Free Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card Page B

established, and Ender had destroyed the Buggers in the year 1180 BSC. But to Andrew, the events were not so remote. He had done far more interstellar travel than any of his students would dare to guess; since he was twenty-five he had, until Trondheim, never stayed more than six months on any planet. Lightspeed travel between worlds had let him skip like a stone over the surface of time. His students had no idea that their Speaker for the Dead, who was surely no older than thirty-five, had very clear memories of events 3000 years before, that in fact those events seemed scarcely twenty years ago to him, only half his lifetime. They had no idea how deeply the question of Ender's ancient guilt burned within him, and how he had answered it in a thousand different unsatisfactory ways. They knew their teacher only as Speaker for the Dead; they did not know that when he was a mere infant, his older sister, Valentine, could not pronounce the name Andrew, and so called him Ender, the name that he made infamous before he was fifteen years old. So let unforgiving Styrka and analytical Plikt ponder the great question of Ender's guilt; for Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead, the question was not academic.
      And now, walking along the damp, grassy hillside in the chill air, Ender-- Andrew, Speaker-- could think only of the piggies, who were already committing inexplicable murders, just as the buggers had carelessly done when they first visited humankind. Was it something unavoidable, when strangers met, that the meeting had to be marked with blood? The buggers had casually killed human beings, but only because they had a hive mind; to them, individual life was as precious as nail parings, and killing a human or two was simply their way of letting us know they were in the neighborhood. Could the piggies have such a reason for killing, too?
      But the voice in his ear had spoken of torture, a ritual murder similar to the execution of one of the piggies' own. The piggies were not a hive mind, they were not the buggers, and Ender Wiggin had to know why they had done what they did.
      "When did you hear about the death of the xenologer?"
      Ender turned. It was Plikt. She had followed him instead of going back to the Caves, where the students lived.
      "Then, while we spoke." He touched his ear; implanted terminals were expensive, but they were not all that rare.
      "I checked the news just before class. There was nothing about it then. If a major story had been coming in by ansible, there would have been an alert. Unless you got the news straight from the ansible report."
      Plikt obviously thought she had a mystery on her hands. And, in fact, she did. "Speakers have high priority access to public information," he said.
      "Has someone asked you to Speak the death of the xenologer?"
      He shook his head. "Lusitania is under a Catholic License."
      "That's what I mean," she said. "They won't have a Speaker of their own there. But they still have to let a Speaker come, if someone requests it. And Trondheim is the closest world to Lusitania."
      "Nobody's called for a Speaker."
      Plikt tugged at his sleeve. "Why are you here?"
      "You know why I came. I Spoke the death of Wutan."
      "I know you came here with your sister, Valentine. She's a much more popular teacher than you are-- she answers questions with answers ; you just answer with more questions."
      "That's because she knows some answers."
      "Speaker, you have to tell me. I tried to find out about you-- I was curious. Your name, for one thing, where you came from. Everything's classified. Classified so deep that I can't even find out what the access level is . God himself couldn't look up your life story."
      Ender took her by the shoulders, looked down into her eyes. "It's none of your business, that's what the access level is."
      "You are more important than anybody guesses, Speaker," she said. "The ansible reports to you before it reports to anybody, doesn't it?