“How many priests can this community support, Ender?” she said, pretending to marvel.
Ender would have liked to retort that she already had the exact number of them in her files. One of her pleasures was to say annoying things when he was not in a position to answer, or even to publicly acknowledge that she was speaking in his ear.
“Drones that don't even reproduce. If they don't copulate, doesn't evolution demand that they expire?” Of course she knew that the priests did most of the administrative and public service work of the community. Ender composed his answers to her as if he could speak them aloud. If the priests weren't there, then government or business or guilds or some other group would expand to take up the burden. Some sort of rigid hierarchy always emerged as the conservative force in a community, maintaining its identity despite the constant variations and changes that beset it. If there were no powerful advocate of orthodoxy, the community would inevitably disintegrate. A powerful orthodoxy is annoying, but essential to the community. Hadn't Valentine written about this in her book on Zanzibar? She compared the priestly class to the skeleton of vertebrates.
Just to show him that she could anticipate his arguments even when he couldn't say them aloud, Jane supplied the quotation; teasingly, she spoke it in Valentine's own voice, which she had obviously stored away in order to torment him. “The bones are hard and by themselves seem dead and stony, but by rooting into and pulling against the skeleton, the rest of the body carries out all the motions of life.”
The sound of Valentine's voice hurt him more than he expected, certainly more than Jane would have intended. His step slowed. He realized that it was her absence that made him so sensitive to the priests' hostility. He had bearded the Calvinist lion in its den, he had walked philosophically naked among the burning coals of Islam, and Shinto fanatics had sung death threats outside his window in Kyoto. But always Valentine had been close– in the same city, breathing the same air, afflicted by the same weather. She would speak courage to him as he set out; he would return from confrontation and her conversation would make sense even of his failures, giving him small shreds of triumph even in defeat. I left her a mere ten days ago, and now, already, I feel the lack of her.
“To the left, I think,” said Jane. Mercifully, she was using her own voice now. “The monastery is at the western edge of the hill, overlooking the Zenador's Station.”
He passed alongside the faculdade, where students from the age of twelve studied the higher sciences. And there, low to the ground, the monastery lay waiting. He smiled at the contrast between the cathedral and the monastery. The Filhos were almost offensive in their rejection of magnificence. No wonder the hierarchy resented them wherever they went. Even the monastery garden made a rebellious statement– everything that wasn't a vegetable garden was abandoned to weeds and unmown grass.
The abbot was called Dom Crist o, of course; it would have been Dona Crist o had the abbot been a woman. In this place, because there was only one escola baixa and one faculdade, there was only one principal; with elegant simplicity, the husband headed the monastery and his wife the schools, enmeshing all the affairs of the order in a single marriage. Ender had told San Angelo right at the beginning that it was the height of pretension, not humility at all, for the leaders of the monasteries and schools to be called «Sir Christian» or «Lady Christian,» arrogating to themselves a title that should belong to every follower of Christ impartially. San Angelo had only smiled– because, of course, that was precisely what he had in mind. Arrogant in his humility, that's what he was, and that was one of the reasons that I loved him.
Dom Crist o came out into the courtyard to greet him instead of waiting for him in his escritorio– part of the discipline of the order was to inconvenience yourself deliberately in favor of those you serve. «Speaker Andrew!» he cried. «Dom Ceifeiro!» Ender called in return. Ceifeiro– reaper– was the order's own title for the office of abbot; school principals were called Aradores, plowmen, and teaching monks were Semeadores, sowers.
The Ceifeiro smiled at the Speaker's rejection of his common title, Dom Crist o. He knew how manipulative it was to require other people to call the Filhos by their titles and made-up names. As San Angelo said, «When they call you by your title, they admit you are a Christian; when they call you by your name, a sermon comes from their own lips.» He took Ender by the shoulders, smiled, and said, «Yes, I'm the Ceifeiro. And what are you to us– our infestation of weeds?»
“I try to be a blight wherever I go.”
“Beware, then, or the Lord of the Harvest will burn you with the tares.”
“I know– damnation is only a breath away, and there's no hope of getting me to repent.”
“The priests do repentance. Our job is teaching the mind. It was good of you to come.”
“It was good of you to invite me here. I had been reduced to the crudest sort of bludgeoning in order to get anyone to converse with me at all.”
The Ceifeiro understood, of course, that the Speaker knew the invitation had come only because of his inquisitorial threat. But Brother Amai preferred to keep the discussion cheerful. “Come, now, is it true you knew San Angelo? Are you the very one who Spoke his death?”
Ender gestured toward the tall weeds peering over the top of the courtyard wall. “He would have approved of the disarray of your garden. He loved provoking Cardinal Aquila, and no doubt your Bishop Peregrino also curls his nose in disgust at your shoddy groundskeeping.”
Dom Crist o winked. «You know too many of our secrets. If we help you find answers to your questions, will you go away?»
“There's hope. The longest I've stayed anywhere since I began serving as a Speaker was the year and a half I lived in Reykjavik, on Trondheim.”
“I wish you'd promise us a similar brevity here. I ask, not for myself, but for the peace of mind of those who wear much heavier robes than mine.”
Ender gave the only sincere answer that might help set the Bishop's mind at ease. “I promise that if I ever find a place to settle down, I'll shed my title of Speaker and become a productive citizen.”
“In a place like this, that would include conversion to Catholicism.”
“San Angelo made me promise years ago that if I ever got religion, it would be his.”
“Somehow that does not sound like a sincere protestation of faith.”
“That's because I haven't any.”
The Ceifeiro laughed as if he knew better, and insisted on showing Ender around the monastery and the schools before getting to Ender's questions. Ender didn't mind– he wanted to see how far San Angelo's ideas had come in the centuries since his death. The schools seemed pleasant enough, and the quality of education was high; but it was dark before the Ceifeiro led him back to the monastery and into the small cell that he and his wife, the Aradora, shared.
Dona Crist was already there, creating a series of grammatical exercises on the terminal between the beds. They waited until she found a stopping place before addressing her.
The Ceifeiro introduced him as Speaker Andrew. «But he seems to find it hard to call me Dom Crist o.»
"So does the Bishop," said his wife. "My true name is Detestai o Pecado e Fazei o Direito." Hate Sin and Do the Right, Ender translated. "My husband's name lends itself to a lovely shortening– Amai, love ye. But mine? Can you imagine shouting to a friend, Oi! Detestai! " They all laughed. "Love and Loathing, that's who we are, husband and wife. What will you call me, if the name Christian is too good for me?"
Ender looked at her face, beginning to wrinkle enough that someone more critical than he might call her old. Still, there was laughter in her smile and a vigor in her eyes that made her seem much younger, even younger than Ender. “I would call you Beleza, but your husband would accuse me of flirting with you.”