Speaker for the Dead

by Orson Scott Card

  "Still," said Ender, "I have to ask someone to lead me there. I shouldn't let them know right away that they can't hide any of their information from me."

  The map disappeared, and Jane's face appeared above the terminal. She had neglected to adjust for the greater size of this terminal, so that her head was many times human size. She was quite imposing. And her simulation was accurate right down to the pores on her face. "Actually, Andrew, it's me they can't hide anything from."

  Ender sighed. "You have a vested interest in this, Jane."

  "I know." She winked. "But you don't."

  "Are you telling me you don't trust me?"

  "You reek of impartiality and a sense of justice. But I'm human enough to want preferential treatment, Andrew."

  "Will you promise me one thing, at least?"

  "Anything, my corpuscular friend."

  "When you decide to hide something from me, will you at least tell me that you aren't going to tell me?"

  "This is getting way too deep for little old me." She was a caricature of an overfeminine woman.

  "Nothing is too deep for you, Jane. Do us both a favor. Don't cut me off at the knees."

  "While you're off with the Ribeira family, is there anything you'd like me to be doing?"

  "Yes. Find every way in which the Ribeiras are significantly different from the rest of the people of Lusitania. And any points of conflict between them and the authorities."

  "You speak, and I obey." She started to do her genie disappearing act.

  "You maneuvered me here, Jane. Why are you trying to unnerve me?"

  "I'm not. And I didn't."

  "I have a shortage of friends in this town."

  "You can trust me with your life."

  "It isn't my life I'm worried about."

  The praca was filled with children playing football. Most of them were stunting, showing how long they could keep the ball in the air using only their feet and heads. Two of them, though, had a vicious duel going. The boy would kick the ball as hard as he could toward the girl, who stood not three meters away. She would stand and take the impact of the ball, not flinching no matter how hard it struck her. Then she would kick the ball back at him, and he would try not to flinch. A little girl was tending the ball, fetching it each time it rebounded from a victim.

  Ender tried asking some of the boys if they knew where the Ribeira family's house was. Their answer was invariably a shrug; when he persisted some of them began moving away, and soon most of the children had retreated from the praca. Ender wondered what the Bishop had told everybody about speakers.

  The duel, however, continued unabated. And now that the praca was not so crowded, Ender saw that another child was involved, a boy of about twelve. He was not extraordinary from behind, but as Ender moved toward the middle of the praca, he could see that there was something wrong with the boy's eyes. It took a moment, but then he understood. The boy had artificial eyes. Both looked shiny and metallic, but Ender knew how they worked. Only one eye was used for sight, but it took four separate visual scans and then separated the signals to feed simulated binocular vision to the brain. The other eye contained the power supply, the computer control, and the external interface. When he wanted to, he could record short sequences of vision in a limited photo memory, probably less than a trillion bits. The duelists were using him as their judge; if they disputed a point, he could replay the scene in slow motion and tell them what had happened.

  The ball went straight for the boy's crotch. He winced elaborately, but the girl was not impressed. "He swiveled away, I saw his hips move!"

  "Did not! You hurt me, I didn't dodge at all!"

  "Reveja! Reveja!" They had been speaking Stark, but the girl now switched into Portuguese.

  The boy with metal eyes showed no expression, but raised a hand to silence them. "Mudou," he said with finality. He moved, Ender translated.

  "Sabia!" I knew it!

  "You liar, Olhado!"

  The boy with metal eyes looked at him with disdain. "I never lie. I'll send you a dump of the scene if you want. In fact, I think I'll post it on the net so everybody can watch you dodge and then lie about it."

  "Mentiroso! Filho de puta! Fode-bode!"

  Ender was pretty sure what the epithets meant, but the boy with metal eyes took it calmly.

  "Da," said the girl. "Da-me." Give it here.

  The boy furiously took off his ring and threw it on the ground at her feet. "Viada!" he said in a hoarse whisper. Then he took off running.

  "Poltrao!" shouted the girl after him. Coward!

