Orson Scott Card - Ender 2 - Speaker for the Dead

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SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

by Orson Scott Card

v1.0 (21-Jul-1999)

If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and

redistribute.

Prologue

In the year 1830, after the formation of Starways Congress, a robot scout ship sent a report by

ansible: The planet it was investigating was well within the parameters for human life. The

nearest planet with any kind of population pressure was Ba¡a; Starways Congress granted them the

exploration license.

So it was that the first humans to see the new world were Portuguese by language, Brazilian by

culture, and Catholic by creed. In the year 1886 they disembarked from their shuttle, crossed

themselves, and named the planet Lusitania-- the ancient name of Portugal. They set about

cataloguing the flora and fauna. Five days later they realized that the little forest-dwelling

animals that they had called porquinhos-- piggies-- were not animals at all.

For the first time since the Xenocide of the Buggers by the Monstrous Ender, humans had found

intelligent alien life.

The piggies were technologically primitive, but they used tools and built houses and spoke a

language. "It is another chance God has given us," declared Archcardinal Pio of Ba¡a. "We can be

redeemed for the destruction of the buggers."

The members of Starways Congress worshipped many gods, or none, but they agreed with the

Archcardinal. Lusitania would be settled from Ba¡a, and therefore under Catholic License, as

tradition demanded. But the colony could never spread beyond a limited area or exceed a limited

population. And it was bound, above all, by one law: the piggies were not to be disturbed.

Chapter 1 -- Pipo

Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as

human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable,

tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not

rivals but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence.

Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the

creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it

does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.

-- Demosthenes, Letter to the Framlings

Rooter was at once the most difficult and the most helpful of the pequeninos. He was always

there whenever Pipo visited their clearing, and did his best to answer the questions Pipo was

forbidden by law to come right out and ask. Pipo depended on him-- too much, probably-- yet though

Rooter clowned and played like the irresponsible youngling that he was, he also watched, probed,

tested. Pipo always had to beware of the traps that Rooter set for him.

A moment ago Rooter had been shimmying up trees, gripping the bark with only the horny pads on

his ankles and inside his thighs. In his hands he carried two sticks-- Father Sticks, they were

called-- which he beat against the tree in a compelling, arhythmic pattern all the while he

climbed.

The noise brought Mandachuva out of the log house. He called to Rooter in the Males' Language,

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and then in Portuguese. "P'ra baixo, bicho!" Several piggies nearby, hearing his Portuguese

wordplay, expressed their appreciation by rubbing their thighs together sharply. It made a hissing

noise, and Mandachuva took a little hop in the air in delight at their applause.

Rooter, in the meantime, bent over backward until it seemed certain he would fall. Then he

flipped off with his hands, did a somersault in the air, and landed on his legs, hopping a few

times but not stumbling.

"So now you're an acrobat," said Pipo.

Rooter swaggered over to him. It was his way of imitating humans. It was all the more effective

as ridicule because his flattened upturned snout looked decidedly porcine. No wonder that

offworlders called them "piggies." The first visitors to this world had started calling them that

in their first reports back in '86, and by the time Lusitania Colony was founded in 1925, the name

was indelible. The xenologers scattered among the Hundred Worlds wrote of them as "Lusitanian

Aborigines," though Pipo knew perfectly well that this was merely a matter of professional dignity-

- except in scholarly papers, xenologers no doubt called them piggies, too. As for Pipo, he called

them pequeninos, and they seemed not to object, for now they called themselves "Little Ones."

Still, dignity or not, there was no denying it. At moments like this, Rooter looked like a hog on

its hind legs.

"Acrobat," Rooter said, trying out the new word. "What I did? You have a word for people who do

that? So there are people who do that as their work?"

Pipo sighed silently, even as he froze his smile in place. The law strictly forbade him to share

information about human society, lest it contaminate piggy culture. Yet Rooter played a constant

game of squeezing the last drop of implication out of everything Pipo said. This time, though,

Pipo had no one to blame but himself, letting out a silly remark that opened unnecessary windows

onto human life. Now and then he got so comfortable among the pequeninos that he spoke naturally.

