Speaker for the dead ew-2

by Orson Scott Card

  «That's nonsense,» said Dom Crist o. «That isn't our intention at all.»

  “Isn't it?” Ender retorted. “Why are we so anxious to keep them from any influence from our culture? It isn't just in the interest of science. It isn't just good xenological procedure. Remember, please, that our discovery of the ansible, of starflight, of partial gravity control, even of the weapon we used to destroy the buggers– all of them came as a direct result of our contact with the buggers. We learned most of the technology from the machines they left behind from their first foray into Earth's star system. We were using those machines long before we understood them. Some of them, like the philotic slope, we don't even understand now. We are in space precisely because of the impact of a devastatingly superior culture. And yet in only a few generations, we took their machines, surpassed them, and destroyed them. That's what our fence means– we're afraid the piggies will do the same to us. And they know that's what it means. They know it, and they hate it.”

  “We aren't afraid of them,” said the Bishop. “They're savages, for heaven's sake–”

  “That's how we looked to the buggers, too,” said Ender. “But to Pipo and Libo and Ouanda and Miro, the piggies have never looked like savages. They're different from us, yes, far more different than framlings. But they're still people. Ramen, not varelse. So when Libo saw that the piggies were in danger of starving, that they were preparing to go to war in order to cut down the population, he didn't act like a scientist. He didn't observe their war and take notes on the death and suffering. He acted like a Christian. He got experimental amaranth that Novinha had rejected for human use because it was too closely akin to Lusitanian biochemistry, and he taught the piggies how to plant it and harvest it and prepare it as food. I have no doubt that the rise in piggy population and the fields of amaranth are what the Starways Congress saw. Not a willful violation of the law, but an act of compassion and love.”

  “How can you call such disobedience a Christian act?” said the Bishop.

  “What man of you is there, when his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?”

  “The devil can quote scripture to suit his own purpose,” said the Bishop.

  “I'm not the devil,” said Ender, “and neither are the piggies. Their babies were dying of hunger, and Libo gave them food and saved their lives.”

  “And look what they did to him!”

  “Yes, let's look what they did to him. They put him to death. Exactly the way they put to death their own most honored citizens. Shouldn't that have told us something?”

  “It told us that they're dangerous and have no conscience,” said the Bishop.

  “It told us that death means something completely different to them. If you really believed that someone was perfect in heart, Bishop, so righteous that to live another day could only cause them to be less perfect, then wouldn't it be a good thing for them if they were killed and taken directly into heaven?”

  “You mock us. You don't believe in heaven.”

  “But you do! What about the martyrs, Bishop Peregrino? Weren't they caught up joyfully into heaven?”

  “Of course they were. But the men who killed them were beasts. Murdering saints didn't sanctify them, it damned their souls to hell forever.”

  “But what if the dead don't go to heaven? What if the dead are transformed into new life, right before your eyes? What if when a piggy dies, if they lay out his body just so, it takes root and turns into something else? What if it turns into a tree that lives fifty or a hundred or five hundred years more?”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded the Bishop.

  «Are you telling us that the piggies somehow metamorphose from animal to plant?» asked Dom Crist o. «Basic biology suggests that this isn't likely.»

  “It's practically impossible,” said Ender. “That's why there are only a handful of species on Lusitania that survived the Descolada. Because only a few of them were able to make the transformation. When the piggies kill one of their people, he is transformed into a tree. And the tree retains at least some of its intelligence. Because today I saw the piggies sing to a tree, and without a single tool touching it, the tree severed its own roots, fell over, and split itself into exactly the shapes and forms of wood and bark that the piggies needed. It wasn't a dream. Miro and Ouanda and I all saw it with our own eyes, and heard the song, and touched the wood, and prayed for the soul of the dead.”

  “What does this have to do with our decision?” demanded Bosquinha. “So the forests are made up of dead piggies. That's a matter for scientists.”

