“That was the mass for my father’s soul,” said Ouanda softly.
“And for mine,” answered Novinha; they all knew that she spoke of Pipo, not the long-dead Venerado, Gusto.
But Ender was not part of their conversation; he had not known Libo and Pipo, and did not belong to their memory of grief. All he could think of was the trees of the forest. They had once been living, breathing piggies, every one of them. The piggies could sing to them, talk to them, even, somehow, understand their speech. But Ender couldn’t. To Ender the trees were not people, could never be people. If he took the knife to Human, it might not be murder in the piggies’ eyes, but to Ender himself he would be taking away the only part of Human’s life that Ender understood. As a piggy, Human was a true raman, a brother. As a tree he would be little more than a gravestone, as far as Ender could understand, as far as he could really believe.
Once again, he thought, I must kill, though I promised that I never would again.
He felt Novinha’s hand take him by the crook of the arm. She leaned on him. “Help me,” she said. “I’m almost blind in the darkness.”
“I have good night vision,” Olhado offered cheerfully from behind her.
“Shut up, stupid,” Ela whispered fiercely. “Mother wants to walk with him.”
Both Novinha and Ender heard her clearly, and both could feel each other’s silent laughter. Novinha drew closer to him as they walked. “I think you have the heart for what you have to do,” she said softly, so that only he could hear.
“Cold and ruthless?” he asked. His voice hinted at wry humor, but the words tasted sour and truthful in his mouth.
“Compassionate enough,” she said, “to put the hot iron into the wound when that’s the only way to heal it.”
As one who had felt his burning iron cauterize her deepest wounds, she had the right to speak; and he believed her, and it eased his heart for the bloody work ahead.
Ender hadn’t thought it would be possible to sleep, knowing what was ahead of him. But now he woke up, Novinha’s voice soft in his ear. He realized that he was outside, lying in the capim, his head resting on Novinha’s lap. It was still dark.
“They’re coming,” said Novinha softly.
Ender sat up. Once, as a child, he would have come awake fully, instantly; but he was trained as a soldier then. Now it took a moment to orient himself. Ouanda, Ela, both awake and watching; Olhado asleep; Quim just stirring. The tall tree of Rooter’s third life rising only a few meters away. And in the near distance, beyond the fence at the bottom of the little valley, the first houses of Milagre rising up the slopes; the Cathedral and the monastery atop the highest and nearest of the hills.
In the other direction, the forest, and coming down from the trees, Human, Mandachuva, Leaf-eater, Arrow, Cups, Calendar, Worm, Bark-dancer, several other brothers whose names Ouanda didn’t know. “I’ve never seen them,” she said. “They must come from other brother-houses.”
Do we have a covenant? said Ender silently. That’s all I care about. Did Human make the wives understand a new way of conceiving of the world?
Human was carrying something. Wrapped in leaves. The piggies wordlessly laid it before Ender; Human unwrapped it carefully. It was a computer printout.
“The Hive Queen and the Hegemon,” said Ouanda softly. “The copy Miro gave them.”
“The covenant,” said Human.
Only then did they realize that the printout was upside down, on the blank side of the paper. And there, in the light of a nightstick, they saw faint hand-printed letters. They were large and awkwardly formed. Ouanda was in awe. “We never taught them to make ink,” she said. “We never taught them to write.”
“Calendar learned to make the letters,” said Human. “Writing with sticks in the dirt. And Worm made the ink from cabra dung and dried macios. This is how you make treaties, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Ender.
“If we didn’t write it on paper, then we would remember it differently.”
“That’s right,” said Ender. “You did well to write it down.”
“We made some changes. The wives wanted some changes, and I thought you would accept them.” Human pointed them out. “You humans can make this covenant with other piggies, but you can’t make a different covenant. You can’t teach any other piggies things you haven’t taught us. Can you accept that?”
“Of course,” said Ender.
“That was the easy one. Now, what if we disagree about what the rules are? What if we disagree about where your prairie land ends and ours begins? So Shouter said, Let the hive queen judge between humans and Little Ones. Let the humans judge between the Little Ones and the hive queen. And let Little Ones judge between the hive queen and the humans.”
Ender wondered how easy that would be. He remembered, as no other living human did, how terrifying the buggers were three thousand years ago. Their insectlike bodies were the nightmares of humanity’s childhood. How easily would the people of Milagre accept their judgment?
So it’s hard. It’s no harder than what we’ve asked the piggies to do. “Yes,” said Ender. “We can accept that, too. It’s a good plan.”
“And another change,” said Human. He looked up at Ender and grinned. It looked ghastly, since piggy faces weren’t designed for that human expression. “This is why it took so long. All these changes.”
Ender smiled back.
“If a tribe of piggies won’t sign the covenant with humans, and if that tribe attacks one of the tribes that has signed the covenant, then we can go to war against them.”
“What do you mean by attack?” asked Ender. If they could take a mere insult as an attack, then this clause would reduce the prohibition of war to nothing.
