The Ender Quintet (Omnibus)

by Card, Orson Scott

  Ela touched him softly on the arm. “Grego tried to stab him, Miro.” But her voice also said, Be calm, it’s all right, Grego’s in no danger and this man is not our enemy. Ender heard all this; so, it seemed, did Miro.

  “Grego,” said Miro. “I told you that someday you’d take on somebody who wasn’t afraid of you.”

  Grego, seeing an ally suddenly turn to an enemy, began to cry. “He’s killing me, he’s killing me.”

  Miro looked coldly at Ender. Ela might trust the Speaker for the Dead, but Miro didn’t, not yet.

  “I am hurting him,” said Ender. He had found that the best way to earn trust was to tell the truth. “Every time he struggles to get free, it causes him quite a bit of discomfort. And he hasn’t stopped struggling yet.”

  Ender met Miro’s gaze steadily, and Miro understood his unspoken request. He did not insist on Grego’s release. “I can’t get you out of this one, Greguinho.”

  “You’re going to let him do this?” asked Estevão.

  Miro gestured toward Estevão and spoke apologetically to Ender. “Everyone calls him Quim.” The nickname was pronounced like the word king in Stark. “It began because his middle name is Rei. But now it’s because he thinks he rules by divine right.”

  “Bastard,” said Quim. He stalked out of the room.

  At the same time, the others settled in for conversation. Miro had decided to accept the stranger, at least temporarily; therefore they could let down their guard a little. Olhado sat down on the floor; Quara returned to her previous perch on the bed. Ela leaned back against the wall. Miro pulled up another chair and sat facing Ender.

  “Why did you come to this house?” asked Miro. Ender saw from the way he asked that he, like Ela, had not told anyone that he had summoned a speaker. So neither of them knew that the other expected him. And, in fact, they almost undoubtedly had not expected him to come so soon.

  “To see your mother,” Ender said.

  Miro’s relief was almost palpable, though he made no obvious gesture. “She’s at work,” he said. “She works late. She’s trying to develop a strain of potato that can compete with the grass here.”

  “Like the amaranth?”

  He grinned. “You already heard about that? No, we don’t want it to be as good a competitor as that. But the diet here is limited, and potatoes would be a nice addition. Besides, amaranth doesn’t ferment into a very good beverage. The miners and farmers have already created a mythology of vodka that makes it the queen of distilled intoxicants.”

  Miro’s smile came to this house like sunlight through a crevice in a cave. Ender could feel the loosening of tensions. Quara wiggled her leg back and forth like an ordinary little girl. Olhado had a stupidly happy expression on his face, his eyes half-closed so that the metallic sheen was not so monstrously obvious. Ela’s smile was broader than Miro’s good humor should have earned. Even Grego had relaxed, had stopped straining against Ender’s grip.

  Then a sudden warmth on Ender’s lap told him that Grego, at least, was far from surrender. Ender had trained himself not to respond reflexively to an enemy’s actions until he had consciously decided to let his reflexes rule. So Grego’s flood of urine did not cause him to so much as flinch. He knew what Grego had been expecting—a shout of anger, and Ender flinging him away, casting him from his lap in disgust. Then Grego would be free—it would be a triumph. Ender yielded him no victory.

  Ela, however, apparently knew the expressions of Grego’s face. Her eyes went wide, and then she took an angry step toward the boy. “Grego, you impossible little—”

  But Ender winked at her and smiled, freezing her in place. “Grego has given me a little gift. It’s the only thing he has to give me, and he made it himself, so it means all the more. I like him so much that I think I’ll never let him go.”

  Grego snarled and struggled again, madly, to break free.

  “Why are you doing this!” said Ela.

  “He’s expecting Grego to act like a human being,” said Miro. “It needs doing, and nobody else has bothered to try.”

  “I’ve tried,” said Ela.

  Olhado spoke up from his place on the floor. “Ela’s the only one here who keeps us civilized.”

  Quim shouted from the other room. “Don’t you tell that bastard anything about our family!”

