“He's a kid. I'm eighteen.”

The Speaker nodded, put his hand on her shoulder, squeezed. “We're all right then. We're friends.”

She was almost sure there was irony in what he said. Irony and, perhaps, a plea. “Yes,” she insisted. “We're friends. Always.”

He nodded again, turned away, pushed the boat from shore, and splashed after it through the reeds and muck. Once the boat was fairly afloat, he sat down and extended the oars, rowed, and then looked up and smiled at her. Ela smiled back, but the smile could not convey the elation she felt, the perfect relief. He had listened to everything, and understood everything, and he would make everything all right. She believed that, believed it so completely that she didn't even notice that it was the source of her sudden happiness. She knew only that she had spent an hour with the Speaker for the Dead, and now she felt more alive than she had in years.

She retrieved her shoes, put them back on her feet, and walked home. Mother would still be at the Biologista's Station, but Ela didn't want to work this afternoon. She wanted to go home and fix dinner; that was always solitary work. She hoped no one would talk with her. She hoped there'd be no problem she was expected to solve. Let this feeling linger forever.

Ela was only home for a few minutes, however, when Miro burst into the kitchen. “Ela,” he said. “Have you seen the Speaker for the Dead?”

“Yes,” she said. “On the river.”

“Where on the river!”

If she told him where they had met, he'd know that it wasn't a chance meeting. “Why?” she asked.

“Listen, Ela, this is no time to be suspicious, please. I've got to find him. We've left messages for him, the computer can't find him–”

“He was rowing downriver, toward home. He's probably going to be at his house soon.”

Miro rushed from the kitchen into the front room. Ela heard him tapping at the terminal. Then he came back in. “Thanks,” he said. “Don't expect me home for dinner.”

“What's so urgent?”

“Nothing.” It was so ridiculous, to say “nothing” when Miro was obviously agitated and hurried, that they both burst out laughing at once. “OK,” said Miro, “it isn't nothing, it's something, but I can't talk about it, OK?”

“OK.” But soon all the secrets will be known, Miro.

“What I don't understand is why he didn't get our message. I mean, the computer was paging him. Doesn't he wear an implant in his ear? The computer's supposed to be able to reach him. Of course, maybe he had it turned off.”

“No,” said Ela. “The light was on.”

Miro cocked his head and squinted at her. “You didn't see that tiny red light on his ear implant, not if he just happened to be out rowing in the middle of the river.”

“He came to shore. We talked.”

“What about?”

Ela smiled. “Nothing,” she said.

He smiled back, but he looked annoyed all the same. She understood: It's all right for you to have secrets from me, but not for me to have secrets from you, is that it, Miro?

He didn't argue about it, though. He was in too much of a hurry. Had to go find the Speaker, and now, and he wouldn't be home for dinner.

Ela had a feeling the Speaker might get to talk to the piggies sooner than she had thought possible. For a moment she was elated. The waiting would be over.

Then the elation passed, and something else took its place. A sick fear. A nightmare of China's papai, dear Libo, lying dead on the hillside, torn apart by the piggies. Only it wasn't Libo, the way she had always imagined the grisly scene. It was Miro. No, no, it wasn't Miro. It was the Speaker. It was the Speaker who would be tortured to death. “No,” she whispered.

Then she shivered and the nightmare left her mind; she went back to trying to spice and season the pasta so it would taste like something better than amaranth glue.

Chapter 14

Renegades

LEAF-EATER: Human says that when your brothers die, you bury them in the dirt and then make your houses out of that dirt. ( Laughs.)

MIRO: No. We never dig where people are buried.

LEAF-EATER: (becomes rigid with agitation): Then your dead don't do you any good at all!

– Ouanda Quenhatta Figueira Mucumbi, Dialogue Transcripts, 103:0:1969:4:13:111

Ender had thought they might have some trouble getting him through the gate, but Ouanda palmed the box, Miro opened the gate, and the three of them walked through. No challenge. It must be as Ela had implied– no one wants to get out of the compound, and so no serious security was needed. Whether that suggested that people were content to stay in Milagre or that they were afraid of the piggies or that they hated their imprisonment so much that they had to pretend the fence wasn't there, Ender could not begin to guess.

Both Ouanda and Miro were very tense, almost frightened. That was understandable, of course, since they were breaking Congressional rules to let him come. But Ender suspected there was more to it than that. Miro's tension was coupled with eagerness, a sense of hurry; he might be frightened, but he wanted to see what would happen, wanted to go ahead.

Ouanda held back, walked a measured step, and her coldness was not just fear but hostility as well. She did not trust him.

So Ender was not surprised when she stepped behind the large tree that grew nearest the gate and waited for Miro and Ender to follow her. Ender saw how Miro looked annoyed for a moment, then controlled himself. His mask of uninvolvement was as cool as a human being could hope for. Ender found himself comparing Miro to the boys he had known in Battle School, sizing him up as a comrade in arms, and thought Miro might have done well there. Ouanda, too, but for different reasons: She held herself responsible for what was happening, even though Ender was an adult and she was much younger. She did not defer to him at all. Whatever she was afraid of, it was not authority.

“Here?” asked Miro blandly.

“Or not at all.” said Ouanda.

Ender folded himself to sit at the base of the tree. “This is Rooter's tree, isn't it?” he asked.

They took it calmly– of course– but their momentary pause told him that yes, he had surprised them by knowing something about a past that they surely regarded as their own. I may be a framling here, Ender said silently, but I don't have to be an ignorant one.

"Yes," said Ouanda. "He's the totem they seem to get the most– direction from. Lately– the last seven or eight years. They've never let us see the rituals in which they talk to their ancestors, but it seems to involve drumming on the trees with heavy polished sticks. We hear them at night sometimes. "

“Sticks? Made of fallen wood?”

“We assume so. Why?”

“Because they have no stone or metal tools to cut the wood– isn't that right? Besides, if they worship the trees, they couldn't very well cut them down.”

“We don't think they worship the trees. It's totemic. They stand for dead ancestors. They– plant them. With the bodies.”

Ouanda had wanted to stop, to talk or question him, but Ender had no intention of letting her believe she– or Miro, for that matter– was in charge of this expedition. Ender intended to talk to the piggies himself. He had never prepared for a Speaking by letting someone else determine his agenda, and he wasn't going to begin now. Besides, he had information they didn't have. He knew Ela's theory.

“And anywhere else?” he asked. “Do they plant trees at any other time?”

They looked at each other. “Not that we've seen,” said Miro.

Ender was not merely curious. He was still thinking of what Ela had told him about reproductive anomalies. “And do the trees also grow by themselves? Are seedlings and saplings scattered through the forest?”

Ouanda shook her head. “We really don't have any evidence of the trees being planted anywhere but in the corpses of the dead. At least, all the trees we know of are quite old, except these three out here.”