Orson Card - Speaker for the Dead

He was alone in the praça. Everyone had gone while Bosquinha talked to him. Ender felt as an old soldier must feel, walking over placid fields at the site of a long-ago battle, hearing the echoes of the carnage in the breeze across the rustling grass.

"Don't let them sever the ansible connection."

The voice in his ear startled him, but he knew it at once. "Jane," he said.

"I can make them think you've cut off your ansible, but if you really do it then I won't be able to help you."

"Jane," he said, "you did this, didn't you! Why else would they notice what Libo and Miro and Ouanda have been doing if you didn't call it to their attention?"

She didn't answer.

"Jane, I'm sorry that I cut you off, I'll never--"

He knew she knew what he would say; he didn't have to finish sentences with her. But she didn't answer.

"I'll never turn off the--"

What good did it do to finish sentences that he knew she understood? She hadn't forgiven him yet, that was all, or she would already be answering, telling him to stop wasting her time. Yet he couldn't keep himself from trying one more time. "I missed you. Jane. I really missed you."

Still she didn't answer. She had said what she had to say, to keep the ansible connection alive, and that was all. For now. Ender didn't mind waiting. It was enough to know that she was still there, listening. He wasn't alone. Ender was surprised to find tears on his cheeks. Tears of relief, he decided. Catharsis. A Speaking, a crisis, people's lives in tatters, the future of the colony in doubt. And I cry in relief because an overblown computer program is speaking to me again.

Ela was waiting for him in his little house. Her eyes were red from crying. "Hello," she said.

"Did I do what you wanted?" he asked.

"I never guessed," she said. "He wasn't our father. I should have known."

"I can't think how you could have."

"What have I done? Calling you here to Speak my father's-- Marcão's-- death. " She began weeping again. "Mother's secrets-- I thought I knew what they were, I thought it was just her files-- I thought she hated Libo. "

"All I did was open the windows and let in some air."

"Tell that to Miro and Ouanda."

"Think a moment, Ela. They would have found out eventually. The cruel thing was that they didn't know for so many years. Now that they have the truth, they can find their own way out."

"Like Mother did? Only this time even worse than adultery?"

Ender touched her hair, smoothed it. She accepted his touch, his consolation. He couldn't remember if his father or mother had ever touched him with such a gesture. They must have. How else would he have learned it?

"Ela, will you help me?"

"Help you what? You've done your work, haven't you?"

"This has nothing to do with Speaking for the dead. I have to know, within the hour, how the Descolada works."

"You'll have to ask Mother-- she's the one who knows."

"I don't think she'd be glad to see me tonight."

" I'm supposed to ask her? Good evening, Mamãe, you've just been revealed to all of Milagre as an adulteress who's been lying to your children all our lives. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you a couple of science questions."

"Ela, it's a matter of survival for Lusitania. Not to mention your brother Miro." He reached over and turned to the terminal. "Log on," he said.

She was puzzled, but she did it. The computer wouldn't recognize her name. "I've been taken off." She looked at him in alarm. "Why?"

"It's not just you. It's everybody."

"It isn't a breakdown," she said. "Somebody stripped out the log-on file."

"Starways Congress stripped all the local computer memory. Everything's gone. We're regarded as being in a state of rebellion. Miro and Ouanda are going to be arrested and sent to Trondheim for trial. Unless I can persuade the Bishop and Bosquinha to launch a real rebellion. Do you understand? If your mother doesn't tell you what I need to know, Miro and Ouanda will both be sent twenty-two lightyears away. The penalty for treason is death. But even going to the trial is as bad as life imprisonment. We'll all be dead or very very old before they get back."

Ela looked blankly at the wall. "What do you need to know?"

"I need to know what the Committee will find when they open up her files. About how the Descolada works. "

"Yes," said Ela. "For Miro's sake she'll do it." She looked at him defiantly. "She does love us, you know. For one of her children, she'd talk to you herself."

"Good," said Ender. "It would be better if she came herself. To the Bishop's chambers, in an hour."

"Yes," said Ela. For a moment she sat still. Then a synapse connected somewhere, and she stood up and hurried toward the door.

She stopped. She came back, embraced him, kissed him on the cheek. "I'm glad you told it all," she said. "I'm glad to know it."

He kissed her forehead and sent her on her way. When the door closed behind her, he sat down on his bed, then lay down and stared at the ceiling. He thought of Novinha, tried to imagine what she was feeling now. No matter how terrible it is, Novinha, your daughter is hurrying home to you right now, sure that despite the pain and humiliation you're going through, you'll forget yourself completely and do whatever it takes to save your son. I would trade you all your suffering, Novinha, for one child who trusted me like that.

The Fence

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.)

The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands, "Is there anyone here," he says to them, "who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?"

They murmur and say, "We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it."

The rabbi says, "Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong." He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, "Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he'll know I am his loyal servant."

So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another rabbi, another city, He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, "Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone."

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.

As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.

"Nor am I without sin," he says to the people. "But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it."

So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.