Speaker for the Dead

16

The Fence

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.)

The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands, "Is there anyone here," he says to them, "who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?"

They murmur and say, "We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it."

The rabbi says, "Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong." He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, "Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he'll know I am his loyal servant."

So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another rabbi, another city, He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, "Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone."

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.

As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.

"Nor am I without sin," he says to the people. "But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it."

So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.

--San Angelo, Letters to an Incipient Heretic, trans. Amai a Tudomundo Para Que Deus Vos Ame Cristão, 103:72:54:2

Minha irmã. My sister. The words kept running through Miro's head until he didn't hear them anymore, they were part of the background: A Ouanda é minha irmã. She's my sister. His feet carried him by habit from the praça to the playing fields and over the saddle of the hill. The crown of the higher peak held the Cathedral and the monastery, which always loomed over the Zenador's Station, as if they were a fortress keeping watch over the gate. Did Libo walk this way as he went to meet my mother? Did they meet in the Xenobiologist's Station? Or was it more discreet, rutting in the grass like hogs on the fazendas?

He stood at the door of the Zenador's Station and tried to think of some reason to go inside. Nothing to do there. Hadn't written a report on what happened today, but he didn't know how to write it anyway. Magical powers, that's what it was. The piggies sing to the trees and the trees split themselves into kindling. Much better than carpentry. The aboriginals are a good deal more sophisticated than previously supposed. Multiple uses for everything. Each tree is at once a totem, a grave marker, and a small lumber mill. Sister. There's something I have to do but I can't remember.

The piggies have the most sensible plan. Live as brothers only, and never mind the women. Would have been better for you, Libo, and that's the truth-- no, I should call you Papai, not Libo. Too bad Mother never told you or you could have dandled me on your knee. Both your eldest children, Ouanda on one knee and Miro on the other, aren't we proud of our two children? Born the same year, only two months apart, what a busy fellow Papai was then, sneaking along the fence to tup Mamãe in her own back yard. Everyone felt sorry for you because you had nothing but daughters. No one to carry on the family name. Their sympathy was wasted. You were brimming over with sons. And I have far more sisters than I ever thought. One more sister than I wanted.

He stood at the gate, looking up toward the woods atop the piggies' hill. There is no scientific purpose to be served by visiting at night. So I guess I'll serve an unscientific purposelessness and see if they have room for another brother in the tribe. I'm probably too big for a bedspace in the log house, so I'll sleep outside, and I won't be much for climbing trees, but I do know a thing or two about technology, and I don't feel any particular inhibitions now about telling you anything you want to know.

He laid his right hand on the identification box and reached out his left to pull the gate. For a split second he didn't realize what was happening. Then his hand felt like it was on fire, like it was being cut off with a rusty saw, he shouted and pulled his left hand away from the gate. Never since the gate was built had it stayed hot after the box was touched by the Zenador's hand.

"Marcos Vladimir Ribeira von Hesse, your passage through the fence has been revoked by order of the Lusitanian Evacuation Committee."

Never since the gate was built had the voice challenged a Zenador. It took a moment before Miro understood what it was saying.

"You and Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi will present yourselves to Deputy Chief of Police Faria Lima Maria do Bosque, who will arrest you in the name of Starways Congress and present you on Trondheim for trial."

For a moment he was lightheaded and his stomach felt heavy and sick. They know. Tonight of all nights. Everything over. Lose Ouanda, lose the piggies, lose my work, all gone. Arrest. Trondheim. Where the Speaker came from, twenty-two years in transit, everybody gone except Ouanda, the only one left, and she's my sister--

His hand flashed out again to pull at the gate; again the excruciating pain shot through his arm, the pain nerves all alerted, all afire at once. I can't just disappear. They'll seal the gate to everyone. Nobody will go to the piggies, nobody will tell them, the piggies will wait for us to come and no one will ever come out of the gate again. Not me, not Ouanda, not the Speaker, nobody, and no explanation.

Evacuation Committee. They'll evacuate us and wipe out every trace of our being here. That much is in the rules, but there's more, isn't there? What did they see? How did they find out? Did the Speaker tell them? He's so addicted to truth. I have to explain to the piggies why we won't be coming back, I have to tell them.

A piggy always watched them, followed them from the moment they entered the forest. Could a piggy be watching now? Miro waved his hand. It was too dark, though. They couldn't possibly see him. Or perhaps they could; no one knew how good the piggies' vision was at night. Whether they saw him or not, they didn't come. And soon it would be too late; if the framlings were watching the gate, they had no doubt already notified Bosquinha, and she'd be on her way, zipping over the grass. She would be oh-so-reluctant to arrest him, but she would do her job, and never mind arguing with her about whether it was good for humans or piggies, either one, to maintain this foolish separation, she wasn't the sort to question the law, she just did what she was told. And he'd surrender, there was no reason to fight, where could he hide inside the fence, out among the cabra herds? But before he gave up, he'd tell the piggies, he had to tell them.

So he walked along the fence, away from the gate, toward the open grassland directly down the hill from the Cathedral, where no one lived near enough to hear his voice. As he walked, he called. Not words, but a high hooting sound, a cry that he and Ouanda used to call each other's attention when they were separated among the piggies. They'd hear it, they had to hear it, they had to come to him because he couldn't possibly pass the fence. So come, Human, Leafeater, Mandachuva, Arrow, Cups, Calendar, anyone, everyone, come and let me tell you that I cannot tell you any more.

Quim sat miserably on a stool in the Bishop's office.

"Estevão," the Bishop said quietly, "there'll be a meeting here in a few minutes, but I want to talk to you a minute first."

"Nothing to talk about," said Quim. "You warned us, and it happened. He's the devil."

"Estevão, we'll talk for a minute and then you'll go home and sleep."

"Never going back there."

"The Master ate with worse sinners than your mother, and forgave them. Are you better than he?"

"None of the adulteresses he forgave was his mother!"

"Not everyone's mother can be the Blessed Virgin."

"Are you on his side, then? Has the Church made way here for the speakers for the dead? Should we tear down the Cathedral and use the stones to make an amphitheater where all our dead can be slandered before we lay them in the ground?"

A whisper: "I am your Bishop, Estevão, the vicar of Christ on this planet, and you will speak to me with the respect you owe to my office."

Quim stood there, furious, unspeaking.

"I think it would have been better if the Speaker had not told these stories publicly. Some things are better learned in privacy, in quiet, so that we need not deal with shocks while an audience watches us. That's why we use the confessional, to shield us from public shame while we wrestle with our private sins. But be fair, Estevão. The Speaker may have told the stories, but the stories all were true. Né?"

