Speaker for the dead ew-2

by Orson Scott Card

  “Speaker,” said Mayor Bosquinha.

  “Mayor,” said Ender. He didn't like talking to people after a Speaking, but he was used to the fact that someone always insisted on talking to him. He forced a smile. “There were many more people here than I expected.”

  “A momentary thing, for most of them,” said Bosquinha. “They'll forget it by morning.”

  Ender was annoyed that she was trivializing it. “Only if something monumental happens in the night,” he said.

  “Yes. Well, that has been arranged.”

  Only then did Ender realize that she was extremely upset, barely under control at all. He took her by the elbow and then cast an arm over her shoulder; she leaned gratefully.

  “Speaker, I came to apologize. Your starship has been commandeered by Starways Congress. It has nothing to do with you. A crime was committed here, a crime so– terrible– that the criminals must be taken to the nearest world, Trondheim, for trial and punishment. Your ship.”

  Ender reflected for a moment. “Miro and Ouanda.”

  She turned her head, looked at him sharply. “You are not surprised.”

  “I also won't let them go.”

  Bosquinha pulled herself away from him. “Won't let them?”

  “I have some idea what they're charged with.”

  “You've been here four days, and you already know something that even I never suspected?”

  “Sometimes the government is the last to know.”

  “Let me tell you why you will let them go, why we'll all let them go to stand trial. Because Congress has stripped our files. The computer memory is empty except for the most rudimentary programs that control our power supply, our water, our sewer. Tomorrow no work can be done because we haven't enough power to run any of the factories, to work in the mines, to power the tractors. I have been removed from office. I am now nothing more than the deputy chief of police, to see that the directives of the Lusitanian Evacuation Committee are carried out.”

  “Evacuation?”

  "The colony's license has been revoked. They're sending starships to take us all away. Every sign of human habitation here is to be removed. Even the gravestones that mark our dead. "

  Ender tried to measure her response. He had not thought Bosquinha was the kind who would bow to mindless authority. “Do you intend to submit to this?”

  “The power and water supplies are controlled by ansible. They also control the fence. They can shut us in here without power or water or sewers, and we can't get out. Once Miro and Ouanda are aboard your starship, headed for Trondheim, they say that some of the restrictions will be relaxed.” She sighed. “Oh, Speaker, I'm afraid this isn't a good time to be a tourist in Lusitania.”

  “I'm not a tourist.” He didn't bother telling her his suspicion that it might not be pure coincidence, Congress noticing the Questionable Activities when Ender happened to be there. “Were you able to save any of your files?”

  Bosquinha sighed. “By imposing on you, I'm afraid. I noticed that all your files were maintained by ansible, offworld. We sent our most crucial files as messages to you.”

  Ender laughed. “Good, that's right, that was well done.”

  “It doesn't matter. We can't get them back. Or, well, yes, we can, but they'll notice it at once and then you'll be in just as much trouble as the rest of us. And they'll wipe out everything then.”

  “Unless you sever the ansible connection immediately after copying all my files to local memory.”

  “Then we really would be in rebellion. And for what?”

  “For the chance to make Lusitania the best and most important of the Hundred Worlds.”

  Bosquinha laughed. “I think they'll regard us as important, but treason is hardly the way to be known as the best.”

  “Please. Don't do anything. Don't arrest Miro and Ouanda. Wait for an hour and let me meet with you and anyone else who needs to be in on the decision.”

  “The decision whether or not to rebel? I can't think why you should be in on that decision, Speaker.”

  “You'll understand at the meeting. Please, this place is too important for the chance to he missed.”

  “The chance for what?”

  “To undo what Ender did in the Xenocide three thousand years ago.”

  Bosquinha gave him a sharp-eyed look. “And here I thought you had just proved yourself to be nothing but a gossipmonger.”

  She might have been joking. Or she might not. “If you think that what I just did was gossip-mongering, you're too stupid to lead this community in anything.” He smiled.

  Bosquinha spread her hands and shrugged. «Pois ‚,» she said. Of course. What else?

  “Will you have the meeting?”

  “I'll call it. In the Bishop's chambers.”

  Ender winced.

  “The Bishop won't meet anywhere else,” she said, “and no decision to rebel will mean a thing if he doesn't agree to it.” Bosquinha laid her hand on his chest. “He may not even let you into the Cathedral. You are the infidel.”

  “But you'll try.”

  “I'll try because of what you did tonight. Only a wise man could see my people so clearly in so short a time. Only a ruthless one would say it all out loud. Your virtue and your flaw– we need them both.”

