Speaker for the Dead

by Orson Scott Card

  "If you'd listen, you'd know for yourself."

  "If you don't tell me, I'll deviate your septum."

  Quim smirked, to show her he wasn't afraid of her threats. But, since in fact he was afraid of her, he then told her. "Some faithless wretch apparently requested a speaker back when the first xenologer died, and he arrives this afternoon--he's already on the shuttle and the Mayor is on her way out to meet him when he lands."

  She hadn't bargained for this. The computer hadn't told her a speaker was already on the way. He was supposed to come years from now, to speak the truth about the monstrosity called Father who had finally blessed his family by dropping dead; the truth would come like light to illuminate and purify their past. But Father was too recently dead for him to be spoken now. His tentacles still reached out from the grave and sucked at their hearts.

  The homily ended, and eventually so did the mass. She held tightly to Grego's hand, trying to keep him from snatching someone's book or bag as they threaded through the crowd. Quim was good for something, at least--he carried Quara, who always froze up when she was supposed to make her way among strangers. Olhado switched his eyes back on and took care of himself, winking metallically at whatever fifteen-year-old semi-virgin he was hoping to horrify today. Ela genuflected at the statues of Os Venerados, her long-dead, half-sainted grandparents. Aren't you proud to have such lovely grandchildren as us?

  Grego was smirking; sure enough, he had a baby's shoe in his hand. Ela silently prayed that the infant had come out of the encounter unbloodied. She took the shoe from Grego and laid it on the little altar where candles burned in perpetual witness of the miracle of the Descolada. Whoever owned the shoe, they'd find it there.

  Mayor Bosquinha was cheerful enough as the car skimmed over the grassland between the shuttleport and the settlement of Milagre. She pointed out herds of semi-domestic cabra, a native species that provided fibers for cloth, but whose meat was nutritionally useless to human beings.

  "Do the piggies eat them?" asked Ender.

  She raised an eyebrow. "We don't know much about the piggies."

  "We know they live in the forest. Do they ever come out on the plain?"

  She shrugged. "That's for the framlings to decide."

  Ender was startled for a moment to hear her use that word; but of course Demosthenes' latest book had been published twenty-two years ago, and distributed through the Hundred Worlds by ansible. Utlanning, framling, raman, varelse--the terms were part of Stark now, and probably did not even seem particularly novel to Bosquinha.

  It was her lack of curiosity about the piggies that left him feeling uncomfortable. The people of Lusitania couldn't possibly be unconcerned about the piggies--they were the reason for the high, impassable fence that none but the Zenadors could cross. No, she wasn't incurious, she was avoiding the subject. Whether it was because the murderous piggies were a painful subject or because she didn't trust a speaker for the dead, he couldn't guess.

  They crested a hill and she stopped the car. Gently it settled onto its skids. Below them a broad river wound its way among grassy hills; beyond the river, the farther hills were completely covered with forest. Along the far bank of the river, brick and plaster houses with tile roofs made a picturesque town. Farmhouses perched on the near bank, their long narrow fields reaching toward the hill where Ender and Bosquinha sat.

  "Milagre," said Bosquinha. "On the highest hill, the Cathedral. Bishop Peregrino has asked the people to be polite and helpful to you."

  From her tone, Ender gathered that he had also let them know that he was a dangerous agent of agnosticism. "Until God strikes me dead?" he asked.

  Bosquinha smiled. "God is setting an example of Christian tolerance, and we expect everyone in town will follow."

  "Do they know who called me?"

  "Whoever called you has been--discreet."

  "You're the Governor, besides being Mayor. You have some privileges of information."

  "I know that your original call was canceled, but too late. I also know that two others have requested speakers in recent years. But you must realize that most people are content to receive their doctrine and their consolation from the priests."

  "They'll be relieved to know that I don't deal in doctrine or consolation."

  "Your kind offer to let us have your cargo of skrika will make you popular enough in the bars, and you can be sure you'll see plenty of vain women wearing the pelts in the months to come. It's coming on to autumn."

  "I happened to acquire the skrika with the starship--it was of no use to me, and I don't expect any special gratitude for it." He looked at the rough, furry-looking grass around him. "This grass--it's native?"

  "And useless. We can't even use it for thatch--if you cut it, it crumbles, and then dissolves into dust in the next rain. But down there, in the fields, the most common crop is a special breed of amaranth that our xenobiologist developed for us. Rice and wheat were feeble and undependable crops here, but the amaranth is so hardy that we have to use herbicides around the fields to keep it from spreading."

  "Why?"

  "This is a quarantined world, Speaker. The amaranth is so well-suited to this environment that it would soon choke out the native grasses. The idea is not to terraform Lusitania. The idea is to have as little impact on this world as possible."

  "That must be hard on the people."

  "Within our enclave, Speaker, we are free and our lives are full. And outside the fence--no one wants to go there, anyway."

  The tone of her voice was heavy with concealed emotion. Ender knew, then, that the fear of the piggies ran deep.