"É."

"Now, Estevão, let us think. Before today, did you love your mother?"

"Yes."

"And this mother that you loved, had she already committed adultery?"

"Ten thousand times."

"I suspect she was not so libidinous as that. But you tell me that you loved her, though she was an adulteress. Isn't she the same person tonight? Has she changed between yesterday and today? Or is it only you who have changed?"

"What she was yesterday was a lie."

"Do you mean that because she was ashamed to tell her children that she was an adulteress, she must also have been lying when she cared for you all the years you were growing up, when she trusted you, when she taught you--"

"She was not exactly a nurturing mother."

"If she had come to the confessional and won forgiveness for her adultery, then she would never have had to tell you at all. You would have gone to your grave not knowing. It would not have been a lie; because she would have been forgiven, she would not have been an adulteress. Admit the truth, Estevão: You're not angry with her adultery. You're angry because you embarrassed yourself in front of the whole city by trying to defend her."

"You make me seem like a fool."

"No one thinks you're a fool. Everyone thinks you're a loyal son. But now, if you're to be a true follower of the Master, you will forgive her and let her see that you love her more than ever, because now you understand her suffering." The Bishop glanced toward the door. "I have a meeting here now, Estevão. Please go into my inner chamber and pray to the Madelena to forgive you for your unforgiving heart."

Looking more miserable than angry, Quim passed through the curtain behind the Bishop's desk.

The Bishop's secretary opened the other door and let the Speaker for the Dead into the chamber. The Bishop did not rise. To his surprise, the Speaker knelt and bowed his head. It was an act that Catholics did only in a public presentation to the Bishop, and Peregrino could not think what the Speaker meant by this. Yet the man knelt there, waiting, and so the Bishop arose from his chair, walked to him, and held out his ring to be kissed. Even then the Speaker waited, until finally Peregrino said, "I bless you, my son, even though I'm not sure whether you mock me with this obeisance."

Head still bowed, the Speaker said, "There's no mockery in me." Then he looked up at Peregrino. "My father was a Catholic. He pretended not to be, for the sake of convenience, but he never forgave himself for his faithlessness."

"You were baptized?"

"My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in."

Peregrino was skeptical. It was too elegant a gesture, for the Speaker to turn out to be Catholic. "I thought," said the Bishop, "that you speakers for the dead renounced all religions before taking up your, shall we say, vocation."

"I don't know what the others do. I don't think there are any rules about it-- certainly there weren't when I became a Speaker."

Bishop Peregrino knew that Speakers were not supposed to lie, but this one certainly seemed to be evasive. "Speaker Andrew, there isn't a place in all the Hundred Worlds where a Catholic has to conceal his faith, and there hasn't been for three thousand years. That was the great blessing of space travel, that it removed the terrible population restrictions on an overcrowded Earth. Are you telling me that your father lived on Earth three thousand years ago?"

"I'm telling you that my father saw to it I was baptized a Catholic, and for his sake I did what he never could do in his life. It was for him that I knelt before a Bishop and received his blessing."

"But it was you that I blessed." And you're still dodging my question. Which implies that my inference about your father's time of life is true, but you don't want to discuss it. Dom Cristão said that there was more to you than met the eye.

"Good," said the Speaker. "I need the blessing more than my father, since he's dead, and I have many more problems to deal with."

"Please sit down." The Speaker chose a stool near the far wall. The Bishop sat in his massive chair behind his desk. "I wish you hadn't Spoken today. It came at an inconvenient time."

"I had no warning that Congress would do this."

"But you knew that Miro and Ouanda had violated the law. Bosquinha told me."

"I found out only a few hours before the Speaking. Thank you for not arresting them yet."

"That's a civil matter." The Bishop brushed it aside, but they both knew that if he had insisted, Bosquinha would have had to obey her orders and arrest them regardless of the Speaker's request. "Your Speaking has caused a great deal of distress."

"More than usual, I'm afraid."

"So-- is your responsibility over? Do you inflict the wounds and leave it to others to heal them?"

"Not wounds, Bishop Peregrino. Surgery. And if I can help to heal the pain afterward, then yes, I stay and help. I have no anesthesia, but I do try for antisepsis."

"You should have been a priest, you know."

"Younger sons used to have only two choices. The priesthood or the military. My parents chose the latter course for me."

"A younger son. Yet you had a sister. And you lived in the time when population controls forbade parents to have more than two children unless the government gave special permission. They called such a child a Third, yes?"

"You know your history."

"Were you born on Earth, before starflight?"

"What concerns us, Bishop Peregrino, is the future of Lusitania, not the biography of a Speaker for the Dead who is plainly only thirty-five years old."

"The future of Lusitania is my concern, Speaker Andrew, not yours."

"The future of the humans on Lusitania is your concern, Bishop. I'm concerned with the piggies as well."

"Let's not compete to see whose concern is greater."

The secretary opened the door again, and Bosquinha, Dom Cristão, and Dona Cristã came in. Bosquinha glanced back and forth between the Bishop and the Speaker.

"There's no blood on the floor, if that's what you're looking for," said the Bishop.

"I was just estimating the temperature," said Bosquinha.

"The warmth of mutual respect, I think," said the Speaker. "Not the heat of anger or the ice of hate."

"The Speaker is a Catholic by baptism, if not by belief," said the Bishop. "I blessed him, and it seems to have made him docile."

"I've always been respectful of authority," said the Speaker.

"You were the one who threatened us with an Inquisitor," the Bishop reminded him. With a smile.

The Speaker's smile was just as chilly. "And you're the one who told the people I was Satan and they shouldn't talk to me."

While the Bishop and the Speaker grinned at each other, the others laughed nervously, sat down, waited.

"It's your meeting, Speaker," said Bosquinha.

"Forgive me," said the Speaker. "There's someone else invited. It'll make things much simpler if we wait a few more minutes for her to come."

Ela found her mother outside the house, not far from the fence. A light breeze that barely rustled the capim had caught her hair and tossed it lightly. It took a moment for Ela to realize why this was so startling. Her mother had not worn her hair down in many years. It looked strangely free, all the more so because Ela could see how it curled and bent where it had been so long forced into a bun. It was then that she knew that the Speaker was right. Mother would listen to his invitation. Whatever shame or pain tonight's Speaking might have caused her, it led her now to stand out in the open, in the dusk just after sunset, looking toward the piggies' hill. Or perhaps she was looking at the fence. Perhaps remembering a man who met her here, or somewhere else in the capim, so that unobserved they could love each other. Always in hiding, always in secret. Mother is glad, thought Ela, to have it

known that Libo was her real husband, that Libo is my true father. Mother is glad, and so am I.

