Speaker for the dead

“It's true,” said Ender, “but we're working on it. Trying to find ways to keep the Descolada from spreading when we go to other worlds.”

“True or not, Ender, it's all leading to war. I remember war– nobody else does. So I revived Demosthenes. I stumbled across some memos and reports. Their fleet is carrying the Little Doctor, Ender. If they decide to, they can blow Lusitania to bits. Just like–”

“Just like I did before. Poetic justice, do you think, for me to end the same way? He who lives by the sword–”

“Don't joke with me, Ender! I'm a middle-aged matron now, and I've lost my patience with silliness. At least for now. I wrote some very ugly truths about what Starways Congress is doing, and published them as Demosthenes. They're looking for me. Treason is what they're calling it.”

“So you're coming here?”

“Not just me. Dear Jakt is turning the fleet over to his brothers and sisters. We've already bought a starship. There's apparently some kind of resistance movement that's helping us– someone named Jane has jimmied the computers to cover our tracks.”

“I know Jane,” said Ender.

“So you do have an organization here! I was shocked when I got a message that I could call you. Your ansible was supposedly blown up.”

“We have powerful friends.”

“Ender, Jakt and I are leaving today. We're bringing our three children.”

“Your first one–”

“Yes, Syfte, the one who was making me fat when you left, she's almost twenty-two now. A very lovely girl. And a good friend, the children's tutor, named Plikt.”

“I have a student by that name,” said Ender, thinking back to conversations only a couple of months ago.

“Oh, yes, well, that was twenty years ago, Ender. And we're bringing several of Jakt's best men and their families. Something of an ark. It's not an emergency– you have twenty-two years to prepare for me. Actually longer, more like thirty years. We're taking the voyage in several hops, the first few in the wrong direction, so that nobody can be sure we're going to Lusitania.”

Coming here. Thirty years from now. I'll be older than she is now. Coming here. By then I'll have my family, too. Novinha's and my children, if we have any, all grown, like hers.

And then, thinking of Novinha, he remembered Miro, remembered what Olhado had suggested several days ago, the day they found the nesting place for the hive queen.

“Would you mind terribly,” said Ender, “if I sent someone to meet you on the way?”

“Meet us? In deep space? No, don't send someone to do that, Ender– it's too terrible a sacrifice, to come so far when the computers can guide us in just fine–”

“It's not really for you, though I want him to meet you. He's one of the xenologers. He was badly injured in an accident. Some brain damage; like a bad stroke. He's– he's the smartest person in Lusitania, says someone whose judgment I trust, but he's lost all his co

“Can your friend arrange to get us course information for such a rendezvous? We're navigators, but only on the sea.”

“Jane will have the revised navigational information in your ship's computer when you leave.”

“Ender– for you it'll be thirty years, but for me– I'll see you in only a few weeks.” She started to cry.

“Maybe I'll come with Miro to meet you.”

“Don't!” she said. “I want you to be as old and crabbed as possible when I arrive. I couldn't put up with you as the thirty-year-old brat I see on my terininal.”

“Thirty-five.”

“You'll be there when I arrive!” she demanded.

“I will,” he said. “And Miro, the boy I'm sending to you. Think of him as my son.”

She nodded gravely. “These are such dangerous times, Ender. I only wish we had Peter.”

“I don't. If he were ru

“It may not be possible to get the one without the other,” said Val. “But we can quarrel about that later. Good-bye, my dear brother.”

He didn't answer. Just looked at her and looked at her until she smiled wryly and switched off the co

Ender didn't have to ask Miro to go; Jane had already told him everything.

“Your sister is Demosthenes?” asked Miro. Ender was used to his slurred speech now. Or maybe his speech was clearing a little. It wasn't as hard to understand, anyway.

“We were a talented family,” said Ender. “I hope you like her.”

“I hope she likes me.” Miro smiled, but he looked afraid.

“I told her,” said Ender, “to think of you as my son.”

Miro nodded. “I know,” he said. And then, almost defiantly, “She showed me your conversation with her.”

Ender felt cold inside.

Jane's voice came into his ear. “I should have asked you,” she said. “But you know you would have said yes.”

It wasn't the invasion of privacy that Ender minded. It was the fact that Jane was so very close to Miro. Get used to it, he told himself. He's the one she's looking out for now.

“We'll miss you,” said Ender.

“Those who will miss me, miss me already,” said Miro, “because they already think of me as dead.”

“We need you alive,” said Ender.

“When I come back, I'll still be only nineteen. And brain-damaged.”

“You'll still be Miro, and brilliant, and trusted, and loved. You started this rebellion, Miro. The fence came down for you. Not for some great cause, but for you. Don't let us down.”

Miro smiled, but Ender couldn't tell if the twist in his smile was because of his paralysis, or because it was a bitter, poisonous smile.

“Tell me something,” said Miro.

“If I won't,” said Ender, “she will.”

“It isn't hard. I just want to know what it was that Pipo and Libo died for. What it was the piggies honored them for.”

Ender understood better than Miro knew: He understood why the boy cared so much about the question. Miro had learned that he was really Libo's son only hours before he crossed the fence and lost his future. Pipo, then Libo, then Miro; father, son, grandson; the three xenologers who had lost their futures for the piggies' sake. Miro hoped that in understanding why his forebears died, he might make more sense of his own sacrifice.

The trouble was that the truth might well leave Miro feeling that none of the sacrifices meant anything at all. So Ender answered with a question. “Don't you already know why?”

Miro spoke slowly and carefully, so that Ender could understand his slurred speech. “I know that the piggies thought they were doing them an honor. I know that Mandachuva and Leaf-eater could have died in their places. With Libo, I even know the occasion. It was when the first amaranth harvest came, and there was plenty of food. They were rewarding him for that. Except why not earlier? Why not when we taught them to use merdona root? Why not when we taught them to make pots, or shoot arrows?”

“The truth?” said Ender.

Miro knew from Ender's tone that the truth would not be easy. “Yes,” he said.

“Neither Pipo nor Libo really deserved the honor. It wasn't the amaranth that the wives were rewarding. It was the fact that Leaf-eater had persuaded them to let a whole generation of infants be conceived and born even though there wasn't enough food for them to eat once they left the mothertree. It was a terrible risk to take, and if he had been wrong, that whole generation of young piggies would have died. Libo brought the harvest, but Leaf-eater was the one who had, in a sense, brought the population to a point where they needed the grain.”

Miro nodded. “Pipo?”

“Pipo told the piggies about his discovery. That the Descolada, which killed humans, was part of their normal physiology. That their bodies could handle transformations that killed us. Mandachuva told the wives that this meant that humans were not godlike and all-powerful. That in some ways we were even weaker than the Little Ones. That what made humans stronger than piggies was not something inherent in us– our size, our brains, our language– but rather the mere accident that we were a few thousand years ahead of them in learning. If they could acquire our knowledge, then we humans would have no more power over them. Mandachuva's discovery that piggies were potentially equal to humans– that was what they rewarded, not the information Pipo gave that led to that discovery.”