Speaker for the Dead

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."
      "What about someone," said Miro, "who can't kill, and can't die, and can't live, either?"
      "Don't deceive yourself," said Ender. "You'll do all three someday."
      Miro left the next morning. There were tearful good-byes. For weeks afterward, it was hard for Novinha to spend any time in her own house, because Miro's absence was so painful to her. Even though she had agreed wholeheartedly with Ender that it was right for Miro to go, it was still unbearable to lose her child. It made Ender wonder if his own parents felt such pain when he was taken away. He suspected they had not. Nor had they hoped for his return. He already loved another man's children more than his parents had loved their own child. Well, he'd get fit revenge for their neglect of him. He'd show them, three thousand years later, how a father should behave. Bishop Peregrino married them in his chambers. By Novinha's calculations, she was still young enough to have another six children, if they hurried. They set at the task with a will.
     
     
     
      Before the marriage, though, there were two days of note. On a day in summer, Ela, Ouanda, and Novinha presented him with the results of their research and speculation: as completely as possible, the life cycle and community structure of the piggies, male and female, and a likely reconstruction of their patterns of life before the Descolada bonded them forever to the trees that, till then, had been no more to them than habitat. Ender had reached his own understanding of who the piggies were, and especially who Human was before his passage to the life of light.
      He lived with the piggies for a week while he wrote The Life of Human. Mandachuva and Leaf-eater read it carefully, discussed it with him; he revised and reshaped; finally it was ready. On that day he invited everyone who was working with the piggies-- all the Ribeira family, Ouanda and her sisters, the many workmen who had brought technological miracles to the piggies, the scholar-monks of the Children of the Mind, Bishop Peregrino, Mayor Bosquinha-- and read the book to them. It wasn't long, less than an hour to read. They had gathered on the hillside near where Human's seedling tree reached upward, now more than three meters high, and where Rooter overshadowed them in the afternoon sunlight. "Speaker," said the Bishop, "almost thou persuadest me to become a humanist." Others, less trained to eloquence, found no words to say, not then or ever. But they knew from that day forward who the piggies were, just as the readers of The Hive Queen had understood the buggers, and the readers of The Hegemon had understood humankind in its