“They are what they are,” said Ender. “They decide what changes they’ll make, not you, not from your blindly human perspective, trying to make them have full and happy lives, just like us.”
“You’re right,” said Ela. “Of course, you’re right, I’m sorry.”
To Ela, the piggies weren’t people, they were strange alien fauna, and Ela was used to discovering that other animals had inhuman life patterns. But Ender could see that Ouanda was still upset. She had made the raman transition: She thought of piggies as us instead of them. She accepted the strange behavior that she knew about, even the murder of her father, as within an acceptable range of alienness. This meant she was actually more tolerant and accepting of the piggies than Ela could possibly be; yet it also made her more vulnerable to the discovery of cruel, bestial behaviors among her friends.
Ender noticed, too, that after years of association with the piggies, Ouanda had one of their habits: At a moment of extreme anxiety, her whole body became rigid. So he reminded her of her humanity by taking her shoulder in a fatherly gesture, drawing her close under his arm.
At his touch Ouanda melted a little, laughed nervously, her voice low. “Do you know what I keep thinking?” she said. “That the little mothers have all their children and die unbaptized.”
“If Bishop Peregrino converts them,” said Ender, “maybe they’ll let us sprinkle the inside of the mothertree and say the words.”
“Don’t mock me,” Ouanda whispered.
“I wasn’t. For now, though, we’ll ask them to change enough that we can live with them, and no more. We’ll change ourselves only enough that they can bear to live with us. Agree to that, or the fence goes up again, because then we truly would be a threat to their survival.”
Ela nodded her agreement, but Ouanda had gone rigid again. Ender’s fingers suddenly dug harshly into Ouanda’s shoulder. Frightened, she nodded her agreement. He relaxed his grip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But they are what they are. If you want, they are what God made them. So don’t try to remake them in your own image.”
He returned to the mothertree. Shouter and Human were waiting.
“Please excuse the interruption,” said Ender.
“It’s all right,” said Human. “I told her what you were doing.”
Ender felt himself sink inside. “What did you tell her we were doing?”
“I said that they wanted to do something to the little mothers that would make us all more like humans, but you said they never could do that or you’d put back the fence. I told her that you said we must remain Little Ones, and you must remain humans.”
Ender smiled. His translation was strictly true, but he had the sense not to get into specifics. It was conceivable that the wives might actually want the little mothers to survive childbirth, without realizing how vast the consequences of such a simple-seeming, humanitarian change might be. Human was an excellent diplomat; he told the truth and yet avoided the whole issue.
“Well,” said Ender. “Now that we’ve all met each other, it’s time to begin serious talking.”
Ender sat down on the bare earth. Shouter squatted on the ground directly opposite him. She sang a few words.
“She says you must teach us everything you know, take us out to the stars, bring us the hive queen and give her the lightstick that this new human brought with you, or in the dark of night she’ll send all the brothers of this forest to kill all the humans in your sleep and hang you high above the ground so you get no third life at all.” Seeing the humans’ alarm, Human reached out his hand and touched Ender’s chest. “No, no, you must understand. That means nothing. That’s the way we always begin when we’re talking to another tribe. Do you think we’re crazy? We’d never kill you! You gave us amaranth, pottery, the Hive Queen and the Hegemon.”
“Tell her to withdraw that threat or we’ll never give her anything else.”
“I told you, Speaker, it doesn’t mean—”
“She said the words, and I won’t talk to her as long as those words stand.”
Human spoke to her.
Shouter jumped to her feet and walked all the way around the mothertree, her hands raised high, singing loudly.
Human leaned to Ender. “She’s complaining to the great mother and to all the wives that you’re a brother who doesn’t know his place. She’s saying that you’re rude and impossible to deal with.”
Ender nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly right. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Again Shouter squatted across from Ender. She spoke in Males’ Language.
“She says she’ll never kill any human or let any of the brothers or wives kill any of you. She says for you to remember that you’re twice as tall as any of us and you know everything and we know nothing. Now has she humiliated herself enough that you’ll talk to her?”