Always a danger. I'm not good at this constant game of taking information while trying to give

nothing in return. Libo, my close-mouthed son, already he's better at discretion than I am, and

he's only been apprenticed to me-- how long since he turned thirteen? --four months.

"I wish I had pads on my legs like yours," said Pipo. "The bark on that tree would rip my skin

to shreds."

"That would cause us all to be ashamed. " Rooter held still in the expectant posture that Pipo

thought of as their way of showing mild anxiety, or perhaps a nonverbal warning to other

pequeninos to be cautious. It might also have been a sign of extreme fear, but as far as Pipo knew

he had never seen a pequenino feel extreme fear.

In any event, Pipo spoke quickly to calm him. "Don't worry, I'm too old and soft to climb trees

like that. I'll leave it to you younglings."

And it worked; Rooter's body at once became mobile again. "I like to climb trees. I can see

everything." Rooter squatted in front of Pipo and leaned his face in close. "Will you bring the

beast that runs over the grass without touching the ground? The others don't believe me when I say

I saw such a thing."

Another trap. What, Pipo, xenologer, will you humiliate this individual of the community you're

studying? Or will you adhere to the rigid law set up by Starways Congress to govern this

encounter? There were few precedents. The only other intelligent aliens that humankind had

encountered were the buggers, three thousand years ago, and at the end of it the buggers were all

dead. This time Starways Congress was making sure that if humanity erred, their errors would be in

the opposite direction. Minimal information, minimal contact.

Rooter recognized Pipo's hesitation, his careful silence.

"You never tell us anything," said Rooter. "You watch us and study us, but you never let us past

your fence and into your village to watch you and study you."

Pipo answered as honestly as he could, but it was more important to be careful than to be

honest. "If you learn so little and we learn so much, why is it that you speak both Stark and

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Portuguese while I'm still struggling with your language?"

"We're smarter." Then Rooter leaned back and spun around on his buttocks so his back was toward

Pipo. "Go back behind your fence," he said.

Pipo stood at once. Not too far away, Libo was with three pequeninos, trying to learn how they

wove dried merdona vines into thatch. He saw Pipo and in a moment was with his father, ready to

go. Pipo led him off without a word; since the pequeninos were so fluent in human languages, they

never discussed what they had learned until they were inside the gate.

It took a half hour to get home, and it was raining heavily when they passed through the gate

and walked along the face of the hill to the Zenador's Station. Zenador? Pipo thought of the word

as he looked at the small sign above the door. On it the word XENOLOGER was written in Stark. That

is what I am, I suppose, thought Pipo, at least to the offworlders. But the Portuguese title

Zenador was so much easier to say that on Lusitania hardly anyone said xenologer, even when

speaking Stark. That is how languages change, thought Pipo. If it weren't for the ansible,

providing instantaneous communication among the Hundred Worlds, we could not possibly maintain a

common language. Interstellar travel is far too rare and slow. Stark would splinter into ten

thousand dialects within a century. It might be interesting to have the computers run a projection

of linguistic changes on Lusitania, if Stark were allowed to decay and absorb Portuguese--

"Father," said Libo.

Only then did Pipo notice that he had stopped ten meters away from the station. Tangents. The

best parts of my intellectual life are tangential, in areas outside my expertise. I suppose

because within my area of expertise the regulations they have placed upon me make it impossible to

know or understand anything. The science of xenology insists on more mysteries than Mother Church.

His handprint was enough to unlock the door. Pipo knew how the evening would unfold even as he

stepped inside to begin. It would take several hours of work at the terminals for them both to

report what they had done during today's encounter. Pipo would then read over Libo's notes, and

Libo would read Pipo's, and when they were satisfied, Pipo would write up a brief summary and then

let the computers take it from there, filing the notes and also transmitting them instantly, by

ansible, to the xenologers in the rest of the Hundred Worlds. More than a thousand scientists

whose whole career is studying the one alien race we know, and except for what little the

satellites can discover about this arboreal species, all the information my colleagues have is

what Libo and I send them. This is definitely minimal intervention.

