Mayor Bosquinha was cheerful enough as the car skimmed over the grassland between the shuttleport and the settlement of Milagre. She pointed out herds of semi-domestic cabra, a native species that provided fibers for cloth, but whose meat was nutritionally useless to human beings.
"Do the piggies eat them?" asked Ender.
She raised an eyebrow. "We don't know much about the piggies."
"We know they live in the forest. Do they ever come out on the plain?"
She shrugged. "That's for the framlings to decide."
Ender was startled for a moment to hear her use that word; but of course Demosthenes' latest book had been published twenty-two years ago, and distributed through the Hundred Worlds by ansible. Utlanning, framling, raman, varelse--the terms were part of Stark now, and probably did not even seem particularly novel to Bosquinha.
It was her lack of curiosity about the piggies that left him feeling uncomfortable. The people of Lusitania couldn't possibly be unconcerned about the piggies--they were the reason for the high, impassable fence that none but the Zenadors could cross. No, she wasn't incurious, she was avoiding the subject. Whether it was because the murderous piggies were a painful subject or because she didn't trust a speaker for the dead, he couldn't guess.
They crested a hill and she stopped the car. Gently it settled onto its skids. Below them a broad river wound its way among grassy hills; beyond the river, the farther hills were completely covered with forest. Along the far bank of the river, brick and plaster houses with tile roofs made a picturesque town. Farmhouses perched on the near bank, their long narrow fields reaching toward the hill where Ender and Bosquinha sat.
"Milagre," said Bosquinha. "On the highest hill, the Cathedral. Bishop Peregrino has asked the people to be polite and helpful to you."
From her tone, Ender gathered that he had also let them know that he was a dangerous agent of agnosticism. "Until God strikes me dead?" he asked.
Bosquinha smiled. "God is setting an example of Christian tolerance, and we expect everyone in town will follow."
"Do they know who called me?"
"Whoever called you has been--discreet."
"You're the Governor, besides being Mayor. You have some privileges of information."
"I know that your original call was canceled, but too late. I also know that two others have requested speakers in recent years. But you must realize that most people are content to receive their doctrine and their consolation from the priests."
"They'll be relieved to know that I don't deal in doctrine or consolation."
"Your kind offer to let us have your cargo of skrika will make you popular enough in the bars, and you can be sure you'll see plenty of vain women wearing the pelts in the months to come. It's coming on to autumn."
"I happened to acquire the skrika with the starship--it was of no use to me, and I don't expect any special gratitude for it." He looked at the rough, furry-looking grass around him. "This grass--it's native?"
"And useless. We can't even use it for thatch--if you cut it, it crumbles, and then dissolves into dust in the next rain. But down there, in the fields, the most common crop is a special breed of amaranth that our xenobiologist developed for us. Rice and wheat were feeble and undependable crops here, but the amaranth is so hardy that we have to use herbicides around the fields to keep it from spreading."
"Why?"
"This is a quarantined world, Speaker. The amaranth is so well-suited to this environment that it would soon choke out the native grasses. The idea is not to terraform Lusitania. The idea is to have as little impact on this world as possible."
"That must be hard on the people."
"Within our enclave, Speaker, we are free and our lives are full. And outside the fence--no one wants to go there, anyway."
The tone of her voice was heavy with concealed emotion. Ender knew, then, that the fear of the piggies ran deep.
"Speaker, I know you're thinking that we're afraid of the piggies. And perhaps some of us are. But the feeling most of us have, most of the time, isn't fear at all. It's hatred. Loathing."
"You've never seen them."
"You must know of the two Zenadors who were killed--I suspect you were originally called to speak the death of Pipo. But both of them, Pipo and Libo alike, were beloved here. Especially Libo. He was a kind and generous man, and the grief at his death was widespread and genuine. It is hard to conceive of how the piggies could do to him what they did. Dom Cristao, the abbot of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo--he says that they must lack the moral sense. He says this may mean that they are beasts. Or it may mean that they are unfallen, having not yet eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree." She smiled tightly. "But that's theology, and so it means nothing to you."
He did not answer. He was used to the way religious people assumed that their sacred stories must sound absurd to unbelievers. But Ender did not consider himself an unbeliever, and he had a keen sense of the sacredness of many tales. But he could not explain this to Bosquinha. She would have to change her assumptions about him over time. She was suspicious of him, but he believed she could be won; to be a good Mayor, she had to be skilled at seeing people for what they are, not for what they seem.
He turned the subject. "The Filhos da Mente de Cristo--my Portuguese isn't strong, but does that mean 'Sons of the Mind of Christ'?"
"They're a new order, relatively speaking, formed only four hundred years ago under a special dispensation of the Pope--"