Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card Page B

sticks. Tonight, though, the celebration seemed to go on forever. Pipo and Libo speculated that perhaps the human example of sexual equality had somehow given the male pequeninos some hope of liberation. "I think this may qualify as a serious modification of piggy behavior," Pipo said gravely. "If we find that we've caused real change, I'm going to have to report it, and Congress will probably direct that human contact with piggies be cut off for a while. Years, perhaps." It was a sobering thought-- that doing their job faithfully might lead Starways Congress to forbid them to do their job at all.
      In the morning Novinha walked with them to the gate in the high fence that separated the human city from the slopes leading up to the forest hills where the piggies lived. Because Pipo and Libo were still trying to reassure each other that neither of them could have done any differently, Novinha walked on ahead and got to the gate first. When the others arrived, she pointed to a patch of freshly cleared red earth only thirty meters or so up the hill from the gate. "That's new," she said. "And there's something in it."
      Pipo opened the gate, and Libo, being younger, ran on ahead to investigate. He stopped at the edge of the cleared patch and went completely rigid, staring down at whatever lay there. Pipo, seeing him, also stopped, and Novinha, suddenly frightened for Libo, ignored the regulation and ran through the gate. Libo's head rocked backward and he dropped to his knees; he clutched his tight-curled hair and cried out in terrible remorse.
      Rooter lay spread-eagled in the cleared dirt. He had been eviscerated, and not carelessly: Each organ had been cleanly separated, and the strands and filaments of his limbs had also been pulled out and spread in a symmetrical pattern on the drying soil. Everything still had some connection to the body-- nothing had been completely severed.
      Libo's agonized crying was almost hysterical. Novinha knelt by him and held him, rocked him, tried to soothe him. Pipo methodically took out his small camera and took pictures from every angle so the computer could analyze it in detail later.
      "He was still alive when they did this," Libo said, when he had calmed enough to speak. Even so, he had to say the words slowly, carefully, as if he were a foreigner just learning to speak. "There's so much blood on the ground, spattered so far-- his heart had to be beating when they opened him up."
      "We'll discuss it later," said Pipo.
      Now the thing Libo had forgotten yesterday came back to him with cruel clarity. "It's what Rooter said about the women. They decide when the men should die. He told me that, and I--" He stopped himself. 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.
      "They didn't dishonor him," said Novinha. "If there's one thing that's certain, it's the love that they have for trees. See?" Out of the center of his chest cavity, which was otherwise empty now, a very small seedling sprouted. "They planted a tree to mark his burial spot."
      "Now we know why they name all their trees," said Libo bitterly. "They planted them as grave markers for the piggies they tortured to death."
      "This is a very large forest," Pipo said calmly. "Please confine your hypotheses to what is at least remotely possible." They were calmed by his quiet, reasoned tone, his insistence that even now they behave as scientists.
      "What should we do?" asked Novinha.
      "We should get you back inside the perimeter immediately, " said Pipo. "It's forbidden for you to come out here."
      "But I meant-- with the body-- what should we do?"
      "Nothing," said Pipo. "The piggies have done what piggies do, for whatever reason piggies do it." He