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.”

Ouanda was not willing to go along with Miro's decision to cooperate. “We know more than you will in twenty years,” she said. “And you're crazy if you think you can duplicate what we know in a ten-minute briefing in the forest.”

“I don't need to duplicate what you know,” Ender said.

“You don't think so?” asked Ouanda.

“Because I have you with me.” Ender smiled.

Miro understood and took it as a compliment. He smiled back. “Here's what we know, and it isn't much. Leaf-eater probably isn't glad to see you. There's a schism between him and a piggy named Human. When they thought we weren't going to bring you, Leaf-eater was sure he had won. Now his victory is taken away. Maybe we saved Human's life.”

“And cost Leaf-eater his?” asked Ender.

“Who knows? My gut feeling is that Human's future is on the line, but Leaf-eater's isn't. Leaf-eater's just trying to make Human fail, not succeed himself.”

“But you don't know.”

"That's the kind of thing we never ask about. " Miro smiled again. "And you're right. It's so much a habit that we usually don't even notice that we're not asking. "

Ouanda was angry. “He's right? He hasn't even seen us at work, and suddenly he's a critic of–”

But Ender had no interest in watching them squabble. He strode off in the direction Leaf-eater had gone, and let them follow as they would. And, of course, they did, leaving their argument for later. As soon as Ender knew they were walking with him, he began to question them again. “These Questionable Activities you've carried out,” he said as he walked. “You introduced new food into their diet?”

“We taught them how to eat the merdona root,” said Ouanda. She was crisp and businesslike, but at least she was speaking to him. She wasn't going to let her anger keep her from being part of what was obviously going to be a crucial meeting with the piggies. “How to nullify the cyanide content by soaking it and drying it in the sun. That was the short-term solution.”

“The long-term solution was some of Mother's cast-off amaranth adaptations,” said Miro. “She made a batch of amaranth that was so well-adapted to Lusitania that it wasn't very good for humans. Too much Lusitanian protein structure, not enough Earthborn. But that sounded about right for the piggies. I got Ela to give me some of the cast-off specimens, without letting her know it was important.”

Don't kid yourself about what Ela does and doesn't know, Ender said silently.

"Libo gave it to them, taught them how to plant it. Then how to grind it, make flour, turn it into bread. Nasty-tasting stuff, but it gave them a diet directly under their control for the first time ever. They've been fat and sassy ever since. "

Ouanda's voice was bitter. “But they killed Father right after the first loaves were taken to the wives.”