Speaker for the Dead

by Orson Scott Card

  Thus Novinha passed the day, doing no work, while her thoughts also refused to carry her to any sort of conclusion.

  In midafternoon Quim came to the door. "I'm sorry to bother you, Mother."

  "It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm useless today, anyway."

  "I know you don't care that Olhado is spending his time with that satanic bastard, but I thought you should know that Quara went straight there after school. To his house."

  "Oh?"

  "Or don't you care about that either, Mother? What, are you planning to turn down the sheets and let him take Father's place completely?"

  Novinha leapt to her feet and advanced on the boy with cold fury. He wilted before her.

  "I'm sorry, Mother, I was so angry--"

  "In all my years of marriage to your father, I never once permitted him to raise a hand against my children. But if he were alive today I'd ask him to give you a thrashing."

  "You could ask," said Quim defiantly, "but I'd kill him before I let him lay a hand on me. You might like getting slapped around, but nobody'll ever do it to me!"

  She didn't decide to do it; her hand swung out and slapped his face before she noticed it was happening.

  It couldn't have hurt him very much. But he immediately burst into tears, slumped down, and sat on the floor, his back to Novinha. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he kept murmuring as he cried.

  She knelt behind him and awkwardly rubbed his shoulders. It occurred to her that she hadn't so much as embraced the boy since he was Grego's age. When did I decide to be so cold? And why, when I touched him again, was it a slap instead of a kiss?

  "I'm worried about what's happening, too," said Novinha.

  "He's wrecking everything," said Quim. "He's come here and everything's changing."

  "Well, for that matter, Estevao, things weren't so very wonderful that a change wasn't welcome."

  "Not his way. Confession and penance and absolution, that's the change we need."

  Not for the first time, Novinha envied Quim's faith in the power of the priests to wash away sin. That's because you've never sinned, my son, that's because you know nothing of the impossibility of penance.

  "I think I'll have a talk with the Speaker," said Novinha.

  "And take Quara home?"

  "I don't know. I can't help but notice that he got her talking again. And it isn't as if she likes him. She hasn't a good word to say about him."

  "Then why did she go to his house?"

  "I suppose to say something rude to him. You've got to admit that's an improvement over her silence."

  "The devil disguises himself by seeming to do good acts, and then--"

  "Quim, don't lecture me on demonology. Take me to the Speaker's house, and I'll deal with him."

  They walked on the path around the bend of the river. The watersnakes were molting, so that snags and fragments of rotting skin made the ground slimy underfoot. That's my next project, thought Novinha. I need to figure out what makes these nasty little monsters tick, so that maybe I can find something useful to do with them. Or at least keep them from making the riverbank smelly and foul for six weeks out of the year. The only saving grace was that the snakeskin seemed to fertilize the soil; the soft rivergrass grew in thickest where the snakes molted. It was the only gentle, pleasant form of life native to Lusitania; all summer long people came to the riverbank to lie on the narrow strip of natural lawn that wound between the reeds and the harsh prairie grass. The snakeskin slime, unpleasant as it was, still promised good things for the future.

  Quim was apparently thinking along the same lines. "Mother, can we plant some rivergrass near our house sometime?"

  "It's one of the first things your grandparents tried, years ago. But they couldn't figure out how to do it. The rivergrass pollinates, but it doesn't bear seed, and when they tried to transplant it, it lived for a while and then died, and didn't grow back the next year. I suppose it just has to be near the water."

  Quim grimaced and walked faster, obviously a little angry. Novinha sighed. Quim always seemed to take it so personally that the universe didn't always work the way he wanted it to.

  They reached the Speaker's house not long after. Children were, of course, playing in the praca--they spoke loudly to hear each other over the noise.

  "Here it is," said Quim. "I think you should get Olhado and Quara out of there."

  "Thanks for showing me the house," she said.

  "I'm not kidding. This is a serious confrontation between good and evil."

