“It's like–” Miro struggled for words. “It's as if you could go back, to old Earth, back before the Xenocide, before star travel, and you said to them, You can travel among the stars, you can live on other worlds. And then showed them a thousand little miracles. Lights that turn on from switches. Steel. Even simple things– pots to hold water. Agriculture. They see you, they know what you are, they know that they can become what you are, do all the things that you do. What do they say– take this away, don't show us, let us live out our nasty, short, brutish little lives, let evolution take its course? No. They say, Give us, teach us, help us.”
“And you say, I can't, and then you go away.”
“It's too late!” said Miro. “Don't you understand? They've already seen the miracles! They've already seen us fly here. They've seen us be tall and strong, with magical tools and knowledge of things they never dreamed of. It's too late to tell them good-bye and go. They know what is possible. And the longer we stay, the more they try to learn, and the more they learn, the more we see how learning helps them, and if you have any kind of compassion, if you understand that they're– they're–”
“Human.”
“Ramen, anyway. They're our children, do you understand that?”
Ender smiled. “What man among you, if his son asks for bread, gives him a stone?”
Ouanda nodded. “That's it. The Congressional rules say we have to give them stones. Even though we have so much bread.”
Ender stood up. “Well, let's go on.”
Ouanda wasn't ready. “You haven't promised–”
“Have you read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon?”
“I have,” said Miro.
“Can you conceive of anyone choosing to call himself Speaker for the Dead, and then doing anything to harm these little ones, these pequeninos?”
Ouanda's anxiety visibly eased, but her hostility was no less. “You're slick, Senhor Andrew, Speaker for the Dead, you're very clever. You remind him of the Hive Queen, and speak scripture to me out of the side of your mouth.”
“I speak to everyone in the language they understand,” said Ender. “That isn't being slick. It's being clear.”
“So you'll do whatever you want.”
“As long as it doesn't hurt the piggies.”
Ouanda sneered. “In your judgment.”
“I have no one else's judgment to use.” He walked away from her, out of the shade of the spreading limbs of the tree, heading for the woods that waited atop the hill. They followed him, running to catch up.
“I have to tell you,” said Miro. “The piggies have been asking for you. They believe you're the very same Speaker who wrote the Hive Queen and the Hegemon.”
“They've read it?”
“They've pretty well incorporated it into their religion, actually. They treat the printout we gave them like a holy book. And now they claim the hive queen herself is talking to them.”
Ender glanced at him. “What does she say?” he asked.
“That you're the real Speaker. And that you've got the hive queen with you. And that you're going to bring her to live with them, and teach them all about metal and– it's really crazy stuff. That's the worst thing, they have such impossible expectations of you.”
It might be simple wish fulfillment on their part, as Miro obviously believed, but Ender knew that from her cocoon the hive queen had been talking to someone. “How do they say the hive queen talks to them?”
Ouanda was on the other side of him now. “Not to them, just to Rooter. And Rooter talks to them. It's all part of their system of totems. We've always tried to play along with it, and act as if we believed it.”
“How condescending of you,” said Ender.
“It's standard anthropological practice,” said Miro.
“You're so busy pretending to believe them, there isn't a chance in the world you could learn anything from them.”
For a moment they lagged behind, so that he actually entered the forest alone. Then they ran to catch up with him. “We've devoted our lives to learning about them!” Miro said.
Ender stopped. “Not from them.” They were just inside the trees; the spotty light through the leaves made their faces unreadable. But he knew what their faces would tell him. Annoyance, resentment, contempt– how dare this unqualified stranger question their professional attitude? This is how: “You're cultural supremacists to the core. You'll perform your Questionable Activities to help out the poor little piggies, but there isn't a chance in the world you'll notice when they have something to teach you.”
“Like what!” demanded Ouanda. “Like how to murder their greatest benefactor, torture him to death after he saved the lives of dozens of their wives and children?”
“So why do you tolerate it? Why are you here helping them after what they did?”
Miro slipped in between Ouanda and Ender. Protecting her, thought Ender; or else keeping her from revealing her weaknesses. “We're professionals. We understand that cultural differences, which we can't explain–”
“You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you would condemn a cabra for chewing up capim.”
“That's right,” said Miro.
Ender smiled. “And that's why you'll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals.”
“We think of them as ramen!” said Ouanda, pushing in front of Miro. Obviously she was not interested in being protected.
“You treat them as if they were not responsible for their own actions,” said Ender. “Ramen are responsible for what they do.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Ouanda sarcastically. “Come in and put them on trial?”
“I'll tell you this. The piggies have learned more about me from dead Rooter than you have learned from having me with you.”
“What's that supposed to mean? That you really are the original Speaker?” Miro obviously regarded it as the most ridiculous proposition imaginable. “And I suppose you really do have a bunch of buggers up there in your starship circling Lusitania, so you can bring them down and–”
“What it means,” interrupted Ouanda, “is that this amateur thinks he's better qualified to deal with the piggies than we are. And as far as I'm concerned that's proof that we should never have agreed to bring him to–”
At that moment Ouanda stopped talking, for a piggy had emerged from the underbrush. Smaller than Ender had expected. Its odor, while not wholly unpleasant, was certainly stronger than Jane's computer simulation could ever imply. "Too late," Ender murmured. "I think we're already meeting. "
The piggy's expression, if he had one, was completely unreadable to Ender. Miro and Ouanda, however, could understand something of his unspoken language. “He's astonished,” Ouanda murmured. By telling Ender that she understood what he did not, she was putting him in his place. That was fine. Ender knew he was a novice here. He also hoped, however, that he had stirred them a little from their normal, unquestioned way of thinking. It was obvious that they were following in well-established patterns. If he was to get any real help from them, they would have to break out of those old patterns and reach new conclusions.
“Leaf-eater,” said Miro.
Leaf-eater did not take his eyes off Ender. “Speaker for the Dead,” he said.
“We brought him,” said Ouanda.
Leaf-eater turned and disappeared among the bushes.
“What does that mean?” Ender asked. “That he left?”
“You mean you haven't already figured it out?” asked Ouanda.
“Whether you like it or not,” said Ender, “the piggies want to speak to me and I will speak to them. I think it will work out better if you help me understand what's going on. Or don't you understand it either?”
He watched them struggle with their annoyance. And then, to Ender's relief, Miro made a decision. Instead of answering with hauteur, he spoke simply, mildly. “No. We don't understand it. We're still playing guessing games with the piggies. They ask us questions, we ask them questions, and to the best of our ability neither they nor we have ever deliberately revealed a thing. We don't even ask them the questions whose answers we really want to know, for fear that they'll learn too much about us from our questions.”