Orson Card - Speaker for the Dead

"They can all catch it?" asked Bosquinha. "I didn't know that."

"I didn't tell anybody," said Novinha. "But I built the protection into every plant that I developed. The amaranth, the potatoes, everything-- the challenge wasn't making the protein usable, the challenge was to get the organisms to produce their own Descolada blockers."

Bosquinha was appalled. "So anywhere we go--"

"We can trigger the complete destruction of the biosphere.

"And you kept this a secret ?" asked Dom Cristão.

"There was no need to tell it." Novinha looked at her hands in her lap. "Something in the information had caused the piggies to kill Pipo. I kept it secret so no one else would know. But now, what Ela has learned over the last few years, and what the Speaker has said tonight-- now I know what it was that Pipo learned. The Descolada doesn't just split the genetic molecules and prevent them from reforming or duplicating. It also encourages them to bond with completely foreign genetic molecules. Ela did the work on this against my will. All the native life on Lusitania thrives in plant-and-animal pairs. The cabra with the capim. The watersnakes with the grama. The suckflies with the reeds. The xingadora bird with the tropeço vines. And the piggies with the trees of the forest."

"You're saying that one becomes the other?" Dom Cristão was at once fascinated and repelled.

"The piggies may be unique in that, in transforming from the corpse of a piggy into a tree," said Novinha. "But perhaps the cabras become fertilized from the pollen of the capim. Perhaps the flies are hatched from the tassels of the river reeds. It should be studied. I should have been studying it all these years."

"And now they'll know this?" asked Dom Cristão. "From your files?"

"Not right away. But sometime in the next twenty or thirty years. Before any other framlings get here, they'll know," said Novinha.

"I'm not a scientist," said the Bishop. "Everyone else seems to understand except me. What does this have to do with the evacuation?"

Bosquinha fidgeted with her hands. "They can't take us off Lusitania," she said. "Anywhere they took us, we'd carry the Descolada with us, and it would kill everything. There aren't enough xenobiologists in the Hundred Worlds to save even a single planet from devastation. By the time they get here, they'll know that we can't leave."

"Well, then," said the Bishop. "That solves our problem. If we tell them now, they won't even send a fleet to evacuate us."

"No," said Ender. "Bishop Peregrino, once they know what the Descolada will do, they'll see to it that no one leaves this planet, ever."

The Bishop scoffed. "What, do you think they'll blow up the planet? Come now, Speaker, there are no more Enders among the human race. The worst they might do is quarantine us here--"

"In which case," said Dom Cristão, "why should we submit to their control at all? We could send them a message telling them about the Descolada, informing them that we will not leave the planet and they should not come here, and that's it."

Bosquinha shook her head. "Do you think that none of them will say, 'The Lusitanians, just by visiting another world, can destroy it. They have a starship, they have a known propensity for rebelliousness, they have the murderous piggies. Their existence is a threat.'"

"Who would say that?" said the Bishop.

"No one in the Vatican," said Ender. "But Congress isn't in the business of saving souls."

"And maybe they'd be right," said the Bishop. "You said yourself that the piggies want starflight. And yet wherever they might go, they'll have this same effect. Even uninhabited worlds, isn't that right? What will they do, endlessly duplicate this bleak landscape-- forests of a single tree, prairies of a single grass, with only the cabra to graze it and only the xingadora to fly above it?"

"Maybe someday we could find a way to get the Descolada under control," said Ela.

"We can't stake our future on such a thin chance," said the Bishop.

"That's why we have to rebel," said Ender. "Because Congress will think exactly that way. Just as they did three thousand years ago, in the Xenocide. Everybody condemns the Xenocide because it destroyed an alien species that turned out to be harmless in its intentions. But as long as it seemed that the buggers were determined to destroy humankind, the leaders of humanity had no choice but to fight back with all their strength. We are presenting them with the same dilemma again. They're already afraid of the piggies. And once they understand the Descolada, all the pretense of trying to protect the piggies will be done with. For the sake of humanity's survival, they'll destroy us. Probably not the whole planet. As you said, there are no Enders today. But they'll certainly obliterate Milagre and remove any trace of human contact. Including killing all the piggies who know us. Then they'll set a watch over this planet to keep the piggies from ever emerging from their primitive state. If you knew what they know, wouldn't you do the same?"

"A speaker for the dead says this?" said Dom Cristão.

"You were there," said the Bishop. "You were there the first time, weren't you. When the buggers were destroyed."

"Last time we had no way of talking to the buggers, no way of knowing they were ramen and not varelse. This time we're here . We know that we won't go out and destroy other worlds. We know that we'll stay here on Lusitania until we can go out safely, the Descolada neutralized. This time," said Ender, "we can keep the ramen alive, so that whoever writes the piggies' story won't have to be a speaker for the dead ."

The secretary opened the door abruptly, and Ouanda burst in. "Bishop," she said. "Mayor. You have to come. Novinha--"

"What is it?" said the Bishop.

"Ouanda, I have to arrest you," said Bosquinha.

"Arrest me later," she said. "It's Miro. He climbed over the fence."

"He can't do that," said Novinha. "It might kill him--" Then, in horror, she realized what she had said. "Take me to him--"

"Get Navio," said Dona Cristã .

"You don't understand," said Ouanda. "We can't get to him. He's on the other side of the fence."

"Then what can we do?" asked Bosquinha.

"Turn the fence off," said Ouanda.

Bosquinha looked helplessly at the others. "I can't do that. The Committee controls that now. By ansible. They'd never turn it off."

"Then Miro's as good as dead," said Ouanda.

"No," said Novinha.

Behind her, another figure came into the room. Small, fur-covered. None of them but Ender had ever before seen a piggy in the flesh, but they knew at once what the creature was. "Excuse me," said the piggy. "Does this mean we should plant him now?"

No one bothered to ask how the piggy got over the fence. They were too busy realizing what he meant by planting Miro.

"No!" screamed Novinha.

Mandachuva looked at her in surprise. "No?"

"I think," said Ender, "that you shouldn't plant any more humans."

Mandachuva stood absolutely still.

"What do you mean?" said Ouanda. "You're making him upset."

"I expect he'll be more upset before this day is over," said Ender. "Come, Ouanda, take us to the fence where Miro is."

"What good will it do if we can't get over the fence?" asked Bosquinha.

"Call for Navio," said Ender.

"I'll go get him," said Dona Cristã . "You forget that no one can call anybody."

"I said, what good will it do?" demanded Bosquinha.

"I told you before," said Ender. "If you decide to rebel, we can sever the ansible connection. And then we can turn off the fence."

"Are you trying to use Miro's plight to force my hand?" asked the Bishop.

"Yes," said Ender. "He's one of your flock, isn't he? So leave the ninety-nine, shepherd, and come with us to save the one that's lost."