The Ender Quintet (Omnibus)

by Card, Orson Scott

  Don’t kid yourself about what Ela does and doesn’t know, Ender said silently.

  “Libo gave it to them, taught them how to plant it. Then how to grind it, make flour, turn it into bread. Nasty-tasting stuff, but it gave them a diet directly under their control for the first time ever. They’ve been fat and sassy ever since.”

  Ouanda’s voice was bitter. “But they killed Father right after the first loaves were taken to the wives.”

  Ender walked in silence for a few moments, trying to make sense of this. The piggies killed Libo immediately after he saved them from starvation? Unthinkable, and yet it happened. How could such a society evolve, killing those who contributed most to its survival? They should do the opposite—they should reward the valuable ones by enhancing their opportunity to reproduce. That’s how communities improve their chances of surviving as a group. How could the piggies possibly survive, murdering those who contribute most to their survival?

  And yet there were human precedents. These children, Miro and Ouanda, with the Questionable Activities—they were better and wiser, in the long run, than the Starways committee that made the rules. But if they were caught, they would be taken from their homes to another world—already a death sentence, in a way, since everyone they knew would be dead before they could ever return—and they would be tried and punished, probably imprisoned. Neither their ideas nor their genes would propagate, and society would be impoverished by it.

  Still, just because humans did it, too, did not make it sensible. Besides, the arrest and imprisonment of Miro and Ouanda, if it ever happened, would make sense if you viewed humans as a single community, and the piggies as their enemies; if you thought that anything that helped the piggies survive was somehow a menace to humanity. Then the punishment of people who enhanced the piggies’ culture would be designed, not to protect the piggies, but to keep the piggies from developing.

  At that moment Ender saw clearly that the rules governing human contact with the piggies did not really function to protect the piggies at all. They functioned to guarantee human superiority and power. From that point of view, by performing their Questionable Activities, Miro and Ouanda were traitors to the self-interest of their own species.

  “Renegades,” he said aloud.

  “What?” said Miro. “What did you say?”

  “Renegades. Those who have denied their own people, and claimed the enemy as their own.”

  “Ah,” said Miro.

  “We’re not,” said Ouanda.

  “Yes we are,” said Miro.

  “I haven’t denied my humanity!”

  “The way Bishop Peregrino defines it, we denied our humanity long ago,” said Miro.

  “But the way I define it—” she began.

  “The way you define it,” said Ender, “the piggies are also human. That’s why you’re a renegade.”

  “I thought you said we treated the piggies like animals!” Ouanda said.

  “When you don’t hold them accountable, when you don’t ask them direct questions, when you try to deceive them, then you treat them like animals.”

  “In other words,” said Miro, “when we do follow the committee rules.”

  “Yes,” said Ouanda, “yes, that’s right, we are renegades.”

  “And you?” said Miro. “Why are you a renegade?”

  “Oh, the human race kicked me out a long time ago. That’s how I got to be a speaker for the dead.”

  With that they arrived at the piggies’ clearing.

  Mother wasn’t at dinner and neither was Miro. That was fine with Ela. When either one of them was there, Ela was stripped of her authority; she couldn’t keep control over the younger children. And yet neither Miro nor Mother took Ela’s place, either. Nobody obeyed Ela and nobody else tried to keep order. So it was quieter, easier when they stayed away.

  Not that the little ones were particularly well-behaved even now. They just resisted her less. She only had to yell at Grego a couple of times to keep him from poking and kicking Quara under the table. And today both Quim and Olhado were keeping to themselves. None of the normal bickering.

  Until the meal was over.

  Quim leaned back in his chair and smiled maliciously at Olhado. “So you’re the one who taught that spy how to get into Mother’s files.”

  Olhado turned to Ela. “You left Quim’s face open again, Ela. You’ve got to learn to be tidier.” It was Olhado’s way of appealing, through humor, for Ela’s intervention.

  Quim did not want Olhado to have any help. “Ela’s not on your side this time, Olhado. Nobody’s on your side. You helped that sneaking spy get into Mother’s files, and that makes you as guilty as he is. He’s the devil’s servant, and so are you.”

  Ela saw the fury in Olhado’s body; she had a momentary image in her mind of Olhado flinging his plate at Quim. But the moment passed. Olhado calmed himself. “I’m sorry,” Olhado said. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

  He was giving in to Quim. He was admitting Quim was right.

  “I hope,” said Ela, “that you mean that you’re sorry that you didn’t mean to do it. I hope you aren’t apologizing for helping the Speaker for the Dead.”

  “Of course he’s apologizing for helping the spy,” said Quim.

  “Because,” said Ela, “we should all help Speaker all we can.”

  Quim jumped to his feet, leaned across the table to shout in her face. “How can you say that! He was violating Mother’s privacy, he was finding out her secrets, he was—”

  To her surprise Ela found herself also on her feet, shoving him back across the table, shouting back at him, and louder. “Mother’s secrets are the cause of half the poison in this house! Mother’s secrets are what’s making us all sick, including her! So maybe the only way to make things right here is to steal all her secrets and get them out in the open where we can kill them!” She stopped shouting. Both Quim and Olhado stood before her, pressed against the far wall as if her words were bullets and they were being executed. Quietly, intensely, Ela went on. “As far as I’m concerned, the Speaker for the Dead is the only chance we have to become a family again. And Mother’s secrets are the only barrier standing in his way. So today I told him everything I knew about what’s in Mother’s files, because I want to give him every shred of truth that I can find.”