But when Pipo got inside the station, he saw at once that it would not be an evening of steady

but relaxing work. Dona Cristƒ was there, dressed in her monastic robes. Was it one of the younger

children, in trouble at school?

"No, no," said Dona Crist . "All your children are doing very well, except this one, who I think

is far too young to be out of school and working here, even as an apprentice. "

Libo said nothing. A wise decision, thought Pipo. Dona Crist was a brilliant and engaging,

perhaps even beautiful, young woman, but she was first and foremost a monk of the Order of the

Filhos da Mente de Cristo, Children of the Mind of Christ, and she was not beautiful to behold

when she was angry at ignorance and stupidity. It was amazing the number of quite intelligent

people whose ignorance and stupidity had melted somewhat in the fire of her scorn. Silence, Libo,

it's a policy that will do you good.

"I'm not here about any child of yours at all," said Dona Crist . "I'm here about Novinha."

Dona Crist did not have to mention a last name; everybody knew Novinha. The terrible Descolada

had ended only eight years before. The plague had threatened to wipe out the colony before it had

a fair chance to get started; the cure was discovered by Novinha's father and mother, Gusto and

Cida, the two xenobiologists. It was a tragic irony that they found the cause of the disease and

its treatment too late to save themselves. Theirs was the last Descolada funeral.

Pipo clearly remembered the little girl Novinha, standing there holding Mayor Bosquinha's hand

while Bishop Peregrino conducted the funeral mass himself. No-- not holding the Mayor's hand. The

picture came back to his mind, and, with it, the way he felt. What does she make of this? he

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remembered asking himself. It's the funeral of her parents, she's the last survivor in her family;

yet all around her she can sense the great rejoicing of the people of this colony. Young as she

is, does she understand that our joy is the best tribute to her parents? They struggled and

succeeded, finding our salvation in the waning days before they died; we are here to celebrate the

great gift they gave us. But to you, Novinha, it's the death of your parents, as your brothers

died before. Five hundred dead, and more than a hundred masses for the dead here in this colony in

the last six months, and all of them were held in an atmosphere of fear and grief and despair.

Now, when your parents die, the fear and grief and despair are no less for you than ever before--

but no one else shares your pain. It is the relief from pain that is foremost in our minds.

Watching her, trying to imagine her feelings, he succeeded only in rekindling his own grief at

the death of his own Maria, seven years old, swept away in the wind of death that covered her body

in cancerous growth and rampant funguses, the flesh swelling or decaying, a new limb, not arm or

leg, growing out of her hip, while the flesh sloughed off her feet and head, baring the bones, her

sweet and beautiful body destroyed before their eyes, while her bright mind was mercilessly alert,

able to feel all that happened to her until she cried out to God to let her die. Pipo remembered

that, and then remembered her requiem mass, shared with five other victims. As he sat, knelt,

stood there with his wife and surviving children, he had felt the perfect unity of the people in

the Cathedral. He knew that his pain was everybody's pain, that through the loss of his eldest

daughter he was bound to his community with the inseparable bonds of grief, and it was a comfort

to him, it was something to cling to. That was how such a grief ought to be, a public mourning.

Little Novinha had nothing of that. Her pain was, if anything, worse than Pipo's had been-- at

least Pipo had not been left without any family at all, and he was an adult, not a child terrified

by suddenly losing the foundation of her life. In her grief she was not drawn more tightly into

the community, but rather excluded from it. Today everyone was rejoicing, except her. Today

everyone praised her parents; she alone yearned for them, would rather they had never found the

cure for others if only they could have remained alive themselves.

Her isolation was so acute that Pipo could see it from where he sat. Novinha took her hand away

from the Mayor as quickly as possible. Her tears dried up as the mass progressed; by the end she

sat in silence, like a prisoner refusing to cooperate with her captors. Pipo's heart broke for

her. Yet he knew that even if he tried, he could not conceal his own gladness at the end of the

Descolada, his rejoicing that none of his other children would be taken from him. She would see

that; his effort to comfort her would be a mockery, would drive her further away.