  Ender nodded gravely, as if Quim had offered a brilliant intellectual proposition. Miro chuckled and Ela rolled her eyes and sat down on the bed beside Quara.

  “We’re not a very happy home,” said Miro.

  “I understand,” said Ender. “With your father so recently dead.”

  Miro smiled sardonically. Olhado spoke up again. “With Father so recently alive, you mean.”

  Ela and Miro were in obvious agreement with this sentiment. But Quim shouted again. “Don’t tell him anything!”

  “Did he hurt you?” Ender asked quietly. He did not move, even though Grego’s urine was getting cold and rank.

  Ela answered. “He didn’t hit us, if that’s what you mean.”

  But for Miro, things had gone too far. “Quim’s right,” said Miro. “It’s nobody’s business but ours.”

  “No,” said Ela. “It’s his business.”

  “How is it his business?” asked Miro.

  “Because he’s here to speak Father’s death,” said Ela.

  “Father’s death!” said Olhado. “Chupa pedras! Father only died three weeks ago!”

  “I was already on my way to speak another death,” said Ender. “But someone did call for a speaker for your father’s death, and so I’ll speak for him.”

  “Against him,” said Ela.

  “For him,” said Ender.

  “I brought you here to tell the truth,” she said bitterly, “and all the truth about Father is against him.”

  Silence pressed to the corners of the room, holding them all still, until Quim walked slowly through the doorway. He looked only at Ela. “You called him,” he said softly. “You.”

  “To tell the truth!” she answered. His accusation obviously stung her; he did not have to say how she had betrayed her family and her church to bring this infidel to lay bare what had been so long concealed. “Everybody in Milagre is so kind and understanding,” she said. “Our teachers overlook little things like Grego’s thievery and Quara’s silence. Never mind that she hasn’t said a word in school, ever! Everybody pretends that we’re just ordinary children—the grandchildren of Os Venerados, and so brilliant, aren’t we, with a zenador and both biologistas in the family! Such prestige. They just look the other way when Father gets himself raging drunk and comes home and beats Mother until she can’t walk!”

  “Shut up!” shouted Quim.

  “Ela,” said Miro.

  “And you, Miro, Father shouting at you, saying terrible things until you run out of the house, you run, stumbling because you can hardly see—”

  “You have no right to tell him!” said Quim.

  Olhado leapt to his feet and stood in the middle of the room, turned around to look at them all with his unhuman eyes. “Why do you still want to hide it?” he asked softly.

  “What’s it to you” asked Quim. “He never did anything to you. You just turned off your eyes and sat there with the headphones on, listening to batuque or Bach or something—”

  “Turn off my eyes?” said Olhado. “I never turned off my eyes.”

  He whirled and walked to the terminal, which was in the corner of the room farthest from the front door. In a few quick movements he had the terminal on, then picked up an interface cable and jammed it in the socket in his right eye. It was only a simple computer linkup, but to Ender it brought back a hideous memory of the eye of a giant, torn open and oozing, as Ender bored deep, penetrated to the brain, and sent it toppling backward to its death. He froze up for a moment before he remembered that his memory was not real, it was of a computer game he had played in the Battle School. Three thousand years ago, but to him a mere twenty-five years, not such a great dista
nce that the memory had lost its power. It was his memories and dreams of the giant’s death that the buggers had taken out of his mind and turned into the signal they left for him; eventually it had led him to the hive queen’s cocoon.

  It was Jane’s voice that brought him back to the present moment. She whispered from the jewel, “If it’s all the same to you, while he’s got that eye linked up I’m going to get a dump of everything else he’s got stored away in there.”

  Then a scene began in the air over the terminal. It was not holographic. Instead the image was like bas-relief, as it would have appeared to a single observer. It was this very room, seen from the spot on the floor where a moment ago Olhado had been sitting—apparently it was his regular spot. In the middle of the floor stood a large man, strong and violent, flinging his arms about as he shouted abuse at Miro, who stood quietly, his head bent, regarding his father without any sign of anger. There was no sound—it was a visual image only. “Have you forgotten?” whispered Olhado. “Have you forgotten what it was like?”