“Attack,” said Human. “It begins when they come into our lands and kill the brothers or the wives. It is not attack when they present themselves for war, or offer an agreement to begin a war. It is attack when they start to fight without an agreement. Since we will never agree to a war, an attack by another tribe is the only way war could begin. I knew you’d ask.”
He pointed to the words of the covenant, and indeed the treaty carefully defined what constituted an attack.
“That is also acceptable,” said Ender. It meant that the possibility of war would not be removed for many generations, perhaps for centuries, since it would take a long time to bring this covenant to every tribe of piggies in the world. But long before the last tribe joined the covenant, Ender thought, the benefits of peaceful exogamy would be made plain, and few would want to be warriors anymore.
“Now the last change,” said Human. “The wives meant this to punish you for making this covenant so difficult. But I think you will believe it is no punishment. Since we are forbidden to take you into the third life, after this covenant is in effect humans are also forbidden to take brothers into the third life.”
For a moment Ender thought it meant his reprieve; he would not have to do the thing that Libo and Pipo had both refused.
“After the covenant,” said Human. “You will be the first and last human to give this gift.”
“I wish . . .” said Ender.
“I know what you wish, my friend Speaker,” said Human. “To you it feels like murder. But to me—when a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him the passage. You. Speaker—ever since I first learned Stark and read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter: Of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well.”
“You did well, Human,” said Ender.
“Here,” he said. “See? We signed the covenant in the human way.”
At the bottom of the last page of the covenant two words were crudely, laboriously shaped. “Human,” Ender read aloud. The
other word he could not read.
“It’s Shouter’s true name,” said Human. “Star-looker. She wasn’t good with the writing stick—the wives don’t use tools very often, since the brothers do that kind of work. So she wanted me to tell you what her name is. And to tell you that she got it because she was always looking in the sky. She says that she didn’t know it then, but she was watching for you to come.”
So many people had so much hope in me, thought Ender. In the end, though, everything depended on them. On Novinha, Miro, Ela, who called for me; on Human and Star-looker. And on the ones who feared my coming, too.
Worm carried the cup of ink; Calendar carried the pen. It was a thin strip of wood with a slit in it and a narrow well that held a little ink when he dipped it in the cup. He had to dip it five times in order to sign his name. “Five,” said Arrow. Ender remembered then that the number five was portentous to the piggies. It had been an accident, but if they chose to see it as a good omen, so much the better.
“I’ll take the covenant to our Governor and the Bishop,” said Ender.
“Of all the documents that were ever treasured in the history of mankind . . .” said Ouanda. No one needed her to finish the sentence. Human, Leaf-eater, and Mandachuva carefully wrapped the book again in leaves and handed it, not to Ender, but to Ouanda. Ender knew at once, with terrible certainty, what that meant. The piggies still had work for him to do, work that would require that his hands be free.
“Now the covenant is made the human way,” said Human. “You must make it true for the Little Ones as well.”
“Can’t the signing be enough?” asked Ender.
“From now on the signing is enough,” said Human. “But only because the same hand that signed for the humans also took the covenant in our way, too.”
“Then I will,” said Ender, “as I promised you I would.”
Human reached out and stroked Ender from the throat to the belly. “The brother’s word is not just in his mouth,” he said. “The brother’s word is in his life.” He turned to the other piggies. “Let me speak to my father one last time before I stand beside him.”
Two of the strange brothers came forward with their small clubs in their hands. They walked with Human to Rooter’s tree and began to beat on it and sing in the Tree Language. Almost at once the trunk split open. The tree was still fairly young, and not so very much thicker in the the trunk than Human’s own body; it was a struggle for him to get inside. But he fit, and the trunk closed up after him. The drumming changed rhythm, but did not let up for a moment.
Jane whispered in Ender’s ear. “I can hear the resonance of the drumming change inside the tree,” she said. “The tree is slowly shaping the sound, to turn the drumming into language.”
The other piggies set to work clearing ground for Human’s tree. Ender noticed that he would be planted so that, from the gate, Rooter would seem to stand on the left hand, and Human on the right. Pulling up the capim by the root was hard work for the piggies; soon Quim was helping them, and then Olhado, and then Ouanda and Ela.
Ouanda gave the covenant to Novinha to hold while she helped dig capim. Novinha, in turn, carried it to Ender, stood before him, looked at him steadily. “You signed it Ender Wiggin,” she said. “Ender.”
The name sounded ugly even to his own ears. He had heard it too often as an epithet. “I’m older than I look,” said Ender. “That was the name I was known by when I blasted the buggers’ home world out of existence. Maybe the presence of that name on the first treaty ever signed between humans and ramen will do something to change the meaning of the name.”
“Ender,” she whispered. She reached toward him, the bundled treaty in her hands, and held it against his chest; it was heavy, since it contained all the pages of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, on the other sides of pages where the covenant was written. “I never went to the priests to confess,” she said, “because I knew they would despise me for my sin. Yet when you named all my sins today, I could bear it because I knew you didn’t despise me. I couldn’t understand why, though, till now.”
“I’m not one to despise other people for their sins,” said Ender. “I haven’t found one yet, that I didn’t say inside myself, I’ve done worse than this.”
