Speaker for the Dead

17

The Wives

Find out how word got out that the Evacuation Fleet is armed with the Little Doctor. That is HIGHEST PRIORITY. Then find out who this so-called Demosthenes is. Calling the Evacuation Fleet a Second Xenocide is definitely a violation of the treason laws under the Code and if CSA can't find this voice and put a stop to it, I can't think of any good reason for CSA to continue to exist.

In the meantime, continue your evaluation of the files retrieved from Lusitania, It's completely irrational for them to rebel just because we want to arrest two errant xenologers. There was nothing in the Mayor's background to suggest this was possible. If there's a chance that there was a revolution, I want to find out who the leaders of that revolution might be.

Pyotr, I know you're doing your best. So am I. So is everybody. So are the people on Lusitania, probably. But my responsibility is the safety and integrity of the Hundred Worlds. I have a hundred times the responsibility of Peter the Hegemon and about a tenth of his power. Not to mention the fact that I'm far from being the genius he was. No doubt you and everybody else would be happier if Peter were still available. I'm just afraid that by the time this thing is over, we may need another Ender. Nobody wants Xenocide, but if it happens, I want to make sure it's the other guys that disappear. When it comes to war, human is human and alien is alien. All that raman business goes up in smoke when we're talking about survival.

Does that satisfy you? Do you believe me when I tell you that I'm not being soft? Now see to it you're not soft, either. See to it you get me results, fast. Now. Love and kisses, Bawa.

--Gobawa Ekimbo, Chmn Xen Ovst Comm, to Pyotr Martinov, Dir Cgrs Sec Agc, Memo 44:1970:5:4:2; cit. Demosthenes, The Second Xenocide, 87:1972:1:1:1

Human led the way through the forest. The piggies scrambled easily up and down slopes, across a stream, through thick underbrush. Human, though, seemed to make a dance of it, running partway up certain trees, touching and speaking to others. The other piggies were much more restrained, only occasionally joining him in his antics. Only Mandachuva hung back with the human beings.

"Why does he do that?" asked Ender quietly.

Mandachuva was baffled for a moment. Ouanda explained what Ender meant. "Why does Human climb the trees, or touch them and sing?"

"He sings to them about the third life," said Mandachuva. "It's very bad manners for him to do that. He has always been selfish and stupid."

Ouanda looked at Ender in surprise, then back at Mandachuva. "I thought everybody liked Human," she said.

"Great honor," said Mandachuva. "A wise one." Then Mandachuva poked Ender in the hip. "But he's a fool in one thing. He thinks you'll do him honor. He thinks you'll take him to the third life."

"What's the third life?" asked Ender.

"The gift that Pipo kept for himself," said Mandachuva. Then he walked faster, caught up with the other piggies.

"Did any of that make sense to you?" Ender asked Ouanda.

"I still can't get used to the way you ask them direct questions."

"I don't get much in the way of answers, do I?"

"Mandachuva is angry, that's something. And he's angry at Pipo, that's another. The third life-- a gift that Pipo kept for himself. It will all make sense."

"When?"

"In twenty years. Or twenty minutes. That's what makes xenology so fun."

Ela was touching the trees, too, and looking from time to time at the bushes. "All the same species of tree. And the bushes, too, just alike. And that vine, climbing most of the trees. Have you ever seen any other plant species here in the forest, Ouanda?"

"Not that I noticed. I never looked for that. The vine is called merdona. The macios seem to feed on it, and the piggies eat the macios. The merdona root, we taught the piggies how to make it edible. Before the amaranth. So they're eating lower on the food chain now."

"Look," said Ender.

The piggies were all stopped, their backs to the humans, facing a clearing. In a moment Ender, Ouanda, and Ela caught up with them and looked over them into the moonlit glen. It was quite a large space, and the ground was beaten bare. Several log houses lined the edges of the clearing, but the middle was empty except for a single huge tree, the largest they had seen in the forest.

The trunk seemed to be moving. "It's crawling with macios," said Ouanda.

"Not macios," said Human.

"Three hundred twenty," said Mandachuva.

"Little brothers," said Arrow.

"And little mothers," added Cups.

"And if you harm them," said Leaf-eater, "we will kill you unplanted and knock down your tree."

"We won't harm them," said Ender.

The piggies did not take a single step into the clearing. They waited and waited, until finally there was some movement near the largest of the log houses, almost directly opposite them. It was a piggy. But larger than any of the piggies they had seen before.

"A wife," murmured Mandachuva.

"What's her name?" asked Ender.

The piggies turned to him and stared. "They don't tell us their names," said Leaf-eater.

"If they even have names," added Cups.

Human reached up and drew Ender down to where he could whisper in his ear. "We always call her Shouter. But never where a wife can hear."

The female looked at them, and then sang-- there was no other way to describe the mellifluous flow of her voice-- a sentence or two in Wives' Language.

"It's for you to go," said Mandachuva. "Speaker. You."

"Alone?" asked Ender. "I'd rather bring Ouanda and Ela with me."

Mandachuva spoke loudly in Wives' Language; it sounded like gargling compared to the beauty of the female's voice. Shouter answered, again singing only briefly.

"She says of course they can come," Mandachuva reported. "She says they're females, aren't they? She's not very sophisticated about the differences between humans and little ones."

"One more thing," said Ender. "At least one of you, as an interpreter. Or can she speak Stark?"

Mandachuva relayed Ender's request. The answer was brief, and Mandachuva didn't like it. He refused to translate it. It was Human who explained. "She says that you may have any interpreter you like, as long as it's me."

"Then we'd like to have you as our interpreter," said Ender.

"You must enter the birthing place first," said Human. "You are the invited one."

Ender stepped out into the open and strode into the moonlight. He could hear Ela and Ouanda following him, and Human padding along behind. Now he could see that Shouter was not the only female here. Several faces were in every doorway. "How many are there?" asked Ender.

Human didn't answer. Ender turned to face him. "How many wives are there?" Ender repeated.

Human still did not answer. Not until Shouter sang again, more loudly and commandingly. Only then did Human translate. "In the birthing place, Speaker, it is only to speak when a wife asks you a question."

Ender nodded gravely, then walked back to where the other males waited at the edge of the clearing. Ouanda and Ela followed him. He could hear Shouter singing behind him, and now he understood why the males referred to her by that name-- her voice was enough to make the trees shake. Human caught up with Ender and tugged at his clothing. "She says why are you going, you haven't been given permission to go. Speaker, this is a very bad thing, she's very angry--"

"Tell her that I did not come to give instructions or to receive instructions. If she won't treat me as an equal, I won't treat her as an equal."

"I can't tell her that," said Human.

"Then she'll always wonder why I left, won't she?"

"This is a great honor, to be called among the wives!"

"It is also a great honor for the Speaker of the Dead to come and visit them."

Human stood still for a few moments, rigid with anxiety. Then he turned and spoke to Shouter.

She in turn fell silent. There was not a sound in the glen.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Speaker," murmured Ouanda.

"I'm improvising," said Ender. "How do you think it's going?"

She didn't answer.

Shouter went back into the large log house. Ender turned around and again headed for the forest. Almost immediately Shouter's voice rang out again.

"She commands you to wait," said Human.

Ender did not break stride, and in a moment he was on the other side of the piggy males. "If she asks me to return, I may come back. But you must tell her, Human, that I did not come to command or to be commanded."

"I can't say that," said Human.

"Why not?" asked Ender.

"Let me," said Ouanda. "Human, do you mean you can't say it because you're afraid, or because there are no words for it?"

"No words. For a brother to speak to a wife about him commanding her, and her petitioning him, those words can't be said in that direction."

Ouanda smiled at Ender. "Not mores, here, Speaker. Language."

"Don't they understand your language, Human?" asked Ender.

"Males' Language can't be spoken in the birthing place," said Human.

"Tell her that my words can't be spoken in Wives' Language, but only in Males' Language, and tell her that I-- petition-- that you be allowed to translate my words in Males' Language."

"You are a lot of trouble, Speaker," said Human. He turned and spoke again to Shouter.

Suddenly the glen was full of the sound of Wives' Language, a dozen different songs, like a choir warming up.

"Speaker," said Ouanda, "you have now violated just about every rule of good anthropological practice."

"Which ones did I miss?"

"The only one I can think of is that you haven't killed any of them yet."

"What you're forgetting," said Ender, "is that I'm not here as a scientist to study them. I'm here as an ambassador to make a treaty with them."

