"Human."
"Ramen, anyway. They're our children, do you understand that?"
Ender smiled. "What man among you, if his son asks for bread, gives him a stone?"
Ouanda nodded. "That's it. The Congressional rules say we have to give them stones. Even though we have so much bread."
Ender stood up. "Well, let's go on."
Ouanda wasn't ready. "You haven't promised--"
"Have you read the Hive Queen and the Hegemon?"
"I have," said Miro.
"Can you conceive of anyone choosing to call himself Speaker for the Dead, and then doing anything to harm these little ones, these pequeninos?"
Ouanda's anxiety visibly eased, but her hostility was no less. "You're slick, Senhor Andrew, Speaker for the Dead, you're very clever. You remind him of the Hive Queen, and speak scripture to me out of the side of your mouth."
"I speak to everyone in the language they understand," said Ender. "That isn't being slick. It's being clear."
"So you'll do whatever you want."
"As long as it doesn't hurt the piggies."
Ouanda sneered. "In your judgment."
"I have no one
else's judgment to use." He walked away from her, out of the shade of the spreading limbs of the tree, heading for the woods that waited atop the hill. They followed him, running to catch up.
"I have to tell you," said Miro. "The piggies have been asking for you. They believe you're the very same speaker who wrote the Hive Queen and the Hegemon."
"They've read it?"
"They've pretty well incorporated it into their religion, actually. They treat the printout we gave them like a holy book. And now they claim the hive queen herself is talking to them."
Ender glanced at him. "What does she say?" he asked.
"That you're the real Speaker. And that you've got the hive queen with you. And that you're going to bring her to live with them, and teach them all about metal and--it's really crazy stuff. That's the worst thing, they have such impossible expectations of you."
It might be simple wish fulfillment on their part, as Miro obviously believed, but Ender knew that from her cocoon the hive queen had been talking to someone. "How do they say the hive queen talks to them?"
Ouanda was on the other side of him now. "Not to them, just to Rooter. And Rooter talks to them. It's all part of their system of totems. We've always tried to play along with it, and act as if we believed it."
"How condescending of you," said Ender.
"It's standard anthropological practice," said Miro.
"You're so busy pretending to believe them, there isn't a chance in the world you could learn anything from them."
For a moment they lagged behind, so that he actually entered the forest alone. Then they ran to catch up with him. "We've devoted our lives to learning about them!" Miro said.
Ender stopped. "Not from them." They were just inside the trees; the spotty light through the leaves made their faces unreadable. But he knew what their faces would tell him. Annoyance, resentment, contempt--how dare this unqualified stranger question their professional attitude? This is how: "You're cultural supremacists to the core. You'll perform your Questionable Activities to help out the poor little piggies, but there isn't a chance in the world you'll notice when they have something to teach you."
"Like what!" demanded Ouanda. "Like how to murder their greatest benefactor, torture him to death after he saved the lives of dozens of their wives and children?"
"So why do you tolerate it? Why are you here helping them after what they did?"