“All these years you’ve borne the burden of humanity’s guilt.”
“Yes, well, it’s nothing mystical,” said Ender. “I think of it as being like the mark of Cain. You don’t make many friends, but nobody hurts you much, either.”
The ground was clear. Mandachuva spoke in Tree Language to the piggies beating on the trunk; their rhythm changed, and again the aperture in the tree came open. Human slid out as if he were an infant being born. Then he walked to the center of the cleared ground. Leaf-eater and Mandachuva each handed him a knife. As he took the knives, Human spoke to them—in Portuguese, so the humans could understand, and so it would carry great force. “I told Shouter that you lost your passage to the third life because of a great misunderstanding by Pipo and Libo. She said that before another hand of hands of days, you both would grow upward into the light.”
Leaf-eater and Mandachuva both let go of their knives, touched Human gently on the belly, and stepped back to the edge of the cleared ground.
Human held out the knives to Ender. They were both made of thin wood. Ender could not imagine a tool that could polish wood to be at once so fine and sharp, and yet so strong. But of course no tool had polished these. They had come thus perfectly shaped from the heart of a living tree, given as a gift to help a brother into the third life.
It was one thing to know with his mind that Human would not really die. It was another thing to believe it. Ender did not take the knives at first. Instead he reached past the blades and took Human by the wrists. “To you it doesn’t feel like death. But to me—I only saw you for the first time yesterday, and tonight I know you are my brother as surely as if Rooter were my father, too. And yet when the sun rises in the morning, I’ll never be able to talk to you again. It feels like death to me, Human, how ever it feels to you.”
“Come and sit in my shade,” said Human, “and see the sunlight through my leaves, and rest your back against my trunk. And do this, also. Add another story to the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Call it the Life of Human. Tell all the humans how I was conceived on the bark of my father’s tree, and born in darkness, eating my mother’s flesh. Tell them how I left the life of darkness behind and came into the half-light of my second life, to learn language from the wives and then come forth to learn all the miracles that Libo and Miro and Ouanda came to teach. Tell them how on the last day of my second life, my true brother came from above the sky, and together we made this covenant so that humans and piggies would be one tribe, not a human tribe or a piggy tribe, but a tribe of ramen. And then my friend gave me passage to the third life, to the full light, so that I could rise into the sky and give life to ten thousand children before I die.”
“I’ll tell your story,” said Ender.
“Then I will truly live forever.”
Ender took the knives. Human lay down upon the ground.
“Olhado,” said Novinha. “Quim. Go back to the gate. Ela, you too.”
“I’m going to see this, Mother,” said Ela. “I’m a scientist.”
“You forget my eyes,” said Olhado. “I’m recording everything. We can show humans everywhere that the treaty was signed. And we can show piggies that the Speaker took the covenant in their way, too.”
“I’m not going, either,” said Quim. “Even the Blessed Virgin stood at the foot of the cross.”
“So stay,” said Novinha softly. And she also stayed. Human’s mouth was filled with capim, but he didn’t chew it very much. “More,” said Ender, “so you don’t feel anything.”
“That’s not right,” said Mandachuva. “These are the last moments of his second life. It’s good to feel something of the pains of this body, to remember when you’re in the third life, and beyond pain.”
Mandachuva an
d Leaf-eater told Ender where and how to cut. It had to be done quickly, they told him, and their hands reached into the steaming body to point out organs that must go here or there. Ender’s hands were quick and sure, his body calm, but even though he could only rarely spare a glance away from the surgery, he knew that above his bloody work, Human’s eyes were watching him, watching him, filled with gratitude and love, filled with agony and death.
It happened under his hands, so quickly that for the first few minutes they could watch it grow. Several large organs shriveled as roots shot out of them; tendrils reached from place to place within the body; Human’s eyes went wide with the final agony; and out of his spine a sprout burst upward, two leaves, four leaves—
And then stopped. The body was dead; its last spasm of strength had gone to making the tree that rooted in Human’s spine. Ender had seen the rootlets and tendrils reaching through the body. The memories, the soul of Human had been transferred into the cells of the newly sprouted tree. It was done. His third life had begun. And when the sun rose in the morning, not long from now, the leaves would taste the light for the first time.
The other piggies were rejoicing, dancing. Leaf-eater and Mandachuva took the knives from Ender’s hands and jammed them into the ground on either side of Human’s head. Ender could not join their celebration. He was covered with blood and reeked with the stench of the body he had butchered. On all fours he crawled from the body, up the hill to a place where he didn’t have to see it. Novinha followed him. Exhausted, spent, all of them, from the work and the emotions of the day. They said nothing, did nothing, but fell into the thick capim, each one leaning or lying on someone else, seeking relief at last in sleep, as the piggies danced away up the hill into the woods.
Bosquinha and Bishop Peregrino made their way to the gate before the sun was up, to watch for the Speaker’s return from the forest. They were there a full ten minutes before they saw a movement much nearer than the forest’s edge. It was a boy, sleepily voiding his bladder into a bush.
The Ender Quintet (Omnibus) Page 72