Mother did not turn to look at her, though she surely could hear Ela's approach through the noisy grass. Ela stopped a few steps away.

"Mother," she said.

"Not a herd of cabra, then," said Mother. "You're so noisy, Ela."

"The Speaker. Wants your help."

"Does he."

Ela explained what the Speaker had told her. Mother did not turn around. When Ela was finished, Mother waited a moment, and then turned to walk over the shoulder of the hill. Ela ran after her, caught up with her. "Mother," said Ela. "Mother, are you going to tell him about the Descolada?"

"Yes."

"Why now? After all these years? Why wouldn't you tell me?"

"Because you did better work on your own, without my help."

"You know what I was doing?"

"You're my apprentice. I have complete access to your files without leaving any footprints. What kind of master would I be if I didn't watch your work?"

"But--"

"I also read the files you hid under Quara's name. You've never been a mother, so you didn't know that all the file activities of a child under twelve are reported to the parents every week. Quara was doing some remarkable research. I'm glad you're coming with me. When I tell the Speaker, I'll be telling you, too."

"You're going the wrong way," said Ela.

Mother stopped. "Isn't the Speaker's house near the praça?"

"The meeting is in the Bishop's chambers."

For the first time Mother faced Ela directly. "What are you and the Speaker trying to do to me?"

"We're trying to save Miro," said Ela. "And Lusitania Colony, if we can."

"Taking me to the spider's lair--"

"The Bishop has to be on our side or--"

"Our side! So when you say we, you mean you and the Speaker, is that it? Do you think I haven't noticed that? All my children, one by one, he's seduced you all--"

"He hasn't seduced anybody!"

"He seduced you with his way of knowing just what you want to hear, of--"

"He's no flatterer," said Ela. "He doesn't tell us what we want. He tells us what we know is true. He didn't win our affection, Mother, he won our trust."

"Whatever he gets from you, you never gave it to me."

"We wanted to."

Ela did not bend this time before her mother's piercing, demanding glare. It was her mother, instead, who bent, who looked away and then looked back with tears in her eyes. "I wanted to tell you." Mother wasn't talking about her files. "When I saw how you hated him, I wanted to say, He's not your father, your father is a good, kind man--"

"Who didn't have the courage to tell us himself."

Rage came into Mother's eyes. "He wanted to. I wouldn't let him."

"I'll tell you something, Mother. I loved Libo, the way everybody in Milagre loved him. But he was willing to be a hypocrite, and so were you, and without anybody even guessing, the poison of your lies hurt us all. I don't blame you, Mother, or him. But I thank God for the Speaker. He was willing to tell us the truth, and it set us free."

"It's easy to tell the truth," said Mother softly, "when you don't love anybody."

"Is that what you think?" said Ela. "I think I know something, Mother. I think you can't possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them. I think the Speaker loved Father. Marcão, I mean. I think he understood him and loved him before he Spoke."

Mother didn't answer, because she knew that it was true.

"And I know he loves Grego, and Quara, and Olhado. And Miro, and even Quim. And me. I know he loves me. And when he shows me that he loves me, I know it's true because he never lies to anybody."

Tears came out of Mother's eyes and drifted down her cheeks.

"I have lied to you and everybody else," Mother said. Her voice sounded weak and strained. "But you have to believe me anyway. When I tell you that I love you."

Ela embraced her mother, and for the first time in years she felt warmth in her mother's response. Because the lies between them now were gone. The Speaker had erased the barrier, and there was no reason to be tentative and cautious anymore.

"You're thinking about that damnable Speaker even now, aren't you?" whispered her mother.

"So are you," Ela answered.

Both their bodies shook with Mother's laugh. "Yes." Then she stopped laughing and pulled away, looked Ela in the eyes. "Will he always come between us?"

"Yes," said Ela. "Like a bridge he'll come between us, not a wall."

Miro saw the piggies when they were halfway down the hillside toward the fence. They were so silent in the forest, but the piggies had no great skill in moving through the capim-- it rustled loudly as they ran. Or perhaps in coming to answer Miro's call they felt no need to conceal themselves. As they came nearer, Miro recognized them. Arrow, Human, Mandachuva, Leaf-eater, Cups. He did not call out to them, nor did they speak when they arrived. Instead they stood behind the fence opposite him and regarded him silently. No Zenador had ever called the piggies to the fence before. By their stillness they showed their anxiety.

"I can't come to you anymore," said Miro.

They waited for his explanation.

"The framlings found out about us. Breaking the law. They sealed the gate."

Leaf-eater touched his chin. "Do you know what it was the framlings saw?"

Miro laughed bitterly. "What didn't they see? Only one framling ever came with us."

"No," said Human. "The hive queen says it wasn't the Speaker. The hive queen says they saw it from the sky. "

The satellites? "What could they see from the sky?"

"Maybe the hunt," said Arrow.

"Maybe the shearing of the cabra," said Leaf-eater.

"Maybe the fields of amaranth," said Cups.

"All of those," said Human. "And maybe they saw that the wives have let three hundred twenty children be born since the first amaranth harvest."

"Three hundred!"

"And twenty," said Mandachuva.

"They saw that food would be plenty," said Arrow. "Now we're sure to win the next war. Our enemies will be planted in huge new forests all over the plain, and the wives will put mother trees in every one of them."

Miro felt sick. Is this what all their work and sacrifice was for, to give some transient advantage to one tribe of piggies? Almost he said, Libo didn't die so you could conquer the world. But his training took over, and he asked a noncommittal question. "Where are all these new children?"

"None of the little brothers come to us," explained Human. "We have too much to do, learning from you and teaching all the other brother-houses. We can't be training little brothers." Then, proudly, he added, "Of the three hundred, fully half are children of my father, Rooter."

Mandachuva nodded gravely. "The wives have great respect for what you have taught us. And they have great hope in the Speaker for the Dead. But what you tell us now, this is very bad. If the framlings hate us, what will we do?"

"I don't know," said Miro. For the moment, his mind was racing to try to cope with all the information they had just told him. Three hundred twenty new babies. A population explosion. And Rooter somehow the father of half of them. Before today Miro would have dismissed the statement of Rooter's fatherhood as part of the piggies' totemic belief system. But having seen a tree uproot itself and fall apart in response to singing, he was prepared to question all his old assumptions.

Yet what good did it do to learn anything now? They'd never let him report again; he couldn't follow up; he'd be aboard a starship for the next quarter century while someone else did all his work. Or worse, no one else.

"Don't be unhappy," said Human. "You'll see-- the Speaker for the Dead will make it all work out well."

