beckoned to Grego and Quara, who slid off their chairs and scurried to Ela's side, eyes wide with awe at the unusual goings-on. After all, even Father had never been able to make Olhado cry. She led them out of the kitchen, back to their bedroom. She heard Quim walk down the hall and go into his own room, slam the door, and hurl himself on his bed. And in the kitchen Olhado's sobs faded, calmed, ended as Mother, for the first time since he lost his eyes, held him in her arms and comforted him, shedding her own silent tears into his hair as she rocked him back and forth.

  * * *

  Miro did not know what to make of the Speaker for the Dead. Somehow he had always imagined a Speaker to be very much like a priest– or rather, like a priest was supposed to be. Quiet, contemplative, withdrawn from the world, carefully leaving action and decision to others. Miro had expected him to be wise.

  He had not expected him to be so intrusive, so dangerous. Yes, he was wise, all right, he kept seeing past pretense, kept saying or doing outrageous things that were, when you thought about it, exactly right. It was as if he were so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn't even know yourself that you had them in you.

  How many times had Miro stood with Ouanda just like this, watching as Libo handled the piggies. But always with Libo they had understood what he was doing; they knew his technique, knew his purpose. The Speaker, however, followed lines of thought that were completely alien to Miro.

  Even though he wore a human shape, it made Miro wonder if Ender was really a framling– he could be as baffling as the piggies. He was as much a raman as they were, alien but still not animal.

  What did the Speaker notice? What did he see? The bow that Arrow carried? The sun-dried pot in which merdona root soaked and stank? How many of the Questionable Activities did he recognize, and how many did he think were native practices?

  The piggies spread out the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. “You,” said Arrow, “you wrote this?”

  “Yes,” said the Speaker for the Dead.

  Miro looked at Ouanda. Her eyes danced with vindication. So the Speaker is a liar.

  Human interrupted. “The other two, Miro and Ouanda, they think you're a liar.”

  Miro immediately looked at the Speaker, but he wasn't glancing at them. “Of course they do,” he said. “It never occurred to them that Rooter might have told you the truth.”

  The Speaker's calm words disturbed Miro. Could it be true? After all, people who traveled between star systems skipped decades, often centuries in getting from one system to another. Sometimes as much as half a millennium. It wouldn't take that many voyages for a person to survive three thousand years. But that would be too incredible a coincidence, for the original Speaker for the Dead to come here. Except that the original Speaker for the Dead was the one who had written the Hive Queen and the Hegemon; he would be interested in the first race of ramen since the buggers. I don't believe it, Miro told himself, but he had to admit the possibility that it might just be true.

  “Why are they so stupid?” asked Human. “Not to know the truth when they hear it?”

  “They aren't stupid,” said the Speaker. “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question. They never thought to question the idea that the original Speaker for the Dead died three thousand years ago, even though they know how star travel prolongs life.”

  “But we told them.”

  “No– you told them that the hive queen told Rooter that I w
rote this book.”

  “That's why they should have known it was true,” said Human. “Rooter is wise, he's a father; he would never make a mistake.”

  Miro did not smile, but he wanted to. The Speaker thought he was so clever, but now here he was, where all the important questions ended, frustrated by the piggies' insistence that their totem trees could talk to them.

  “Ah,” said Speaker. “There's so much that we don't understand. And so much that you don't understand. We should tell each other more.”

  Human sat down beside Arrow, sharing the position of honor with him. Arrow gave no sign of minding. “Speaker for the Dead,” said Human, “will you bring the hive queen to us?”

  “I haven't decided yet,” said the Speaker.

  Again Miro looked at Ouanda. Was the Speaker insane, hinting that he could deliver what could not be delivered?

  Then he remembered what the Speaker had said about questioning all our beliefs except the ones that we really believed. Miro had always taken for granted what everyone knew– that all the buggers had been destroyed. But what if a hive queen had survived? What if that was how the Speaker for the Dead had been able to write his book, because he had a bugger to talk to? It was unlikely in the extreme, but it was not impossible. Miro didn't know for sure that the last bugger had been killed. He only knew that everybody believed it, and that no one in three thousand years had produced a shred of evidence to the contrary.

  But even if it was true, how could Human have known it? The simplest explanation was that the piggies had incorporated the powerful story of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon into their religion, and were unable to grasp the idea that there were many Speakers for the Dead, and none of them was the author of the book; that all the buggers were dead, and no hive queen could ever come. That was the simplest explanation, the one easiest to accept. Any other explanation would force him to admit the possibility that Rooter's totem tree somehow talked to the piggies.

  “What will make you decide?” said Human. “We give gifts to the wives, to win their honor, but you are the wisest of all humans, and we have nothing that you need.”

  “You have many things that I need,” said Speaker.

  “What? Can't you make better pots than these? Truer arrows? The cape I wear is made from cabra wool– but your clothing is finer.”

  “I don't need things like that,” said Speaker. “What I need are true stories.”

  Human leaned closer, then let his body become rigid in excitement, in anticipation. “O Speaker!” he said, and his voice was powerful with the importance of his words. “Will you add our story to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon?”

  “I don't know your story,” said the Speaker.

  “Ask us! Ask us anything!”

  “How can I tell your story? I only tell the stories of the dead.”

  “We are dead!” shouted Human. Miro had never seen him so agitated. “We are being murdered every day. Humans are filling up all the worlds. The ships travel through the black of night from star to star to star, filling up every empty place. Here we are, on our one little world, watching the sky fill up with humans. The humans build their stupid fence to keep us out, but that is nothing. The sky is our fence!” Human leapt upward– startlingly high, for his legs were powerful. “Look how the fence throws me back down to the ground!”