Shouter watched him, glumly waiting for his response.
“Yes,” said Ender. “Now we can begin.”
Novinha knelt on the floor beside Miro’s bed. Quim and Olhado stood behind her. Dom Cristão was putting Quara and Grego to bed in their room. The sound of his off-tune lullaby was barely audible behind the tortured sound of Miro’s breathing.
Miro’s eyes opened.
“Miro,” said Novinha.
Miro groaned.
“Miro, you’re home in bed. You went over the fence while it was on. Now Dr. Navio says that your brain has been damaged. We don’t know whether the damage is permanent or not. You may be partially paralyzed. But you’re alive, Miro, and Navio says that he can do many things to help you compensate for what you may have lost. Do you understand? I’m telling you the truth. It may be very bad for a while, but it’s worth trying.”
He moaned softly. But it was not a sound of pain. It was as if he were trying to talk, and couldn’t.
“Can you move your jaw, Miro?” asked Quim.
Slowly Miro’s mouth opened and closed.
Olhado held his hand a meter above Miro’s head and moved it. “Can you make your eyes follow the movement of my hand?”
Miro’s eyes followed. Novinha squeezed Miro’s hand. “Did you feel me squeeze your hand?”
Miro moaned again.
“Close your mouth for no,” said Quim, “and open your mouth for yes.”
Miro closed his mouth and said, “Mm.”
Novinha could not help herself; despite her encouraging words, this was the most terrible thing that had happened to any of her children. She had thought when Lauro lost his eyes and became Olhado—she hated the nickname, but now used it herself—that nothing worse could happen. But Miro, paralyzed, helpless, so he couldn’t even feel the touch of her hand, that could not be borne. She had felt one kind of grief when Pipo died, and another kind when Libo died, and a terrible regret at Marcão’s death. She even remembered the aching emptiness she felt as she watched them lower her mother and father into the ground. But there was no pain worse than to watch her child suffer and be unable to help.
She stood up to leave. For his sake, she would do her crying silently, and in another room.
“Mm. Mm. Mm.”
“He doesn’t want you to go,” said Quim.
“I’ll stay if you want,” said Novinha. “But you should sleep again. Navio said that the more you sleep for a while—”
“Mm. Mm. Mm.”
“Doesn’t want to sleep, either,” said Quim.
Novinha stifled her immediate response, to snap at Quim and tell him that she could hear his answers perfectly well for herself. This was no time for quarreling. Besides, it was Quim who had worked out the system that Miro was using to communicate. He had a right to take pride in it, to pretend that he was Miro’s voice. It was his way of affirming that he was part of the family. That he was not quitting because of what he learned in the praça today. It was his way of forgiving her, so she held her tongue.
“Maybe he wants to tell us something,” said Olhado.
“Mm.”
“Or ask a question?” sai
d Quim.
“Ma. Aa.”
“That’s great,” said Quim. “If he can’t move his hands, he can’t write.”
“Sem problema,” said Olhado. “Scanning. He can scan. If we bring him in by the terminal, I can make it scan the letters and he just says yes when it hits the letters he wants.”
“That’ll take forever,” said Quim.
“Do you want to try that, Miro?” asked Novinha.
He wanted to.
The three of them carried him to the front room and laid him on the bed there. Olhado oriented the terminal so it displayed all the letters of the alphabet, facing so Miro could see them. He wrote a short program that caused each letter to light up in turn for a fraction of a second. It took a few trial runs for the speed to be right—slow enough that Miro could make a sound that meant this letter before the light moved on to the next one.
Miro, in turn, kept things moving faster yet by deliberately abbreviating his words.
P-I-G.
“Piggies,” said Olhado.
“Yes,” said Novinha. “Why were you crossing the fence with the piggies?”
“Mmmmm!”
“He’s asking a question, Mother,” said Quim. “He doesn’t want to answer any.”
