Speaker for the Dead (Ender Quintet Book 2)

by Orson Scott Card

Only when the loneliness becomes unbearable do adolescents root themselves, or try to root themselves. It may or may not be in the community of their childhood, and it may or may not be their childhood identity and connections that they resume upon entering adulthood. And, in fact, many fail at adulthood and constantly reach backward for the freedom and passion of adolescence. But those who achieve it are the ones who create civilization.

Our whole demeanor changes, our mannerisms, our figures of speech, when we move from one context to another. Listen to someone you know when they pick up the telephone. We have special voices for different people; our attitudes, our moods change depending on whom we are with.

Libo paused for a moment in silence. Pipo knew what it meant. He was examining himself to find an answer. Not the answer that he thought would be most likely to bring him adult favor, and not the answer that would provoke their ire—the two kinds of deception that most children his age delighted in. He was examining himself to discover the truth.

“I should have done more for the girl. I’d like to see if it isn’t too late to begin.” Dona Cristã laughed a bit. “Oh, Pipo, I’d be glad for you to try. But do believe me, my dear friend, touching her heart is like bathing in ice.” “I imagine. I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.”

“Maybe,” said Pipo. “And maybe not. What I want to know, Novinha, what I must know before I’ll let you take the test, is what community you do belong to.” “You said it yourself! I don’t belong to any.” “Impossible. Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to and the ones she doesn’t belong to. I am this and this and this, but definitely not that and that and that. All your definitions are negative. I could make an infinite list of the things you are not. But a person who really believes she doesn’t belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad.”

For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

He was also desperate for human company—he would have been glad to discuss religion with a Calvinist, just to have somebody smarter than the ship’s computer to talk to.

He hadn’t planned this, he had played it by ear. How could he have guessed that Olhado would have a recording of Marcão’s viciousness to his family? His only real insight was with Grego, and even that was instinctive, a sense that Grego was desperately hungry for someone to have authority over him, for someone to act like a father to him. Since his own father had been cruel, Grego would believe only cruelty as a proof of love and strength.

“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one’s life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”

Dom Cristão smiled thinly and inclined his head. “I think that we should strike first to remove his power to harm us.” Those militant words took Bishop Peregrino by surprise. “Exactly,” he said. “But I never expected you to understand that.” “The Filhos are as ardent as any unordained Christian could hope to be,” said Dom Cristão. “But since we have no priesthood, we have to make do with reason and logic as poor substitutes for authority.” Bishop Peregrino suspected irony from time to time, but was never quite able to pin it down.

Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.

Maybe she couldn’t know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

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.

“Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand.”

Bishop Peregrino smiled grimly, the way a duelist might salute a worthy opponent. You walk a twisted path, Speaker, circling around the truth, feinting at it. And when you strike, your aim will be deadly. These people came for entertainment, but they’re your targets; you will pierce them to the heart.

He could not have known that beneath that empathic mask would be hiding Ender the destroyer, the mythic Lucifer of mankind’s greatest crime, determined to live up to his name, making a mockery of the life work of Pipo, Libo, Ouanda, and Miro himself by seeing in a single hour with the piggies what all the others had failed in almost fifty years to see, and then riving Ouanda from him with a single, merciless stroke from the blade of truth; that was the voice that Miro heard, the only certainty left to him, that relentless terrible voice. Miro clung to the sound of it, trying to hate it, yet failing, because he knew, could not deceive himself, he knew that Ender was a destroyer, but what he destroyed was illusion, and the illusion had to die.

Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.

“What if the law was based on a misunderstanding, and the penalty is far out of proportion to the sin?” “We can’t be the judges of that,” said the Bishop. “We are the judges of that. If we go along with Congressional orders, then we’re saying that the law is good and the punishment is just. And it may be that at the end of this meeting you’ll decide exactly that. But there are some things you must know before you can make your decision. Some of those things I can tell you, and some of those things only Ela and Novinha can tell you. You shouldn’t make your decision until you know all that we know.”

“I think we’ve taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness.”

Human was an excellent diplomat; he told the truth and yet avoided the whole issue.

“It’s the dream of every living creature. The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It’s the desire for greatness. There are two ways, though, to fulfil it. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up or destroy it, until nothing is left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, Only I will be great, and to make room for me the rest of you must give up even what you already have, and become nothing. Do you understand, Human, that if we humans felt this way, acted this way, we could kill every piggy in Lusitania and make this place our home. How much of your dream would be left, if we were evil?”

“We know you now. That makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Even Quim doesn’t hate you now. When you really know somebody, you can’t hate them.” “Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”

Once you understand what people really want, you can’t hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can’t hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.”

“And that’s as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it’s true. When we’re that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it.”

“As long as you keep getting born, it’s all right to die sometimes.”

“There are worse reasons to die,” Ender answered, “than to die because you cannot bear to kill.”