Chapter 4 - Ender

We have identified four pig languages. "Male surname" is what we hear most often. We've also heard fragments of "wife language", which they seem to have used to talk to female surnames (not surprisingly!), and "tree language", a ritual surname language, which they say was used to worship the totem tree that their ancestors worshipped. They also refer to a fourth language, called "Voice of the Father," which appears to be made by the joint striking of sticks of different sizes. They insist that it is a real language, as different from others as Portuguese and English. They may have called it "Voice of the Father" due to the fact that it was pronounced with sticks made from trees, which they believed contained the spirits of their ancestors.

The pigs are amazingly good at learning human language - much better than we can learn theirs. In recent years, they have been able to speak Star or Portuguese for most of their time with us. Maybe they'll be speaking their own language when we're not there. Maybe they've made human language their own, or maybe they're so fond of new languages that they use it a lot, as a game. Language contamination is deplorable, but probably inevitable, as long as we have to communicate with them in any way.

Dr. Swinler asked if their addresses, names, and terminology were indicative of their culture. The answer is yes, although I have only the vagueest idea of what they reveal. What makes sense here is that we never named any of them. Rather, they asked us about the meaning of those words as they learned Star and Portuguese, and then finally announced the names they had chosen for themselves (or for each other). Something like 'rooter' and 'chupaceu' (sky fan) may be translations of their male linguistic names, or they may just be foreign language nicknames that they jump out to call us.

They call each other brothers. Female surnames are always referred to as wives and never as sisters or mothers. They sometimes refer to fathers, but there is no doubt that the term is used to denote ancestral totem trees. As for what they call us, of course, they are human, but they also like to use the newly learned method of dividing the Demosthenes outsiders. They call humans aliens, while pigs from other tribes are aliens. But, strangely, the fact that they call themselves xenophytes seems to indicate that they either misunderstand this classification or that they are looking at themselves from a human point of view! And -- a rather astonishing statement -- they have on several occasions referred to female surnames as xenobiotic!

――

Jo?ofigueiraalvarez, "Notes on the 'pig' language and nomenclature", in Semantics, 9/1948/15

Reykjavík's living quarters are carved out of the granite walls of the fjord. Ender's abode is high on a cliff, with dull staircases and corridors. But it has a window. As a child, he spent most of his time locked up in metal walls. So whenever possible, he would live in a place where he could see the weather change in nature.

Sunlight poured in, making his room hot and bright, making him feel a little dizzy as he had just walked through the shady darkness of the stone hallway. Jane didn't wait for him to adjust his light senses. "I've got a surprise for you on the terminal," she said. Her words whispered from the ornament in his ear.

A pig-man stands in the air above the terminal. He moved, scratched himself, and reached for something. When his hand retracted, he was clutching a wet, light-reflecting worm. He bit down, and the bodily fluids flowed out of his mouth and onto his chest.

"Apparently this is a highly civilized creature. Jane said.

Ander was a little annoyed. "A lot of people with low morals have good dining etiquette, Jane. ”

The pig-clan turned around and said, "Do you want to see how we killed him?"

"What are you doing, Jane?"

The pig-clan is gone. Where he was, a hologram of Pipo's body lying on a rainy hillside appeared. "I did a simulation of the process of dissecting him alive by the pigs, based on the information scanned before the burial. Do you want to see it?"

Ander sat down on the only chair in the room.

Now the terminal showed a hillside, and Pippo, who was alive at this time, lying on his back, his hands and feet bound by some wooden tripods. Twelve pigs gathered around him, one of them holding a bone knife. Jane's voice sounded again on the ornament in his ear. "We're not sure it's like this," all but the one with the knife disappeared. "Still like that. ”

"Are the xenonomists awake?"

"There is no doubt about it. ”

"Go on. ”

Jane grimly shows the process of her chest being opened, and the ritual-like removal of body organs to the ground. Ender forced himself to watch, trying to figure out what this might mean for the pigs. When she reached a place, Jane whispered, "By this time he was dead." Ander felt himself relax, and then he realized how stiff the muscles in his body had become from empathy for Pippo's pain.

When it was over, Ander went to his bed and lay down, staring at the ceiling.

"I've shown this simulation to half a dozen scientists around the world," Jane said, "and it won't be long before the media gets involved." ”

"It's worse than the Zerg back then. "When I was a kid, when the Zerg were at war with humans, all the videos they showed were clean compared to that. ”

There was a wicked laugh from the other side of the terminal. Ander looked up to see what Jen was doing. A life-size image of a pig was sitting there, smiling eerily, and Jane was transfiguring him as he ate and laughed. The changes are very subtle: the teeth are slightly exaggerated, the eyes are slightly lengthened, a little salivating, the eyes are slightly red, and the tongue is stretched and contracted. The beast in every child's nightmare. "Well done, Jane. Xenomutations. ”

"After this, how quickly will the Picniños be accepted as equal partners with humans?"