  “Then you’re the worst traitor of all,” said Quim. His voice was trembling. He was about to cry.

  “I say that helping the Speaker for the Dead is an act of loyalty,” Ela answered. “The only real treason is obeying Mother, because what she wants, what she has worked for all her life, is her own self-destruction and the destruction of this family.”

  To Ela’s surprise, it was not Quim but Olhado who wept. His tear glands did not function, of course, having been removed when his eyes were installed. So there was no moistening of his eyes to warn of the onset of crying. Instead he doubled over with a sob, then sank down along the wall until he sat on the floor, his head between his knees, sobbing and sobbing. Ela understood why. Because she had told him that his love for the Speaker was not disloyal, that he had not sinned, and he believed her when she told him that, he knew that it was true.

  Then she looked up from Olhado to see Mother standing in the doorway. Ela felt herself go weak inside, trembling at the thought of what Mother must have overheard.

  But Mother did not seem angry. Just a little sad, and very tired. She was looking at Olhado.

  Quim’s outrage found his voice. “Did you hear what Ela was saying?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Mother, never taking her eyes from Olhado. “And for all I know she might be right.”

  Ela was no less unnerved than Quim.

  “Go to your rooms, children,” Mother said quietly. “I need to talk to Olhado.”

  Ela beckoned to Grego and Quara, who slid off their chairs and scurried to Ela’s side, eyes wide with awe at the unusual goings-on. After all, even Father had never been able to make Olhado cry. She led them out of the kitchen,
back to their bedroom. She heard Quim walk down the hall and go into his own room, slam the door, and hurl himself on his bed. And in the kitchen Olhado’s sobs faded, calmed, ended as Mother, for the first time since he lost his eyes, held him in her arms and comforted him, shedding her own silent tears into his hair as she rocked him back and forth.

  Miro did not know what to make of the Speaker for the Dead. Somehow he had always imagined a Speaker to be very much like a priest—or rather, like a priest was supposed to be. Quiet, contemplative, withdrawn from the world, carefully leaving action and decision to others. Miro had expected him to be wise.

  He had not expected him to be so intrusive, so dangerous. Yes, he was wise, all right, he kept seeing past pretense, kept saying or doing outrageous things that were, when you thought about it, exactly right. It was as if he were so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn’t even know yourself that you had them in you.

  How many times had Miro stood with Ouanda just like this, watching as Libo handled the piggies? But always with Libo they had understood what he was doing; they knew his technique, knew his purpose. The Speaker, however, followed lines of thought that were completely alien to Miro. Even though he wore a human shape, it made Miro wonder if Ender was really a framling—he could be as baffling as the piggies. He was as much a ramen as they were, alien but still not animal.

  What did the Speaker notice? What did he see? The bow that Arrow carried? The sun-dried pot in which merdona root soaked and stank? How many of the Questionable Activities did he recognize, and how many did he think were native practices?

  The piggies spread out the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. “You,” said Arrow, “you wrote this?”

  “Yes,” said the Speaker for the Dead.

  Miro looked at Ouanda. Her eyes danced with vindication. So the Speaker is a liar.

  Human interrupted. “The other two, Miro and Ouanda, they think you’re a liar.”

  Miro immediately looked at the Speaker, but he wasn’t glancing at them. “Of course they do,” he said. “It never occurred to them that Rooter might have told you the truth.”

  The Speaker’s calm words disturbed Miro. Could it be true? After all, people who traveled between star systems skipped decades, often centuries in getting from one system to another. Sometimes as much as half a millennium. It wouldn’t take all that many voyages for a person to survive three thousand years. But that would be too incredible a coincidence, for the original Speaker for the Dead to come here. Except that the original Speaker for the Dead was the one who had written the Hive Queen and the Hegemon; he would be interested in the first race of ramen since the buggers. I don’t believe it, Miro told himself, but he had to admit the possibility that it might just be true.

  “Why are they so stupid?” asked Human. “Not to know the truth when they hear it?”

  “They aren’t stupid,” said the Speaker. “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe, and those we never think to question. They never thought to question the idea that the original Speaker for the Dead died three thousand years ago, even though they know how star travel prolongs life.”

  “But we told them.”

  “No—you told them that the hive queen told Rooter that I wrote this book.”

  “That’s why they should have known it was true,” said Human. “Rooter is wise, he’s a father; he would never make a mistake.”

  Miro did not smile, but he wanted to. The Speaker thought he was so clever, but now here he was, where all the important questions ended, frustrated by the piggies’ insistence that their totem trees could talk to them.

  “Ah,” said Speaker. “There’s so much that we don’t understand. And so much that you don’t understand. We should tell each other more.”

