Speaker for the dead

“By your argument we should kill the piggies now, primitive and helpless as they are!” shouted Styrka.

“My argument? I asked a question. A question isn't an argument, unless you think you know my answer, and I assure you, Styrka, that you do not. Think about this. Class is dismissed.”

“Will we talk about this tomorrow?” they demanded.

“If you want,” said Andrew. But he knew that if they discussed it, it would be without him. For them, the issue of Ender the Xenocide was merely philosophical. After all, the Bugger Wars were more than three thousand years ago; it was now the year 1948 SC, counting from the year the Starways Code was established, and Ender had destroyed the Buggers in the year 1180 BSC. But to Andrew, the events were not so remote. He had done far more interstellar travel than any of his students would dare to guess; since he was twenty-five he had, until Trondheim, never stayed more than six months on any planet. Lightspeed travel between worlds had let him skip like a stone over the surface of time. His students had no idea that their Speaker for the Dead, who was surely no older than thirty-five, had very clear memories of events 3000 years before, that in fact those events seemed scarcely twenty years ago to him, only half his lifetime. They had no idea how deeply the question of Ender's ancient guilt burned within him, and how he had answered it in a thousand different unsatisfactory ways. They knew their teacher only as Speaker for the Dead; they did not know that when he was a mere infant, his older sister, Valentine, could not pronounce the name Andrew, and so called him Ender, the name that he made infamous before he was fifteen years old. So let unforgiving Styrka and analytical Plikt ponder the great question of Ender's guilt; for Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead, the question was not academic.

And now, walking along the damp, grassy hillside in the chill air, Ender– Andrew, Speaker– could think only of the piggies, who were already committing inexplicable murders, just as the buggers had carelessly done when they first visited humankind. Was it something unavoidable, when strangers met, that the meeting had to be marked with blood? The buggers had casually killed human beings, but only because they had a hive mind; to them, individual life was as precious as nail parings, and killing a human or two was simply their way of letting us know they were in the neighborhood. Could the piggies have such a reason for killing, too?

But the voice in his ear had spoken of torture, a ritual murder similar to the execution of one of the piggies' own. The piggies were not a hive mind, they were not the buggers, and Ender Wiggin had to know why they had done what they did.

“When did you hear about the death of the xenologer?”

Ender turned. It was Plikt. She had followed him instead of going back to the Caves, where the students lived.

“Then, while we spoke.” He touched his ear; implanted terminals were expensive, but they were not all that rare.

“I checked the news just before class. There was nothing about it then. If a major story had been coming in by ansible, there would have been an alert. Unless you got the news straight from the ansible report.”

Plikt obviously thought she had a mystery on her hands. And, in fact, she did. “Speakers have high priority access to public information,” he said.

“Has someone asked you to Speak the death of the xenologer?”

He shook his head. “Lusitania is under a Catholic License.”

“That's what I mean,” she said. “They won't have a Speaker of their own there. But they still have to let a Speaker come, if someone requests it. And Trondheim is the closest world to Lusitania.”

“Nobody's called for a Speaker.”

Plikt tugged at his sleeve. “Why are you here?”

“You know why I came. I Spoke the death of Wutan.”

“I know you came here with your sister, Valentine. She's a much more popular teacher than you are– she answers questions with answers; you just answer with more questions.”

“That's because she knows some answers.”

“Speaker, you have to tell me. I tried to find out about you– I was curious. Your name, for one thing, where you came from. Everything's classified. Classified so deep that I can't even find out what the access level is. God himself couldn't look up your life story.”

Ender took her by the shoulders, looked down into her eyes. “It's none of your business, that's what the access level is.”

“You are more important than anybody guesses, Speaker,” she said. “The ansible reports to you before it reports to anybody, doesn't it? And nobody can look up information about you.”

“Nobody has ever tried. Why you?”

“I want to be a Speaker,” she said.

"Go ahead then. The computer will train you. It isn't like a religion– you don't have to memorize any catechism. Now leave me alone. " He let go of her with a little shove. She staggered backward as he strode off.

“I want to Speak for you,” she cried.

“I'm not dead yet!” he shouted back.

“I know you're going to Lusitania! I know you are!”

Then you know more than I do, said Ender silently. But he trembled as he walked, even though the sun was shining and he wore three sweaters to keep out the cold. He hadn't known Plikt had so much emotion in her. Obviously she had come to identify with him. It frightened him to have this girl need something from him so desperately. He had spent years now without making any real co

The idea of casting a root into the icy soil of Trondheim repelled him. What did Plikt want from him? It didn't matter; he wouldn't give it. How dare she demand things from him, as if he belonged to her? Ender Wiggin didn't belong to anybody. If she knew who he really was, she would loathe him as the Xenocide; or she would worship him as the Savior of Mankind– Ender remembered what it was like when people used to do that, too, and he didn't like it any better. Even now they knew him only by his role, by the name Speaker, Talman, Falante, Spieler, whatever they called the Speaker for the Dead in the language of their city or nation or world.

He didn't want them to know him. He did not belong to them, to the human race. He had another errand, he belonged to someone else. Not human beings. Not the bloody piggies, either. Or so he thought.

Chapter 3

Libo

Observed Diet: Primarily macios, the shiny worms that live among merclona vines on the bark of the trees. Sometimes they have been seen to chew capirn blades. Sometimes– accidently? –they ingest merclona leaves along with the maclos.

We've never seen them eat anything else. Novinha analyzed all three foods– macios, capim blades, and merclona leaves– and the results were surprising. Either the peclueninos don't need many different proteins, or they're hungry all the time. Their diet is sehously lacking in many trace elements. And calcium intake is so low, we wonder whether their bones use calcium the same way ours do.

Pure speculation: Since we can't take tissue samples, our only knowledge of piggy anatomy and physiology is what we were able to glean from our photographs of the vivisected corpse of the piggy called Rooter. Still, there are some obvious anomalies. The piggles' tongues, which are so fantastically agile that they can produce any sound we make, and a lot we can't, must have evolved for some purpose. Probing for insects in tree bark or in nests in the ground, maybe. Whether an ancient ancestral piggy did that, they certainly don't do it now. And the horny pads on their feet and inside their knees allow them to climb trees and cling by their legs alone. Why did that evolve? To escape from some predator? There is no predator on Lusitania large enough to harm them. To cling to the tree while probing for insects in the bark? That fits in with their tongues, but where are the insects? The only insects are the suckflies and the puladors, but they don't bore into the bark and the piggies don't eat them anyway. The macios are large, live on the bark's surface, and can easily be harvested by pulling down the merclona vines; they really don't even have to climb the trees.