Speaker for the Dead

by Orson Scott Card

  This was the work that Miro longed to be part of. But what good were his clubbed hands and shuffling step in the amaranth fields? Of what use was he sitting at a loom, weaving cabra wool? He couldn't even talk well enough to teach.

  Ela was working on developing new strains of Earthborn plants and even small animals and insects, new species that could resist the Descolada, even neutralize it. Mother was helping her with advice, but little more, for she was working on the most vital and secret project of them all. Again, it was Ender who came to Miro and told him what only his family and Ouanda knew: that the hive queen lived, that she was being restored as soon as Novinha found a way for her to resist the Descolada, her and all the buggers that would be born to her. As soon as it was ready, the hive queen would be revived.

  And Miro would not be part of that, either. For the first time, humans and two alien races, living together as ramen on the same world, and Miro wasn't part of any of it. He was less human than the piggies were. He couldn't speak or use his hands half so well. He had stopped being a tool-using, language-speaking animal. He was varelse now. They only kept him as a pet.

  He wanted to go away. Better yet, he wanted to disappear, to go away even from himself.

  But not right now. There was a new puzzle that only he knew about, and so only he could solve. His terminal was behaving very strangely.

  He noticed it the first week after he recovered from total paralysis. He was scanning some of Ouanda's files and realized that without doing anything special, he had accessed confidential files. They were protected with several layers, he had no idea what the passwords were, and yet a simple, routine scan had brought the information forward. It was her speculations on pequenino evolution and their probable pre-Descolada society and life patterns. The sort of thing that as recently as two weeks ago she would have talked about, argued about with Miro. Now she kept it confidential and never discussed it with him at all.

  Miro didn't tell her he had seen the files, but he did steer conversations toward the subject and drew her out; she talked about her ideas willingly enough, once Miro showed his interest. Sometimes it was almost like old times. Except that he would hear the sound of his own slurred voice and keep most of his opinions to himself, merely listening to her, letting things he would have argued with pass right by. Still, seeing her confidential files allowed him to penetrate to what she was really interested in.

  But how had he seen them?

  It happened again and again. Files of Ela's, Mother's, Dom Cristao's. As the piggies began to play with their new terminal, Miro was able to watch them in an echo mode that he had never seen the terminal use before--it enabled him to watch all their computer transactions and then make some suggestions, change things a little. He took particular delight in guessing what the piggies were really trying to do and helping them, surreptitiously, to do it. But how had he got such unorthodox, powerful access to the machine?

  The terminal was learning to accommodate itself to him, too. Instead of long code sequences, he only had to begin a sequence and the machine would obey his instructions. Finally he did not even have to log on. He touched the keyboard and the terminal displayed a list of all the activities he usually engaged in, then scanned through them. He could touch a key and it would go directly to the activity he wanted, skipping dozens of preliminaries, saving him many painful minutes of typing one character at a time.

  At first he thought that Olhado had created the new program for him, or perhaps someone in the Mayor's office. But Olhado only looked blankly at what the terminal was doing and said, "Bacana," that's great. And when he sent a message to the Mayor, she never got it. Instead, the Speaker for the Dead came to visit him.

  "So your terminal is being helpful," said Ender.

  Miro didn't answer. He was too busy trying to think why the Mayor had sent the Speaker to answer his note.

  "The Mayor didn't get your message," said Ender. "I did. And it's better if you don't mention to anybody else what your terminal is doing."

  "Why?" asked Miro. That was one word he could say without slurring too much.

  "Because it isn't a new program helping you. It's a person."

  Miro laughed. No human being could be as quick as the program that was helping him. It was faster, in fact, than most programs he had worked with before, and very resourceful and intuitive; faster than a human, but smarter than a program.

  "It's an old friend of mine, I think. At least, she was the one who told me about your message and suggested that I let you know that discretion was a good idea. You see, she's a bit shy. She doesn't make many friends."

  "How many?"