Just as quickly as they started, the wives fell silent. Shouter emerged from her house and walked to the middle of the clearing to stand very near to the huge central tree. She sang.

Human answered her-- in Brothers' Language. Ouanda murmured a rough translation. "He's telling her what you said, about coming as equals."

Again the wives erupted in cacophonous song.

"How do you think they'll respond?" asked Ela.

"How could I know?" asked Ouanda. "I've been here exactly as often as you."

"I think they'll understand it and let me in on those terms," said Ender.

"Why do you think that?" asked Ouanda.

"Because I came out of the sky. Because I'm the Speaker for the Dead."

"Don't start thinking you're a great white god," said Ouanda. "It usually doesn't work out very well."

"I'm not Pizarro," said Ender.

In his ear Jane murmured, "I'm beginning to make some sense out of the Wives' Language. The basics of the Males' Language were in Pipo's and Libo's notes. Human's translations are very helpful. The Wives' Language is closely related to Males' Language, except that it seems more archaic-- closer to the roots, more old forms-- and all the female-to-male forms are in the imperative voice, while the male-to-female forms are in the supplicative. The female word for the brothers seems to be related to the male word for macio, the tree worm. If this is the language of love, it's a wonder they manage to reproduce at all."

Ender smiled. It was good to hear Jane speak to him again, good to know he would have her help.

He realized that Mandachuva had been asking Ouanda a question, for now he heard her whispered answer. "He's listening to the jewel in his ear."

"Is it the hive queen?" asked Mandachuva.

"No," said Ouanda. "It's a..." She struggled to find a word. "It's a computer. A machine with a voice."

"Can I have one?" asked Mandachuva.

"Someday," Ender answered, saving Ouanda the trouble of trying to figure out how to answer.

The wives fell silent, and again Shouter's voice was alone. Immediately the males became agitated, bouncing up and down on their toes.

Jane whispered in his ear. "She's speaking Males' Language herself," she said.

"Very great day," said Arrow quietly. "The wives speaking Males' Language in this place. Never happened before."

"She invites you to come in," said Human. "As a sister to a brother she invites you."

Immediately Ender walked into the clearing and approached her directly. Even though she was taller than the males, she was still a good fifty centimeters shorter than Ender, so he fell to his knees at once. They were eye to eye.

"I am grateful for your kindness to me," said Ender.

"I could say that in Wives' Language," Human said.

"Say it in your language anyway," said Ender.

He did. Shouter reached out a hand and touched the smooth skin of his forehead, the rough stubble of his jaw; she pressed a finger against his lip, and he closed his eyes but did not flinch as she laid a delicate finger on his eyelid.

She spoke. "You are the holy Speaker?" translated Human. Jane corrected the translation. "He added the word holy."

Ender looked Human in the eye. "I am not holy," he said.

Human went rigid.

"Tell her."

He was in turmoil for a moment; then he apparently decided that Ender was the less dangerous of the two. "She didn't say holy."

"Tell me what she says, as exactly as you can," said Ender.

"If you aren't holy," said Human, "how did you know what she really said?"

"Please," said Ender, "be truthful between her and me."

"To you I'll be truthful," said Human. "But when I speak to her, it's my voice she hears saying your words. I have to say them-- carefully. "

"Be truthful," said Ender. "Don't be afraid. It's important that she knows exactly what I said. Tell her this. Say that I ask her to forgive you for speaking to her rudely, but I am a rude framling and you must say exactly what I say."

Human rolled his eyes, but turned to Shouter and spoke.

She answered briefly. Human translated. "She says her head is not carved from merdona root. Of course she understands that."

"Tell her that we humans have never seen such a great tree before. Ask her to explain to us what she and the other wives do with this tree."

Ouanda was aghast. "You certainly get straight to the point, don't you?"

But when Human translated Ender's words, Shouter immediately went to the tree, touched it, and began to sing.

Now, gathered closer to the tree, they could see the mass of creatures squirming on the bark. Most of them were no more than four or five centimeters long. They looked vaguely fetal, though a thin haze of dark fur covered their pinkish bodies. Their eyes were open. They climbed over each other, struggling to win a place at one of the smears of drying dough that dotted the bark.

"Amaranth mash," said Ouanda.

"Babies," said Ela.

"Not babies," said Human. "These are almost grown enough to walk."

Ender stepped to the tree, reached out his hand. Shouter abruptly stopped her song. But Ender did not stop his movement. He touched his fingers to the bark near a young piggy. In its climbing, it touched him, climbed over his hand, clung to him. "Do you know this one by name?" asked Ender.

Frightened, Human hastily translated. And gave back Shouter's answer. "That one is a brother of mine," he said. "He won't get a name until he can walk on two legs. His father is Rooter."

"And his mother?" asked Ender.

"Oh, the little mothers never have names," said Human.

"Ask her."

Human asked her. She answered. "She says his mother was very strong and very courageous. She made herself fat in bearing her five children." Human touched his forehead. "Five children is a very good number. And she was fat enough to feed them all."

"Does his mother bring the mash that feeds him?"

Human looked horrified. "Speaker, I can't say that. Not in any language."

"Why not?"

"I told you. She was fat enough to feed all five of her little ones. Put back that little brother, and let the wife sing to the tree."

Ender put his hand near the trunk again and the little brother squirmed away. Shouter resumed her song. Ouanda glared at Ender for his impetuousness. But Ela seemed excited. "Don't you see? The newborns feed on their mother's body."

Ender drew away, repelled.

"How can you say that?" asked Ouanda.

"Look at them squirming on the trees, just like little macios. They and the macios must have been competitors." Ela pointed toward a part of the tree unstained by amaranth mash. "The tree leaks sap. Here in the cracks. Back before the Descolada there must have been insects that fed on the sap, and the macios and the infant piggies competed to eat them. That's why the piggies were able to mingle their genetic molecules with these trees. Not only did the infants live here, the adults constantly had to climb the trees to keep the macios away. Even when there were plenty of other food sources, they were still tied to these trees throughout their life cycles. Long before they ever became trees."

"We're studying piggy society," said Ouanda impatiently. "Not the distant evolutionary past."

"I'm conducting delicate negotiations," said Ender. "So please be quiet and learn what you can without conducting a seminar."

The singing reached a climax; a crack appeared in the side of the tree.

"They're not going to knock down this tree for us, are they?" asked Ouanda, horrified.

"She is asking the tree to open her heart." Human touched his forehead. "This is the mothertree, and it is the only one in all our forest. No harm may come to this tree, or all our children will come from other trees, and our fathers all will die."

All the other wives' voices joined Shouter's now, and soon a hole gaped wide in the trunk of the mothertree. Immediately Ender moved to stand directly in front of the hole. It was too dark inside for him to see.

Ela took her nightstick from her belt and held it out to him. Ouanda's hand flew out and seized Ela's wrist. "A machine!" she said. "You can't bring that here."

Ender gently took the nightstick out of Ela's hand. "The fence is off," said Ender, "and we all can engage in Questionable Activities now." He pointed the barrel of the nightstick at the ground and pressed it on, then slid his finger quickly along the barrel to soften the light and spread it. The wives murmured, and Shouter touched Human on the belly.

"I told them you could make little moons at night," he said. "I told them you carried them with you."

"Will it hurt anything if I let this light into the heart of the mothertree?"

Human asked Shouter, and Shouter reached for the nightstick. Then, holding it in trembling hands, she sang softly and tilted it slightly so that a sliver of the light passed through the hole. Almost at once she recoiled and pointed the nightstick the other direction. "The brightness blinds them," Human said.

In Ender's ear, Jane whispered, "The sound of her voice is echoing from the inside of the tree. When the light went in, the echo modulated, causing a high overtone and a shaping of the sound. The tree was answering, using the sound of Shouter's own voice."

"Can you see?" Ender said softly.

"Kneel down and get me close enough, and then move me across the opening. " Ender obeyed, letting his head move slowly in front of the hole, giving the jeweled ear a clear angle toward the interior. Jane described what she saw. Ender knelt there for a long time, not moving. Then he turned to the others. "The little mothers," said Ender. "There are little mothers in there, pregnant ones. Not more than four centimeters long. One of them is giving birth."

"You see with your jewel?" asked Ela.

Ouanda knelt beside him, trying to see inside and failing. "Incredible sexual dimorphism. The females come to sexual maturity in their infancy, give birth, and die." She asked Human, "All of these little ones on the outside of the tree, they're all brothers?"