  "Everything is," said Novinha. "It's figuring out which is which that takes so much work. No, no, Quim, I know you could tell me in detail, but--"

  "Don't condescend to me, Mother."

  "But Quim, it seems so natural, considering how you always condescend to me."

  His face went tight with anger.

  She reached out and touched him tentatively, gently; his shoulder tautened against her touch as if her hand were a poisonous spider. "Quim," she said, "don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but the map."

  He shrugged her hand away and stalked off. My, but I miss the days when we never talked to each other for weeks at a time.

  She clapped her hands loudly. In a moment the door opened. It was Quara. "Oi, Maezinha," she said, "tambem veio jogar?" Did you come to play, too?

  Olhado and the Speaker were playing a game of starship warfare on the terminal. The Speaker had been given a machine with a far larger and more detailed holographic field than most, and the two of them were operating squadrons of more than a dozen ships at the same time. It was very complex, and neither of them looked up or even greeted her.

  "Olhado told me to shut up or he'd rip my tongue out and make me eat it in a sandwich," said Quara. "So you better not say anything till the game's over."

  "Please sit down," murmured the Speaker.

  "You are butchered now, Speaker," crowed Olhado.

  More than half of the Speaker's fleet disappeared in a series of simulated explosions. Novinha sat down on a stool.

  Quara sat on the floor beside her. "I heard you and Quim talking outside," she said. "You were shouting, so we could hear everything."

  Novinha felt herself blushing. It annoyed her that the Speaker had heard her quarreling with her son. It was none of his business. Nothing in her family was any of his business. And she certainly didn't approve of him playing games of warfare. It was so archaic and outmoded, anyway. There hadn't been any battles in space in hundreds of years, unless running fights with smugglers counted. Milagre was such a peaceful place that nobody even owned a weapon more dangerous than the Constable's jolt. Olhado would never see a battle in his life. And here he was caught up in a game of war. Maybe it was something evolution had bred into males of the species, the desire to blast rivals into little bits or mash them to the ground. Or maybe the violence that he saw in his home has made him seek it out in his play. My fault. Once again, my fault.

  Suddenly Olhado screamed in frustration, as his fleet disappeared in a series of explosions. "I didn't see it! I can't believe you did that! I didn't even see it coming!"

  "So, don't yell about it," said the Speaker. "Play it back and see how I did it, so you can counter it next time."

  "I thought you speakers were supposed to be like priests or something. How did you get so good at tactics?"

  The Speaker smiled pointedly at Novinha as he answered. "Sometimes it's a little like a battle just to get people to tell you the truth."

  Olhado leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed, as he replayed what he saw of the game.

  "You've been prying," said Novinha. "And you weren't very clever about it. Is that what passes for 'tactics' among speakers for the dead?"

  "It got you here, didn't it?" The Speaker smiled.

  "What were you looking for in my files?"

  "I came to speak Pipo's death."

  "I didn't kill him. My files are none of your business."

  "You c
alled me here."

  "I changed my mind. I'm sorry. It still doesn't give you the right to--"

  His voice suddenly went soft, and he knelt in front of her so that she could hear his words. "Pipo learned something from you, and whatever he learned, the piggies killed him because of it. So you locked your files away where no one could ever find it out. You even refused to marry Libo, just so he wouldn't get access to what Pipo saw. You've twisted and distorted your life and the lives of everybody you loved in order to keep Libo and now Miro from learning that secret and dying."

  Novinha felt a sudden coldness, and her hands and feet began to tremble. He had been here three days, and already he knew more than anyone but Libo had ever guessed. "It's all lies," she said.

  "Listen to me, Dona Ivanova. It didn't work. Libo died anyway, didn't he? Whatever your secret is, keeping it to yourself didn't save his life. And it won't save Miro, either. Ignorance and deception can't save anybody. Knowing saves them."

  "Never," she whispered.

  "I can understand your keeping it from Libo and Miro, but what am I to you? I'm nothing to you, so what does it matter if I know the secret and it kills me?"

  "It doesn't matter at all if you live or die," said Novinha, "but you'll never get access to those files."