  “I'm telling you that when the piggies killed Pipo and Libo they thought they were helping them transform into the next stage of their existence. They weren't beasts, they were ramen, giving the highest honor to the men who had served them so well.”

  “Another moral transformation, is that it?” asked the Bishop. “Just as you did today in your Speaking, making us see Marcos Ribeira again and again, each time in a new light, now you want us to think the piggies are noble? Very well, they're noble. But I won't rebel against Congress, with all the suffering such a thing would cause, just so our scientists can teach the piggies how to make refrigerators.”

  “Please,” said Novinha.

  They looked at her expectantly.

  “You say that they stripped our files? They read them all?”

  “Yes,” said Bosquinha.

  “Then they know everything that I have in my files. About the Descolada.”

  “Yes,” said Bosquinha.

  Novinha folded her hands in her lap. “There won't be any evacuation.”

  “I didn't think so,” said Ender. “That's why I asked Ela to bring you.”

  “Why won't there be an evacuation?” asked Bosquinha.

  “Because of the Descolada.”

  “Nonsense,” said the Bishop. “Your parents found a cure for that.”

  “They didn't cure it,” said Novinha. “They controlled it. They stopped it from becoming active.”

  “That's right,” said Bosquinha. “That's why we put the additives in the water. The Colador.”

  “Every human being on Lusitania, except perhaps the Speaker, who may not have caught it yet, is a carrier of the Descolada.”

  “The additive isn't expensive,” said the Bishop. “But perhaps they might isolate us. I can see that they might do that.”

  “There's nowhere isolated enough,” said Novinha. “The Descolada is infinitely variable. It attacks any kind of genetic material. The additive can be given to humans. But can they give additives to every blade of grass? To every bird? To every fish? To every bit of plankton in the sea?”

  “They can all catch it?” asked Bosquinha. “I didn't know that.”

  “I didn't tell anybody,” said Novinha. “But I built the protection into every plant that I developed. The amaranth, the potatoes, everything– the challenge wasn't making the protein usable, the challenge was to get the organisms to produce their own Descolada blockers.”

  Bosquinha was appalled. “So anywhere we go–”

  "We can trigger the complete destruction of the biosphere.

  «And you kept this a secret?» asked Dom Crist o.

  “There was no need to tell it.” Novinha looked at her hands in her lap. “Something in the information had caused the piggies to kill Pipo. I kept it secret so no one else would know. But now, what Ela has learned over the last few years, and what the Speaker has said tonight– now I know what it was that Pipo learned. The Descolada doesn't just split the genetic molecules and prevent them from reforming or duplicating. It also encourages them to bond with completely foreign genetic molecules. Ela did the work on this against my will. All the native life on Lusitania thrives in plant-and-animal pairs. The cabra with the capim. The watersnakes with the grama. The suckflies with the reeds. The xingadora bird with the tropeqo vines. And the piggies with the trees of the forest.”

  «You're saying that one becomes the other?» Dom Crist o was at once fa
scinated and repelled.

  “The piggies may be unique in that, in transforming from the corpse of a piggy into a tree,” said Novinha. “But perhaps the cabras become fertilized from the pollen of the capim. Perhaps the flies are hatched from the tassels of the river reeds. It should be studied. I should have been studying it all these years.”

  «And now they'll know this?» asked Dom Crist o. «From your files?»

  “Not right away. But sometime in the next twenty or thirty years. Before any other framlings get here, they'll know,” said Novinha.

  “I'm not a scientist,” said the Bishop. “Everyone else seems to understand except me. What does this have to do with the evacuation?”

  Bosquinha fidgeted with her hands. “They can't take us off Lusitania,” she said. “Anywhere they took us, we'd carry the Descolada with us, and it would kill everything. There aren't enough xenobiologists in the Hundred Worlds to save even a single planet from devastation. By the time they get here, they'll know that we can't leave.”