Human repeated the question to Shouter. The wife reached up to a place near the aperture in the trunk and took down one fairly large infant. She sang a few words of explanation. "That one is a young wife," Human translated. "She will join the other wives in caring for the children, when she's old enough."

"Is there only one?" asked Ela.

Ender shuddered and stood up. "That one is sterile, or else they never let her mate. She couldn't possibly have had children."

"Why not?" asked Ouanda.

"There's no birth canal," said Ender. "The babies eat their way out."

Ouanda muttered a prayer.

Ela, however, was more curious than ever. "Fascinating," she said. "But if they're so small, how do they mate?"

"We carry them to the fathers, of course," said Human. "How do you think? The father's can't come here, can they?"

"The fathers," said Ouanda. "That's what they call the most revered trees."

"That's right," said Human. "The fathers are ripe on the bark. They put their dust on the bark, in the sap. We carry the little mother to the father the wives have chosen. She crawls on the bark, and the dust on the sap gets into her belly and fills it up with little ones."

Ouanda wordlessly pointed to the small protuberances on Human's belly.

"Yes," Human said. "These are the carries. The honored brother puts the little mother on one of his carries, and she holds very tight all the way to the father." He touched his belly. "It is the greatest joy we have in our second life. We would carry the little mothers every night if we could."

Shouter sang, long and loud, and the hole in the mothertree began to close again.

"All those females, all the little mothers," asked Ela. "Are they sentient?"

It was a word that Human didn't know.

"Are they awake?" asked Ender.

"Of course," said Human.

"What he means," explained Ouanda, "is can the little mothers think? Do they understand language?"

"Them?" asked Human. "No, they're no smarter than the cabras. And only a little smarter than the macios. They only do three things. Eat, crawl, and cling to the carry. The ones on the outside of the tree, now-- they're beginning to learn. I can remember climbing on the face of the mothertree. So I had memory then. But I'm one of the very few that remember so far back."

Tears came unbidden to Ouanda's eyes. "All the mothers, they're born, they mate, they give birth and die, all in their infancy. They never even know they were alive."

"It's sexual dimorphism carried to a ridiculous extreme," said Ela. "The females reach sexual maturity early, but the males reach it late. It's ironic, isn't it, that the dominant female adults are all sterile. They govern the whole tribe, and yet their own genes can't be passed on--"

"Ela," said Ouanda, "what if we could develop a way to let the little mothers bear their children without being devoured. A caesarean section. With a protein-rich nutrient substitute for the little mother's corpse. Could the females survive to adulthood?"

Ela didn't have a chance to answer. Ender took them both by the arms and pulled them away. "How dare you!" he whispered. "What if they could find a way to let infant human girls conceive and bear children, which would feed on their mother's tiny corpse?"

"What are you talking about!" said Ouanda.

"That's sick," said Ela.

"We didn't come here to attack them at the root of their lives," said Ender. "We came here to find a way to share a world with them. In a hundred years or five hundred years, when they've learned enough to make changes for themselves, then they can decide whether to alter the way that their children are conceived and born. But we can't begin to guess what it would do to them if suddenly as many females as males came to maturity. To do what? They can't bear more children, can they? They can't compete with the males to become fathers, can they? What are they for?"

"But they're dying without ever being alive--"

"They are what they are," said Ender. "They decide what changes they'll make, not you, not from your blindly human perspective, trying to make them have full and happy lives, just like us."

"You're right," said Ela. "Of course, you're right, I'm sorry." To Ela, the piggies weren't people, they were strange alien fauna, and Ela was used to discovering that other animals had inhuman life patterns. But Ender could see that Ouanda was still upset. She had made the raman transition: She thought of piggies as us instead of them. She accepted the strange behavior that she knew about, even the murder of her father, as within an acceptable range of alienness. This meant she was actually more tolerant and accepting of the piggies than Ela could possibly be; yet it also made her more vulnerable to the discovery of cruel, bestial behaviors among her friends.

Ender noticed, too, that after years of association with the piggies, Ouanda had one of their habits: At a moment of extreme anxiety, her whole body became rigid. So he reminded her of her humanity by taking her shoulder in a fatherly gesture, drawing her close under his arm.

At his touch Ouanda melted a little, laughed nervously, her voice low. "Do you know what I keep thinking?" she said. "That the little mothers have all their children and die unbaptized."

"If Bishop Peregrino converts them," said Ender, "maybe they'll let us sprinkle the inside of the mothertree and say the words."

"Don't mock me," Ouanda whispered.

"I wasn't. For now, though, we'll ask them to change enough that we can live with them, and no more. We'll change ourselves only enough that they can bear to live with us. Agree to that, or the fence goes up again, because then we truly would be a threat to their survival."

Ela nodded her agreement, but Ouanda had gone rigid again. Ender's fingers suddenly dug harshly into Ouanda's shoulder. Frightened, she nodded her agreement. He relaxed his grip. "I'm sorry," he said. "But they are what they are. If you want, they are what God made them. So don't try to remake them in your own image."

He returned to the mothertree. Shouter and Human were waiting.

"Please excuse the interruption," said Ender.

"It's all right," said Human. "I told her what you were doing."

Ender felt himself sink inside. "What did you tell her we were doing?"

"I said that they wanted to do something to the little mothers that would make us all more like humans, but you said they never could do that or you'd put back the fence. I told her that you said we must remain Little Ones, and you must remain humans."

Ender smiled. His translation was strictly true, but he had the sense not to get into specifics. It was conceivable that the wives might actually want the little mothers to survive childbirth, without realizing how vast the consequences of such a simple-seeming, humanitarian change might be. Human was an excellent diplomat; he told the truth and yet avoided the whole issue.

"Well," said Ender. "Now that we've all met each other, it's time to begin serious talking."

Ender sat down on the bare earth. Shouter squatted on the ground directly opposite him. She sang a few words.

"She says you must teach us everything you know, take us out to the stars, bring us the hive queen and give her the lightstick that this new human brought with you, or in the dark of night she'll send all the brothers of this forest to kill all the humans in your sleep and hang you high above the ground so you get no third life at all." Seeing the humans' alarm, Human reached out his hand and touched Ender's chest. "No, no, you must understand. That means nothing. That's the way we always begin when we're talking to another tribe. Do you think we're crazy? We'd never kill you! You gave us amaranth, pottery, The Hive Queen and the Hegemon."

"Tell her to withdraw that threat or we'll never give her anything else."

"I told you, Speaker, it doesn't mean--"

"She said the words, and I won't talk to her as long as those words stand."

Human spoke to her.

Shouter jumped to her feet and walked all the way around the mothertree, her hands raised high, singing loudly.

Human leaned to Ender. "She's complaining to the great mother and to all the wives that you're a brother who doesn't know his place. She's saying that you're rude and impossible to deal with."

Ender nodded. "Yes, that's exactly right. Now we're getting somewhere."

Again Shouter squatted across from Ender. She spoke in Males' Language.

"She says she'll never kill any human or let any of the brothers or wives kill any of you. She says for you to remember that you're twice as tall as any of us and you know everything and we know nothing. Now has she humiliated herself enough that you'll talk to her?"

Shouter watched him, glumly waiting for his response.

"Yes," said Ender. "Now we can begin."

Novinha knelt on the floor beside Miro's bed. Quim and Olhado stood behind her. Dom Cristão was putting Quara and Grego to bed in their room. The sound of his off-tune lullaby was barely audible behind the tortured sound of Miro's breathing.

Miro's eyes opened.

"Miro," said Novinha.

Miro groaned.

"Miro, you're home in bed. You went over the fence while it was on. Now Dr. Navio says that your brain has been damaged. We don't know whether the damage is permanent or not. You may be partially paralyzed. But you're alive, Miro, and Navio says that he can do many things to help you compensate for what you may have lost. Do you understand? I'm telling you the truth. It may be very bad for a while, but it's worth trying."

He moaned softly. But it was not a sound of pain. It was as if he were trying to talk, and couldn't.

"Can you move your jaw, Miro?" asked Quim.

Slowly Miro's mouth opened and closed.

Olhado held his hand a meter above Miro's head and moved it. "Can you make your eyes follow the movement of my hand?"

Miro's eyes followed. Novinha squeezed Miro's hand. "Did you feel me squeeze your hand?"

Miro moaned again.

"Close your mouth for no," said Quim, "and open your mouth for yes."

