“Of course he's apologizing for helping the spy,” said Quim.
“Because,” said Ela, “we should all help Speaker all we can.”
Quim jumped to his feet, leaned across the table to shout in her face. “How can you say that! He was violating Mother's privacy, he was finding out her secrets, he was–”
To her surprise Ela found herself also on her feet, shoving him back across the table, shouting back at him, and louder. “Mother's secrets are the cause of half the poison in this house! Mother's secrets are what's making us all sick, including her! So maybe the only way to make things right here is to steal all her secrets and get them out in the open where we can kill them!” She stopped shouting. Both Quim and Ohado stood before her, pressed against the far wall as if her words were bullets and they were being executed. Quietly, intensely, Ela went on. “As far as I'm concerned, the Speaker for the Dead is the only chance we have to become a family again. And Mother's secrets are the only barrier standing in his way. So today I told him everything I knew about what's in Mother's files, because I want to give him every shred of truth that I can find.”
“Then you're the worst traitor of all,” said Quim. His voice was trembling. He was about to cry.
“I say that helping the Speaker for the Dead is an act of loyalty,” Ela answered. “The only real treason is obeying Mother, because what she wants, what she has worked for all her life, is her own self-destruction and the destruction of this family.”
To Ela's surprise, it was not Quim but Olhado who wept. His tear glands did not function, of course, having been removed when his eyes were installed. So there was no moistening of his eyes to warn of the onset of crying. Instead he doubled over with a sob, then sank down along the wall until he sat on the floor, his head between his knees, sobbing and sobbing. Ela understood why. Because she had told him that his love for the Speaker was not disloyal, that he had not sinned, and he believed her when she told him that, he knew that it was true.
Then she looked up from Olhado to see Mother standing in the doorway. Ela felt herself go weak inside, trembling at the thought of what Mother must have overheard.
But Mother did not seem angry. Just a little sad, and very tired. She was looking at Olhado.
Quim's outrage found his voice. “Did you hear what Ela was saying?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mother, never taking her eyes from Olhado. “And for all I know she might be right.”
Ela was no less unnerved than Quim.
“Go to your rooms, children,” Mother said quietly. “I need to talk to Olhado.”
Ela beckoned to Grego and Quara, who slid off their chairs and scurried to Ela's side, eyes wide with awe at the unusual goings-on. After all, even Father had never been able to make Olhado cry. She led them out of the kitchen, back to their bedroom. She heard Quim walk down the hall and go into his own room, slam the door, and hurl himself on his bed. And in the kitchen Olhado's sobs faded, calmed, ended as Mother, for the first time since he lost his eyes, held him in her arms and comforted him, shedding her own silent tears into his hair as she rocked him back and forth.
Miro did not know what to make of the Speaker for the Dead. Somehow he had always imagined a Speaker to be very much like a priest– or rather, like a priest was supposed to be. Quiet, contemplative, withdrawn from the world, carefully leaving action and decision to others. Miro had expected him to be wise.
He had not expected him to be so intrusive, so dangerous. Yes, he was wise, all right, he kept seeing past pretense, kept saying or doing outrageous things that were, when you thought about it, exactly right. It was as if he were so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn't even know yourself that you had them in you.
How many times had Miro stood with Ouanda just like this, watching as Libo handled the piggies. But always with Libo they had understood what he was doing; they knew his technique, knew his purpose. The Speaker, however, followed lines of thought that were completely alien to Miro.
Even though he wore a human shape, it made Miro wonder if Ender was really a framling– he could be as baffling as the piggies. He was as much a raman as they were, alien but still not animal.
What did the Speaker notice? What did he see? The bow that Arrow carried? The sun-dried pot in which merdona root soaked and stank? How many of the Questionable Activities did he recognize, and how many did he think were native practices?
The piggies spread out the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. “You,” said Arrow, “you wrote this?”
“Yes,” said the Speaker for the Dead.
Miro looked at Ouanda. Her eyes danced with vindication. So the Speaker is a liar.
Human interrupted. “The other two, Miro and Ouanda, they think you're a liar.”
Miro immediately looked at the Speaker, but he wasn't glancing at them. “Of course they do,” he said. “It never occurred to them that Rooter might have told you the truth.”
The Speaker's calm words disturbed Miro. Could it be true? After all, people who traveled between star systems skipped decades, often centuries in getting from one system to another. Sometimes as much as half a millennium. It wouldn't take that many voyages for a person to survive three thousand years. But that would be too incredible a coincidence, for the original Speaker for the Dead to come here. Except that the original Speaker for the Dead was the one who had written the Hive Queen and the Hegemon; he would be interested in the first race of ramen since the buggers. I don't believe it, Miro told himself, but he had to admit the possibility that it might just be true.
“Why are they so stupid?” asked Human. “Not to know the truth when they hear it?”
“They aren't stupid,” said the Speaker. “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question. They never thought to question the idea that the original Speaker for the Dead died three thousand years ago, even though they know how star travel prolongs life.”
“But we told them.”
“No– you told them that the hive queen told Rooter that I wrote this book.”
“That's why they should have known it was true,” said Human. “Rooter is wise, he's a father; he would never make a mistake.”
Miro did not smile, but he wanted to. The Speaker thought he was so clever, but now here he was, where all the important questions ended, frustrated by the piggies' insistence that their totem trees could talk to them.
“Ah,” said Speaker. “There's so much that we don't understand. And so much that you don't understand. We should tell each other more.”
Human sat down beside Arrow, sharing the position of honor with him. Arrow gave no sign of minding. “Speaker for the Dead,” said Human, “will you bring the hive queen to us?”
“I haven't decided yet,” said the Speaker.
Again Miro looked at Ouanda. Was the Speaker insane, hinting that he could deliver what could not be delivered?
Then he remembered what the Speaker had said about questioning all our beliefs except the ones that we really believed. Miro had always taken for granted what everyone knew– that all the buggers had been destroyed. But what if a hive queen had survived? What if that was how the Speaker for the Dead had been able to write his book, because he had a bugger to talk to? It was unlikely in the extreme, but it was not impossible. Miro didn't know for sure that the last bugger had been killed. He only knew that everybody believed it, and that no one in three thousand years had produced a shred of evidence to the contrary.
But even if it was true, how could Human have known it? The simplest explanation was that the piggies had incorporated the powerful story of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon into their religion, and were unable to grasp the idea that there were many Speakers for the Dead, and none of them was the author of the book; that all the buggers were dead, and no hive queen could ever come. That was the simplest explanation, the one easiest to accept. Any other explanation would force him to admit the possibility that Rooter's totem tree somehow talked to the piggies.