  Bosquinha turned and hurried away. Ender knew that she did not, in her inmost heart, want to comply with Starways Congress. It had been too sudden, too severe; they had preempted her authority as if she were guilty of a crime. To give in smacked of confession, and she knew she had done nothing wrong. She wanted to resist, wanted to find some plausible way to slap back at Congress and tell them to wait, to be calm. Or, if necessary, to tell them to drop dead. But she wasn't a fool. She wouldn't do anything to resist them unless she knew it would work and knew it would benefit her people. She was a good Governor, Ender knew. She would gladly sacrifice her pride, her reputation, her future for her people's sake.

  He was alone in the praqa. Everyone had gone while Bosquinha talked to him. Ender felt as an old soldier must feel, walking over placid fields at the site of a long-ago battle, hearing the echoes of the carnage in the breeze across the rustling grass.

  “Don't let them sever the ansible connection.”

  The voice in his ear startled him, but he knew it at once. “Jane,” he said.

  “I can make them think you've cut off your ansible, but if you really do it then I won't be able to help you.”

  “Jane,” he said, “you did this, didn't you! Why else would they notice what Libo and Miro and Ouanda have been doing if you didn't call it to their attention?”

  She didn't answer.

  “Jane, I'm sorry that I cut you off, I'll never–”

  He knew she knew what he would say; he didn't have to finish sentences with her. But she didn't answer.

  “I'll never turn off the–”

  What good did it do to finish sentences that he knew she understood? She hadn't forgiven him yet, that was all, or she would already be answering, telling him to stop wasting her time. Yet he couldn't keep himself from trying one more time. “I missed you. Jane. I really missed you.”

  Still she didn't answer. She had said what she had to say, to keep the ansible connection alive, and that was all. For now. Ender didn't mind waiting. It was enough to know that she was still there, listening. He wasn't alone. Ender was surprised to find tears on his cheeks. Tears of relief, he decided. Catharsis. A Speaking, a crisis, people's lives in tatters, the future of the colony in doubt. And I cry in relief because an overblown computer program is speaking to me again.

  Ela was waiting for him in his little house. Her eyes were red from crying. “Hello,” she said.

  “Did I do what you wanted?” he asked.

  “I never guessed,” she said. “He wasn't our father. I should have known.”

  “I can't think how you could have.”

  "What have I done? Calling you here to Speak my father's– Marc o's– death. " She began weeping again. "Mother'
s secrets– I thought I knew what they were, I thought it was just her files– I thought she hated Libo. "

  “All I did was open the windows and let in some air.”

  “Tell that to Miro and Ouanda.”

  “Think a moment, Ela. They would have found out eventually. The cruel thing was that they didn't know for so many years. Now that they have the truth, they can find their own way out.”

  “Like Mother did? Only this time even worse than adultery?”

  Ender touched her hair, smoothed it. She accepted his touch, his consolation. He couldn't remember if his father or mother had ever touched him with such a gesture. They must have. How else would he have learned it?

  “Ela, will you help me?”

  “Help you what? You've done your work, haven't you?”

  “This has nothing to do with Speaking for the dead. I have to know, within the hour, how the Descolada works.”

  “You'll have to ask Mother– she's the one who knows.”

  “I don't think she'd be glad to see me tonight.”

  “I'm supposed to ask her? Good evening, Mamae, you've just been revealed to all of Milagre as an adulteress who's been lying to your children all our lives. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you a couple of science questions.”

  “Ela, it's a matter of survival for Lusitania. Not to mention your brother Miro.” He reached over and turned to the terminal. “Log on,” he said.

  She was puzzled, but she did it. The computer wouldn't recognize her name. “I've been taken off.” She looked at him in alarm. “Why?”

  “It's not just you. It's everybody.”

  “It isn't a breakdown,” she said. “Somebody stripped out the log-on file.”

  “Starways Congress stripped all the local computer memory. Everything's gone. We're regarded as being in a state of rebellion. Miro and Ouanda are going to be arrested and sent to Trondheim for trial. Unless I can persuade the Bishop and Bosquinha to launch a real rebellion. Do you understand? If your mother doesn't tell you what I need to know, Miro and Ouanda will both be sent twenty-two lightyears away. The penalty for treason is death. But even going to the trial is as bad as life imprisonment. We'll all be dead or very very old before they get back.”

  Ela looked blankly at the wall. “What do you need to know?”

  "I need to know what the Committee will find when they open up her files. About how the Descolada works. "

  “Yes,” said Ela. “For Miro's sake she'll do it.” She looked at him defiantly. “She does love us, you know. For one of her children, she'd talk to you herself.”

  “Good,” said Ender. “It would be better if she came herself. To the Bishop's chambers, in an hour.”

  “Yes,” said Ela. For a moment she sat still. Then a synapse connected somewhere, and she stood up and hurried toward the door.

  She stopped. She came back, embraced him, kissed him on the cheek. “I'm glad you told it all,” she said. “I'm glad to know it.”