“Aa.”
“Do you want to know about the piggies that were with you when you crossed the fence?” asked Novinha. He did. “They’ve gone back into the forest. With Ouanda and Ela and the Speaker for the Dead.” Quickly she told him about the meeting in the Bishop’s chambers, what they had learned about the piggies, and above all what they had decided to do. “When they turned off the fence to save you, Miro, it was a decision to rebel against Congress. Do you understand? The Committee’s rules are finished. The fence is nothing but wires now. The gate will stand open.”
Tears came to Miro’s eyes.
“Is that all you wanted to know?” asked Novinha. “You should sleep.”
No, he said. No no no no.
“Wait till his eyes are clear,” said Quim. “And then we’ll scan some more.”
D-I-G-A-F-A-L—
“Diga ao Falante pelos Mortos,” said Olhado.
“What should we tell the Speaker?” asked Quim.
“You should sleep now and tell us later,” said Novinha. “He won’t be back for hours. He’s negotiating a set of rules to govern relations between the piggies and us. To stop them from killing any more of us, the way they killed Pipo and L—and your father.”
But Miro refused to sleep. He continued spelling out his message as the terminal scanned. Together the three of them worked out what he was trying to get them to tell the Speaker. And they understood that he wanted them to go now, before the negotiations ended.
So Novinha left Dom Cristão and Dona Cristã to watch over the house and the little children. On the way out of the house she stopped beside her oldest son. The exertion had worn him out; his eyes were closed and his breathing was regular. She touched his hand, held it, squeezed it; he couldn’t feel her touch, she knew, but then it was herself she was comforting, not him.
He opened his eyes. And, ever so gently, she felt his fingers tighten on hers. “I felt it,” she whispered to him. “You’ll be all right.”
He shut his eyes against his tears. She got up and walked blindly to the door. “I have something in my eye,” she told Olhado. “Lead me for a few minutes until I can see for myself.”
Quim was already at the fence. “The gate’s too far!” he shouted. “Can you climb over, Mother?”
She could, but it wasn’t easy. “No doubt about it,” she said. “Bosquinha’s going to have to let us install another gate right here.”
It was late now, past midnight, and both Ouanda and Ela was getting sleepy. Ender was not. He had been on edge for hours in his bargaining with Shouter; his body chemistry had responded, and even if he had gone home right now it would have been hours before he was capable of sleep.
He now knew far more about what the piggies wanted and needed. Their forest was their home, their nation; it was all the definition of property they had ever needed. Now, however, the amaranth fields had caused them to see that the prairie was also useful land, which they needed to control. Yet they had little concept of land measurement. How many hectares did they need to keep under cultivation? How much land could the humans use? Since the piggies themselves barely understood their needs, it was hard for Ender to pin them down.
Harder still was the concept of law and government. The wives ruled: to the piggies, it was that simple. But Ender had finally got them to understand that humans made their laws differently, and that human laws applied to human problems. To make them understand why humans needed their own laws, Ender had to explain to them human mating patterns. He was amused to note that Shouter was appalled at the notion of adults mating with each other, and of men having an equal voice with women in the making of the laws. The idea of family and kinship separate from the tribe was “brother blindness” to her. It was all right for Human to take pride in his father’s many matings, but as far as the wives were concerned, they chose fathers solely on the basis of what was good for the tribe. The tribe and the individual—they were the only entities the wives respected.
Finally, though, they understood that human laws must apply within the borders of human settlements, and piggy laws must apply within the piggy tribes. Where the borders should be was entirely a different matter. Now, after three hours, they had finally agreed to one thing and one thing only: Piggy law applied within the forest, and all humans who came within the forest were subject to it. Human law applied within the fence, and all piggies who came there were subject to human government. All the rest of the planet would be divided up later. It was a very small triumph, but at least there was some agreement.
