Libo paused for a moment in silence. Pipo knew what it meant. He was examining himself to find an answer. Not the answer that he thought would be most likely to bring him adult favor, and not the answer that would provoke their ire—the two kinds of deception that most children his age delighted in. He was examining himself to discover the truth.
Of course he did nothing. The law required him to do nothing. And at that moment he decided that he hated the law. If the law meant allowing this to be done to Rooter, then the law had no understanding. Rooter was a person. You don’t stand by and let this happen to a person just because you’re studying him.
The boy was bright, Andrew knew; his Calvinism would not outlast his undergraduate education, though its excision would be long and painful.
I’ve got to find a place where we won’t kill you again the moment you appear. You’re still in too many human nightmares. Not that many people really believe my book. They may condemn the Xenocide, but they’d do it again.
“What, wallowing in loneliness?” asked Jane. “I can hear your heartrate falling and your breathing getting heavy. In a moment you’ll either be asleep, dead, or lachrymose.” “I’m much more complex than that,” said Ender cheerfully. “Anticipated self-pity is what I’m feeling, about pains that haven’t even arrived.” “Very good, Ender. Get an early start. That way you can wallow so much longer.”
“It’s the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn’t have the good fortune to be born homo sapiens.”
Father and I began doing this because we couldn’t bear to withhold knowledge from the piggies. You will discover, as I have, that it is no less painful to withhold knowledge from your fellow scientists. When you watch them struggle with a question, knowing that you have the information that could easily resolve their dilemma; when you see them come very near the truth and then for lack of your information retreat from their correct conclusions and return to error—you would not be human if it didn’t cause you great anguish.
made it a point to be completely deferent to the Church hierarchy. At the Bishop’s summons he immediately switched off the lectern and dismissed the class without so much as completing the point under discussion. The students were not surprised; they knew he would do the same if any ordained priest had interrupted his class. It was, of course, immensely flattering to the priesthood to see how important they were in the eyes of the Filhos; but it also made it plain to them that any time they visited the school during teaching hours, classwork would be completely disrupted wherever they went. As a result, the priests rarely visited the school, and the Filhos, through extreme deference, maintained almost complete independence.
Oh, how the lay member gets the crusading spirit when Mother Church is threatened—but ask him to go to mass once a week, and the crusading spirit curls up and goes to sleep.
The reason she did not speak to him was because, as she analyzed what was happening to him, she realized that he did not need to lean on old, safe companionships. Jane and Valentine had been constantly with him. Even together they could not begin to meet all his needs; but they met enough of his needs that he never had to reach out and accomplish more.
I’m just a kid. I’m twelve. Quim could help you a lot better than me. He’s fifteen, he’s actually gotten into the guts of this stuff. He also knows math.” “But Quim thinks I’m the infidel and prays every day for me to die.” “No, that was only before he met you,
Novinha sighed. Quim always seemed to take it so personally that the universe didn’t always work the way he wanted it to.
Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.
“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.”
He had not expected him to be so intrusive, so dangerous. Yes, he was wise, all right, he kept seeing past pretense, kept saying or doing outrageous things that were, when you thought about it, exactly right. It was as if he were so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn’t even know yourself that you had them in you.
“Why are they so stupid?” asked Human. “Not to know the truth when they hear it?” “They aren’t stupid,” said the Speaker. “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe, and those we never think to question
What if that was how the Speaker for the Dead had been able to write his book, because he had a bugger to talk to? It was unlikely in the extreme, but it was not impossible. Miro didn’t know for sure that the last bugger had been killed. He only knew that everybody believed it, and that no one in three thousand years had produced a shred of evidence to the contrary.
You see, the piggies don’t think of the fence the way we do. We see it as a way of protecting their culture from human influence and corruption. They see it as a way of keeping them from learning all the wonderful secrets that we know.
“Do you think we’re making a mistake?” snapped the Bishop. “Not at all,” said Dom Cristão. “I think we’ve taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness.”
“I want to understand everything,” said Miro. “I want to know everything and put it all together to see what it means.” “Excellent project,” she said. “It will look very good on your résumé.”
“I guess that’s what you’re doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is.” “I’m more arrogant than that. I’m betting your life, too, and everybody else’s, and I’m not so much as asking anyone else’s opinion.”