  He ran at the nearest tree, bounded up the trunk, higher than Miro had ever seen him climb; he shinnied out on a limb and threw himself upward into the air. He hung there for an agonizing moment at the apex of his leap; then gravity flung him downward onto the hard ground.

  Miro could hear the breath thrust out of him by the force of the blow. The Speaker immediately rushed to Human; Miro was close behind. Human wasn't breathing.

  “Is he dead?” asked Ouanda behind him.

  “No!” cried a piggy in the Males' Language. “You can't die! No no no!” Miro looked; to his surprise, it was Leaf-eater. “You can't die!”

  Then Human reached up a feeble hand and touched the Speaker's face. He inhaled, a deep gasp. And then spoke, “You see, Speaker? I would die to climb the wall that keeps us from the stars.”

  In all the years that Miro had known the piggies, in all the years before, they had never once spoken of star travel, never once asked about it. Yet now Miro realized that all the questions they did ask were oriented toward discovering the secret of starflight. The xenologers had never realized that because they knew– knew without questioning– that the piggies were so remote from the level of culture that could build starships that it would be a thousand years before such a thing could possibly be in their reach. But their craving for knowledge about metal, about motors, about flying above the ground, it was all their way of trying to find the secret of starflight.

  Human slowly got to his feet, holding the Speaker's hands. Miro realized that in all the years he had known the piggies, never once had a piggy taken him by the hand. He felt a deep regret. And the sharp pain of jealousy.

  Now that Human was clearly not injured, the other piggies crowded close around the Speaker. They did not jostle, but they wanted to be near.

  “Rooter says the hive queen knows how to build starships,” said Arrow.

  “Rooter says the hive queen will teach us everything,” said Cups. “Metal, fire made from rocks, houses made from black water, everything.”

  Speaker raised his hands, fended off their babbling. “If you were all very thirsty, and saw that I had water, you'd all ask me for a drink. But what if I knew that the water I had was poisoned?”

  “There is no poison in the ships that fly to the stars,” said Human.

  “There are many paths to starflight,” said the Speaker. “Some are better than others. I'll give you everything I can that won't destroy you.”

  “The hive queen promises!” said Human.

  “And so do I.”

  Human lunged forward, grabbed the Speaker by the hair and ears, and pulled him face to face. Miro had never seen such an act of violence; it was what he had dreaded, the decision to murder. “If we are ramen,” shouted Human into the Speaker's face, “then it is ours to decide, not yours! And if we are varelse, then you might as well kill us all right now, the way you killed all the hive queen's sisters!”

  Miro was stunned. It was one thing for the piggies to decide this was the Speaker who wrote the book. But how could they reach the unbelievable conclusion that he was somehow guilty of the Xenocide? Who did they think he was, the monster Ender?

  And yet there sat the Speaker for the Dead, tears running down his cheeks, his eyes closed, as if Human's accusation had the force of truth.

  Human turned his head to speak to Miro. “What is this water?” he whispered. Then he touched the Speaker's tears.

  “It's how we show pain or grief or suffering,” Miro answered.

  Mandachuva suddenly cried out, a hideous cry that Miro had never heard before, like an animal dying.

  “That is how we show pain,” whispered Human.

  “Ah! Ah!” cried Mandachuva. “I have seen that water before! In the eyes of Libo and Pipo I saw that water!”

  One by one, and then all at once, all the other piggies took up the same cry. Miro was terrified, awed, excited all at once. He had no idea what it meant, but the piggies were showing emotions that they had concealed from the xenologers for forty-seven years.

  “Are they grieving for Papa?” whispered Ouanda. Her eyes, too, glistened with excitement, and her hair was matted with the sweat of fear.

  Miro said it the moment it occurred to him: “They didn't know until this moment that Pipo and Libo were crying when they died.”

  Miro had no idea what thoughts then went through Ouanda's head; he only knew that she turned away, stumbled a few steps, fell to her hands and knees, and wept bitterly.

  All in all, the coming of the Speaker had certainly stirred things up.

  Miro knelt beside the Speaker, whose head was now bowed, his chin pressed against his chest. “Speaker,” Mir
o said. “Como pode ser? How can it be, that you are the first Speaker, and yet you are also Ender? Nao pode ser.”

  “She told them more than I ever thought she would,” he whispered.

  “But the Speaker for the Dead, the one who wrote this book, he's the wisest man who lived in the age of flight among the stars. While Ender was a murderer, he killed a whole people, a beautiful race of ramen that could have taught us everything–”

  “Both human, though,” whispered the Speaker.

  Human was near them now, and he spoke a couplet from the Hegemon: “Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand.”

  “Human,” said the Speaker, “tell your people not to grieve for what they did in ignorance.”

  “It was a terrible thing,” said Human. “It was our greatest gift.”

  “Tell your people to be quiet, and listen to me.”

  Human shouted a few words, not in the Males' Language, but in the Wives' Language, the language of authority. They fell silent, then sat to hear what Speaker would say.

  “I'll do everything I can,” said the Speaker, “but first I have to know you, or how can I tell your story? I have to know you, or how can I know whether the drink is poisonous or not? And the hardest problem of all will still remain. The human race is free to love the buggers because they think the buggers all are dead. You are still alive, and so they're still afraid of you.”

  Human stood among them and gestured toward his body, as if it were a weak and feeble thing. “Of us!”

  “They're afraid of the same thing you fear, when you look up and see the stars fill up with humans. They're afraid that someday they'll come to a world and find that you have got there first.”

  “We don't want to be there first,” said Human. “We want to be there too.”

  “Then give me time,” said the Speaker. “Teach me who you are, so that I can teach them.”

  “Anything,” said Human. He looked around at the others. “We'll teach you anything.”

  Leaf-eater stood up. He spoke in the Males' Language, but Miro understood him. “Some things aren't yours to teach.”