Speaker for the Dead

playing a game of starship warfare on the terminal. The Speaker had been given a machine with a far larger and more detailed holographic field than most, and the two of them were operating squadrons of more than a dozen ships at the same time. It was very complex, and neither of them looked up or even greeted her.
      "Olhado told me to shut up or he'd rip my tongue out and make me eat it in a sandwich," said Quara. "So you better not say anything till the game's over."
      "Please sit down," murmured the Speaker.
      "You are butchered now, Speaker," crowed Olhado.
      More than half of the Speaker's fleet disappeared in a series of simulated explosions. Novinha sat down on a stool.
      Quara sat on the floor beside her. "I heard you and Quim talking outside," she said. "You were shouting, so we could hear everything."
      Novinha felt herself blushing. It annoyed her that the Speaker had heard her quarreling with her son. It was none of his business. Nothing in her family was any of his business. And she certainly didn't approve of him playing games of warfare. It was so archaic and outmoded, anyway. There hadn't been any battles in space in hundreds of years, unless running fights with smugglers counted. Milagre was such a peaceful place that nobody even owned a weapon more dangerous than the Constable's jolt. Olhado would never see a battle in his life. And here he was caught up in a game of war. Maybe it was something evolution had bred into males of the species, the desire to blast rivals into little bits or mash them to the ground. Or maybe the violence that he saw in his home has made him seek it out in his play. My fault. Once again, my fault.
      Suddenly Olhado screamed in frustration, as his fleet disappeared in a series of explosions. "I didn't see it! I can't believe you did that! I didn't even see it coming!"
      "So, don't yell about it," said the Speaker. "Play it back and see how I did it, so you can counter it next time."
      "I thought you Speakers were supposed to be like priests or something. How did you get so good at tactics?"
      The Speaker smiled pointedly at Novinha as he answered. "Sometimes it's a little like a battle just to get people to tell you the truth."
      Olhado leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed, as he replayed what he saw of the game.
      "You've been prying," said Novinha. "And you weren't very clever about it. Is that what passes for 'tactics' among Speakers for the Dead?"
      "It got you here, didn't it?" The Speaker smiled.
      "What were you looking for in my files?"
      "I came to Speak Pipo's death."
      "I didn't kill him. My files are none of your business."
      "You called me here."
      "I changed my mind. I'm sorry. It still doesn't give you the right to--"
      His voice suddenly went soft, and he knelt in front of her so that she could hear his words. "Pipo learned something from you, and whatever he learned, the piggies killed him because of it. So you locked your files away where no one could ever find it out. You even refused to marry Libo, just so he wouldn't get access to what Pipo saw. You've twisted and distorted your life and the lives of everybody you loved in order to keep Libo and now Miro from learning that secret and dying."
      Novinha felt a sudden coldness, and her hands and feet began to tremble. He had been here three days, and already he knew more than anyone but Libo had ever guessed. "It's all lies," she said.
      "Listen to me, Dona Ivanova. It didn't work. Libo died anyway, didn't he? Whatever your secret is, keeping it to yourself didn't save his life. And it won't save Miro, either. Ignorance and deception can't save anybody. Knowing saves them."
      "Never," she whispered.
      "I can understand your keeping it from Libo and Miro, but what am I to you? I'm nothing to you, so what does it matter if I know the secret and it kills me?"
      "It doesn't matter at all if you live or die," said Novinha, "but you'll never get access to those files."
      "You don't seem to understand that you don't have the right to put blinders on other people's eyes. Your son and his sister go out every day to meet with the piggies, and thanks to you, they don't know whether their next word or their next act will be their death sentence. Tomorrow I'm going with them, because I can't speak Pipo's death without talking to the piggies--"
        "I don't want you to Speak Pipo's death."
      "I don't care what you want, I'm not doing it for you. But I am