  "At the present moment, exactly two. For a few thousand years before now, exactly one."

  "Not human," said Miro.

  "Raman," said Ender. "More human than most humans. We've loved each other for a long time, helped each other, depended on each other. But in the last few weeks, since I got here, we've drifted apart. I'm--involved more in the lives of people around me. Your family."

  "Mother."

  "Yes. Your mother, your brothers and sisters, the work with the piggies, the work for the hive queen. My friend and I used to talk to each other constantly. I don't have time now. We've hurt each other's feeling sometimes. She's lonely, and so I think she's chosen another companion."

  "Nao quero." Don't want one.

  "Yes you do," said Ender. "She's already helped you. Now that you know she exists, you'll find that she's--a good friend. You can't have a better one. More loyal. More helpful."

  "Puppy dog?"

  "Don't be a jackass," said Ender. "I'm introducing you to a fourth alien species. You're supposed to be a xenologer, aren't you? She knows you, Miro. Your physical problems are nothing to her. She has no body at all. She exists among the philotic disturbances in the ansible communications of the Hundred Worlds. She's the most intelligent creature alive, and you're the second human being she's ever chosen to reveal herself to."

  "How?" How did she come to be? How did she know me, to choose me?

  "Ask her yourself." Ender touched the jewel in his ear. "Just a word of advice. Once she comes to trust you, keep her with you always. Keep no secrets from her. She once had a lover who switched her off. Only for an hour, but things were never the same between them after that. They became--just friends. Good friends, loyal friends, always until he dies. But all his life he will regret that one thoughtless act of disloyalty."

  Ender's eyes glistened, and Miro realized that whatever this creature was that lived in the computer, it was no phantom, it was part of this man's life. And he was passing it down to Miro, like father to son, the right to know this friend.

  Ender left without another word, and Miro turned to the terminal. There was a holo of a woman there. She was small, sitting on a stool, leaning against a holographic wall. She was not beautiful. Not ugly, either. Her face had character. Her eyes were haunting, innocent, sad. Her mouth delicate, about to smile, about to weep. Her clothing seemed veil-like, insubstantial, and yet instead of being provocative, it revealed a sort of innocence, a girlish, small-breasted body, the hands clasped lightly in her lap, her legs childishly parted with the toes pointing inward. She could have been sitting on a teeter-totter in a playground. Or on the edge of her lover's bed.

  "Bom dia," Miro said softly.

  "Hi," she said. "I asked him to introduce us."

  She was quiet, reserved, but it was Miro who felt shy. For so long, Ouanda had been the only woman in his life, besides the women of his family, and he had little confidence in the social graces. At the same time, he was aware that he was speaking to a hologram. A completely convincing one, but a midair laser projection all the same.

  She reached up one hand and laid it gently on her breast. "Feels nothing," she said. "No nerves."

  Tears came to his eyes. Self-pity, of course. That he would probably never have a woman more substantial than this one. If he tried to touch one, his caresses would be crude pawing. Sometimes, when he w
asn't careful, he drooled and couldn't even feel it. What a lover.

  "But I have eyes," she said. "And ears. I see everything in all the Hundred Worlds. I watch the sky through a thousand telescopes. I overhear a trillion conversations every day." She giggled a little. "I'm the best gossip in the universe."

  Then, suddenly, she stood up, grew larger, closer, so that she only showed from the waist up, as if she had moved closer to an invisible camera. Her eyes burned with intensity as she stared right at him. "And you're a parochial schoolboy who's never seen anything but one town and one forest in his life."

  "Don't get much chance to travel," he said.

  "We'll see about that," she answered. "So. What do you want to do today?"

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "You don't need my name," she said.

  "How do I call you?"

  "I'm here whenever you want me."

  "But I want to know," he said.

  She touched her ear. "When you like me well enough to take me with you wherever you go, then I'll tell you my name."

  Impulsively, he told her what he had told no one else. "I want to leave this place," said Miro. "Can you take me away from Lusitania?"

