Speaker for the Dead

minutes they could watch it grow. Several large organs shriveled as roots shot out of them; tendrils reached from place to place within the body; Human's eyes went wide with the final agony; and out of his spine a sprout burst upward, two leaves, four leaves-- And then stopped. The body was dead; its last spasm of strength had gone to making the tree that rooted in Human's spine. Ender had seen the rootlets and tendrils reaching through the body. The memories, the soul of Human had been transferred into the cells of the newly sprouted tree. It was done. His third life had begun. And when the sun rose in the morning, not long from now, the leaves would taste the light for the first time.
      The other piggies were rejoicing, dancing. Leaf-eater and Mandachuva took the knives from Ender's hands and jammed them into the ground on either side of Human's head. Ender could not join their celebration. He was covered with blood and reeked with the stench of the body he had butchered. On all fours he crawled from the body, up the hill to a place where he didn't have to see it. Novinha followed him. Exhausted, spent, all of them, from the work and the emotions of the day. They said nothing, did nothing, but fell into the thick capim, each one leaning or lying on someone else, seeking relief at last in sleep, as the piggies danced away up the hill into the woods.
     
     
     
      Bosquinha and Bishop Peregrino made their way to the gate before the sun was up, to watch for the Speaker's return from the forest. They were there a full ten minutes before they saw a movement much nearer than the forest's edge. It was a boy, sleepily voiding his bladder into a bush.
      "Olhado!" called the Mayor.
      The boy turned, waved, then hastily fastened his trousers and began waking others who slept in the tall grass. Bosquinha and the Bishop opened the gate and walked out to meet them.
      "Foolish, isn't it," said Bosquinha, "but this is the moment when our rebellion seems most real. When I first walk beyond the fence."
      "Why did they spend the night out of doors?" Peregrino wondered aloud. "The gate was open, they could have gone home."
      Bosquinha took a quick census of the group outside the gates. Ouanda and Ela, arm in arm like sisters. Olhado and Quim. Novinha. And there, yes, the Speaker, sitting down, Novinha behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders. They all waited expectantly, saying nothing. Until Ender looked up at them. "We have the treaty," he said. "It's a good one."
      Novinha held up a bundle wrapped in leaves. "They wrote it down," she said. "For you to sign."
      Bosquinha took the bundle. "All the files were restored before midnight," she said. "Not just the ones we saved in your message queue. Whoever your friend is, Speaker, he's very good."
      "She," said the Speaker. "Her name is Jane."
      Now, though, the Bishop and Bosquinha could see what lay on the cleared earth just down the hill from where the Speaker had slept. Now they understood the dark stains on the Speaker's hands and arms, the spatter marks on his face.
      "I would rather have no treaty," said Bosquinha, "than one you had to kill to get."
      "Wait before you judge," said the Bishop. "I think the night's work was more than just what we see before us."
      "Very wise, Father Peregrino," said the Speaker softly.
      "I'll explain it to you if you want," said Ouanda. "Ela and I understand it as well as anyone."
      "It was like a sacrament," said Olhado.
      Bosquinha looked at Novinha, uncomprehending. "You let him watch?"
      Olhado tapped his eyes. "All the piggies will see it, someday, through my eyes."
      "It wasn't death," said Quim. "It was resurrection."
      The Bishop stepped near the tortured corpse and touched the seedling tree growing from the chest cavity. "His name is Human," said the Speaker.
      "And so is yours," said the Bishop softly. He turned and looked around at the members of his little flock, who had already taken humanity a step further than it had ever gone before. Am I the shepherd, Peregrino asked himself, or the most confused and helpless of the sheep? "Come, all of you. Come with me to the Cathedral. The bells will soon ring for mass."
      The children gathered and prepared to go. Novinha, too, stepped away from her place behind the Speaker. Then she stopped, turned back to him, looked at him with silent invitation in her eyes.
      "Soon," he said. "A moment more."
      She, too, followed the Bishop through the