  "Cao!" shouted the boy, not even looking over his shoulder.

  It was not the girl he was shouting at this time. She turned at once to look at the boy with metal eyes, who stiffened at the name. Almost at once the girl looked at the ground. The little one, who had been doing the ball-fetching, walked to the boy with metal eyes and whispered something. He looked up, noticing Ender for the first time.

  The older girl was apologizing. "Desculpa, Olhado, nao queria que--"

  "Nao ha problema, Michi." He did not look at her.

  The girl started to go on, but then she, too, noticed Ender and fell silent.

  "Porque esta olhando-nos?" asked the boy. Why are you looking at us?

  Ender answered with a question. "Voce e arbitro?" You're the arbiter here? The word could mean "umpire," but it could also mean "magistrate."

  "De vez em quando." Sometimes.

  Ender switched to Stark--he wasn't sure he knew how to say anything complex in Portuguese. "Then tell me, arbiter, is it fair to leave a stranger to find his way around without help?"

  "Stranger? You mean utlanning, framling, or raman?"

  "No, I think I mean infidel."

  "O Senhor e descrente?" You're an unbeliever?

  "So descredo no incrivel." I only disbelieve the unbelievable.

  The boy grinned. "Where do you want to go, Speaker?"

  "The house of the Ribeira family."

  The little girl edged closer to the boy with metal eyes. "Which Ribeira family?"

  "The widow Ivanova."

  "I think I can find it," said the boy.

  "Everybody in town can find it," said Ender. "The point is, will you take me there?"

  "Why do you want to go there?"

  "I ask people questions and try to find out true stories."

  "Nobody at the Ribeira house knows any true stories."

  "I'd settle for lies."

  "Come on then." He started toward the low-mown grass of the main road. The little girl was whispering in his ear. He stopped and turned to Ender, who was following close behind.

  "Quara wants to know. What's your name?"

  "Andrew. Andrew Wiggin."

  "She's Quara."

  "And you?"

  "Everybody calls me Olhado. Because of my eyes." He picked up the little girl and put her on his shoulders. "But my real name's Lauro. Lauro Suleimao Ribeira." He grinned, then turned around and strode off.

  Ender followed. Ribeira. Of course.

  Jane had been listening, too, and spoke from the jewel in his ear. "Lauro Suleimao Ribeira is Novinha's fourth child. He lost his eyes in a laser accident. He's twelve years old. Oh, and I found one difference between the Ribeira family and the rest of the town. The Ribeiras are willing to defy the Bishop and lead you where you want to go."

  I noticed something, too, Jane, he answered silently. This boy enjoyed deceiving me, and then enjoyed even more letting me see how I'd been fooled. I just hope you don't take lessons from him.

  Miro sat on the hillside. The shade of the trees made him invisible to anyone who might be watching from Milagre, but he could see much of the town from here--certainly the cathedral and the monastery on the highest hill, and then the observatory on the next hill to the north. And under the observatory, in a depression in the hillside, the house where he lived, not very far from the fence.

  "Miro," whispered Leaf-eater. "Are you a tree?"

  It was a
translation from the pequeninos' idiom. Sometimes they meditated, holding themselves motionless for hours. They called this "being a tree."

  "More like a blade of grass," Miro answered.

  Leaf-eater giggled in the high, wheezy way he had. It never sounded natural--the pequeninos had learned laughter by rote, as if it were simply another word in Stark. It didn't arise out of amusement, or at least Miro didn't think it did.

  "Is it going to rain?" asked Miro. To a piggy this meant: are you interrupting me for my own sake, or for yours?

  "It rained fire today," said Leaf-eater. "Out in the prairie."

  "Yes. We have a visitor from another world."

  "Is it the Speaker?"

  Miro didn't answer.

  "You must bring him to see us."

  Miro didn't answer.

  "I root my face in the ground for you, Miro, my limbs are lumber for your house."

