Ender's Saga 2 - Speaker For The Dead

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SPEAKER FOR

THE DEAD

by Orson Scott Card

Table of Contents

Prologue ................................................................... 3

Chapter 1 -- Pipo ....................................................... 5

Chapter 2 -- Trondheim .............................................50

Chapter 3 -- Libo ......................................................63

Chapter 4 -- Ender ....................................................84

Chapter 5 -- Valentine ............................................. 107

Chapter 6 -- Olhado ................................................ 125

Chapter 7 -- The Ribeira House ................................. 162

Chapter 8 -- Dona Ivanova ....................................... 184

Chapter 9 -- Congenital Defect.................................. 200

Chapter 10 -- Children of the Mind ............................ 226

Chapter 11 -- Jane .................................................. 254

Chapter 12 -- Files .................................................. 271

Chapter 13 -- Ela .................................................... 294

Chapter 14 -- Renegades ......................................... 328

Chapter 15 -- Speaking............................................ 372

Chapter 16 -- The Fence .......................................... 415

Chapter 17 -- The Wives .......................................... 469

Chapter 18 -- The Hive Queen .................................. 537

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, 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 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.

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摘要：

SPEAKERFORTHEDEADbyOrsonScottCard(c)1986OrsonScottCardTableofContentsPrologue...................................................................3Chapter1--Pipo.......................................................5Chapter2--Trondheim.............................................50Chapter3--Libo........

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