"The Speaker. Yes, he'll make everything work out fine." The way he did for me and Ouanda. My sister.

"The hive queen says he'll teach the framlings to love us."

"Teach the framlings," said Miro. "He'd better do it quickly then. It's too late for him to save me and Ouanda. They're arresting us and taking us off planet."

"To the stars?" asked Human hopefully.

"Yes, to the stars, to stand trial! To be punished for helping you. It'll take us twenty-two years to get there, and they'll never let us come back."

The piggies took a moment to absorb this information. Fine, thought Miro. Let them wonder how the Speaker is going to solve everything for them. I trusted in the Speaker, too, and it didn't do much for me. The piggies conferred together.

Human emerged from the group and came closer to the fence. "We'll hide you."

"They'll never find you in the forest," said Mandachuva.

"They have machines that can track me by my smell," said Miro.

"Ah. But doesn't the law forbid them to show us their machines?" asked Human.

Miro shook his head. "It doesn't matter. The gate is sealed to me. I can't cross the fence."

The piggies looked at each other.

"But you have capim right there," said Arrow.

Miro looked stupidly at the grass. "So what?" he asked.

"Chew it," said Human.

"Why?" asked Miro.

"We've seen humans chewing capim," said Leaf-eater. "The other night, on the hillside, we saw the Speaker and some of the robe-humans chewing capim."

"And many other times," said Mandachuva.

Their impatience with him was frustrating. "What does that have to do with the fence?"

Again the piggies looked at each other. Finally Mandachuva tore off a blade of capim near the ground, folded it carefully into a thick wad, and put it in his mouth to chew it. He sat down after a while. The others began teasing him, poking him with their fingers, pinching him. He showed no sign of noticing. Finally Human gave him a particularly vicious pinch, and when Mandachuva did not respond, they began saying, in males' language, Ready, Time to go, Now, Ready.

Mandachuva stood up, a bit shaky for a moment. Then he ran at the fence and scrambled to the top, flipped over, and landed on all fours on the same side as Miro.

Miro leaped to his feet and began to cry out just as Mandachuva reached the top; by the time he finished his cry, Mandachuva was standing up and dusting himself off.

"You can't do that," said Miro. "It stimulates all the pain nerves in the body. The fence can't be crossed."

"Oh," said Mandachuva.

From the other side of the fence, Human was rubbing his thighs together. "He didn't know," he said. "The humans don't know."

"It's an anesthetic," said Miro. "It stops you from feeling pain."

"No," said Mandachuva. "I feel the pain. Very bad pain. Worst pain in the world."

"Rooter says the fence is even worse than dying," said Human. "Pain in all the places."

"But you don't care," said Miro.

"It's happening to your other self," said Mandachuva. "It's happening to your animal self. But your tree self doesn't care. It makes you be your tree self."

Then Miro remembered a detail that had been lost in the grotesquerie of Libo's death. The dead man's mouth had been filled with a wad of capim. So had the mouth of every piggy that had died. Anesthetic. The death looked like hideous torture, but pain was not the purpose of it. They used an anesthetic. It had nothing to do with pain.

"So," said Mandachuva. "Chew the grass, and come with us. We'll hide you."

"Ouanda," said Miro.

"Oh, I'll go get her," said Mandachuva.

"You don't know where she lives."

"Yes I do," said Mandachuva.

"We do this many times a year," said Human. "We know where everybody lives."

"But no one has ever seen you," said Miro.

"We're very secret," said Mandachuva. "Besides, nobody is looking for us."

Miro imagined dozens of piggies creeping about in Milagre in the middle of the night. No guard was kept. Only a few people had business that took them out in the darkness. And the piggies were small, small enough to duck down in the capim and disappear completely. No wonder they knew about metal and machines, despite all the rules designed to keep them from learning about them. No doubt they had seen the mines, had watched the shuttle land, had seen the kilns firing the bricks, had watched the fazendeiros plowing and planting the human-specific amaranth. No wonder they had known what to ask for.

How stupid of us, to think we could cut them off from our culture. They kept far more secrets from us than we could possibly keep from them. So much for cultural superiority.

Miro pulled up his own blade of capim.

"No," said Mandachuva, taking the blade from his hands. "You don't get the root part. If you take the root part, it doesn't do you any good." He threw away Miro's blade and tore off his own, about ten centimeters above the base. Then he folded it and handed it to Miro, who began to chew it.

Mandachuva pinched and poked him.

"Don't worry about that," said Miro. "Go get Ouanda. They could arrest her any minute. Go. Now. Go on."

Mandachuva looked at the others and, seeing some invisible signal of consent, jogged off along the fenceline toward the slopes of Vila Alta, where Ouanda lived.

Miro chewed a little more. He pinched himself. As the piggies said, he felt the pain, but he didn't care. All he cared about was that this was a way out, a way to stay on Lusitania. To stay, perhaps, with Ouanda. Forget the rules, all the rules. They had no power over him once he left the human enclave and entered the piggies' forest. He would become a renegade, as they already accused him of being, and he and Ouanda could leave behind all the insane rules of human behavior and live as they wanted to, and raise a family of humans who had completely new values, learned from the piggies, from the forest life; something new in the Hundred Worlds, and Congress would be powerless to stop them.

He ran at the fence and seized it with both hands. The pain was no less than before, but now he didn't care, he scrambled up to the top. But with each new handhold the pain grew more intense, and he began to care, he began to care very much about the pain, he began to realize that the capim had no anesthetic effect on him at all, but by this time he was already at the top of the fence. The pain was maddening; he couldn't think; momentum carried him above the top and as he balanced there his head passed through the vertical field of the fence. All the pain possible to his body came to his brain at once, as if every part of him were on fire.

The Little Ones watched in horror as their friend hung there atop the fence, his head and torso on one side, his hips and legs on the other. At once they cried out, reached for him, tried to pull him down. Since they had not chewed capim, they dared not touch the fence.

Hearing their cries, Mandachuva ran back. Enough of the anesthetic remained in his body that he could climb up and push the heavy human body over the top. Miro landed with a bone-crushing thump on the ground, his arm still touching the fence. The piggies pulled him away. His face was frozen in a rictus of agony.

"Quick!" shouted Leaf-eater. "Before he dies, we have to plant him!"

"No!" Human answered, pushing Leaf-eater away from Miro's frozen body. "We don't know if he's dying! The pain is just an illusion, you know that, he doesn't have a wound, the pain should go away--"

"It isn't going away," said Arrow. "Look at him."

Miro's fists were clenched, his legs were doubled under him, and his spine and neck were arched backward. Though he was breathing in short, hard pants, his face seemed to grow even tighter with pain.

