Speaker for the Dead

was late at night. A terrible night, everybody was so afraid, the piggies seemed so awful, and everybody loved Libo so much-- except Mother, of course. Mother waited up for Miro. He came in and went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, and Mother put a plate down in front of him, put food on the plate. Didn't say a word. He ate it, too. Not a word about it. As if the year before hadn't happened. I woke up in the middle of the night because I could hear Miro throwing up and crying in the bathroom. I don't think anybody else heard, and I didn't go to him because I didn't think he wanted anybody to hear him. Now I think I should have gone, but I was afraid. There were such terrible things in my family."
      The Speaker nodded.
      "I should have gone to him," Ela said again.
      "Yes," the Speaker said. "You should have."
      A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.
      If I'm not that frightened girl who heard her brother in desperate pain and dared not go to him, who am I? But the water flowing through the grillwork under the fence held no answers. Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.
      Still the Speaker lay there on the grama, looking at the clouds coming darkly out of the west. "I've told you all I know," Ela said. "I told you what was in those files-- the Descolada information. That's all I know."
      "No it isn't," said the Speaker.
      "It is, I promise."
      "Do you mean to say that you obeyed her? That when your mother told you not to do any theoretical work, you simply turned off your mind and did what she wanted?"
      Ela giggled. "She thinks so."
      "But you didn't."
      "I'm a scientist, even if she isn't."
      "She was once," said the Speaker. "She passed her tests when she was thirteen."
      "I know," said Ela.
      "And she used to share information with Pipo before he died."
      "I know that, too. It was just Libo that she hated."
      "So tell me, Ela. What have you discovered in your theoretical work?"
      "I haven't discovered any answers. But at least I know what some of the questions are. That's a start, isn't it? Nobody else is asking questions. It's so funny, isn't it? Miro says the framling xenologers are always pestering him and Ouanda for more information, more data, and yet the law forbids them from learning anything more. And yet not a single framling xenobiologist has ever asked us for any information. They all just study the biosphere on their own planets and don't ask Mother a single question. I'm the only one asking, and nobody cares. "
      "I care," said the Speaker. "I need to know what the questions are."
      "OK, here's one. We have a herd of cabra here inside the fence. The cabra can't jump the fence, they don't even touch it. I've examined and tagged every single cabra in the herd, and you know something? There's not one male. They're all female."
      "Bad luck," said the Speaker. "You'd think they would have left at least one male inside."
      "It doesn't matter," said Ela. "I don't know if there are any males. In the last five years every single adult cabra has given birth at least once. And not one of them has mated."
      "Maybe they clone," said the Speaker.
      "The offspring is not genetically identical to the mother. That much research I could sneak into the lab without Mother noticing. There is some kind of gene transfer going on."
      "Hermaphrodites?"
      "No. Pure female. No male sexual organs at all. Does that qualify as an important question? Somehow the cabras are having some kind of genetic exchange, without sex."
      "The theological implications alone are astounding."
      "Don't make fun."
      "Of which? Science or theology?"
      "Either one. Do you