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, Marcao 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 Marcao, 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?"
"Gracas 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 Marcao'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 Marcao died. I'd never heard of the disease, but the computer had it on file,"
"And Os Venerados didn't find it?"
"Apparently not, or they would surely have told Marcos. And even if they hadn't told him, Ivanova herself should have found it."
"Maybe she did," said Ender.
Navio laughed aloud. "Impossible. No woman in her right mind would deliberately bear the children of a man with a genetic defect like that. Marcao was surely in constant agony for many years. You don't wish that on your own children. No, Ivanova may be eccentric, but she's not insane."
Jane was quite amused. When Ender got home, she made her image appear above his terminal just so she could laugh uproariously.
"He can't help it," said Ender. "In a devout Catholic colony like this, dealing with the Biologista, one of the most respected people here, of course he doesn't think to question his basic premises."
"Don't apologize for him," said Jane. "I don't expect wetware to work as logically as software. But you can't ask me not to be amused."
"In a way it's rather sweet of him," said Ender. "He'd rather believe that Marcao's disease was different from every other recorded case. He'd rather believe that somehow Ivanova's parents didn't notice that Marcos had the disease, and so she married him in ignorance, even though Ockham's razor decrees that we believe the simplest explanation: Marcao's decay progressed like every other, testes first, and all of Novinha's children were sired by someone else. No wonder Marcao was bitter and angry. Every one of her six children reminded him that his wife was sleeping with another man. It was probably part of their bargain in the beginning that she would not be faithful to him. But six children is rather rubbing his nose in it."
"The delicious contradictions of religious life," said Jane. "She deliberately set out to commit adultery--but she would never dream of using a contraceptive."
"Have you scanned the children's genetic pattern to find the most likely father?"
"You mean you haven't guessed?"
"I've guessed, but I want to make sure the clinical evidence doesn't disprove the obvious answer."
"It was Libo, of course. What a dog! He sired six children on Novinha, and four more on his own wife."