First meetings in the Enderverse

neighborhood full of people far above his level of income would never have rated a mention in the newsnets, but it colored the lives of his children as they were growing up, forcing them to deal with people who looked down on them. It also filled his own life with anxiety over finances. He worked himself to death, paying for the house. He did it “for the children,” yet they all wished that they had been able to grow up with people who wouldn’t judge them for their lack of money, who didn’t dismiss them as climbers.
    His wife was isolated in a neighborhood where she had no women friends, and he had been dead for less than a day when she put the house on the market; she had already moved out. But the speaker did not stop there. He went on to show how the dead man’s obsession with this house, with putting his family in this neighborhood, arose from his own mother’s constant harping at his father’s failure to provide a fine home for her. She constantly talked about how it had been a mistake for her to “marry down,” and so the dead man had grown up obsessed with the need for a man to provide only the best for his family, no matter what it took. He hated his mother-he fled his home world and came to Sorelledolce primarily to get away from her-but her twisted values came with him and distorted his life and the lives of his children. In the end, it was her quarrel with her husband that killed her son, for it led to the exhaustion and the stroke that felled him before he was fifty. Andrew could see that the widow and children had not known their grandmother, back on their father’s home planet, had not guessed at the source of his obsession with living in the right neighborhood, in the right house. Now that they could see the script that had been given him as a child, tears were shed. Obviously, they had been given permission to face their resentments and, at the same time, forgive their father for the pain he had put them through. Things made sense to them now. The speaking ended. Family members embraced the speaker, and each other; then the speaker went away.
    Andrew followed him. Caught him by the arm as he reached the street.
    “Sir,” Andrew said, “how did you become a speaker?”
    The man looked at him oddly. “I spoke.”
    “But how did you prepare?”
    “The first death I spoke was the death of my grandfather,” he said. “I hadn’t even read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon.” (The books were invariably sold as a single volume now.) “But when I was done, people told me I had a real gift as a speaker for the dead. That’s when I finally read the books and got an idea of how the thing ought to be done. So when other people asked me to speak at funerals, I knew how much research was required. I don’t know that I’m doing it ‘right’ even now.”
    “So to be a speaker for the dead, you simply-”
    “Speak. And get asked to speak again.” The man smiled. “It’s not a paying job, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “No, no,” said Andrew. “I just… I just wanted to know how the thing was done, that’s all.” This man, already in his fifties, would not be likely to believe that the author of The Hive Queen and the Hegemon stood before him in the form of this twenty-year-old.
    “And in case you’re wondering,” said the speaker for the dead, “we aren’t ministers. We don’t stake out our turf and get testy if someone else sticks his nose in.”
    “Oh?”
    “So if you’re thinking of becoming a speaker for the dead, all I can say is, go for it. Just don’t do a half-assed job. You’re reshaping the past for people, and if you aren’t going to plunge in and do it right, finding out everything, you’ll only do harm and it’s better not to do it at all. You can’t stand up and wing it.”
    “No, I guess you can’t.”
    “There it is. Your full apprenticeship as a speaker for the dead. I hope you don’t want a certificate.”
    The man smiled. “It’s not always as appreciated as it was in there. Sometimes you speak because the dead person asked for a speaker for the dead in his will. The family doesn’t want you to do it, and they’re horrified at the things you say, and they’ll never forgive you for it when you’re done. But… you do it anyway, because the dead man wanted the truth spoken.”
    “How can you be sure when you’ve found the truth.”
    “You never know. You just do your best.” He patted Andrew on the back.
    “I’d love to talk