"Before he dies," said Leaf-eater. "We have to give him root."

"Go get Ouanda," said Human. He turned to face Mandachuva. "Now! Go get her and tell her Miro is dying. Tell her the gate is sealed and Miro is on this side of it and he's dying."

Mandachuva took off at a run.

The secretary opened the door, but not until he actually saw Novinha did Ender allow himself to feel relief. When he sent Ela for her, he was sure that she would come; but as they waited so many long minutes for her arrival, he began to doubt his understanding of her. There had been no need to doubt. She was the woman that he thought she was. He noticed that her hair was down and windblown, and for the first time since he came to Lusitania, Ender saw in her face a clear image of the girl who in her anguish had summoned him less than two weeks, more than twenty years ago.

She looked tense, worried, but Ender knew her anxiety was because of her present situation, coming into the Bishop's own chambers so shortly after the disclosure of her transgressions. If Ela told her about the danger to Miro, that, too, might be part of her tension. All this was transient; Ender could see in her face, in the relaxation of her movement, in the steadiness of her gaze, that the end of her long deception was indeed the gift he had hoped, had believed it would be. I did not come to hurt you, Novinha, and I'm glad to see that my Speaking has brought you better things than shame.

Novinha stood for a moment, looking at the Bishop. Not defiantly, but politely, with dignity; he responded the same way, quietly offering her a seat. Dom Cristão started to rise from his stool, but she shook her head, smiled, took another stool near the wall. Near Ender. Ela came and stood behind and beside her mother, so she was also partly behind Ender. Like a daughter standing between her parents, thought Ender; then he thrust the thought away from him and refused to think of it anymore. There were far more important matters at hand.

"I see," said Bosquinha, "that you intend this meeting to be an interesting one."

"I think Congress decided that already," said Dona Cristã .

"Your son is accused," Bishop Peregrino began, "of crimes against--"

"I know what he's accused of," said Novinha. "I didn't know until tonight, when Ela told me, but I'm not surprised. My daughter Elanora has also been defying some rules her master set for her. Both of them have a higher allegiance to their own conscience than to the rules others set down for them. It's a failing, if your object is to maintain order, but if your goal is to learn and adapt, it's a virtue."

"Your son isn't on trial here," said Dom Cristão.

"I asked you to meet together," said Ender, "because a decision must be made. Whether or not to comply with the orders given us by Starways Congress."

"We don't have much choice," said Bishop Peregrino.

"There are many choices," said Ender, "and many reasons for choosing. You already made one choice-- when you found your files being stripped, you decided to try to save them, and you decided to trust them with me, a stranger. Your trust was not misplaced-- I'll return your files to you whenever you ask, unread, unaltered."

"Thank you," said Dona Cristã . "But we did that before we knew the gravity of the charge."

"They're going to evacuate us," said Dom Cristão.

"They control everything," said Bishop Peregrino.

"I already told him that," said Bosquinha.

"They don't control everything," said Ender. "They only control you through the ansible connection."

"We can't cut off the ansible," said Bishop Peregrino. "That is our only connection with the Vatican."

"I don't suggest cutting off the ansible. I only tell you what I can do. And when I tell you this, I am trusting you the way you trusted me. Because if you repeat this to anyone, the cost to me-- and to someone else, whom I love and depend on-- would be immeasurable."

He looked at each of them, and each in turn nodded acquiescence.

"I have a friend whose control over ansible communications among all the Hundred Worlds is complete-- and completely unsuspected. I'm the only one who knows what she can do. And she has told me that when I ask her to, she can make it seem to all the framlings that we here on Lusitania have cut off our ansible connection. And yet we will have the ability to send guarded messages if we want to-- to the Vatican, to the offices of your order. We can read distant records, intercept distant communications. In short, we will have eyes and they will be blind."

"Cutting off the ansible, or even seeming to, would be an act of rebellion. Of war." Bosquinha was saying it as harshly as possible, but Ender could see that the idea appealed to her, though she was resisting it with all her might. "I will say, though, that if we were insane enough to decide on war, what the Speaker is offering us is a clear advantage. We'd need any advantage we could get-- if we were mad enough to rebel."

"We have nothing to gain by rebellion," said the Bishop, "and everything to lose. I grieve for the tragedy it would be to send Miro and Ouanda to stand trial on another world, especially because they are so young. But the court will no doubt take that into account and treat them with mercy. And by complying with the orders of the committee, we will save this community much suffering."

"Don't you think that having to evacuate this world will also cause them suffering?" asked Ender.

"Yes. Yes, it will. But a law was broken, and the penalty must be paid."

"What if the law was based on a misunderstanding, and the penalty is far out of proportion to the sin?"

"We can't be the judges of that," said the Bishop.

"We are the judges of that. If we go along with Congressional orders, then we're saying that the law is good and the punishment is just. And it may be that at the end of this meeting you'll decide exactly that. But there are some things you must know before you can make your decision. Some of those things I can tell you, and some of those things only Ela and Novinha can tell you. You shouldn't make your decision until you know all that we know."

"I'm always glad to know as much as possible," said the Bishop. "Of course, the final decision is Bosquinha's, not mine--"

"The final decision belongs to all of you together, the civil and religious and intellectual leadership of Lusitania. If any one of you decides against rebellion, rebellion is impossible. Without the Church's support, Bosquinha can't lead. Without civil support, the Church has no power."

"We have no power," said Dom Cristão. "Only opinions."

"Every adult in Lusitania looks to you for wisdom and fairmindedness."

"You forget a fourth power," said Bishop Peregrino. "Yourself."

"I'm a framling here."

"A most extraordinary framling," said the Bishop. "In your four days here you have captured the soul of this people in a way I feared and foretold. Now you counsel rebellion that could cost us everything. You are as dangerous as Satan. And yet here you are, submitting to our authority as if you weren't free to get on the shuttle and leave here when the starship returns to Trondheim with our two young criminals aboard. "

"I submit to your authority," said Ender, "because I don't want to be a framling here. I want to be your citizen, your student, your parishioner."

"As a speaker for the dead?" asked the Bishop.

"As Andrew Wiggin. I have some other skills that might be useful. Particularly if you rebel. And I have other work to do that can't be done if humans are taken from Lusitania."

"We don't doubt your sincerity," said the Bishop. "But you must forgive us if we are doubtful about casting in with a citizen who is something of a latecomer."

Ender nodded. The Bishop could not say more until he knew more. "Let me tell you first what I know. Today, this afternoon, I went out into the forest with Miro and Ouanda."

"You! You also broke the law!" The Bishop half-rose from his chair.

