Speaker for the Dead

waiting flyer. Olhado marked the spot on the map and stored it. He laughed and made jokes all the way home, and Ender laughed with him. The boy wasn't Jane. But he was Olhado, and Ender loved him, and Olhado needed Ender, and that was what a few million years of evolution had decided Ender needed most. It was the hunger that had gnawed at him through all those years with Valentine, that had kept him moving from world to world. This boy with metal eyes. His bright and devastatingly destructive little brother Grego. Quara's penetrating understanding, her innocence; Quim's utter self-control, asceticism, faith; Ela's dependability, like a rock, and yet she knew when to move out and act; and Miro...
      Miro. I have no consolation for Miro, not in this world, not at this time. His life's work was taken from him, his body, his hope for the future, and nothing I can say or do will give him a vital work to do. He lives in pain, his lover turned into his sister, his life among the piggies now impossible to him as they look to other humans for friendship and learning.
      "Miro needs..." Ender said softly.
      "Miro needs to leave Lusitania," said Olhado.
      "Mm," said Ender.
      "You've got a starship, haven't you?" said Olhado. "I remember reading a story once. Or maybe it was a vid. About an old-time hero in the Bugger Wars, Mazer Rackham. He saved Earth from destruction once, but they knew he'd be dead long before the next battle. So they sent him out in a starship at relativistic speeds, just sent him out and had him come back. A hundred years had gone by for the Earth, but only two years for him."
      "You think Miro needs something as drastic as that?"
      "There's a battle coming. There are decisions to make. Miro's the smartest person in Lusitania, and the best. He doesn't get mad, you know. Even in the worst of times with Father. Marcão. Sorry, I still call him Father."
      "That's all right. In most ways he was ."
      "Miro would think, and he'd decide the best thing to do, and it always was the best thing. Mother depended on him to. The way I see it, we need Miro when Starways Congress sends its fleet against us. He'll study all the information, everything we've learned in the years that he was gone, put it all together, and tell us what to do."
      Ender couldn't help himself. He laughed. "So it's a dumb idea," said Olhado.
      "You see better than anybody else I know," said Ender. "I've got to think about this, but you might be right."
      They drove on in silence for a while.
      "I was just talking," said Olhado. "When I said that about Miro. It was just something I thought, putting him together with that old story. It probably isn't even a true story."
      "It's true," said Ender.
      "How do you know?"
      "I knew Mazer Rackham."
      Olhado whistled. "You're old. You're older than any of the trees."
      "I'm older than any of the human colonies. It doesn't make me wise, unfortunately."
      "Are you really Ender? The Ender?"
      "That's why it's my password."
      "It's funny. Before you got here, the Bishop tried to tell us all that you were Satan. Quim's the only one in the family that took him seriously. But if the Bishop had told us you were Ender , we would have stoned you to death in the praça the day you arrived."
      "Why don't you now?"
      "We know you now. That makes all the difference, doesn't it? Even Quim doesn't hate you now. When you really know somebody, you can't hate them."
      "Or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them."
      "Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristão says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes."
      "I don't think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It's just cause and effect. We never can sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause-- knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."
      "Mother doesn't like it that you're Ender."
      "I know."
      "But she loves you anyway."
      "I know."
      "And Quim-- it's really funny, but now that he knows you're Ender, he likes you better for it."
      "That's because he's a crusader, and I got my bad reputation by winning a crusade."