  “Well, then,” said the Bishop. “That solves our problem. If we tell them now, they won't even send a fleet to evacuate us.”

  “No,” said Ender. “Bishop Peregrino, once they know what the Descolada will do, they'll see to it that no one leaves this planet, ever.”

  The Bishop scoffed. “What, do you think they'll blow up the planet? Come now, Speaker, there are no more Enders among the human race. The worst they might do is quarantine us here–”

  «In which case,» said Dom Crist o, «why should we submit to their control at all? We could send them a message telling them about the Descolada, informing them that we will not leave the planet and they should not come here, and that's it.»

  Bosquinha shook her head. “Do you think that none of them will say, 'The Lusitanians, just by visiting another world, can destroy it. They have a starship, they have a known propensity for rebelliousness, they have the murderous piggies. Their existence is a threat.'”

  “Who would say that?” said the Bishop.

  “No one in the Vatican,” said Ender. “But Congress isn't in the business of saving souls.”

  “And maybe they'd be right,” said the Bishop. “You said yourself that the piggies want starflight. And yet wherever they might go, they'll have this same effect. Even uninhabited worlds, isn't that right? What will they do, endlessly duplicate this bleak landscape– forests of a single tree, prairies of a single grass, with only the cabra to graze it and only the xingadora to fly above it?”

  “Maybe someday we could find a way to get the Descolada under control,” said Ela.

  “We can't stake our future on such a thin chance,” said the Bishop.

  “That's why we have to rebel,” said Ender. “Because Congress will think exactly that way. Just as they did three thousand years ago, in the Xenocide. Everybody condemns the Xenocide because it destroyed an alien species that turned out to be harmless in its intentions. But as long as it seemed that the buggers were determined to destroy humankind, the leaders of humanity had no choice but to fight back with all their strength. We are presenting them with the same dilemma again. They're already afraid of the piggies. And once they understand the Descolada, all the pretense of trying to protect the piggies will be done with. For the sake of humanity's survival, they'll destroy us. Probably not the whole planet. As you said, there are no Enders today. But they'll certainly obliterate Milagre and remove any trace of human contact. Including killing all the piggies who know us. Then they'll set a watch over this planet to keep the piggies from ever emerging from their primitive state. If you knew what they know, wouldn't you do the same?”

  «A Speaker for the Dead says this?» said Dom Crist o.

  “You were there,” said the Bishop. “You were there the first time, weren't you. When the buggers were destroyed.”

  “Last time we had no way of talking to the buggers, no way of knowing they were ramen and not varelse. This time we're here. We know that we won't go out and destroy other worlds. We know that we'll stay here on Lusitania until we can go out safely, the Descolada neutralized. This time,” said Ender, “we can keep the ramen alive, so that whoever writes the piggies' story won't have to be a Speaker for the Dead.”

  The secretary opened the door abruptly, and Ouanda burst in. “Bishop,” she said. “Mayor. You have to come. Novinha–”

  “What is it?” said the Bishop.

  “Ouanda, I have to arrest you,” said Bosquinha.

  “Arrest me later,” she said. “It's Miro. He climbed over the fence.”

  “He can't do that,” said Novinha. “It might kill him–” Then, in horror, she realized what she had said. “Take me to him–”

  «Get Navio,» said Dona Crist .

  “You don't understand,” said Ouanda. “We can't get to him. He's on the other side of the fence.”

  “Then what can we do?” asked Bosquinha.

  “Turn the fence off,” said Ouanda.

  Bosquinha looked helplessly at the others. “I can't do that. The Committee controls that now. By ansible. They'd never turn it off.”

  “Then Miro's as good as dead,” said Ouanda.

  “No,” said Novinha.

  Behind her, another figure came into the room. Small, fur-covered. None of them but Ender had ever before seen a piggy in the flesh, but they knew at once what the creature was. “Excuse me,” said the piggy. “Does this mean we should plant him now?”