  She at once became coquettish, mocking. "And we only just met! Really, Mr. Ribeira, I'm not that sort of girl."

  "Maybe when we get to know each other," Miro said, laughing.

  She made a subtle, wonderful transition, and the woman on the screen was a lanky feline, sprawling sensuously on a tree limb. She purred noisily, stretched out a limb, groomed herself. "I can break your neck with a single blow from my paw," she whispered; her tone of voice suggested seduction; her claws promised murder. "When I get you alone, I can bite your throat out with a single kiss."

  He laughed. Then he realized that in all this conversation, he had actually forgotten how slurred his speech was. She understood every word. She never said, "What? I didn't get that," or any of the other polite but infuriating things that people said. She understood him without any special effort at all.

  "I want to understand everything," said Miro. "I want to know everything and put it all together to see what it means."

  "Excellent project," she said. "It will look very good on your resume."

  Ender found that Olhado was a much better driver than he was. The boy's depth perception was better, and when he plugged his eye directly into the onboard computer, navigation practically took care of itself. Ender could devote his energies to looking.

  The scenery seemed monotonous when they first began these exploratory flights. Endless prairies, huge herds of cabra, occasional forests in the distance--they never came close to those, of course, since they didn't want to attract the attention of the piggies that lived there. Besides, they were looking for a home for the hive queen, and it wouldn't do to put her too close to any tribe.

  Today they headed west, on the other side of Rooter's Forest, and they followed a small river to its outlet. They stopped there on the beach, with breakers rolling gently to shore. Ender tasted the water. Salt. The sea.

  Olhado got the onboard terminal to display a map of this region of Lusitania, pointing out their location, Rooter's Forest, and the other piggy settlements nearby. It was a good place, and in the back of his mind Ender could sense the hive queen's approval. Near the sea, plenty of water, sunny.

  They skimmed over the water, traveling upstream a few hundred meters until the right bank rose to form a low cliff. "Any place to stop along here?" asked Ender.

  Olhado found a place, fifty meters from the crown of the hill. They walked back along the river's edge, where the reeds gave way to the grama. Every river on Lusitania looked like this, of course. Ela had easily documented the genetic patterns, as soon as she had access to Novinha's files and permission to pursue the subject. Reeds that co-reproduced with suckflies. Grama that mated with watersnakes. And then the endless capim, which rubbed its pollen-rich tassels on the bellies of fertile cabra to germinate the next generation of manure-producing animals. Entwined in the roots and stems of the capim were the tropecos, long trailing vines that Ela proved had the same genes as the xingadora, the ground-nesting bird that used the living plant for its nest. The same sort of pairing continued in the forest: Macio worms that hatched from the seeds of merdona vines and then gave birth to merdona seed. Puladors, small insects that mated with the shiny-leafed bushes in the forest. And, above all, the piggies and the trees, both at the peak of their kingdoms, plant and animal merged into one long life.

  That was the list, the whole list of surface animals and plants of Lusitania. Under water there were many, many more. But the Descolada had left Lusitania monotonous.

  And yet even the monotony had a peculiar beauty. The geography was as varied as any other world--rivers, hills, mountains, deserts, oceans, islands. The carpet of capim and the patches of forest became background music to the symphony of landforms. The eye became sensitized to undulations, outcroppings, cliffs, pits, and, above all, the sparkle and rush of water in the sunlight. Lusitania, like Trondheim, was one of the rare worlds that was dominated by a single motif instead of displaying the whole symphony of possibility. With Trondheim, however, it was because the planet was on the bare edge of habitability, its climate only just able to support surface life. Lusitania's climate and soil cried out a welcome to the oncoming plow, the excavator's pick, the mason's trowel. Bring me to life, it said.