Miro closed his mouth and said, "Mm."

Novinha could not help herself; despite her encouraging words, this was the most terrible thing that had happened to any of her children. She had thought when Lauro lost his eyes and became Olhado-- she hated the nickname, but now used it herself-- that nothing worse could happen. But Miro, paralyzed, helpless, so he couldn't even feel the touch of her hand, that could not be borne. She had felt one kind of grief when Pipo died, and another kind when Libo died, and a terrible regret at Marcão's death. She even remembered the aching emptiness she felt as she watched them lower her mother and father into the ground. But there was no pain worse than to watch her child suffer and be unable to help.

She stood up to leave. For his sake, she would do her crying silently, and in another room.

"Mm. Mm. Mm."

"He doesn't want you to go," said Quim.

"I'll stay if you want," said Novinha. "But you should sleep again. Navio said that the more you sleep for a while--"

"Mm. Mm. Mm."

"Doesn't want to sleep, either," said Quim.

Novinha stifled her immediate response, to snap at Quim and tell him that she could hear his answers perfectly well for herself. This was no time for quarreling. Besides, it was Quim who had worked out the system that Miro was using to communicate. He had a right to take pride in it, to pretend that he was Miro's voice. It was his way of affirming that he was part of the family. That he was not quitting because of what he learned in the praça today. It was his way of forgiving her, so she held her tongue.

"Maybe he wants to tell us something," said Olhado.

"Mm."

"Or ask a question?" said Quim.

"Ma. Aa."

"That's great," said Quim. "If he can't move his hands, he can't write."

"Sem problema," said Olhado. "Scanning. He can scan. If we bring him in by the terminal, I can make it scan the letters and he just says yes when it hits the letters he wants.

"That'll take forever," said Quim.

"Do you want to try that, Miro?" asked Novinha.

He wanted to.

The three of them carried him to the front room and laid him on the bed there. Olhado oriented the terminal so it displayed all the letters of the alphabet, facing so Miro could see them. He wrote a short program that caused each letter to light up in turn for a fraction of a second. It took a few trial runs for the speed to be right-- slow enough that Miro could make a sound that meant this letter before the light moved on to the next one.

Miro, in turn, kept things moving faster yet by deliberately abbreviating his words.

P-I-G.

"Piggies," said Olhado.

"Yes," said Novinha. "Why were you crossing the fence with the piggies?"

"Mmmmm!"

"He's asking a question, Mother," said Quim. "He doesn't want to answer any."

"Aa."

"Do you want to know about the piggies that were with you when you crossed the fence?" asked Novinha. He did. "They've gone back into the forest. With Ouanda and Ela and the Speaker for the Dead." Quickly she told him about the meeting in the Bishop's chambers, what they had learned about the piggies, and above all what they had decided to do. "When they turned off the fence to save you, Miro, it was a decision to rebel against Congress. Do you understand? The Committee's rules are finished. The fence is nothing but wires now. The gate will stand open."

Tears came to Miro's eyes.

"Is that all you wanted to know?" asked Novinha. "You should sleep."

No, he said. No no no no.

"Wait till his eyes are clear," said Quim. "And then we'll scan some more."

D-I-G-A F-A-L--

"Diga ao Falante pelos Mortos," said Olhado.

"What should we tell the Speaker?" asked Quim.

"You should sleep now and tell us later," said Novinha. "He won't be back for hours. He's negotiating a set of rules to govern relations between the piggies and us. To stop them from killing any more of us, the way they killed Pipo and L-- and your father."

But Miro refused to sleep. He continued spelling out his message as the terminal scanned. Together the three of them worked out what he was trying to get them to tell the Speaker. And they understood that he wanted them to go now, before the negotiations ended.

So Novinha left Dom Cristão and Dona Cristã to watch over the house and the little children. On the way out of the house she stopped beside her oldest son. The exertion had worn him out; his eyes were closed and his breathing was regular. She touched his hand, held it, squeezed it; he couldn't feel her touch, she knew, but then it was herself she was comforting, not him.

He opened his eyes. And, ever so gently, she felt his fingers tighten on hers. "I felt it," she whispered to him. "You'll be all right."

He shut his eyes against his tears. She got up and walked blindly to the door. "I have something in my eye," she told Olhado. "Lead me for a few minutes until I can see for myself."

Quim was already at the fence. "The gate's too far!" he shouted. "Can you climb over, Mother?"

She could, but it wasn't easy. "No doubt about it," she said. "Bosquinha's going to have to let us install another gate right here."

It was late now, past midnight, and both Ouanda and Ela was getting sleepy. Ender was not. He had been on edge for hours in his bargaining with Shouter; his body chemistry had responded, and even if he had gone home right now it would have been hours before he was capable of sleep.

He now knew far more about what the piggies wanted and needed. Their forest was their home, their nation; it was all the definition of property they had ever needed. Now, however, the amaranth fields had caused them to see that the prairie was also useful land, which they needed to control. Yet they had little concept of land measurement. How many hectares did they need to keep under cultivation? How much land could the humans use? Since the piggies themselves barely understood their needs, it was hard for Ender to pin them down.

Harder still was the concept of law and government. The wives ruled: to the piggies, it was that simple. But Ender had finally got them to understand that humans made their laws differently, and that human laws applied to human problems. To make them understand why humans needed their own laws, Ender had to explain to them human mating patterns. He was amused to note that Shouter was appalled at the notion of adults mating with each other, and of men having an equal voice with women in the making of the laws. The idea of family and kinship separate from the tribe was "brother blindness" to her. It was all right for Human to take pride in his father's many matings, but as far as the wives were concerned, they chose fathers solely on the basis of what was good for the tribe. The tribe and the individual-- they were the only entities the wives respected.

Finally, though, they understood that human laws must apply within the borders of human settlements, and piggy laws must apply within the piggy tribes. Where the borders should be was entirely a different matter. Now, after three hours, they had finally agreed to one thing and one thing only: Piggy law applied within the forest, and all humans who came within the forest were subject to it. Human law applied within the fence, and all piggies who came there were subject to human government. All the rest of the planet would be divided up later. It was a very small triumph, but at least there was some agreement.

"You must understand," Ender told her, "that humans will need a lot of open land. But we're only the beginning of the problem. You want the hive queen to teach you, to help you mine ore and smelt metals and make tools. But she'll also need land. And in a very short time she'll be far stronger than either humans or Little Ones." Every one of her buggers, he explained, was perfectly obedient and infinitely hardworking. They would quickly outstrip the humans in their productivity and power. Once she was restored to life on Lusitania, she would have to be reckoned with at every turn.

"Rooter says she can be trusted," said Human. And, translating for Shouter, he said, "The mothertree also gives the hive queen her trust."

"Do you give her your land?" Ender insisted.

"The world is big," Human translated for Shouter. "She can use all the forests of the other tribes. So can you. We give them to you freely."

Ender looked at Ouanda and Ela. "That's all very good," said Ela, "but are those forests theirs to give?"

"Definitely not," said Ouanda. "They even have wars with the other tribes."

"We'll kill them for you if they give you trouble," offered Human. "We're very strong now. Three hundred twenty babies. In ten years no tribe can stand against us."

"Human," said Ender, "tell Shouter that we are dealing with this tribe now. We'll deal with other tribes later."

Human translated quickly, his words tumbling over each other, and quickly had Shouter's response. "No no no no no."

"What is she objecting to?" asked Ender.

"You won't deal with our enemies. You came to us. If you go to them, then you are the enemy, too."

It was at that moment that the lights appeared in the forest behind them, and Arrow and Leaf-eater led Novinha, Quim, and Olhado into the wives' clearing.

"Miro sent us," Olhado explained.

"How is he?" asked Ouanda.

"Paralyzed," said Quim bluntly. It saved Novinha the effort of explaining it gently.

"Nossa Senhora," whispered Ouanda.

"But much of it is temporary," said Novinha. "Before I left, I squeezed his hand. He felt it, and squeezed me back. Just a little, but the nerve connections aren't dead, not all of them, anyway."

"Excuse me," said Ender, "but that's a conversation you can carry on back in Milagre. I have another matter to attend to here. "

"Sorry," Novinha said. "Miro's message. He couldn't speak, but he gave it to us letter by letter, and we figured out what went in the cracks. The piggies are planning war. Using the advantages they've gained from us. Arrows, their greater numbers-- they'd be irresistible. As I understand it, though, Miro says that their warfare isn't just a matter of conquest of territory. It's an opportunity for genetic mixing. Male exogamy. The winning tribe gets the use of the trees that grow from the bodies of the war dead."