Bosquinha reached forward, gestured to settle the Bishop's ire. "The intrusion in our files began long before this afternoon. The Congressional Order couldn't possibly be related to his infraction."

"I broke the law," said Ender, "because the piggies were asking for me. Demanding, in fact, to see me. They had seen the shuttle land. They knew that I was here. And, for good or ill, they had read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon."

"They gave the piggies that book?" said the Bishop.

"They also gave them the New Testament," said Ender. "But surely you won't be surprised to learn that the piggies found much in common between themselves and the hive queen. Let me tell you what the piggies said. They begged me to convince all the Hundred Worlds to end the rules that keep them isolated here. You see, the piggies don't think of the fence the way we do. We see it as a way of protecting their culture from human influence and corruption. They see it as a way of keeping them from learning all the wonderful secrets that we know. They imagine our ships going from star to star, colonizing them, filling them up. And five or ten thousand years from now, when they finally learn all that we refuse to teach them, they'll emerge into space to find all the worlds filled up. No place for them at all. They think of our fence as a form of species murder. We will keep them on Lusitania like animals in a zoo, while we go out and take all the rest of the universe."

"That's nonsense," said Dom Cristão. "That isn't our intention at all."

"Isn't it?" Ender retorted. "Why are we so anxious to keep them from any influence from our culture? It isn't just in the interest of science. It isn't just good xenological procedure. Remember, please, that our discovery of the ansible, of starflight, of partial gravity control, even of the weapon we used to destroy the buggers-- all of them came as a direct result of our contact with the buggers. We learned most of the technology from the machines they left behind from their first foray into Earth's star system. We were using those machines long before we understood them. Some of them, like the philotic slope, we don't even understand now. We are in space precisely because of the impact of a devastatingly superior culture. And yet in only a few generations, we took their machines, surpassed them, and destroyed them. That's what our fence means-- we're afraid the piggies will do the same to us. And they know that's what it means. They know it, and they hate it."

"We aren't afraid of them," said the Bishop. "They're savages, for heaven's sake--"

"That's how we looked to the buggers, too," said Ender. "But to Pipo and Libo and Ouanda and Miro, the piggies have never looked like savages. They're different from us, yes, far more different than framlings. But they're still people. Ramen, not varelse. So when Libo saw that the piggies were in danger of starving, that they were preparing to go to war in order to cut down the population, he didn't act like a scientist. He didn't observe their war and take notes on the death and suffering. He acted like a Christian. He got experimental amaranth that Novinha had rejected for human use because it was too closely akin to Lusitanian biochemistry, and he taught the piggies how to plant it and harvest it and prepare it as food. I have no doubt that the rise in piggy population and the fields of amaranth are what the Starways Congress saw. Not a willful violation of the law, but an act of compassion and love."

"How can you call such disobedience a Christian act?" said the Bishop.

"What man of you is there, when his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?"

"The devil can quote scripture to suit his own purpose," said the Bishop.

"I'm not the devil," said Ender, "and neither are the piggies. Their babies were dying of hunger, and Libo gave them food and saved their lives."

"And look what they did to him!"

"Yes, let's look what they did to him. They put him to death. Exactly the way they put to death their own most honored citizens. Shouldn't that have told us something?"

"It told us that they're dangerous and have no conscience," said the Bishop.

"It told us that death means something completely different to them. If you really believed that someone was perfect in heart, Bishop, so righteous that to live another day could only cause them to be less perfect, then wouldn't it be a good thing for them if they were killed and taken directly into heaven?"

"You mock us. You don't believe in heaven."

"But you do! What about the martyrs, Bishop Peregrino? Weren't they caught up joyfully into heaven?"

"Of course they were. But the men who killed them were beasts. Murdering saints didn't sanctify them, it damned their souls to hell forever."

"But what if the dead don't go to heaven? What if the dead are transformed into new life, right before your eyes? What if when a piggy dies, if they lay out his body just so, it takes root and turns into something else? What if it turns into a tree that lives fifty or a hundred or five hundred years more?"

"What are you talking about?" demanded the Bishop.

"Are you telling us that the piggies somehow metamorphose from animal to plant?" asked Dom Cristão. "Basic biology suggests that this isn't likely."

"It's practically impossible," said Ender. "That's why there are only a handful of species on Lusitania that survived the Descolada. Because only a few of them were able to make the transformation. When the piggies kill one of their people, he is transformed into a tree. And the tree retains at least some of its intelligence. Because today I saw the piggies sing to a tree, and without a single tool touching it, the tree severed its own roots, fell over, and split itself into exactly the shapes and forms of wood and bark that the piggies needed. It wasn't a dream. Miro and Ouanda and I all saw it with our own eyes, and heard the song, and touched the wood, and prayed for the soul of the dead."

"What does this have to do with our decision?" demanded Bosquinha. "So the forests are made up of dead piggies. That's a matter for scientists."

"I'm telling you that when the piggies killed Pipo and Libo they thought they were helping them transform into the next stage of their existence. They weren't beasts, they were ramen, giving the highest honor to the men who had served them so well."

"Another moral transformation, is that it?" asked the Bishop. "Just as you did today in your Speaking, making us see Marcos Ribeira again and again, each time in a new light, now you want us to think the piggies are noble? Very well, they're noble. But I won't rebel against Congress, with all the suffering such a thing would cause, just so our scientists can teach the piggies how to make refrigerators."

"Please," said Novinha.

They looked at her expectantly.

"You say that they stripped our files? They read them all?"

"Yes," said Bosquinha.

"Then they know everything that I have in my files. About the Descolada."

"Yes," said Bosquinha.

Novinha folded her hands in her lap. "There won't be any evacuation."

"I didn't think so," said Ender. "That's why I asked Ela to bring you."

"Why won't there be an evacuation?" asked Bosquinha.

"Because of the Descolada."

"Nonsense," said the Bishop. "Your parents found a cure for that."

"They didn't cure it," said Novinha. "They controlled it. They stopped it from becoming active."

"That's right," said Bosquinha. "That's why we put the additives in the water. The Colador."

"Every human being on Lusitania, except perhaps the Speaker, who may not have caught it yet, is a carrier of the Descolada."

"The additive isn't expensive," said the Bishop. "But perhaps they might isolate us. I can see that they might do that."

"There's nowhere isolated enough," said Novinha. "The Descolada is infinitely variable. It attacks any kind of genetic material. The additive can be given to humans. But can they give additives to every blade of grass? To every bird? To every fish? To every bit of plankton in the sea?"

"They can all catch it?" asked Bosquinha. "I didn't know that."