After the mass she walked in bitter solitude amid the crowds of well-meaning people who cruelly

told her that her parents were sure to be saints, sure to sit at the right hand of God. What kind

of comfort is that for a child? Pipo whispered aloud to his wife, "She'll never forgive us for

today."

"Forgive?" Conceicao was not one of those wives who instantly understood her husband's train of

thought. "We didn't kill her parents--"

"But we're all rejoicing today, aren't we? She'll never forgive us for that."

"Nonsense. She doesn't understand anyway; she's too young."

She understands, Pipo thought. Didn't Maria understand things when she was even younger than

Novinha is now?

As the years passed-- eight years now-- he had seen her from time to time. She was his son

Libo's age, and until Libo's thirteenth birthday that meant they were in many classes together. He

heard her give occasional readings and speeches, along with other children. There was an elegance

to her thought, an intensity to her examination of ideas that appealed to him. At the same time,

she seemed utterly cold, completely removed from everyone else. Pipo's own boy, Libo, was shy, but

even so he had several friends, and had won the affection of his teachers. Novinha, though, had no

friends at all, no one whose gaze she sought after a moment of triumph. There was no teacher who

genuinely liked her, because she refused to reciprocate, to respond. "She is emotionally

paralyzed," Dona Crist said once when Pipo asked about her. "There is no reaching her. She swears

that she's perfectly happy, and doesn't see any need to change."

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Now Dona Crist had come to the Zenador's Station to talk to Pipo about Novinha. Why Pipo? He

could guess only one reason for the principal of the school to come to him about this particular

orphaned girl. "Am I to believe that in all the years you've had Novinha in your school, I'm the

only person who asked about her?"

"Not the only person," she said. "There was all kinds of interest in her a couple of years ago,

when the Pope beatified her parents. Everybody asked then whether the daughter of Gusto and Cida,

Os Venerados, had ever noticed any miraculous events associated with her parents, as so many other

people had."

"They actually asked her that?"

"There were rumors, and Bishop Peregrino had to investigate." Dona Crist got a bit tight-lipped

when she spoke of the young spiritual leader of Lusitania Colony. But then, it was said that the

hierarchy never got along well with the order of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo. "Her answer was

instructive. "

"I can imagine."

"She said, more or less, that if her parents were actually listening to prayers and had any

influence in heaven to get them granted, then why wouldn't they have answered her prayer, for them

to return from the grave? That would be a useful miracle, she said, and there are precedents. If

Os Venerados actually had the power to grant miracles, then it must mean they did not love her

enough to answer her prayer. She preferred to believe that her parents still loved her, and simply

did not have the power to act."

"A born sophist," said Pipo.

"A sophist and an expert in guilt: she told the Bishop that if the Pope declared her parents to

be venerable, it would be the same as the Church saying that her parents hated her. The Petition

for canonization of her parents was proof that Lusitania despised her; if it was granted, it would

be proof that the Church itself was despicable. Bishop Peregrino was livid."

"I notice he sent in the petition anyway."

"For the good of the community. And there were all those miracles."

"Someone touches the shrine and a headache goes away and they cry 'Milagre!-- os santos me

abenqoaram!'" Miracle!-- the saints have blessed me!

"You know that Holy Rome requires more substantial miracles than that. But it doesn't matter.

The Pope graciously allowed us to call our little town Milagre, and now I imagine that every time

someone says that name, Novinha burns a little hotter with her secret rage."

"Or colder. One never knows what temperature that sort of thing will take."

"Anyway, Pipo, you aren't the only one who ever asked about her. But you're the only one who

ever asked about her for her own sake, and not because of her most Holy and Blessed parents."

It was a sad thought, that except for the Filhos, who ran the schools of Lusitania, there had

been no concern for the girl except the slender shards of attention Pipo had spared for her over

the years.

"She has one friend," said Libo.

Pipo had forgotten that his son was there-- Libo was so quiet that he was easy to overlook. Dona

Crist also seemed startled. "Libo," she said, "I think we were indiscreet, talking about one of

your schoolmates like this."

"I'm apprentice Zenador now," Libo reminded her. It meant he wasn't in school.

"Who is her friend?" asked Pipo.

"Marc o."

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