Ender looked at Human, Leaf-eater, Arrow. "It's true," said Arrow. "Of course it's true. We are the wisest of tribes now. All of us will make better fathers than any of the other piggies. "

"I see," said Ender.

"That's why Miro wanted us to come to you now, tonight," said Novinha. "While the negotiations still aren't final. That has to end."

Human stood up, bounced up and down as if he were about to take off and fly. "I won't translate that," said Human.

"I will," said Leaf-eater.

"Stop!" shouted Ender. His voice was far louder than he had ever let it be heard before. Immediately everyone fell silent; the echo of his shout seemed to linger among the trees. "Leaf-eater," said Ender, "I will have no interpreter but Human."

"Who are you to tell me that I may not speak to the wives? I am a piggy, and you are nothing."

"Human," said Ender, "tell Shouter that if she lets Leafeater translate words that we humans have said among ourselves, then he is a spy. And if she lets him spy on us, we will go home now and you will have nothing from us. I'll take the hive queen to another world to restore her. Do you understand?"

Of course he understood. Ender also knew that Human was pleased. Leaf-eater was trying to usurp Human's role and discredit him-- along with Ender. When Human finished translating Ender's words, Shouter sang at Leaf-eater. Abashed, he quickly retreated to the woods to watch with the other piggies.

But Human was by no means a puppet. He gave no sign that he was grateful. He looked Ender in the eye. "You said you wouldn't try to change us."

"I said I wouldn't try to change you more than is necessary."

"Why is this necessary? It's between us and the other piggies."

"Careful," said Ouanda. "He's very upset."

Before he could hope to persuade Shouter, he had to convince Human. "You are our first friends among the piggies. You have our trust and our love. We will never do anything to harm you, or to give any other piggies an advantage over you. But we didn't come just to you. We represent all of humankind, and we've come to teach all we can to all of the piggies. Regardless of tribe."

"You don't represent all humankind. You're about to fight a war with other humans. So how can you say that our wars are evil and your wars are good?"

Surely Pizarro, for all his shortcomings, had an easier time of it with Atahualpa. "We're trying not to fight a war with other humans," said Ender. "And if we fight one, it won't be our war, trying to gain an advantage over them. It will be your war, trying to win you the right to travel among the stars." Ender held up his open hand. "We have set aside our humanness to become ramen with you." He closed his hand into a fist. "Human and piggy and hive queen, here on Lusitania, will be one. All humans. All buggers. All piggies.

Human sat in silence, digesting this.

"Speaker," he finally said. "This is very hard. Until you humans came, other piggies were-- always to be killed, and their third life was to be slaves to us in forests that we kept. This forest was once a battlefield, and the most ancient trees are the warriors who died in battle. Our oldest fathers are the heroes of that war, and our houses are made of the cowards. All our lives we prepare to win battles with our enemies, so that our wives can make a mothertree in a new battle forest, and make us mighty and great. These last ten years we have learned to use arrows to kill from far off. Pots and cabra skins to carry water across the drylands. Amaranth and merdona root so we can be many and strong and carry food with us far from the macios of our home forest. We rejoiced in this because it meant that we would always be victorious in war. We would carry our wives, our little mothers, our heroes to every corner of the great world, and finally one day out into the stars. This is our dream, Speaker, and you tell me now that you want us to lose it like wind in the sky."

It was a powerful speech. None of the others offered Ender any suggestions about what to say in answer. Human had half-convinced them.

"You dream is a good one," said Ender. "It's the dream of every living creature. The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It's the desire for greatness. There are two ways, though, to fulfil it. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up or destroy it, until nothing is left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, Only I will be great, and to make room for me the rest of you must give up even what you already have, and become nothing. Do you understand, Human, that if we humans felt this way, acted this way, we could kill every piggy in Lusitania and make this place our home. How much of your dream would be left, if we were evil?"

Human was trying hard to understand. "I see that you gave us great gifts, when you could have taken from us even the little that we had. But why did you give us the gifts, if we can't use them to become great?"

"We want you to grow, to travel among the stars. Here on Lusitania we want you to be strong and powerful, with hundreds and thousands of brothers and wives. We want to teach you to grow many kinds of plants and raise many different animals. Ela and Novinha, these two women, will work all the days of their lives to develop more plants that can live here in Lusitania, and every good thing that they make, they'll give to you. So you can grow. But why does a single piggy in any other forest have to die, just so you can have these gifts? And why would it hurt you in any way, if we also gave the same gifts to them?"

"If they become just as strong as we are, then what have we gained?"

What am I expecting this brother to do, thought Ender. His people have always measured themselves against the other tribes. Their forest isn't fifty hectares or five hundred-- it's either larger or smaller than the forest of the tribe to the west or the south. What I have to do now is the work of a generation: I have to teach him a new way of conceiving the stature of his own people. "Is Rooter great?" asked Ender.

"I say he is," said Human. "He's my father. His tree isn't the oldest or thickest, but no father that we remember has ever had so many children so quickly after he was planted."

"So in a way, all the children that he fathered are still part of him. The more children he fathers, the greater he becomes." Human nodded slowly. "And the more you accomplish in your life, the greater you make your father, is that true?"

"If his children do well, then yes, it's a great honor to the fathertree."

"Do you have to kill all the other great trees in order for your father to be great?"

"That's different," said Human. "All the other great trees are fathers of the tribe. And the lesser trees are still brothers." Yet Ender could see that Human was uncertain now. He was resisting Ender's ideas because they were strange, not because they were wrong or incomprehensible. He was beginning to understand.

"Look at the wives," said Ender. "They have no children. They can never be great the way that your father is great."

"Speaker, you know that they're the greatest of all. The whole tribe obeys them. When they rule us well, the tribe prospers; when the tribe becomes many, then the wives are also made strong--"

"Even though not a single one of you is their own child."

"How could we be?" asked Human.

"And yet you add to their greatness. Even though they aren't your mother or your father, they still grow when you grow."

"We're all the same tribe."

"But why are you the same tribe? You have different fathers, different mothers."

"Because we are the tribe! We live here in the forest, we--"

"If another piggy came here from another tribe, and asked you to let him stay and be a brother--"

"We would never make him a fathertree!"

"But you tried to make Pipo and Libo fathertrees."

Human was breathing heavily. "I see," he said. "They were part of the tribe. From the sky, but we made them brothers and tried to make them fathers. The tribe is whatever we believe it is. If we say the tribe is all the Little Ones in the forest, and all the trees, then that is what the tribe is. Even though some of the oldest trees here came from warriors of two different tribes, fallen in battle. We become one tribe because we say we're one tribe."

Ender marveled at his mind, this small raman. How few humans were able to grasp this idea, or let it extend beyond the narrow confines of their tribe, their family, their nation.

Human walked behind Ender, leaned against him, the weight of the young piggy pressed against his back. Ender felt Human's breath on his cheek, and then their cheeks were pressed together, both of them looking in the same direction. All at once Ender understood: "You see what I see," said Ender.

"You humans grow by making us part of you, humans and piggies and buggers, ramen together. Then we are one tribe, and our greatness is your greatness, and yours is ours." Ender could feel Human's body trembling with the strength of the idea. "You say to us, we must see all other tribes the same way. As one tribe, our tribe all together, so that we grow by making them grow."

"You could send teachers," said Ender. "Brothers to the other tribes, who could pass into their third life in the other forests and have children there."

"This is a strange and difficult thing to ask of the wives," said Human. "Maybe an impossible thing. Their minds don't work the way a brother's mind works. A brother can think of many different things. But a wife thinks of only one thing: what is good for the tribe, and at the root of that, what is good for the children and the little mothers."

"Can you make them understand this?" asked Ender.

"Better than you could," said Human. "But probably not. Probably I'll fail."

"I don't think you'll fail," said Ender.

"You came here tonight to make a covenant between us, the piggies of this tribe, and you, the humans who live on this world. The humans outside Lusitania won't care about our covenant, and the piggies outside ths forest won't care about it."

"We want to make the same covenant with all of them."

"And in this covenant, you humans promise to teach us everything."

"As quickly as you can understand it."

"Any question we ask."

"If we know the answer."

"When! If! These aren't words in a covenant! Give me straight answers now, Speaker for the Dead." Human stood up, pushed away from Ender, walked around in front of him, bent down a little to look at Ender from above. "Promise to teach us everything that you know!"