  Miro hated it when they begged for something. It was as if they thought of him as someone particularly wise or strong, a parent from whom favors must be wheedled. Well, if they felt that way, it was his own fault. His and Libo's. Playing God out here among the piggies.

  "I promised, didn't I, Leaf-eater?"

  "When when when?"

  "It'll take time. I have to find out whether he can be trusted."

  Leaf-eater looked baffled. Miro had tried to explain that not all humans knew each other, and some weren't nice, but they never seemed to understand.

  "As soon as I can," Miro said.

  Suddenly Leaf-eater began to rock back and forth on the ground, shifting his hips from side to side as if he were trying to relieve an itch in his anus. Libo had speculated once that this was what performed the same function that laughter did for humans. "Talk to me in piddle-geese!" wheezed Leaf-eater. Leaf-eater always seemed to be greatly amused that Miro and the other Zenadors spoke two languages interchangeably. This despite the fact that at least four different piggy languages had been recorded or at least hinted at over the years, all spoken by this same tribe of piggies.

  But if he wanted to hear Portuguese, he'd get Portuguese. "Vai comer folhas." Go eat leaves.

  Leaf-eater looked puzzled. "Why is that clever?"

  "Because that's your name. Come-folhas."

  Leaf-eater pulled a large insect out of his nostril and flipped it away, buzzing. "Don't be crude," he said. Then he walked away.

  Miro watched him go. Leaf-eater was always so difficult. Miro much preferred the company of the piggy called Human. Even though Human was smarter, and Miro had to watch himself more carefully with him, at least he didn't seem hostile the way Leaf-eater often did.

  With the piggy out of sight, Miro turned back toward the city. Somebody was moving down the path along the face of the hill, toward his house. The one in front was very tall--no, it was Olhado with Quara on his shoulders. Quara was much too old for that. Miro worried about her. She seemed not to be coming out of the shock of Father's death. Miro felt a moment's bitterness. And to think he and Ela had expected Father's death would solve all their problems.

  Then he stood up and tried to get a better view of the man behind Olhado and Quara. No one he'd seen before. The Speaker. Already! He couldn't have been in town for more than an hour, and he was already going to the house. That's great, all I need is for Mother to find out that I was the one who called him here. Somehow I thought that a speaker for the dead would be discreet about it, not just come straight home to the person who called. What a fool. Bad enough that he's coming years before I expected a speaker to get here. Quim's bound to report this to the Bishop, even if nobody else does. Now I'm going to have to deal with Mother and, probably, the whole city.

  Miro moved back into the trees and jogged along a path that led, eventually, to the gate back into the city.

  7

  THE RIBEIRA HOUSE

  Miro, this time you should have been there, because even though I have a better memory for dialogue than you, I sure don't know what this means. You saw the new piggy, the one they call Human--I thought I saw you talking to him for a minute before you took off for the Questionable Activity. Mandachuva told me they named him Human because he was very smart as a child. OK, it's very flattering that "smart" and "human" are linked in their minds, or perhaps patronizing that they think we'll be flattered by that, but that's not what matters.

  Mandachuva then said: "He could already talk when he started walking around by himself." And he made a gesture with his hand about ten centimeters off the ground. To me it looked like he was telling how tall Human was when he learned how to talk and walk. Ten centimeters! But I could be completely wrong. You should have been there, to see for yourself.

  If I'm right, and that's what Mandachuva meant, then for the first time we have an idea of piggy childhood. If they actually start walking at ten centimeters in height--and talking, no less!--then they must have less development time during gestation than humans, and do a lot more developing after they're born.

  But now it gets absolutely crazy, even by your standards. He then leaned in close and told me--as if he weren't supposed to--who Human's father was: "Your grandfather Pipo knew Human's father. His tree is near your gate."

  Is he kidding? Rooter died twenty-four years ago, didn't he? OK, maybe this is just a religious thing, sort of adopt-a-tree or something. But the way Mandachuva was so secretive about it, I keep thinking it's somehow true. Is it possible that they have a 24-year gestation period? Or maybe it took a couple of decades for Human to develop from a 10-centimeter toddler into the fine specimen of piggihood we now see. Or maybe Rooter's sperm was saved in a jar somewhere.

