Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,60

here or I wouldn't have come," said Ender. "You may not like the law when it annoys you, but it protects many a Catholic on worlds where another creed is licensed."

Navio drummed his fingers on his desk. "What are your questions, Speaker," he said. "Let's get this done."

"It's simple enough, to start with, at least. What was the proximate cause of the death of Marcos Maria Ribeira?"

"Marcão!" said Navio. "You couldn't possibly have been summoned to speak his death, he only passed away a few weeks ago--"

"I have been asked to Speak several deaths, Dom Navio, and I choose to begin with Marcão's."

Navio grimaced. "What if I ask for proof of your authority?" Jane whispered in Ender's ear. "Let's dazzle the dear boy." Immediately, Navio's terminal came alive with official documents, while one of Jane's most authoritative voices declared, "Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead, has accepted the call for an explanation of the life and death of Marcos Maria Ribeira, of the city of Milagre, Lusitania Colony."

It was not the document that impressed Navio, however. It was the fact that he had not actually made the request, or even logged on to his terminal. Navio knew at once that the computer had been activated through the jewel in the Speaker's ear, but it meant that a very high-level logic routine was shadowing the Speaker and enforcing compliance with his requests. No one on Lusitania, not even Bosquinha herself, had ever had authority to do that. Whatever this Speaker was, Navio concluded, he's a bigger fish than even Bishop Peregrino can hope to fry.

"All right," Navio said, forcing a laugh. Now, apparently, he remembered how to be jovial again. "I meant to help you anyway-- the Bishop's paranoia doesn't afflict everyone in Milagre, you know."

Ender smiled back at him, taking his hypocrisy at face value.

"Marcos Ribeira died of a congenital defect." He rattled off a long pseudo-Latin name. "You've never heard of it because it's quite rare, and is passed on only through the genes. Beginning at the onset of puberty, in most cases, it involves the gradual replacement of exocrine and endocrine glandular tissues with lipidous cells. What that means is that bit by bit over the years, the adrenal glands, the pituitary, the liver, the testes, the thyroid, and so on, are all replaced by large agglomerations of fat cells."

"Always fatal? Irreversible?"

"Oh, yes. Actually, Marcão survived ten years longer than usual. His case was remarkable in several ways. In every other recorded case-- and admittedly there aren't that many-- the disease attacks the testicles first, rendering the victim sterile and, in most cases, impotent. With six healthy children, it's obvious that Marcos Ribeira's testes were the last of his glands to be affected. Once they were attacked, however, progress must have been unusually fast-- the testes were completely replaced with fat cells, even though much of his liver and thyroid were still functioning."

"What killed him in the end?"

"The pituitary and the adrenals weren't functioning. He was a walking dead man. He just fell down in one of the bars, in the middle of some ribald song, as I heard."

As always, Ender's mind automatically found seeming contradictions. "How does a hereditary disease get passed on if it makes its victims sterile?"

"It's usually passed through collateral lines. One child will die of it; his brothers and sisters won't manifest the disease at all, but they'll pass on the tendency to their children. Naturally, though, we were afraid that Marcão, having children, would pass on the defective gene to all of them."

"You tested them?"

"Not a one had any of the genetic deformations. You can bet that Dona Ivanova was looking over my shoulder the whole time. We zeroed in immediately on the problem genes and cleared each of the children, bim bim bim, just like that. "

"None of them had it? Not even a recessive tendency?"

"Graças a Deus," said the doctor. "Who would ever have married them if they had had the poisoned genes? As it was, I can't understand how Marcão's own genetic defect went undiscovered."

"Are genetic scans routine here?"

"Oh, no, not at all. But we had a great plague some thirty years ago. Dona Ivanova's own parents, the Venerado Gusto and the Venerada Cida, they conducted a detailed genetic scan of every man, woman, and child in the colony. It's how they found the cure. And their computer comparisons would definitely have turned up this particular defect-- that's how I found out what it was when Marcão died. I'd