"We promise that."

"And you also promise to restore the hive queen to help us."

"I'll restore the hive queen. You'll have to make your own covenant with her. She doesn't obey human law."

"You promise to restore the hive queen, whether she helps us or not."

"Yes."

"You promise to obey our law when you come into our forest. And you agree that the prairie land that we need will also be under our law."

"Yes."

"And you will go to war against all the other humans in all the stars of the sky to protect us and let us also travel in the stars?"

"We already have."

Human relaxed, stepped back, squatted in his old position. He drew with his finger in the dirt. "Now, what you want from us," said Human. "We will obey human law in your city, and also in the prairie land that you need."

"Yes," said Ender.

"And you don't want us to go to war," said Human.

"That's right."

"And that's all?"

"One more thing," said Ender.

"What you ask is already impossible," said Human. "You might as well ask more."

"The third life," said Ender. "When does it begin? When you kill a piggy and he grows into a tree, is that right?"

"The first life is within the mothertree, where we never see the light, and where we eat blindly the meat of our mother's body and the sap of the mothertree. The second life is when we live in the shade of the forest, the half-light, running and walking and climbing, seeing and singing and talking, making with our hands. The third life is when we reach and drink from the sun, in the full light at last, never moving except in the wind; only to think, and on those certain days when the brothers drum on your trunk, to speak to them. Yes, that's the third life."

"Humans don't have the third life."

Human looked at him, puzzled.

"When we die, even if you plant us, nothing grows. There's no tree. We never drink from the sun. When we die, we're dead."

Human looked at Ouanda. "But the other book you gave us. It talked all the time about living after death and being born again."

"Not as a tree," said Ender. "Not as anything you can touch or feel. Or talk to. Or get answers from."

"I don't believe you," said Human. "If that's true, why did Pipo and Libo make us plant them?"

Novinha knelt down beside Ender, touching him-- no, leaning on him-- so she could hear more clearly.

"How did they make you plant them?" said Ender.

"They made the great gift, won the great honor. The human and the piggy together. Pipo and Mandachuva. Libo and Leaf-eater. Mandachuva and Leaf-eater both thought that they would win the third life, but each time, Pipo and Libo would not. They insisted on keeping the gift for themselves. Why would they do that, if humans have no third life?"

Novinha's voice came then, husky and emotional. "What did they have to do, to give the third life to Mandachuva or Leaf-eater?"

"Plant them, of course," said Human. "The same as today."

"The same as what today?" asked Ender.

"You and me," said Human. "Human and the Speaker for the Dead. If we make this covenant so that the wives and the humans agree together, then this is a great, a noble day. So either you will give me the third life, or I will give it to you."

"With my own hand?"

"Of course," said Human. "If you won't give me the honor, then I must give it to you."

Ender remembered the picture he had first seen only two weeks ago, of Pipo dismembered and disemboweled, his body parts stretched and spread. Planted. "Human," said Ender, "the worst crime that a human being can commit is murder. And one of the worst ways to do it is to take a living person and cut him and hurt him so badly that he dies."

Again Human squatted for a while, trying to make sense of this. "Speaker," he said at last, "my mind keeps seeing this two ways. If humans don't have a third life, then planting is killing, forever. In our eyes, Libo and Pipo were keeping the honor to themselves, and leaving Mandachuva and Leaf-eater as you see them, to die without honor for their accomplishments. In our eyes, you humans came out of the fence to the hillside and tore them from the ground before their roots could grow. In our eyes, it was you who committed murder, when you carried Pipo and Libo away. But now I see it another way. Pipo and Libo wouldn't take Mandachuva and Leaf-eater into the third life, because to them it would be murder. So they willingly allowed their own death, just so they wouldn't have to kill any of us."

"Yes," said Novinha.

"But if that's so, then when you humans saw them on the hillside, why didn't you come into the forest and kill us all? Why didn't you make a great fire and consume all our fathers, and the great mothertree herself?"

Leaf-eater cried out from the edge of the forest, a terrible keening cry, an unbearable grief.

"If you had cut one of our trees," said Human. "If you had murdered a single tree, we would have come upon you in the night and killed you, every one of you. And even if some of you survived, our messengers would have told the story to every other tribe, and none of you would ever have left this land alive. Why didn't you kill us, for murdering Pipo and Libo?"

Mandachuva suddenly appeared behind Human, panting heavily. He flung himself to the ground, his hands outstretched toward Ender. "I cut him with these hands," he cried. "I tried to honor him, and I killed his tree forever!"

"No," said Ender. He took Mandachuva's hands, held them. "You both thought you were saving each other's life. He hurt you, and you-- hurt him, yes, killed him, but you both believed you were doing good. That's enough, until now. Now you know the truth, and so do we. We know that you didn't mean murder. And you know that when you take a knife to a human being, we die forever. That's the last term in the covenant, Human. Never take another human being to the third life, because we don't know how to go."

"When I tell this story to the wives," said Human, "you'll hear grief so terrible that it will sound like the breaking of trees in a thunderstorm."

He turned and stood before Shouter, and spoke to her for a few moments. Then he returned to Ender. "Go now," he said.

"We have no covenant yet," said Ender.

"I have to speak to all the wives. They'll never do that while you're here, in the shade of the mothertree, with no one to protect the little ones. Arrow will lead you back out of the forest. Wait for me on the hillside, where Rooter keeps watch over the gate. Sleep if you can. I'll present the covenant to the wives and try to make them understand that we must deal as kindly with the other tribes as you have dealt with us."

Impulsively, Human reached out a hand and touched Ender firmly on the belly. "I make my own covenant," he said to Ender. "I will honor you forever, but I will never kill you."

Ender put out his hand and laid his palm against Human's warm abdomen. The protuberances under his hand were hot to the touch. "I will also honor you forever," said Ender.

"And if we make this convenant between your tribe and ours," said Human, "will you give me the honor of the third life? Will you let me rise up and drink the light?"

"Can we do it quickly? Not the slow and terrible way that--"

"And make me one of the silent trees? Never fathering? Without honor, except to feed my sap to the filthy macios and give my wood to the brothers when they sing to me?"

"Isn't there someone else who can do it?" asked Ender. "One of the brothers, who knows your way of life and death?"

"You don't understand," said Human. "This is how the whole tribe knows that the truth has been spoken. Either you must take me into the third life, or I must take you, or there's no covenant. I won't kill you, Speaker, and we both want a treaty."

"I'll do it," said Ender.

Human nodded, withdrew his hand, and returned to Shouter.

"Ó Deus," whispered Ouanda. "How will you have the heart?"

Ender had no answer. He merely followed silently behind Arrow as he led them to the woods. Novinha gave him her own nightstick to lead the way; Arrow played with it like a child, making the light small and large, making it hover and swoop like a suckfly among the trees and bushes. He was as happy and playful as Ender had ever seen a piggy be.

But behind them, they could hear the voices of the wives, singing a terrible and cacophonous song. Human had told them the truth about Pipo and Libo, that they died the final death, and in pain, all so that they would not have to do to Mandachuva and Leaf-eater what they thought was murder. Only when they had gone far enough that the sound of the wives' keening was softer than their own footfalls and the wind in the trees did any of the humans speak.

"That was the mass for my father's soul," said Ouanda softly.

"And for mine," answered Novinha; they all knew that she spoke of Pipo, not the long-dead Venerado, Gusto.

But Ender was not part of their conversation; he had not known Libo and Pipo, and did not belong to their memory of grief. All he could think of was the trees of the forest. They had once been living, breathing piggies, every one of them. The piggies could sing to them, talk to them, even, somehow, understand their speech. But Ender couldn't. To Ender the trees were not people, could never be people. If he took the knife to Human, it might not be murder in the piggies' eyes, but to Ender himself he would be taking away the only part of Human's life that Ender understood. As a piggy, Human was a true raman, a brother. As a tree he would be little more than a gravestone, as far as Ender could understand, as far as he could really believe.

Once again, he thought, I must kill, though I promised that I never would again.

He felt Novinha's hand take him by the crook of the arm. She leaned on him. "Help me," she said. "I'm almost blind in the darkness."

"I have good night vision," Olhado offered cheerfully from behind her.

"Shut up, stupid," Ela whispered fiercely. "Mother wants to walk with him."