“You must understand,” Ender told her, “that humans will need a lot of open land. But we’re only the beginning of the problem. You want the hive queen to teach you, to help you mine ore and smelt metals and make tools. But she’ll also need land. And in a very short time she’ll be far stronger than either humans or Little Ones.” Every one of her buggers, he explained, was perfectly obedient and infinitely hardworking. They would quickly outstrip the humans in their productivity and power. Once she was restored to life on Lusitania, she would have to be reckoned with at every turn.
“Rooter says she can be trusted,” said Human. And, translating for Shouter, he said, “The mothertree also gives the hive queen her trust.”
“Do you give her your land?” Ender insisted.
“The world is big,” Human translated for Shouter. “She can use all the forests of the other tribes. So can you. We give them to you freely.”
Ender looked at Ouanda and Ela. “That’s all very good,” said Ela, “but are those forests theirs to give?”
“Definitely not,” said Ouanda. “They even have wars with the other tribes.”
“We’ll kill them for you if they give you trouble,” offered Human. “We’re very strong now. Three hundred twenty babies. In ten years no tribe can stand against us.”
“Human,” said Ender, “tell Shouter that we are dealing with this tribe now. We’ll deal with other tribes later.”
Human translated quickly, his words tumbling over each other, and quickly had Shouter’s response. “No no no no no.”
“What is she objecting to?” asked Ender.
“You won’t deal with our enemies. You came to us. If you go to them, then you are the enemy, too.”
It was at that moment that the lights appeared in the forest behind them, and Arrow and Leaf-eater led Novinha, Quim, and Olhado into the wives’ clearing.
“Miro sent us,” Olhado explained.
“How is he?” asked Ouanda.
“Paralyzed,” said Quim bluntly. It saved Novinha the effort of explaining it gently.
“Nossa Senhora,” whispered Ouanda.
“But much of it is temporary,” said Novinha. “Before I left, I squeezed his hand. He felt it, and
squeezed me back. Just a little, but the nerve connections aren’t dead, not all of them, anyway.”
“Excuse me,” said Ender, “but that’s a conversation you can carry on back in Milagre. I have another matter to attend to here.”
“Sorry,” Novinha said. “Miro’s message. He couldn’t speak, but he gave it to us letter by letter, and we figured out what went in the cracks. The piggies are planning war. Using the advantages they’ve gained from us. Arrows, their greater numbers—they’d be irresistible. As I understand it, though, Miro says that their warfare isn’t just a matter of conquest of territory. It’s an opportunity for genetic mixing. Male exogamy. The winning tribe gets the use of the trees that grow from the bodies of the war dead.”
Ender looked at Human, Leaf-eater, Arrow. “It’s true,” said Arrow. “Of course it’s true. We are the wisest of tribes now. All of us will make better fathers than any of the other piggies.”
“I see,” said Ender.
“That’s why Miro wanted us to come to you now, tonight,” said Novinha. “While the negotiations still aren’t final. That has to end.”
Human stood up, bounced up and down as if he were about to take off and fly. “I won’t translate that,” said Human.
“I will,” said Leaf-eater.
“Stop!” shouted Ender. His voice was far louder than he had ever let it be heard before. Immediately everyone fell silent; the echo of his shout seemed to linger among the trees. “Leaf-eater,” said Ender, “I will have no interpreter but Human.”
“Who are you to tell me that I may not speak to the wives? I am a piggy, and you are nothing.”
“Human,” said Ender, “tell Shouter that if she lets Leaf-eater translate words that we humans have said among ourselves, then he is a spy. And if she lets him spy on us, we will go home now and you will have nothing from us. I’ll take the hive queen to another world to restore her. Do you understand?”
Of course he understood. Ender also knew that Human was pleased. Leaf-eater was trying to usurp Human’s role and discredit him—along with Ender. When Human finished translating Ender’s words, Shouter sang at Leaf-eater. Abashed, he quickly retreated to the woods to watch with the other piggies.
The Ender Quintet (Omnibus) Page 70