  But this matters. This is the first time a piggy personally known to human observers has ever been named as a father. And Rooter, no less, the very one that got murdered. In other words, the male with the lowest prestige--an executed criminal, even--has been named as a father! That means that our males aren't cast-off bachelors at all, even though some of them are so old they knew Pipo. They are potential fathers.

  What's more, if Human was so remarkably smart, then why was he dumped here if this is really a group of miserable bachelors? I think we've had it wrong for quite a while. This isn't a low-prestige group of bachelors, this is a high-prestige group of juveniles, and some of them are really going to amount to something.

  So when you told me you felt sorry for me because you got to go out on the Questionable Activity and I had to stay home and work up some Official Fabrications for the ansible report, you were full of Unpleasant Excretions! (If you get home after I'm asleep, wake me up for a kiss, OK? I earned it today.)

  --Memo from Ouanda Figueira Mucumbi to Miro Ribeira von Hesse, retrieved from Lusitanian files by Congressional order and introduced as evidence in the Trial In Absentia of the Xenologers of Lusitania on Charges of Treason and Malfeasance

  There was no construction industry in Lusitania. When a couple got married, their friends and family built them a house. The Ribeira house expressed the history of the family. At the front, the old part of the house was made of plastic sheets rooted to a concrete foundation. Rooms had been built on as the family grew, each addition abutting the one before, so that five distinct one-story structures fronted the hillside. The later ones were all brick, decently plumbed, roofed with tile, but with no attempt whatever at aesthetic appeal. The family had built exactly what was needed and nothing more.

  It was not poverty, Ender knew--there was no poverty in a community where the economy was completely controlled. The lack of decoration, of individuality, showed the family's contempt for their own house; to Ender this bespoke contempt for themselves as well. Certainly Olhado and Quara showed none of the relaxation, the letting-down that most people feel when they come home. If anything, they grew warier, less jaunty; the house might have been a subtle source of gravity, making them heavier the nearer they approached.

  Olhado and Quara went right in. Ender waited at the door for someone to invite him to enter. Olhado left the door ajar, but walked on
out of the room without speaking to him. Ender could see Quara sitting on a bed in the front room, leaning against a bare wall. There was nothing whatsoever on any of the walls. They were stark white. Quara's face matched the blankness of the walls. Though her eyes regarded Ender unwaveringly, she showed no sign of recognizing that he was there; certainly she did nothing to indicate he might come in.

  There was a disease in this house. Ender tried to understand what it was in Novinha's character that he had missed before, that would let her live in a place like this. Had Pipo's death so long before emptied Novinha's heart as thoroughly as this?

  "Is your mother home?" Ender asked.

  Quara said nothing.

  "Oh," he said. "Excuse me. I thought you were a little girl, but I see now that you're a statue."

  She showed no sign of hearing him. So much for trying to jolly her out of her somberness.

  Shoes slapped rapidly against a concrete floor. A little boy ran into the room, stopped in the middle, and whirled to face the doorway where Ender stood. He couldn't be more than a year younger than Quara, six or seven years old, probably. Unlike Quara, his face showed plenty of understanding. Along with a feral hunger.

  "Is your mother home?" asked Ender.

  The boy bent over and carefully rolled up his pantleg. He had taped a long kitchen knife to his leg. Slowly he untaped it. Then, holding it in front of him with both hands, he aimed himself at Ender and launched himself full speed. Ender noted that the knife was well-aimed at his crotch. The boy was not subtle in his approach to strangers.

  A moment later Ender had the boy tucked under his arm and the knife jammed into the ceiling. The boy was kicking and screaming. Ender had to use both hands to control his limbs; the boy ended up dangling in front of him by his hands and feet, for all the world like a calf roped for branding.

  Ender looked steadily at Quara. "If you don't go right now and get whoever is in charge in this house, I'm going to take this animal home and serve it for supper."