  In the scene on the terminal Miro finally turned and left; Marcão following him to the door, shouting after him. Then he turned back into the room and stood there, panting like an animal exhausted from the chase. In the picture Grego ran to his father and clung to his leg, shouting out the door, his face making it plain that he was echoing his father’s cruel words to Miro. Marcão pried the child from his leg and walked with determined purpose into the back room.

  “There’s no sound,” said Olhado. “But you can hear it, can’t you?”

  Ender felt Grego’s body trembling on his lap.

  “There it is, a blow, a crash—she’s falling to the floor, can you feel it in your flesh, the way her body hits the concrete?”

  “Shut up, Olhado,” said Miro.

  The computer-generated scene ended. “I can’t believe you saved that,” said Ela.

  Quim was weeping, making no effort to hide it. “I killed him,” he said. “I killed him I killed him I killed him.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Miro in exasperation. “He had a rotten disease, it was congenital!”

  “I prayed for him to die!” screamed Quim. His face was mottled with passion, tears and mucus and spittle mingling around his lips. “I prayed to the Virgin, I prayed to Jesus, I prayed to Grandpa and Grandma, I said I’d go to hell for it if only he’d die, and they did it, and now I’ll go to hell and I’m not sorry for it! God forgive me but I’m glad!” Sobbing, he stumbled back out of the room. A door slammed in the distance.

  “Well, another certified miracle to the credit of Os Venerados,” said Miro. “Sainthood is assured.”

  “Shut up,” said Olhado.

  “And he’s the one who kept telling us that Christ wanted us to forgive the old fart,” said Miro.

  On Ender’s lap, Grego now trembled so violently that Ender grew concerned. He realized that Grego was whispering a word. Ela, too, saw Grego’s distress and knelt in front of the boy.

  “He’s crying, I’ve never seen him cry like this—”

  “Papa, papa, papa,” whispered Grego. His trembling had given way to great shudders, almost convulsive in their violence.

  “Is he afraid of Father?” asked Olhado. His face showed deep concern for Grego. To Ender’s relief, all their faces were full of worry. There was love in this family, and not just the solidarity of living under the rule of the same tyrant for all these years.

  “Papa’s gone now,” said Miro comfortingly. “You don’t have to worry now.”

  Ender shook his head. “Miro,” he said, “didn’t you watch Olhado’s memory? Little boys don’t judge their fathers, they love them. Grego was trying as hard as he could to be just like Marcos Ribeira. The rest of you might have been glad to see him gone, but for Grego it was the end of the world.”

  It had not occurred to any of them. Even now it was a sickening idea; Ender could see them recoil from it. And yet they knew it was true. Now that Ender had pointed it out, it was obvious.

  “Deus nos perdoa,” murmured Ela. God forgive us.

  “The things we’ve said,” whispered Miro.

  Ela reached out for Grego. He refused to go to her. Instead he did exactly what Ender expected, what he had prepared for. Grego turned in Ender’s relaxed grip, flung his arms around the neck of the speaker for the dead, and wept bitterly, hysterically.

  Ender spoke gently to the others, who watched helplessly. “How could he show his grief to you, when he thought you hated him?”

  “We never hated Grego,” said Olhado.

  “I should have known,” said Miro. “I knew he was suffering the worst pain of any of us, but it never occurred to me . . .”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” said Ender. “It’s the kind of thing that only a stranger can see.”

  He heard Jane whispering in his ear. “You never cease to amaze me, Andrew, the way you turn people into plasma.”

  Ender couldn’t answer her, and she wouldn’t believe him anyway. He hadn’t planned this, he had played it by ear. How could he have guessed that Olhado would have a recording of Marcão’s viciousness to his family? His only real insight was with Grego, and even that was instinctive, a sense that Grego was desperately hungry for someone to have authority over him, for someone to act like a father to him. Since his own father had been cruel, Grego would believe only cruelty as a proof of love and strength. Now his tears washed Ender’s neck as hotly as, a moment before, his urine had soaked Ender’s thighs.