  "Speaker, I know you're thinking that we're afraid of the piggies. And perhaps some of us are. But the feeling most of us have, most of the time, isn't fear at all. It's hatred. Loathing."

  "You've never seen them."

  "You must know of the two Zenadors who were killed--I suspect you were originally called to speak the death of Pipo. But both of them, Pipo and Libo alike, were beloved here. Especially Libo. He was a kind and generous man, and the grief at his death was widespread and genuine. It is hard to conceive of how the piggies could do to him what they did. Dom Cristao, the abbot of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo--he says that they must lack the moral sense. He says this may mean that they are beasts. Or it may mean that they are unfallen, having not yet eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree." She smiled tightly. "But that's theology, and so it means nothing to you."

  He did not answer. He was used to the way religious people assumed that their sacred stories must sound absurd to unbelievers. But Ender did not consider himself an unbeliever, and he had a keen sense of the sacredness of many tales. But he could not explain this to Bosquinha. She would have to change her assumptions about him over time. She was suspicious of him, but he believed she could be won; to be a good Mayor, she had to be skilled at seeing people for what they are, not for what they seem.

  He turned the subject. "The Filhos da Mente de Cristo--my Portuguese isn't strong, but does that mean 'Sons of the Mind of Christ'?"

  "They're a new order, relatively speaking, formed only four hundred years ago under a special dispensation of the Pope--"

  "Oh, I know the Children of the Mind of Christ, Mayor. I Spoke the death of San Angelo on Moctezuma, in the city of Cordoba."

  Her eyes widened. "Then the story is true!"

  "I've heard many versions of the story, Mayor Bosquinha. One tale has it that the devil possessed San Angelo on his deathbed, so he cried out for the unspeakable rites of the pagan Hablador de los Muertos."

  Bosquinha smiled. "That is something like the tale that is whispered. Dom Cristao says it's nonsense, of course."

  "It happens that San Angelo, back before he was sainted, attended my speaking for a woman that he knew. The fungus in his blood was already killing him. He came to me and said, 'Andrew, they're already telling the most terrible lies about me, saying that I've done miracles and should be sainted. You must help me. You must tell the truth at
my death.' "

  "But the miracles have been certified, and he was canonized only ninety years after his death."

  "Yes. Well, that's partly my fault. When I spoke his death, I attested several of the miracles myself."

  Now she laughed aloud. "A speaker for the dead, believing in miracles?"

  "Look at your cathedral hill. How many of those buildings are for the priests, and how many are for the school?"

  Bosquinha understood at once, and glared at him. "The Filhos da Mente de Cristo are obedient to the Bishop."

  "Except that they preserve and teach all knowledge, whether the Bishop approves of it or not."

  "San Angelo may have allowed you to meddle in affairs of the Church. I assure you that Bishop Peregrino will not."

  "I've come to speak a simple death, and I'll abide by the law. I think you'll find I do less harm than you expect, and perhaps more good."

  "If you've come to speak Pipo's death, Speaker pelos Mortos, then you will do nothing but harm. Leave the piggies behind the wall. If I had my way, no human being would pass through that fence again."

  "I hope there's a room I can rent."

  "We're an unchanging town here, Speaker. Everyone has a house here and there's nowhere else to go--why would anyone maintain an inn? We can only offer you one of the small plastic dwellings the first colonists put up. It's small, but it has all the amenities."

  "Since I don't need many amenities or much space, I'm sure it will be fine. And I look forward to meeting Dom Cristao. Where the followers of San Angelo are, the truth has friends."

  Bosquinha sniffed and started the car again. As Ender intended, her preconceived notions of a speaker for the dead were now shattered. To think he had actually known San Angelo, and admired the Filhos. It was not what Bishop Peregrino had led them to expect.

  The room was only thinly furnished, and if Ender had owned much he would have had trouble finding anywhere to put it. As always before, however, he was able to unpack from interstellar flight in only a few minutes. Only the bundled cocoon of the hive queen remained in his bag; he had long since given up feeling odd about the incongruity of stowing the future of a magnificent race in a duffel under his bed.

  "Maybe this will be the place," he murmured. The cocoon felt cool, almost cold, even through the towels it was wrapped in.

 

  It was unnerving to have her so certain of it. There was no hint of pleading or impatience or any of the other feelings she had given him in the past, desiring to emerge. Just absolute certainty.

  "I wish we could decide just like that," he said. "It might be the place, but it all depends on whether the piggies can cope with having you here."

 

  "It takes time. Give me a few months here."

 

  "Who is it that you've found? I thought you told me that you couldn't communicate with anybody but me."

 

  And then he lost the thread of her thought, felt it seep away like a dream that is forgotten upon waking, even as you try to remember it and keep it alive. Ender wasn't sure what the hive queen had found, but whatever it was, he would have to deal with the reality of Starways Code, the Catholic Church, young xenologers who might not even let him meet the piggies, a xenobiologist who had changed her mind about inviting him here, and something more, perhaps the most difficult thing of all: that if the hive queen stayed here, he would have to stay here. I've been disconnected from humanity for so many years, he thought, coming in to meddle and pry and hurt and heal, then going away again, myself untouched. How will I ever become a part of this place, if this is where I'll stay? The only things I've ever been a part of were an army of little boys in the Battle School, and Valentine, and both are gone now, both part of the past--

  "What, wallowing in loneliness?" asked Jane. "I can hear your heartrate falling and your breathing getting heavy. In a moment you'll either be asleep, dead, or lachrymose."