  "You don't seem to understand that you don't have the right to put blinders on other people's eyes. Your son and his sister go out every day to meet with the piggies, and thanks to you, they don't know whether their next word or their next act will be their death sentence. Tomorrow I'm going with them, because I can't speak Pipo's death without talking to the piggies--"

  "I don't want you to speak Pipo's death."

  "I don't care what you want, I'm not doing it for you. But I am begging you to let me know what Pipo knew."

  "You'll never know what Pipo knew, because he was a good and kind and loving person who--"

  "Who took a lonely, frightened little girl and healed the wounds in her heart." As he said it, his hand rested on Quara's shoulder.

  It was more than Novinha could bear. "Don't you dare to compare yourself to him! Quara isn't an orphan, do you hear me? She has a mother, me, and she doesn't need you, none of us need you, none of us!" And then, inexplicably, she was crying. She didn't want to cry in front of him. She didn't want to be here. He was confusing everything. She stumbled to the door and slammed it behind her. Quim was right. He was like the devil. He knew too much, demanded too much, gave too much, and already they all needed him too much. How could he have acquired so much power over them in so short a time?

  Then she had a thought that at once dried up her unshed tears and filled her with terror. He had said that Miro and his sister went out to the piggies every day. He knew. He knew all the secrets.

  All except the secret that she didn't even know herself--the one that Pipo had somehow discovered in her simulation. If he ever got that, he'd have everything that she had hidden for all these years. When she called for the speaker for the dead, she had wanted him to discover the truth about Pipo; instead, he had come and discovered the truth about her.

  The door slammed. Ender leaned on the stool where she had sat and put his head down on his hands.

  He heard Olhado stand up and walk slowly across the room toward him.

  "You tried to access Mother's files," he said quietly.

  "Yes," said Ender.

  "You got me to teach you how to do searches so that you could spy on my own mother. You made a traitor out of me."

  There was no answer that would satisfy Olhado right now; Ender didn't try. He waited in silence as Olhado walked to the door and left.

  The turmoil he felt was not silent, however, to the hive queen. He felt her stir in his mind, drawn by his anguish. No, he said to her silently. There's nothing you can do, nothing I can explain. Human things, that's all, strange and alien human problems that are beyond comprehension.

  And he felt her touch him inwardly, touch him like the breeze in the leaves of a tree; he felt the strength and vigor of upward-thrusting wood, the firm grip of roots in earth, the gentle play of sunlight on passionate leaves. The feeling faded as the hive queen retreated from his mind. The strength of the tree stayed with him, the calm of its quietude replaced his own tortured silence.

  It had been only a moment; the sound of Olhado closing the door still rang in the room. Beside him, Quara jumped to her feet and skipped across the floor to his bed. She jumped up and bounced on it a few times.

  "You only lasted a couple of days," she said cheerfully. "Everybody hates you now."

  Ender laughed wryly and turned around to look at her. "Do you?"

  "Oh, yes," she said. "I hated you first of all, except maybe Quim." She slid off the bed and walked to the terminal. One key at a time, she carefully logged on. A group of double-column addition problems appeared in the air above the terminal. "You want to see me do arithmetic?"

  Ender got up and joined her at the terminal. "Sure," he said. "Those look hard, though."

  "Not for me," she said boastfully. "I do them faster than anybody."

  13

  ELA

  MIRO: The piggies call themselves males, but we're only taking their word for it.

  OUANDA: Why would they lie?

  MIRO: I know you're young and naive, but there's some missing equipment.

  OUANDA: I passed physical anthropology. Who says they do it the way we do it?

  MIRO: Obviously they don't. (For that matter, WE don't do it at all.) Maybe I've figured out where their genitals are. Those bumps on their bellies, where the hair is light and fine.

  OUANDA: Vestigial nipples. Even you have them.

  MIRO: I saw Leaf-eater and Pots yesterday, about ten meters off, so I didn't see them WELL, but Pots was stroking Leaf-eater's belly, and I think those belly-bumps might have tumesced.

