"We didn't want to bring you out here." Miro said it firmly, and with his body so oriented toward Ouanda's that Ender understood that in fact Miro had wanted to bring him out here, but was including himself in Ouanda's reluctance in order to show her that he was one with her. You are in love with each other, Ender said silently. And tonight, if I speak Marcao's death, I will have to tell you that you're brother and sister. I have to drive the wedge of the incest tabu between you. And you will surely hate me.
"You're going to see--some--" Ouanda could not bring herself to say it.
Miro smiled. "We call them Questionable Activities. They began with Pipo, accidentally. But Libo did it deliberately, and we are continuing his work. It is careful, gradual. We didn't just discard the Congressional rules about this. But there were crises, and we had to help. A few years ago, for instance, the piggies were running short of macios, the bark worms they mostly lived on then--"
"You're going to tell him that first?" asked Ouanda.
Ah, thought Ender. It isn't as important to her to maintain the illusion of solidarity as it is to him.
"He's here partly to speak Libo's death," said Miro. "And this was what happened right before."
"We have no evidence of a causal relationship--"
"Let me discover causal relationships," said Ender quietly. "Tell me what happened when the piggies got hungry."
"It was the wives who were hungry, they said." Miro ignored Ouanda's anxiety. "You see, the males gather food for the females and the young, and so there wasn't enough to go around. They kept hinting about how they would have to go to war. About how they would probably all die." Miro shook his head. "They seemed almost happy about it."
Ouanda stood up. "He hasn't even promised. Hasn't promised anything."
"What do you want me to promise?" asked Ender.
"Not to--let any of this--"
"Not to tell on you?" asked Ender.
She nodded, though she plainly resented the childish phrase.
"I won't promise any such thing," said Ender. "My business is telling."
She whirled on Miro. "You see!"
Miro in turn looked frightened. "You can't tell. They'll seal the gate. They'll never let us through!"
"And you'd have to find another line of work?" asked Ender.
Ouanda looked at him with contempt. "Is that all you think xenology is? A job? That's another intelligent species there in the woods. Ramen, not varelse, and they must be known."
Ender did not answer, but his gaze did not leave her face.
"It's like the Hive Queen and the Hegemon," said Miro. "The piggies, they're like the buggers. Only smaller, weaker, more primitive. We need to study them, yes, but that isn't enough. You can study beasts and not care a bit when one of them drops dead or gets eaten up, but these are--they're like us. We can't just study their hunger, observe their destruction in war, we know them, we--"
"Love them," said Ender.
"Yes!" said Ouanda defiantly.
"But if you left them, if you weren't here at all, they wouldn't disappear, would they?"
"No," said Miro.
"I told you he'd be just like the committee," said Ouanda.
Ender ignored her. "What would it cost them if you left?"
"It's like--" Miro struggled for words. "It's as if you could go back, to old Earth, back before the Xenocide, before star travel, and you said to them, You can travel among the stars, you can live on other worlds. And then showed them a thousand little miracles. Lights that turn on from switches. Steel. Even simple things--pots to hold water. Agriculture. They see you, they know what you are, they know that they can become what you are, do all the things that you do. What do they say--take this away, don't show us, let us live out our nasty, short, brutish little lives, let evolution take its course? No. They say, Give us, teach us, help us."
"And you say, I can't, and then you go away."
"It's too late!" said Miro. "Don't you understand? They've already seen the miracles! They've already seen us fly here. They've seen us be tall and strong, with magical tools and knowledge of things they never dreamed of. It's too late to tell them good-bye and go. They know what is possible. And the longer we stay, the more they try to learn, and the more they learn, the more we see how learning helps them, and if you have any kind of compassion, if you understand that they're--they're--"