  He had guessed what Grego would do, but Quara managed to take him by surprise. As the others watched Grego’s weeping in silence, she got off the bed and walked directly to Ender. Her eyes were narrow and angry. “You stink!” she said firmly. Then she marched out of the room toward the back of the house.

  Miro barely suppressed his laughter, and Ela smiled. Ender raised his eyebrows as if to say, You win some, you lose some.

  Olhado seemed to hear his unspoken words. From his chair by the terminal, the metal-eyed boy said softly, “You win with her, too. It’s the most she’s said to anyone outside the family in months.”

  But I’m not outside the family, Ender said silently. Didn’t you notice? I’m in the family now, whether you like it or not. Whether I like it or not.

  After a while Grego’s sobbing stopped. He was asleep. Ender carried him to his bed; Quara was already asleep on the other side of the small room. Ela helped Ender strip off Grego’s urine-soaked pants and put looser underwear on him—her touch was gentle and deft, and Grego did not waken.

  Back in the front room Miro eyed Ender clinically. “Well, Speaker, you have a choice. My pants will be tight on you and too short in the crotch, but Father’s would fall right off.”

  It took Ender a moment to remember. Grego’s urine had long since dried. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I can change when I get home.”

  “Mother won’t be home for another hour. You came to see her, didn’t you? We can have your pants clean by then.”

  “Your pants, then,” said Ender. “I’ll take my chances with the crotch.”

  8

  DONA IVANOVA

  It means a life of constant deception. You will go out and discover something, something vital, and then when you get back to the station you’ll write up a completely innocuous report, one which mentions nothing that we learned through cultural contamination.

  You’re too young to understand what torture this is. Father and I began doing this because we couldn’t bear to withhold knowledge from the piggies. You will discover, as I have, that it is no less painful to withhold knowledge from your fellow scientists. When you watch them struggle with a question, knowing that you have the information that could easily resolve their dilemma; when you see them come very near the truth and then for lack of your information retreat from their correct conclusions and return to error—you would not be human if it didn’t cause you great anguish.

  You must remind yourselves, always: It is their law, their choi
ce. They are the ones who built the wall between themselves and the truth, and they would only punish us if we let them know how easily and thoroughly that wall has been breached. And for every framling scientist who is longing for the truth, there are ten petty-minded descabeçados [headless ones] who despise knowledge, who never think of an original hypothesis, whose only labor is to prey on the writings of the true scientists in order to catch tiny errors or contradictions or lapses in method. These suckflies will pore over every report you make, and if you are careless even once they will catch you.

  That means you can’t even mention a piggy whose name is derived from cultural contamination: “Cups” would tell them that we have taught them rudimentary pottery-making. “Calendar” and “Reaper” are obvious. And God himself couldn’t save us if they learned Arrow’s name.

  —Memo from Liberdade Figueira de Medici to Ouanda Figueira Mucumbi and Miro Ribeira von Hesse, retrieved from Lusitanian files by Congressional order and introduced as evidence in the Trial In Absentia of the Xenologers of Lusitania on Charges of Treason and Malfeasance

  Novinha lingered in the Biologista’s Station even though her meaningful work was finished more than an hour ago. The cloned potato plants were all thriving in nutrient solution; now it would be a matter of making daily observations to see which of her genetic alterations would produce the hardiest plant with the most useful root.

  If I have nothing to do, why don’t I go home? She had no answer for the question. Her children needed her, that was certain; she did them no kindness by leaving early each morning and coming home only after the little ones were asleep. And yet even now, knowing she should go back, she sat staring at the laboratory, seeing nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.

  She thought of going home, and could not imagine why she felt no joy at the prospect. After all, she reminded herself, Marcão is dead. He died three weeks ago. Not a moment too soon. He did all that I ever needed him for, and I did all that he wanted, but all our reasons expired four years before he finally rotted away. In all that time we never shared a moment of love, but I never thought of leaving him. Divorce would have been impossible, but desquite would have been enough. To stop the beatings. Even yet her hip was stiff and sometimes painful from the last time he had thrown her to the concrete floor. What lovely memorabilia you left behind, Cão, my dog of a husband.