Orson Card - Speaker for the Dead

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 connections with our life here. Yet we'll need him later. When you arrive. He's a very good man, Val. He can make the last week of your voyage very educational."

"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 running our little rebellion, he'd end up Hegemon of all the Hundred Worlds. We just want them to leave us alone."

"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 connection.

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."

"So both of them--"

"The piggies didn't want to kill either Pipo or Libo. In both cases, the crucial achievement belonged to a piggy. The only reason Pipo and Libo died was because they couldn't bring themselves to take a knife and kill a friend."

Miro must have seen the pain in Ender's face, despite his best effort to conceal it. Because it was Ender's bitterness that he answered. "You," said Miro, "you can kill anybody."

"It's a knack I was born with," said Ender.

"You killed Human because you knew it would make him live a new and better life," said Miro.

"Yes."

"And me," said Miro.

"Yes," said Ender. "Sending you away is very much like killing you."

"But will I live a new and better life?"

"I don't know. Already you get around better than a tree."

Miro laughed. "So I've got one thing on old Human, don't I-- at least I'm ambulatory. And nobody has to hit me with a stick so I can talk." Then Miro's expression grew sour again. "Of course, now he can have a thousand children."

"Don't count on being celibate all your life," said Ender. "You may be disappointed."

"I hope so," said Miro.

And then, after a silence: "Speaker?"

"Call me Ender."

"Ender, did Pipo and Libo die for nothing, then?" Ender understood the real question: Am I also enduring this for nothing?

"There are worse reasons to die," Ender answered, "than to die because you cannot bear to kill."