  Human sat down beside Arrow, sharing the position of honor with him. Arrow gave no sign of minding. “Speaker for the Dead,” said Human, “will you bring the hive queen to us?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” said the Speaker.

  Again Miro looked at Ouanda. Was the Speaker insane, hinting that he could deliver what could not be delivered?

  Then he remembered what the Speaker had said about questioning all our beliefs except the ones we really believed. Miro had always taken for granted what everyone knew—that all the buggers had been destroyed. But what if a hive queen had survived? What if that was how the Speaker for the Dead had been able to write his book, because he had a bugger to talk to? It was unlikely in the extreme, but it was not impossible. Miro didn’t know for sure that the last bugger had been killed. He only knew that everybody believed it, and that no one in three thousand years had produced a shred of evidence to the contrary.

  But even if it was true, how could Human have known it? The simplest explanation was that the piggies had incorporated the powerful story of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon into their religion, and were unable to grasp the idea that there were many speakers for the dead, and none of them was the author of the book; that all the buggers were dead, and no hive queen could ever come. That was the simplest explanation, the one easiest to accept. Any other explanation would force him to admit the possibility that Rooter’s totem tree somehow talked to the piggies.

  “What will make you decide?” said Human. “We give gifts to the wives, to win their honor, but you are the wisest of all humans, and we have nothing that you need.”

  “You have many things that I need,” said Speaker.

  “What? Can’t you make better pots than these? Truer arrows? The cape I wear is made from cabra wool—but your clothing is finer.”

  “I don’t need things like that,” said Speaker. “What I need are true stories.”

  Human leaned closer, then let his body become rigid in excitement, in anticipation. “O Speaker!” he said, and his voice was powerful with the importance of his words. “Will you add our story to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon?”

  “I don’t know your story,” said the Speaker.

  “Ask us! Ask us anything!”

  “How can I tell your story? I only tell the stories of the dead.”

  “We are dead!” shouted Human. Miro had never seen him so agitated. “We are being murdered every day. Humans are filling up all the worlds. The ships travel through the black of night from star to star to star, filling up every empty place. Here we are, on our one little world, watching the sky fill up with humans. The humans build their stupid fence to keep us out, but that is nothing. The sky is our fence!” Human leapt upward—startlingly high, for his legs were powerful. “Look how the fence throws me back down to the ground!”

  He ran at the nearest tree, bounded up the trunk, higher than Miro had ever seen him climb; he shinnied out on a limb and threw himself upward into the air. He hung there for an agonizing moment at the apex of his leap; then gravity flung him downward onto the hard ground.

  Miro could hear the breath thrust out of him by the force of the blow. The Speaker immediately rushed to Human; Miro was close behind. Human wasn’t breathing.

  “Is he dead?” asked Ouanda behind him.

  “No!” cried a piggy in the Males’ Language. “You can’t die! No, no, no!” Miro looked; to his surprise, it was Leaf-eater. “You can’t die!”

  Then Human reached up a feeble hand and touched the Speaker’s face. He inhaled, a deep gasp. And then spoke, “You see, Speaker? I would die to climb the wall that keeps us from the stars.”

  In all the years that Miro had known the piggies, in all the years before, they had never once spoken of star travel, never once asked about it. Yet now Miro realized that all the questions they did ask were oriented toward discovering the secret of starflight. The xenologers had never realized that because they knew—knew without questioning—that the piggies were so remote from the level of culture that could build starships that it would be a thousand years before such a thing could possibly be in their reach
. But their craving for knowledge about metal, about motors, about flying above the ground, it was all their way of trying to find the secret of starflight.

  Human slowly got to his feet, holding the Speaker’s hands. Miro realized that in all the years he had known the piggies, never once had a piggy taken him by the hand. He felt a deep regret. And the sharp pain of jealousy.

  Now that Human was clearly not injured, the other piggies crowded close around the Speaker. They did not jostle, but they wanted to be near.

  “Rooter says the hive queen knows how to build starships,” said Arrow.

  “Rooter says the hive queen will teach us everything,” said Cups. “Metal, fire made from rocks, houses made from black water, everything.”

  Speaker raised his hands, fended off their babbling. “If you were all very thirsty, and saw that I had water, you’d all ask me for a drink. But what if I knew that the water I had was poisoned?”

  “There is no poison in the ships that fly to the stars,” said Human.

  “There are many paths to starflight,” said the Speaker. “Some are better than others. I’ll give you everything I can that won’t destroy you.”

  “The hive queen promises!” said Human.

  “And so do I.”

  Human lunged forward, grabbed the Speaker by the hair and ears, and pulled him face to face. Miro had never seen such an act of violence; it was what he had dreaded, the decision to murder—

  “If we are ramen,” shouted Human into the Speaker’s face, “then it is ours to decide, not yours! And if we are varelse, then you might as well kill us all right now, the way you killed all the hive queen’s sisters!”

  Miro was stunned. It was one thing for the piggies to decide this was the Speaker who wrote the book. But how could they reach the unbelievable conclusion that he was somehow guilty of the Xenocide? Who did they think he was, the monster Ender?