  OUANDA: Or they might not.

  MIRO: One thing for sure. Leaf-eater's belly was wet--the sun was reflected off it--and he was enjoying it.

  OUANDA: This is perverted.

  MIRO: Why not? They're all bachelors, aren't they? They're adults, but their so-called wives haven't introduced any of them to the joys of fatherhood.

  OUANDA: I think a sex-starved zenador is projecting his own frustrations onto his subjects.

  --Marcos Vladimir "Miro" Ribeira von Hesse and Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi, Working Notes, 1970:1:4:30

  The clearing was very still. Miro saw at once that something was wrong. The piggies weren't doing anything. Just standing or sitting here and there. And still; hardly a breath. Staring at the ground.

  Except Human, who emerged from the forest behind them. He walked slowly, stiffly around to the front. Miro felt Ouanda's elbow press against him, but he did not look at her. He knew she was thinking the same thing he thought. Is this the moment that they will kill us, as they killed Libo and Pipo?

  Human regarded them steadily for several minutes. It was unnerving to have him wait so long. But Miro and Ouanda were disciplined. They said nothing, did not even let their faces change from the relaxed, meaningless expression they had practiced for so many years. The art of noncommunication was the first one they had to learn before Libo would let either of them come with him. Until their faces showed nothing, until they did not even perspire visibly under emotional stress, no piggy would see them. As if it did any good--Human was too adroit at turning evasions into answers, gleaning facts from empty statements. Even their absolute stillness no doubt communicated their fear, but out of that circle there could be no escape. Everything communicated something.

  "You have lied to us," said Human.

  Don't answer, Miro said silently, and Ouanda was as wordless as if she had heard him. No doubt she was also thinking the same message to him.

  "Rooter says that the Speaker for the Dead wants to come to us."

  It was the most maddening thing about the piggies. Whenever they had something outrageous to say
, they always blamed it on some dead piggy who couldn't possibly have said it. No doubt there was some religious ritual involved: Go to their totem tree, ask a leading question, and lie there contemplating the leaves or the bark or something until you get exactly the answer you want.

  "We never said otherwise," said Miro.

  Ouanda breathed a little more quickly.

  "You said he wouldn't come."

  "That's right," said Miro. "He wouldn't. He has to obey the law just like anyone else. If he tried to pass through the gate without permission--"

  "That's a lie."

  Miro fell silent.

  "It's the law," said Ouanda quietly.

  "The law has been twisted before this," said Human. "You could bring him here, but you don't. Everything depends on you bringing him here. Rooter says the hive queen can't give us her gifts unless he comes."

  Miro quelled his impatience. The hive queen! Hadn't he told the piggies a dozen times that all the buggers were killed? And now the dead hive queen was talking to them as much as dead Rooter. The piggies would be much easier to deal with if they could stop getting orders from the dead.

  "It's the law," said Ouanda again. "If we even ask him to come, he might report us and we'd be sent away, we'd never come to you again."

  "He won't report you. He wants to come."

  "How do you know?"

  "Rooter says."

  There were times that Miro wanted to chop down the totem tree that grew where Rooter had been killed. Maybe then they'd shut up about what Rooter says. But instead they'd probably name some other tree Rooter and be outraged as well. Don't even admit that you doubt their religion, that was a textbook rule; even offworld xenologers, even anthropologists knew that.

  "Ask him," said Human.

  "Rooter?" asked Ouanda.

  "He wouldn't speak to you," said Human. Contemptuously? "Ask the Speaker whether he'll come or not."

  Miro waited for Ouanda to answer. She knew already what his answer would be. Hadn't they argued it out a dozen times in the last two days? He's a good man, said Miro. He's a fake, said Ouanda. He was good with the little ones, said Miro. So are child molesters, said Ouanda. I believe in him, said Miro. Then you're an idiot, said Ouanda. We can trust him, said Miro. He'll betray us, said Ouanda. And that was where it always ended.