"I didn't tell anybody," said Novinha. "But I built the protection into every plant that I developed. The amaranth, the potatoes, everything-- the challenge wasn't making the protein usable, the challenge was to get the organisms to produce their own Descolada blockers."

Bosquinha was appalled. "So anywhere we go--"

"We can trigger the complete destruction of the biosphere.

"And you kept this a secret?" asked Dom Cristão.

"There was no need to tell it." Novinha looked at her hands in her lap. "Something in the information had caused the piggies to kill Pipo. I kept it secret so no one else would know. But now, what Ela has learned over the last few years, and what the Speaker has said tonight-- now I know what it was that Pipo learned. The Descolada doesn't just split the genetic molecules and prevent them from reforming or duplicating. It also encourages them to bond with completely foreign genetic molecules. Ela did the work on this against my will. All the native life on Lusitania thrives in plant-and-animal pairs. The cabra with the capim. The watersnakes with the grama. The suckflies with the reeds. The xingadora bird with the tropeço vines. And the piggies with the trees of the forest."

"You're saying that one becomes the other?" Dom Cristão was at once fascinated and repelled.

"The piggies may be unique in that, in transforming from the corpse of a piggy into a tree," said Novinha. "But perhaps the cabras become fertilized from the pollen of the capim. Perhaps the flies are hatched from the tassels of the river reeds. It should be studied. I should have been studying it all these years."

"And now they'll know this?" asked Dom Cristão. "From your files?"

"Not right away. But sometime in the next twenty or thirty years. Before any other framlings get here, they'll know," said Novinha.

"I'm not a scientist," said the Bishop. "Everyone else seems to understand except me. What does this have to do with the evacuation?"

Bosquinha fidgeted with her hands. "They can't take us off Lusitania," she said. "Anywhere they took us, we'd carry the Descolada with us, and it would kill everything. There aren't enough xenobiologists in the Hundred Worlds to save even a single planet from devastation. By the time they get here, they'll know that we can't leave."

"Well, then," said the Bishop. "That solves our problem. If we tell them now, they won't even send a fleet to evacuate us."

"No," said Ender. "Bishop Peregrino, once they know what the Descolada will do, they'll see to it that no one leaves this planet, ever."

The Bishop scoffed. "What, do you think they'll blow up the planet? Come now, Speaker, there are no more Enders among the human race. The worst they might do is quarantine us here--"

"In which case," said Dom Cristão, "why should we submit to their control at all? We could send them a message telling them about the Descolada, informing them that we will not leave the planet and they should not come here, and that's it."

Bosquinha shook her head. "Do you think that none of them will say, 'The Lusitanians, just by visiting another world, can destroy it. They have a starship, they have a known propensity for rebelliousness, they have the murderous piggies. Their existence is a threat.'"

"Who would say that?" said the Bishop.

"No one in the Vatican," said Ender. "But Congress isn't in the business of saving souls."

"And maybe they'd be right," said the Bishop. "You said yourself that the piggies want starflight. And yet wherever they might go, they'll have this same effect. Even uninhabited worlds, isn't that right? What will they do, endlessly duplicate this bleak landscape-- forests of a single tree, prairies of a single grass, with only the cabra to graze it and only the xingadora to fly above it?"

"Maybe someday we could find a way to get the Descolada under control," said Ela.

"We can't stake our future on such a thin chance," said the Bishop.

"That's why we have to rebel," said Ender. "Because Congress will think exactly that way. Just as they did three thousand years ago, in the Xenocide. Everybody condemns the Xenocide because it destroyed an alien species that turned out to be harmless in its intentions. But as long as it seemed that the buggers were determined to destroy humankind, the leaders of humanity had no choice but to fight back with all their strength. We are presenting them with the same dilemma again. They're already afraid of the piggies. And once they understand the Descolada, all the pretense of trying to protect the piggies will be done with. For the sake of humanity's survival, they'll destroy us. Probably not the whole planet. As you said, there are no Enders today. But they'll certainly obliterate Milagre and remove any trace of human contact. Including killing all the piggies who know us. Then they'll set a watch over this planet to keep the piggies from ever emerging from their primitive state. If you knew what they know, wouldn't you do the same?"

"A speaker for the dead says this?" said Dom Cristão.

"You were there," said the Bishop. "You were there the first time, weren't you. When the buggers were destroyed."

"Last time we had no way of talking to the buggers, no way of knowing they were ramen and not varelse. This time we're here. We know that we won't go out and destroy other worlds. We know that we'll stay here on Lusitania until we can go out safely, the Descolada neutralized. This time," said Ender, "we can keep the ramen alive, so that whoever writes the piggies' story won't have to be a speaker for the dead."

The secretary opened the door abruptly, and Ouanda burst in. "Bishop," she said. "Mayor. You have to come. Novinha--"

"What is it?" said the Bishop.

"Ouanda, I have to arrest you," said Bosquinha.

"Arrest me later," she said. "It's Miro. He climbed over the fence."

"He can't do that," said Novinha. "It might kill him--" Then, in horror, she realized what she had said. "Take me to him--"

"Get Navio," said Dona Cristã .

"You don't understand," said Ouanda. "We can't get to him. He's on the other side of the fence."

"Then what can we do?" asked Bosquinha.

"Turn the fence off," said Ouanda.

Bosquinha looked helplessly at the others. "I can't do that. The Committee controls that now. By ansible. They'd never turn it off."

"Then Miro's as good as dead," said Ouanda.

"No," said Novinha.

Behind her, another figure came into the room. Small, fur-covered. None of them but Ender had ever before seen a piggy in the flesh, but they knew at once what the creature was. "Excuse me," said the piggy. "Does this mean we should plant him now?"

No one bothered to ask how the piggy got over the fence. They were too busy realizing what he meant by planting Miro.

"No!" screamed Novinha.

Mandachuva looked at her in surprise. "No?"

"I think," said Ender, "that you shouldn't plant any more humans."

Mandachuva stood absolutely still.

"What do you mean?" said Ouanda. "You're making him upset."

"I expect he'll be more upset before this day is over," said Ender. "Come, Ouanda, take us to the fence where Miro is."

"What good will it do if we can't get over the fence?" asked Bosquinha.

"Call for Navio," said Ender.

"I'll go get him," said Dona Cristã . "You forget that no one can call anybody."

"I said, what good will it do?" demanded Bosquinha.

"I told you before," said Ender. "If you decide to rebel, we can sever the ansible connection. And then we can turn off the fence."

"Are you trying to use Miro's plight to force my hand?" asked the Bishop.

"Yes," said Ender. "He's one of your flock, isn't he? So leave the ninety-nine, shepherd, and come with us to save the one that's lost."