Both Novinha and Ender heard her clearly, and both could feel each other's silent laughter. Novinha drew closer to him as they walked. "I think you have the heart for what you have to do," she said softly, so that only he could hear.

"Cold and ruthless?" he asked. His voice hinted at wry humor, but the words tasted sour and truthful in his mouth.

"Compassionate enough," she said, "to put the hot iron into the wound when that's the only way to heal it."

As one who had felt his burning iron cauterize her deepest wounds, she had the right to speak; and he believed her, and it eased his heart for the bloody work ahead.

Ender hadn't thought it would be possible to sleep, knowing what was ahead of him. But now he woke up, Novinha's voice soft in his ear. He realized that he was outside, lying in the capim, his head resting on Novinha's lap. It was still dark.

"They're coming," said Novinha softly.

Ender sat up. Once, as a child, he would have come awake fully, instantly; but he was trained as a soldier then. Now it took a moment to orient himself. Ouanda, Ela, both awake and watching; Olhado asleep; Quim just stirring. The tall tree of Rooter's third life rising only a few meters away. And in the near distance, beyond the fence at the bottom of the little valley, the first houses of Milagre rising up the slopes; the Cathedral and the monastery atop the highest and nearest of the hills.

In the other direction, the forest, and coming down from the trees, Human, Mandachuva, Leaf-eater, Arrow, Cups, Calendar, Worm, Bark-dancer, several other brothers whose names Ouanda didn't know. "I've never seen them," she said. "They must come from other brother-houses."

Do we have a covenant? said Ender silently. That's all I care about. Did Human make the wives understand a new way of conceiving of the world?

Human was carrying something. Wrapped in leaves. The piggies wordlessly laid it before Ender; Human unwrapped it carefully. It was a computer printout.

"The Hive Queen and the Hegemon," said Ouanda softly. "The copy Miro gave them."

"The covenant," said Human.

Only then did they realize that the printout was upside down, on the blank side of the paper. And there, in the light of a nightstick, they saw faint hand-printed letters. They were large and awkwardly formed. Ouanda was in awe. "We never taught them to make ink," she said. "We never taught them to write."

"Calendar learned to make the letters," said Human. "Writing with sticks in the dirt. And Worm made the ink from cabra dung and dried macios. This is how you make treaties, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Ender.

"If we didn't write it on paper, then we would remember it differently."

"That's right," said Ender. "You did well to write it down."

"We made some changes. The wives wanted some changes, and I thought you would accept them." Human pointed them out. "You humans can make this covenant with other piggies, but you can't make a different covenant. You can't teach any other piggies things you haven't taught us. Can you accept that?"

"Of course," said Ender.

"That was the easy one. Now, what if we disagree about what the rules are? What if we disagree about where your prairie land ends and ours begins? So Shouter said, Let the hive queen judge between humans and Little Ones. Let the humans judge between the Little Ones and the hive queen. And let Little Ones judge between the hive queen and the humans."

Ender wondered how easy that would be. He remembered, as no other living human did, how terrifying the buggers were three thousand years ago. Their insectlike bodies were the nightmares of humanity's childhood. How easily would the people of Milagre accept their judgment?

So it's hard. It's no harder than what we've asked the piggies to do. "Yes," said Ender. "We can accept that, too. It's a good plan."

"And another change," said Human. He looked up at Ender and grinned. It looked ghastly, since piggy faces weren't designed for that human expression. "This is why it took so long. All these changes."

Ender smiled back.

"If a tribe of piggies won't sign the covenant with humans, and if that tribe attacks one of the tribes that has signed the covenant, then we can go to war against them."

"What do you mean by attack?" asked Ender. If they could take a mere insult as an attack, then this clause would reduce the prohibition of war to nothing.

"Attack," said Human. "It begins when they come into our lands and kill the brothers or the wives. It is not attack when they present themselves for war, or offer an agreement to begin a war. It is attack when they start to fight without an agreement. Since we will never agree to a war, an attack by another tribe is the only way war could begin. I knew you'd ask."

He pointed to the words of the covenant, and indeed the treaty carefully defined what constituted an attack.

"That is also acceptable," said Ender. It meant that the possibility of war would not be removed for many generations, perhaps for centuries, since it would take a long time to bring this covenant to every tribe of piggies in the world. But long before the last tribe joined the covenant, Ender thought, the benefits of peaceful exogamy would be made plain, and few would want to be warriors anymore.

"Now the last change," said Human. "The wives meant this to punish you for making this covenant so difficult. But I think you will believe it is no punishment. Since we are forbidden to take you into the third life, after this covenant is in effect humans are also forbidden to take brothers into the third life."

For a moment Ender thought it meant his reprieve; he would not have to do the thing that Libo and Pipo had both refused.

"After the covenant," said Human. "You will be the first and last human to give this gift."

"I wish..." said Ender.

"I know what you wish, my friend Speaker," said Human. "To you it feels like murder. But to me-- when a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him the passage. You. Speaker-- ever since I first learned Stark and read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter, of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well."

"You did well, Human," said Ender.

"Here," he said. "See? We signed the covenant in the human way."

At the bottom of the last page of the covenant two words were crudely, laboriously shaped. "Human," Ender read aloud. The other word he could not read.

"It's Shouter's true name," said Human. "Star-looker. She wasn't good with the writing stick-- the wives don't use tools very often, since the brothers do that kind of work. So she wanted me to tell you what her name is. And to tell you that she got it because she was always looking in the sky. She says that she didn't know it then, but she was watching for you to come."

So many people had so much hope in me, thought Ender. In the end, though, everything depended on them. On Novinha, Miro, Ela, who called for me; on Human and Star-looker. And on the ones who feared my coming, too.

Worm carried the cup of ink; Calendar carried the pen. It was a thin strip of wood with a slit in it and a narrow well that held a little ink when he dipped it in the cup. He had to dip it five times in order to sign his name. "Five," said Arrow. Ender remembered then that the number five was portentous to the piggies. It had been an accident, but if they chose to see it as a good omen, so much the better.

"I'll take the covenant to our Governor and the Bishop," said Ender.

"Of all the documents that were ever treasured in the history of mankind..." said Ouanda. No one needed her to finish the sentence. Human, Leaf-eater, and Mandachuva carefully wrapped the book again in leaves and handed it, not to Ender, but to Ouanda. Ender knew at once, with terrible certainty, what that meant. The piggies still had work for him to do, work that would require that his hands be free.

"Now the covenant is made the human way," said Human. "You must make it true for the Little Ones as well."

"Can't the signing be enough?" asked Ender.

"From now on the signing is enough," said Human. "But only because the same hand that signed for the humans also took the covenant in our way, too."

"Then I will," said Ender, "as I promised you I would."

Human reached out and stroked Ender from the throat to the belly. "The brother's word is not just in his mouth," he said. "The brother's word is in his life." He turned to the other piggies. "Let me speak to my father one last time before I stand beside him."

Two of the strange brothers came forward with their small clubs in their hands. They walked with Human to Rooter's tree and began to beat on it and sing in the Fathers' Language. Almost at once the trunk split open. The tree was still fairly young, and not so very much thicker in the trunk than Human's own body; it was a struggle for him to get inside. But he fit, and the trunk closed up after him. The drumming changed rhythm, but did not let up for a moment.

Jane whispered in Ender's ear. "I can hear the resonance of the drumming change inside the tree," she said. "The tree is slowly shaping the sound, to turn the drumming into language."

The other piggies set to work clearing ground for Human's tree. Ender noticed that he would be planted so that, from the gate, Rooter would seem to stand on the left hand, and Human on the right. Pulling up the capim by the root was hard work for the piggies; soon Quim was helping them, and then Olhado, and then Ouanda and Ela.

Ouanda gave the covenant to Novinha to hold while she helped dig capim. Novinha, in turn, carried it to Ender, stood before him, looked at him steadily. "You signed it Ender Wiggin," she said. "Ender."

The name sounded ugly even to his own ears. He had heard it too often as an epithet. "I'm older than I look," said Ender. "That was the name I was known by when I blasted the buggers' home world out of existence. Maybe the presence of that name on the first treaty ever signed between humans and ramen will do something to change the meaning of the name."

"Ender," she whispered. She reached toward him, the bundled treaty in her hands, and held it against his chest; it was heavy, since it contained all the pages of The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, on the other sides of pages where the covenant was written. "I never went to the priests to confess," she said, "because I knew they would despise me for my sin. Yet when you named all my sins today, I could bear it because I knew you didn't despise me. I couldn't understand why, though, till now."