  "I'm much more complex than that," said Ender cheerfully. "Anticipated self-pity is what I'm feeling, about pains that haven't even arrived."

  "Very good, Ender. Get an early start. That way you can wallow so much longer." The terminal came alive, showing Jane as a piggy in a chorus line of leggy women, high-kicking with exuberance. "Get a little exercise, you'll feel so much better. After all, you've unpacked. What are you waiting for?"

  "I don't even know where I am, Jane."

  "They really don't keep a map of the city," Jane explained. "Everybody knows where everything is. But they do have a map of the sewer system, divided into boroughs. I can extrapolate where all the buildings are."

  "Show me, then."

  A three-dimensional model of the town appeared over the terminal. Ender might not be particularly welcome there, and his room might be sparse, but they had shown courtesy in the terminal they provided for him. It wasn't a standard home installation, but rather an elaborate simulator. It was able to project holos into a space sixteen times larger than most terminals, with a resolution four times greater. The illusion was so real that Ender felt for a vertiginous moment that he was Gulliver, leaning over a Lilliput that had not yet come to fear him, that did not yet recognize his power to destroy.

  The names of the different boroughs hung in the air over each sewer district. "You're here," said Jane. "Vila Velha, the old town. The praca is just through the block from you. That's where public meetings are held."

  "Do you have any map of the piggy lands?"

  The village map slid rapidly toward Ender, the near features disappearing as new ones came into view on the far side. It was as if he were flying over it. Like a witch, he thought. The boundary of the town was marked by a fence.

  "That barrier is the only thing standing between us and the piggies," mused Ender.

  "It generates an electric field that stimulates any pain-sensitive nerves that come within it," said Jane. "Just touching it makes all your wetware go screwy--it makes you feel as though somebody were cutting off your fingers with a file."

  "Pleasant thought. Are we in a concentration camp? Or a zoo?"

  "It all depends on how you look at it," said Jane. "It's the human side of the fence that's connected to the rest of the universe, and the piggy side that's trapped on its home world."

  "The difference is that they don't know what they're missing."

  "I know," said Jane. "It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born homo sapiens." Beyond the fence was a hillside, and along the top of the hill a thick forest began. "The xenologers have never gone deep into piggy lands. The piggy community that they deal with is less than a kilometer inside this wood. The piggies live in a log house, all the males together. We don't know about any other settlements except that the satellites have been able to confirm that every forest like this one carries just about all the population that a hunter-gatherer culture can sustain."

  "They hunt?"


  "Mostly they gather."

  "Where did Pipo and Libo die?"

  Jane brightened a patch of grassy ground on the hillside leading up to the trees. A large tree grew in isolation nearby, with two smaller ones not far off.

  "Those trees," said Ender. "I don't remember any being so close in the holos I saw on Trondheim."

  "It's been twenty-two years. The big one is the tree the piggies planted in the corpse of the rebel called Rooter, who was executed before Pipo was murdered. The other two are more recent piggy executions."

  "I wish I knew why they plant trees for piggies, and not for humans."

  "The trees are sacred," said Jane. "Pipo recorded that many of the trees in the forest are named. Libo speculated that they might be named for the dead."

  "And humans simply aren't part of the pattern of tree-worship. Well, that's likely enough. Except that I've found that rituals and myths don't come from nowhere. There's usually some reason for it that's tied to the survival of the community."

  "Andrew Wiggin, anthropologist?"

  "The proper study of mankind is man."

  "Go study some men, then, Ender. Novinha's family, for instance. By the way, the computer network has officially been barred from showing you where anybody lives."

  Ender grinned. "So Bosquinha isn't as friendly as she seems."

  "If you have to ask where people live, they'll know where you're going. If they don't want you to go there, no one will know where they live."

  "You can override their restriction, can't you?"

  "I already have." A light was blinking near the fence line, behind the observatory hill. It was as isolated a spot as was possible to find in Milagre. Few other houses had been built where the fence would be visible all the time. Ender wondered whether Novinha had chosen to live there to be near the fence or to be far from neighbors. Perhaps it had been Marcao's choice.

  The nearest borough was Vila Atras, and then the borough called As Fabricas stretched down to the river. As the name implied, it consisted mostly of small factories that worked the metals and plastics and processed the foods and fibers that Milagre used. A nice, tight, self-contained economy. And Novinha had chosen to live back behind everything, out of sight, invisible. It was Novinha who chose it, too, Ender was sure of that now. Wasn't it the pattern of her life? She had never belonged to Milagre. It was no accident that all three calls for a speaker had come from her and her children. The very act of calling a speaker was defiant, a sign that they did not think they belonged among the devout Catholics of Lusitania.