Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,133

something completely different to them. If you really believed that someone was perfect in heart, Bishop, so righteous that to live another day could only cause them to be less perfect, then wouldn't it be a good thing for them if they were killed and taken directly into heaven?"

"You mock us. You don't believe in heaven."

"But you do! What about the martyrs, Bishop Peregrino? Weren't they caught up joyfully into heaven?"

"Of course they were. But the men who killed them were beasts. Murdering saints didn't sanctify them, it damned their souls to hell forever."

"But what if the dead don't go to heaven? What if the dead are transformed into new life, right before your eyes? What if when a piggy dies, if they lay out his body just so, it takes root and turns into something else? What if it turns into a tree that lives fifty or a hundred or five hundred years more?"

"What are you talking about?" demanded the Bishop.

"Are you telling us that the piggies somehow metamorphose from animal to plant?" asked Dom Cristão. "Basic biology suggests that this isn't likely."

"It's practically impossible," said Ender. "That's why there are only a handful of species on Lusitania that survived the Descolada. Because only a few of them were able to make the transformation. When the piggies kill one of their people, he is transformed into a tree. And the tree retains at least some of its intelligence. Because today I saw the piggies sing to a tree, and without a single tool touching it, the tree severed its own roots, fell over, and split itself into exactly the shapes and forms of wood and bark that the piggies needed. It wasn't a dream. Miro and Ouanda and I all saw it with our own eyes, and heard the song, and touched the wood, and prayed for the soul of the dead."

"What does this have to do with our decision?" demanded Bosquinha. "So the forests are made up of dead piggies. That's a matter for scientists."

"I'm telling you that when the piggies killed Pipo and Libo they thought they were helping them transform into the next stage of their existence. They weren't beasts, they were ramen, giving the highest honor to the men who had served them so well."

"Another moral transformation, is that it?" asked the Bishop. "Just as you did today in your Speaking, making us see Marcos Ribeira again and again, each time in a new light, now you want us to think the piggies are noble? Very well, they're noble. But I won't rebel against Congress, with all the suffering such a thing would cause, just so our scientists can teach the piggies how to make refrigerators."

"Please," said Novinha.

They looked at her expectantly.

"You say that they stripped our files? They read them all?"

"Yes," said Bosquinha.

"Then they know everything that I have in my files. About the Descolada."

"Yes," said Bosquinha.

Novinha folded her hands in her lap. "There won't be any evacuation."

"I didn't think so," said Ender. "That's why I asked Ela to bring you."

"Why won't there be an evacuation?" asked Bosquinha.

"Because of the Descolada."

"Nonsense," said the Bishop. "Your parents found a cure for that."

"They didn't cure it," said Novinha. "They controlled it. They stopped it from becoming active."

"That's right," said Bosquinha. "That's why we put the additives in the water. The Colador."

"Every human being on Lusitania, except perhaps the Speaker, who may not have caught it yet, is a carrier of the Descolada."

"The additive isn't expensive," said the Bishop. "But perhaps they might isolate us. I can see that they might do that."

"There's nowhere isolated enough," said Novinha. "The Descolada is infinitely variable. It attacks any kind of genetic material. The additive can be given to humans. But can they give additives to every blade of grass? To every bird? To every fish? To every bit of plankton in the sea?"

"They can all catch it?" asked Bosquinha. "I didn't know that."

"I didn't tell anybody," said Novinha. "But I built the protection into every plant that I developed. The amaranth, the potatoes, everything-- the challenge wasn't making the protein usable, the challenge was to get the organisms to produce their own Descolada blockers."

Bosquinha was appalled. "So anywhere we go--"

"We can trigger the complete destruction of the biosphere.

"And you kept this a secret?" asked Dom Cristão.

"There was no need to tell it." Novinha looked at her hands in her lap. "Something in the information had caused the piggies to kill Pipo. I kept it secret so no one else