  Ender did not understand that he loved this place because it was as devastated and barren as his own life, stripped and distorted in his childhood by events every bit as terrible, on a small scale, as the Descolada had been to this world. And yet it had thrived, had found a few threads strong enough to survive and continue to grow. Out of the challenge of the Descolada had come the three lives of the Little Ones. Out of the Battle School, out of years of isolation, had come Ender Wiggin. He fit this place as if he had planned it. The boy who walked beside him through the grama felt like his true son, as if he had known the boy from infancy. I know how it feels to have a metal wall between me and the world, Olhado. But here and now I have made the wall come down, and flesh touches earth, drinks water, gives comfort, takes love.

  The earthen bank of the river rose in terraces, a dozen meters from shore to crest. The soil was moist enough to dig and hold its shape. The hive queen was a burrower; Ender felt the desire in him to dig, and so he dug, Olhado beside him. The ground gave way easily enough, and yet the roof of their cavelet stayed firm.

 

  And so it was decided.

  "Here it is," said Ender aloud.

  Olhado grinned. But it was really Jane that Ender was talking to, and her answer that he heard. "Novinha thinks they have it. The tests all came through negative--the Descolada stayed inactive with the new Colador present in the cloned bugger cells. Ela thinks that the daisies she's been working with can be adapted to produce the Colador naturally. If that works, you'll only have to plant seeds here and there and the buggers can keep the Descolada at bay by sucking flowers."

  Her tone was lively enough, but it was all business, no fun. No fun at all. "Fine," Ender said. He felt a stab of jealousy--Jane was no doubt talking far more easily with Miro, teasing him, taunting him as she used to do with Ender.

  But it was easy enough to drive the feeling of jealousy away. He put out a hand and rested it easily on Olhado's shoulder; he momentarily pulled the boy close, and then together they walked back to the waiting flyer. Olhado marked the spot on the map and stored it. He laughed and made jokes all the way home, and Ender laughed with him. The boy wasn't Jane. But he was Olhado, and Ender loved him, and Olhado needed Ender, and that was what a few million years of evolution had decided Ender needed most. It was the hunger that had gnawed at him through all those years with Valentine, that had kept him moving from world to world. This boy with metal eyes. His bright and devastatingly destructive little brother Grego. Quara's penetrating understanding, her innocence; Quim's utter self-control, asceticism, faith; Ela's d
ependability, like a rock, and yet she knew when to move out and act; and Miro . . .

  Miro. I have no consolation for Miro, not in this world, not at this time. His life's work was taken from him, his body, his hope for the future, and nothing I can say or do will give him a vital work to do. He lives in pain, his lover turned into his sister, his life among the piggies now impossible to him as they look to other humans for friendship and learning.

  "Miro needs . . ." Ender said softly.

  "Miro needs to leave Lusitania," said Olhado.

  "Mm," said Ender.

  "You've got a starship, haven't you?" said Olhado. "I remember reading a story once. Or maybe it was a vid. About an old-time hero in the Bugger Wars, Mazer Rackham. He saved Earth from destruction once, but they knew he'd be dead long before the next battle. So they sent him out in a starship at relativistic speeds, just sent him out and had him come back. A hundred years had gone by for the Earth, but only two years for him."

  "You think Miro needs something as drastic as that?"

  "There's a battle coming. There are decisions to make. Miro's the smartest person in Lusitania, and the best. He doesn't get mad, you know. Even in the worst of times with Father. Marcao. Sorry, I still call him Father."

  "That's all right. In many ways he was."

  "Miro would think, and he'd decide the best thing to do, and it always was the best thing. Mother depended on him too. The way I see it, we need Miro when Starways Congress sends its fleet against us. He'll study all the information, everything we've learned in the years that he was gone, put it all together, and tell us what to do."

  Ender couldn't help himself. He laughed.

  "So it's a dumb idea," said Olhado.

  "You see better than anybody else I know," said Ender. "I've got to think about this, but you might be right."

  They drove on in silence for a while.

  "I was just talking," said Olhado. "When I said that about Miro. It was just something I thought, putting him together with that old story. It probably isn't even a true story."

  "It's true," said Ender.