Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,163

us all that you were Satan. Quim's the only one in the family that took him seriously. But if the Bishop had told us you were Ender, we would have stoned you to death in the praça the day you arrived."

"Why don't you now?"

"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."

"Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristão says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes."

"I don't think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It's just cause and effect. We never can sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause-- knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. 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."

"Mother doesn't like it that you're Ender."

"I know."

"But she loves you anyway."

"I know."

"And Quim-- it's really funny, but now that he knows you're Ender, he likes you better for it."

"That's because he's a crusader, and I got my bad reputation by winning a crusade."

"And me," said Olhado.

"Yes, you," said Ender.

"You killed more people than anybody in history."

"Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me."

"But when you Spoke for Father, you made me feet sorry for him. You make people love each other and forgive each other. How could you kill all those millions of people in the Xenocide?"

"I thought I was playing games. I didn't know it was the real thing. But that's no excuse, Olhado. If I had known the battle was real, I would have done the same thing. We thought they wanted to kill us. We were wrong, but we had no way to know that." Ender shook his head. "Except that I knew better. I knew my enemy. That's how I beat her, the hive queen, I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. So I blew up her planet."

"And today we found the place to bring her back to life." Olhado was very serious. "Are you sure she won't try to get even? Are you sure she won't try to wipe out humankind, starting with you?"

"I'm as sure," said Ender, "as I am of anything."

"Not absolutely sure," said Olhado.

"Sure enough to bring her back to life," said Ender. "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."

"I guess that's what you're doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is."

"I'm more arrogant than that. I'm betting your life, too, and everybody else's, and I'm not so much as asking anyone else's opinion."

"Funny," said Olhado. "If I asked somebody whether they'd trust Ender with a decision that might affect the future of the human race, they'd say, of course not. But if I asked them whether they'd trust the Speaker for the Dead, they'd say yes, most of them. And they wouldn't even guess that they were the same person."

"Yeah," said Ender. "Funny."

Neither of them laughed. Then, after a long time, Olhado spoke again. His thoughts had wandered to a subject that mattered more. "I don't want Miro to go away for thirty years."

"Say twenty years."

"In twenty years I'll be thirty-two. But he'd come back the age he is now. Twenty. Twelve years younger than me. If there's ever a girl who wants to marry a guy with reflecting eyes, I might even be married and have kids then. He won't even know me. I won't be his little brother anymore." Olhado swallowed. "It'd be like him dying."

"No," said Ender. "It'd be like him passing from his second life to his third."

"That's like dying, too," said Olhado.

"It's also like being born," said Ender. "As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes."

Valentine called the next day. Ender's fingers trembled as he