Speaker for the Dead

plague some thirty years ago. Dona Ivanova's own parents, the Venerado Gusto and the Venerada Cida, they conducted a detailed genetic scan of every man, woman, and child in the colony. It's how they found the cure. And their computer comparisons would definitely have turned up this particular defect-- that's how I found out what it was when Marcão died. I'd never heard of the disease, but the computer had it on file."
      "And Os Venerados didn't find it?"
      "Apparently not, or they would surely have told Marcos. And even if they hadn't told him, Ivanova herself should have found it."
      "Maybe she did," said Ender.
      Navio laughed aloud. "Impossible. No woman in her right mind would deliberately bear the children of a man with a genetic defect like that . Marcão was surely in constant agony for many years. You don't wish that on your own children. No, Ivanova may be eccentric, but she's not insane."
     
     
     
      Jane was quite amused. When Ender got home, she made her image appear above his terminal just so she could laugh uproariously.
      "He can't help it," said Ender. "In a devout Catholic colony like this, dealing with the Biologista, one of the most respected people here, of course he doesn't think to question his basic premises."
      "Don't apologize for him," said Jane. "I don't expect wetware to work as logically as software. But you can't ask me not to be amused."
      "In a way it's rather sweet of him," said Ender. "He'd rather believe that Marcão's disease was different from every other recorded case. He'd rather believe that somehow Ivanova's parents didn't notice that Marcos had the disease, and so she married him in ignorance, even though Ockham's razor decrees that we believe the simplest explanation: Maredo's decay progressed like every other, testes first, and all of Novinha's children were sired by someone else. No wonder Marcão was bitter and angry. Every one of her six children reminded him that his wife was sleeping with another man. It was probably part of their bargain in the beginning that she would not be faithful to him. But six children is rather rubbing his nose in it."
      "The delicious contradictions of religious life," said Jane. "She deliberately set out to commit adultery-- but she would never dream of using a contraceptive."
      "Have you scanned the children's genetic pattern to find the most likely father?"
      "You mean you haven't guessed?"
      "I've guessed, but I want to make sure the clinical evidence doesn't disprove the obvious answer."
      "It was Libo, of course. What a dog! He sired six children on Novinha, and four more on his own wife."
      "What I don't understand," said Ender, "is why Novinha didn't marry Libo in the first place. It makes no sense at all for her to have married a man she obviously despised, whose disease she certainly knew about, and then to go ahead and bear children to the man she must have loved from the beginning. "
      "Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head."
     
     
     
      Miro carefully picked his way through the forest. He recognized trees now and then, or thought he did-- no human could ever have the piggies' knack for naming every single tree in the woods. But then, humans didn't worship the trees as totems of their ancestors, either.
      Miro had deliberately chosen a longer way to reach the piggies' log house. Ever since Libo accepted Miro as a second apprentice, to work with him alongside Libo's daughter, Ouanda, he had taught them that they must never form a path leading from Milagre to the piggies' home. Someday, Libo warned them, there may be trouble between human and piggy; we will make no path to guide a pogrom to its destination. So today Miro walked the far side of the creek, along the top of the high bank.
      Sure enough, a piggy soon appeared in the near distance, watching him. That was how Libo reasoned out, years ago, that the females must live somewhere in that direction; the males always kept a watch on the Zenadors when they went too near. And, as Libo had insisted, Miro made no effort to move any farther in the forbidden direction. His curiosity dampened whenever he remembered what Libo's body looked like when he and Ouanda found it. Libo had not been quite dead yet; his eyes were open and moving. He only died when both Miro and Ouanda knelt at either side of him, each holding a