"I'm not one to despise other people for their sins," said Ender. "I haven't found one yet, that I didn't say inside myself, I've done worse than this."

"All these years you've borne the burden of humanity's guilt."

"Yes, well, it's nothing mystical," said Ender. "I think of it as being like the mark of Cain. You don't make many friends, but nobody hurts you much, either."

The ground was clear. Mandachuva spoke in Tree Language to the piggies beating on the trunk; their rhythm changed, and again the aperture in the tree came open. Human slid out as if he were an infant being born. Then he walked to the center of the cleared ground. Leaf-eater and Mandachuva each handed him a knife. As he took the knives, Human spoke to them-- in Portuguese, so the humans could understand, and so it would carry great force. "I told Shouter that you lost your passage to the third life because of a great misunderstanding by Pipo and Libo. She said that before another hand of hands of days, you both would grow upward into the light."

Leaf-eater and Mandachuva both let go of their knives, touched Human gently on the belly, and stepped back to the edge of the cleared ground.

Human held out the knives to Ender. They were both made of thin wood. Ender could not imagine a tool that could polish wood to be at once so fine and sharp, and yet so strong. But of course no tool had polished these. They had come thus perfectly shaped from the heart of a living tree, given as a gift to help a brother into the third life.

It was one thing to know with his mind that Human would not really die. It was another thing to believe it. Ender did not take the knives at first. Instead he reached past the blades and took Human by the wrists. "To you it doesn't feel like death. But to me-- I only saw you for the first time yesterday, and tonight I know you are my brother as surely as if Rooter were my father, too. And yet when the sun rises in the morning, I'll never be able to talk to you again. It feels like death to me, Human, how ever it feels to you."

"Come and sit in my shade," said Human, "and see the sunlight through my leaves, and rest your back against my trunk. And do this, also. Add another story to The Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Call it The Life of Human. Tell all the humans how I was conceived on the bark of my father's tree, and born in darkness, eating my mother's flesh. Tell them how I left the life of darkness behind and came into the half-light of my second life, to learn language from the wives and then come forth to learn all the miracles that Libo and Miro and Ouanda came to teach. Tell them how on the last day of my second life, my true brother came from above the sky, and together we made this covenant so that humans and piggies would be one tribe, not a human tribe or a piggy tribe, but a tribe of ramen. And then my friend gave me passage to the third life, to the full light, so that I could rise into the sky and give life to ten thousand children before I die."

"I'll tell your story," said Ender.

"Then I will truly live forever."

Ender took the knives. Human lay down upon the ground.

"Olhado," said Novinha. "Quim. Go back to the gate. Ela, you too."

"I'm going to see this, Mother," said Ela. "I'm a scientist."

"You forget my eyes," said Olhado. "I'm recording everything. We can show humans everywhere that the treaty was signed. And we can show piggies that the Speaker took the covenant in their way, too."

"I'm not going, either," said Quim. "Even the Blessed Virgin stood at the foot of the cross."

"You can stay," said Novinha softly. And she also stayed.

Human's mouth was filled with capim, but he didn't chew it very much. "More," said Ender, "so you don't feel anything."

"That's not right," said Mandachuva. "These are the last moments of his second life. It's good to feel something of the pains of this body, to remember when you're in the third life, and beyond pain."

Mandachuva and Leaf-eater told Ender where and how to cut. It had to be done quickly, they told him, and their hands reached into the steaming body to point out organs that must go here or there. Ender's hands were quick and sure, his body calm, but even though he could only rarely spare a glance away from the surgery, he knew that above his bloody work, Human's eyes were watching him, watching him, filled with gratitude and love, filled with agony and death.

It happened under his hands, so quickly that for the first few minutes they could watch it grow. Several large organs shriveled as roots shot out of them; tendrils reached from place to place within the body; Human's eyes went wide with the final agony; and out of his spine a sprout burst upward, two leaves, four leaves-- And then stopped. The body was dead; its last spasm of strength had gone to making the tree that rooted in Human's spine. Ender had seen the rootlets and tendrils reaching through the body. The memories, the soul of Human had been transferred into the cells of the newly sprouted tree. It was done. His third life had begun. And when the sun rose in the morning, not long from now, the leaves would taste the light for the first time.

The other piggies were rejoicing, dancing. Leaf-eater and Mandachuva took the knives from Ender's hands and jammed them into the ground on either side of Human's head. Ender could not join their celebration. He was covered with blood and reeked with the stench of the body he had butchered. On all fours he crawled from the body, up the hill to a place where he didn't have to see it. Novinha followed him. Exhausted, spent, all of them, from the work and the emotions of the day. They said nothing, did nothing, but fell into the thick capim, each one leaning or lying on someone else, seeking relief at last in sleep, as the piggies danced away up the hill into the woods.

Bosquinha and Bishop Peregrino made their way to the gate before the sun was up, to watch for the Speaker's return from the forest. They were there a full ten minutes before they saw a movement much nearer than the forest's edge. It was a boy, sleepily voiding his bladder into a bush.

"Olhado!" called the Mayor.

The boy turned, waved, then hastily fastened his trousers and began waking others who slept in the tall grass. Bosquinha and the Bishop opened the gate and walked out to meet them.

"Foolish, isn't it," said Bosquinha, "but this is the moment when our rebellion seems most real. When I first walk beyond the fence."

"Why did they spend the night out of doors?" Peregrino wondered aloud. "The gate was open, they could have gone home."

Bosquinha took a quick census of the group outside the gates. Ouanda and Ela, arm in arm like sisters. Olhado and Quim. Novinha. And there, yes, the Speaker, sitting down, Novinha behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders. They all waited expectantly, saying nothing. Until Ender looked up at them. "We have the treaty," he said. "It's a good one."

Novinha held up a bundle wrapped in leaves. "They wrote it down," she said. "For you to sign."

Bosquinha took the bundle. "All the files were restored before midnight," she said. "Not just the ones we saved in your message queue. Whoever your friend is, Speaker, he's very good."

"She," said the Speaker. "Her name is Jane."

Now, though, the Bishop and Bosquinha could see what lay on the cleared earth just down the hill from where the Speaker had slept. Now they understood the dark stains on the Speaker's hands and arms, the spatter marks on his face.

"I would rather have no treaty," said Bosquinha, "than one you had to kill to get."

"Wait before you judge," said the Bishop. "I think the night's work was more than just what we see before us."

"Very wise, Father Peregrino," said the Speaker softly.

"I'll explain it to you if you want," said Ouanda. "Ela and I understand it as well as anyone."

"It was like a sacrament," said Olhado.

Bosquinha looked at Novinha, uncomprehending. "You let him watch?"

Olhado tapped his eyes. "All the piggies will see it, someday, through my eyes."

"It wasn't death," said Quim. "It was resurrection."

The Bishop stepped near the tortured corpse and touched the seedling tree growing from the chest cavity. "His name is Human," said the Speaker.

"And so is yours," said the Bishop softly. He turned and looked around at the members of his little flock, who had already taken humanity a step further than it had ever gone before. Am I the shepherd, Peregrino asked himself, or the most confused and helpless of the sheep? "Come, all of you. Come with me to the Cathedral. The bells will soon ring for mass."

The children gathered and prepared to go. Novinha, too, stepped away from her place behind the Speaker. Then she stopped, turned back to him, looked at him with silent invitation in her eyes.

"Soon," he said. "A moment more."

She, too, followed the Bishop through the gate and up the hill into the Cathedral.

The mass had barely begun when Peregrino saw the Speaker enter at the back of the Cathedral. He paused a moment, then found Novinha and her family with his eyes. In only a few steps he had taken a place beside her. Where Marcão had sat, those rare times when the whole family came together.

The duties of the service took his attention; a few moments later, when Peregrino could look again, he saw that Grego was now sitting beside the Speaker. Peregrino thought of the terms of the treaty as the girls had explained it to him. Of the meaning of the death of the piggy called Human, and before him, of the deaths of Pipo and Libo. All things coming clear, all things coming together. The young man, Miro, lying paralyzed in bed, with his sister Ouanda tending him. Novinha, the lost one, now found. The fence, its shadow so dark in the minds of all who had lived within its bounds, now still and harmless, invisible, insubstantial.

It was the miracle of the wafer, turned into the flesh of God in his hands. How suddenly we find the flesh of God within us after all, when we thought that we were only made of dust.