  He kissed her forehead and sent her on her way. When the door closed behind her, he sat down on his bed, then lay down and stared at the ceiling. He thought of Novinha, tried to imagine what she was feeling now. No matter how terrible it is, Novinha, your daughter is hurrying home to you right now, sure that despite the pain and humiliation you're going through, you'll forget yourself completely and do whatever it takes to save your son. I would trade you all your suffering, Novinha, for one child who trusted me like that.

  Chapter 16

  The Fence

  A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.)

  The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands, “Is there anyone here,” he says to them, “who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?”

  They murmur and say, “We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it.”

  The rabbi says, “Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong.” He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, “Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he'll know I am his loyal servant.”

  So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

  Another rabbi, another city, He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, “Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.”

  The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.

  As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.

  “Nor am I without sin,” he says to the people. “But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.”

  So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

  The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.

  – San Angelo, Letters to on Incipient Heretic, trans. Amai a Tudomundo Para Que Deus Vos Ame Crist o, 103:72:54:2

  Minha irma. My sister. The words kept running through Miro's head until he didn't hear them anymore, they were part of the background: A Ouanda ‚ minha irma. She's my sister. His feet carried him by habit from the praqa to the playing fields and over the saddle of the hill. The crown of the higher peak held the Cathedral and the monastery, which always loomed over the Zenador's Station, as if they were a fortress keeping watch over the gate. Did Libo walk this way as he went to meet my mother? Did they meet in the Xenobiologist's Station? Or was it more discreet, rutting in the grass like hogs on the fazendas?

  He stood at the door of the Zenador's Station and tried to think of some reason to go inside. Nothing to do there. Hadn't written a report on what happened today, but he didn't know how to write it anyway. Magical powers, that's what it was. The piggies sing to the trees and the trees split themselves into kindling. Much better than carpentry. The aboriginals are a good deal more sophisticated than previously supposed. Multiple uses for everything. Each tree is at once a totem, a grave marker, and a small lumber mill. Sister. There's something I have to do but I can't remember.

  The piggies have the most sensible plan. Live as brothers only, and never mind the women. Would have been better for you, Libo, and that's the truth– no, I should call you Papai, not Libo. Too bad Mother never told you or you could have dandled me on your knee. Both your eldest children, Ouanda on one knee and Miro on the other, aren't we proud of our two children? Born the same year, only two months apart, what a busy fellow Papai was then, sneaking along the fence to tup Mamde in her own back yard. Everyone felt sorry for you because you had nothing but daughters. No one to carry on the family name. Their sympathy was wasted. You were brimming over with sons. And I have far more sisters than I ever thought. One more sister than I wanted.

  He stood at the gate, looking up toward the woods atop the piggies' hill. There is no scientific purpose to be served by visiting at night. So I guess I'll serve an unscientific purposelessness and see if they have room for another brother in the tribe. I'm probably too big for a bedspace in the log
house, so I'll sleep outside, and I won't be much for climbing trees, but I do know a thing or two about technology, and I don't feel any particular inhibitions now about telling you anything you want to know.

  He laid his right hand on the identification box and reached out his left to pull the gate. For a split second he didn't realize what was happening. Then his hand felt like it was on fire, like it was being cut off with a rusty saw, he shouted and pulled his left hand away from the gate. Never since the gate was built had it stayed hot after the box was touched by the Zenador's hand.

  “Marcos Vladimir Ribeira von Hesse, your passage through the fence has been revoked by order of the Lusitanian Evacuation Committee.”

  Never since the gate was built had the voice challenged a Zenador. It took a moment before Miro understood what it was saying.

  “You and Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi will present yourselves to Deputy Chief of Police Faria Lima Maria do Bosque, who will arrest you in the name of Starways Congress and present you on Trondheim for trial.”

  For a moment he was lightheaded and his stomach felt heavy and sick. They know. Tonight of all nights. Everything over. Lose Ouanda, lose the piggies, lose my work, all gone. Arrest. Trondheim. Where the Speaker came from, twenty-two years in transit, everybody gone except Ouanda, the only one left, and she's my sister–

  His hand flashed out again to pull at the gate; again the excruciating pain shot through his arm, the pain nerves all alerted, all afire at once. I can't just disappear. They'll seal the gate to everyone. Nobody will go to the piggies, nobody will tell them, the piggies will wait for us to come and no one will ever come out of the gate again. Not me, not Ouanda, not the Speaker, nobody, and no explanation.

  Evacuation Committee. They'll evacuate us and wipe out every trace of our being here. That much is in the rules, but there's more, isn't there? What did they see? How did they find out? Did the Speaker tell them? He's so addicted to truth. I have to explain to the piggies why we won't be coming back, I have to tell them.