  No one bothered to ask how the piggy got over the fence. They were too busy realizing what he meant by planting Miro.

  “No!” screamed Novinha.

  Mandachuva looked at her in surprise. “No?”

  “I think,” said Ender, “that you shouldn't plant any more humans.”

  Mandachuva stood absolutely still.

  “What do you mean?” said Ouanda. “You're making him upset.”

  “I expect he'll be more upset before this day is over,” said Ender. “Come, Ouanda, take us to the fence where Miro is.”

  “What good will it do if we can't get over the fence?” asked Bosquinha.

  “Call for Navio,” said Ender.

  «I'll go get him,» said Dona Crist . «You forget that no one can call anybody.»

  “I said, what good will it do?” demanded Bosquinha.

  “I told you before,” said Ender. “If you decide to rebel, we can sever the ansible connection. And then we can turn off the fence.”

  “Are you trying to use Miro's plight to force my hand?” asked the Bishop.

  “Yes,” said Ender. “He's one of your flock, isn't he? So leave the ninety-nine, shepherd, and come with us to save the one that's lost.”

  “What's happening?” asked Mandachuva.

  “You're leading us to the fence,” said Ender. “Hurry, please.”

  They filed down the stairs from the Bishop's chambers to the Cathedral below. Ender could hear the Bishop behind him, grumbling about perverting scripture to serve private ends.

  They passed down the aisle of the Cathedral, Mandachuva leading the way. Ender noticed that the Bishop paused near the altar, watching the small furred creature as the humans trooped after him. Outside the Cathedral, the Bishop caught up with him. “Tell me, Speaker,” he said, “just as a matter of opinion, if the fence came down, if we rebelled against Starways Congress, would all the rules about contact with the piggies be ended?”

  “I hope so,” said Ender. “I hope that there'll be no more unnatural barriers between us and them.”

  “Then,” said the Bishop, “we'd be able to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Little Ones, wouldn't we? There'd be no rule against it.”

  “That's right,” said Ender. “They might not be converted, but there'd be no rule against trying.”

  “I have to think about this,” said the Bishop. “But perhaps, my dear infidel, your rebellion will open the door to the conversion of a great nation. Perhaps God led you here after all.”

  By the time the Bishop, Dom Crist o, and Ender reach
ed the fence, Mandachuva and the women had already been there for some time. Ender could tell by the way Ela was standing between her mother and the fence, and the way Novinha was holding her hands out in front of her face, that Novinha had already tried to climb over the fence to reach her son. She was crying now and shouting at him. «Miro! Miro, how could you do ' this, how could you climb it–» while Ela tried to talk to her, to calm her.

  On the other side of the fence, four piggies stood watching, amazed.

  Ouanda was trembling with fear for Miro's life, but she had enough presence of mind to tell Ender what she knew he could not see for himself. “That's Cups, and Arrow, and Human, and Leaf-eater. Leaf-eater's trying to get the others to plant him. I think I know what that means, but we're all right. Human and Mandachuva have convinced them not to do it.”

  “But it still doesn't get us any closer,” said Ender. “Why did Miro do something so stupid?”

  “Mandachuva explained on the way here. The piggies chew capim and it has an anesthetic effect. They can climb the fence whenever they want. Apparently they've been doing it for years. They thought we didn't do it because we were so obedient to law. Now they know that capim doesn't have the same effect on us.”

  Ender walked to the fence. “Human,” he said.

  Human stepped forward.

  “There's a chance that we can turn off the fence. But if we do it, we're at war with all the humans on every other world. Do you understand that? The humans of Lusitania and the piggies, together, at war against all the other humans.”

  “Oh,” said Human.

  “Will we win?” asked Arrow.

  “We might,” said Ender. “And we might not.”

  “Will you give us the hive queen?” asked Human.

  “First I have to meet with the wives,” said Ender.

  The piggies stiffened.

  “What are you talking about?” asked the Bishop.