"What's happening?" asked Mandachuva.

"You're leading us to the fence," said Ender. "Hurry, please."

They filed down the stairs from the Bishop's chambers to the Cathedral below. Ender could hear the Bishop behind him, grumbling about perverting scripture to serve private ends.

They passed down the aisle of the Cathedral, Mandachuva leading the way. Ender noticed that the Bishop paused near the altar, watching the small furred creature as the humans trooped after him. Outside the Cathedral, the Bishop caught up with him. "Tell me, Speaker," he said, "just as a matter of opinion, if the fence came down, if we rebelled against Starways Congress, would all the rules about contact with the piggies be ended?"

"I hope so," said Ender. "I hope that there'll be no more unnatural barriers between us and them."

"Then," said the Bishop, "we'd be able to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Little Ones, wouldn't we? There'd be no rule against it."

"That's right," said Ender. "They might not be converted, but there'd be no rule against trying."

"I have to think about this," said the Bishop. "But perhaps, my dear infidel, your rebellion will open the door to the conversion of a great nation. Perhaps God led you here after all."

By the time the Bishop, Dom Cristão, and Ender reached the fence, Mandachuva and the women had already been there for some time. Ender could tell by the way Ela was standing between her mother and the fence, and the way Novinha was holding her hands out in front of her face, that Novinha had already tried to climb over the fence to reach her son. She was crying now and shouting at him. "Miro! Miro, how could you do ' this, how could you climb it--" while Ela tried to talk to her, to calm her.

On the other side of the fence, four piggies stood watching, amazed.

Ouanda was trembling with fear for Miro's life, but she had enough presence of mind to tell Ender what she knew he could not see for himself. "That's Cups, and Arrow, and Human, and Leaf-eater. Leaf-eater's trying to get the others to plant him. I think I know what that means, but we're all right. Human and Mandachuva have convinced them not to do it."

"But it still doesn't get us any closer," said Ender. "Why did Miro do something so stupid?"

"Mandachuva explained on the way here. The piggies chew capim and it has an anesthetic effect. They can climb the fence whenever they want. Apparently they've been doing it for years. They thought we didn't do it because we were so obedient to law. Now they know that capim doesn't have the same effect on us."

Ender walked to the fence. "Human," he said.

Human stepped forward.

"There's a chance that we can turn off the fence. But if we do it, we're at war with all the humans on every other world. Do you understand that? The humans of Lusitania and the piggies, together, at war against all the other humans."

"Oh," said Human.

"Will we win?" asked Arrow.

"We might," said Ender. "And we might not."

"Will you give us the hive queen?" asked Human.

"First I have to meet with the wives," said Ender.

The piggies stiffened.

"What are you talking about?" asked the Bishop.

"I have to meet with the wives," said Ender to the piggies, "because we have to make a treaty. An agreement. A set of rules between us. Do you understand me? Humans can't live by your laws, and you can't live by ours, but if we're to live in peace, with no fence between us, and if I'm to let the hive queen live with you and help you and teach you, then you have to make us some promises, and keep them. Do you understand?"

"I understand," said Human. "But you don't know what you're asking for, to deal with the wives. They're not smart the way that the brothers are smart."

"They make all the decisions, don't they?"

"Of course," said Human. "They're the keepers of the mothers, aren't they? But I warn you, it's dangerous to speak to the wives. Especially for you, because they honor you so much."

"If the fence comes down, I have to speak to the wives. If I can't speak to them, then the fence stays up, and Miro dies, and we'll have to obey the Congressional Order that all the humans of Lusitania must leave here." Ender did not tell them that the humans might well be killed. He always told the truth, but he didn't always tell it all.

"I'll take you to the wives," said Human.

Leaf-eater walked up to him and ran his hand derisively across Human's belly. "They named you right," he said. "You are a human, not one of us." Leaf-eater started to run away, but Arrow and Cups held him.

"I'll take you," said Human. "Now, stop the fence and save Miro's life."

Ender turned to the Bishop.

"It's not my decision," said the Bishop. "It's Bosquinha's."

"My oath is to the Starways Congress," said Bosquinha, "but I'll perjure myself this minute to save the lives of my people. I say the fence comes down and we try to make the most of our rebellion."

"If we can preach to the piggies," said the Bishop.

"I'll ask them when I meet with the wives," said Ender. "I can't promise more than that."

"Bishop!" cried Novinha. "Pipo and Libo already died beyond that fence!"

"Bring it down," said the Bishop. "I don't want to see this colony end with God's work here still untouched." He smiled grimly. "But Os Venerados had better be made saints pretty soon. We'll need their help."

"Jane," murmured Ender.

"That's why I love you," said Jane. "You can do anything, as long as I set up the circumstances just right."

"Cut off the ansible and turn off the fence, please," said Ender.

"Done," she said.

Ender ran for the fence, climbed over it. With the piggies' help he lifted Miro to the top and let his rigid body drop into the waiting arms of the Bishop, the Mayor, Dom Cristão, and Novinha. Navio was jogging down the slope right behind Dona Cristã . Whatever they could do to help Miro would be done.

Ouanda was climbing the fence.

"Go back," said Ender. "We've already got him over."

"If you're going to see the wives," said Ouanda, "I'm going with you. You need my help."

Ender had no answer to that. She dropped down and came to Ender.

Navio was kneeling by Miro's body. "He climbed the fence?" he said. "There's nothing in the books for that. It isn't possible. Nobody can bear enough pain to get his head right through the field."

"Will he live?" demanded Novinha.

"How should I know?" said Navio, impatiently stripping away Miro's clothing and attaching sensors to him. "Nobody covered this in medical school."

Ender noticed that the fence was shaking again. Ela was climbing over. "I don't need your help," Ender said.

"It's about time somebody who knows something about xenobiology got to see what's going on," she retorted.

"Stay and look after your brother," said Ouanda.

Ela looked at her defiantly. "He's your brother, too," she said. "Now let's both see to it that if he dies, he didn't die for nothing."

The three of them followed Human and the other piggies into the forest.

Bosquinha and the Bishop watched them go. "When I woke up this morning," Bosquinha said, "I didn't expect to be a rebel before I went to bed."

"Nor did I ever imagine that the Speaker would be our ambassador to the piggies," said the Bishop.

"The question is," said Dom Cristão, "will we ever be forgiven for it."

"Do you think we're making a mistake?" snapped the Bishop.

"Not at all," said Dom Cristão. "I think we've taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness."

"Fortunately," said the Bishop, "humankind isn't the judge that matters. And now I intend to pray for this boy, since medical science has obviously reached the boundary of its competence."