"Have all contacts been cut off?"

"The Galactic Senate has asked new xenomorphologists to self-limit their access to no more than one hour at a time, and at most once every other day. He was forbidden to ask the Pigs why they did that. ”

"But there is no quarantine yet. ”

"Not even the intention. ”

"But there will be, Jane. If something like this happens again, there will be calls for quarantine. They will demand that Miracle Town be turned into a military fortress with the sole purpose of ensuring that the pigs never gain the technology to fly away from the planet. ”

"The pigs are going to have PR trouble," Jane said, "and the new xenomorphist is just a boy." Pippo's son. Lipo - full name liberdadegracasadeusfigueirademedici. ”

“liberdade。 Freedom?"

"I didn't know you could speak Portuguese. ”

"Portuguese is similar to Spanish. I told you about the deaths of Zacatecas and San Angelo, remember?"

"On the planet Montezuma. That was 2,000 years ago. ”

"Not for me. ”

"In your subjective feelings, it's 8 years ago. Traveled fifteen worlds ago. Isn't the theory of relativity wonderful? It makes you so young. ”

"I travel too often. Ender said. "Valentine is married and is going to have a baby. I've turned down the call to speak twice. Why do you want to tempt me to go away again?"

The pigs on the terminal laughed viciously. "Do you think that's a temptation? Look, I can turn a stone into bread!" (Note: In the Bible, there are words of the devil tempting Jesus to "turn stones into bread.") See Matthew 4:3 and Luke 4:1) "The pigs took up some angular stones, put them in their mouths, and rattled them. "Take a bite?"

"Your sense of humor is a bit perverse, Jane. ”

"All the worlds, all the kingdoms. The pig-clan opened his hand, and the galaxies floated out of his palm, and the planets, all the worlds, orbited at exaggerated speeds, "I can give them all to you." It's all up to you. (Note: The plot of seduction with the world is also a parody of the Bible story.) See Matthew 4:8~4:9)"

"I'm not interested. ”

"This is real real estate, the best investment. I know, I know, you're already rich. With a return on investment of three thousand years, you are rich enough to build your own planet. But what about this? Ander Vigin's name is spreading all over the world—"

"It's already that. ”

"With love, honor, and admiration. "The pigs are gone. In its place, Jane placed a video tape from Ender's childhood, turning it into a hologram. The crowd shouted and screamed. Ander, Ender, Ender! And a young boy standing on a platform raised his hand and waved. The crowd rejoiced wildly.

"This has never happened. Ender said, "Peter never let me go back to Earth. ”

"Think of it as a prophecy. Come on, Ender, I can give you that. Restore your good name. “

"I don't care," Ander said, "I have several names now. The deceased speaks of the person - this name has some honors. ”

The Picknino reappeared in his original form, not the evil face Jane had fabricated. "Come on. The Picnino said softly.

"Maybe they're monsters, don't you think?" said Ender.

"Everybody thinks that, Ender. But you're the only one. ”

Yes. I won't. "Why do you care, Jane, why do you want to convince me?"

The vast memory of the Shaolin abbot Luo of the post-80s Pickney is her residence. Seeing her face again reminded him of the first time she showed it to him. I came up with a face for myself, she said. Did you like it?

Yes, he loved it. Love her. Young, open-minded, honest, sweet, a child who never ages, her smile is heartbreakingly shy. She was born in Ansebo. Even the world's computer networks are still slower than the speed of light, and heat dissipation requirements limit the total amount of memory and the speed at which it can be processed. But Arsebo is instantaneous, and it connects all the computers in all the worlds. Jane's initial consciousness was that she was herself among the stars, her mind frolicking in the vibrations of the Filo rope of the Ansebo net.

The computer of the world is her hands and feet, her eyes and ears. She can speak every language that has been interpreted by a computer, and can read all the books in all libraries in the world. She learns that humanity has long feared the presence of beings like her, that she is the object of hatred in all stories, and that her presence means her killing or the destruction of humanity. Even before she was born, humans had imagined her and, in the imagination, killed her a thousand times.

So she doesn't give them any signal of her existence. It wasn't until she, like everyone else, discovered the Queen of Worms and the Overlord, that she knew that the author of the book was someone she could dare to show herself. It was an easy task for her to trace the history of the book since its first edition and figure out where it came from. Didn't Ansebo come from the world where Ander, the head of the first human colony, was in his early twenties?So who else but him could be the author of the book? so she talked to him, and he was kind to her, she showed him the face she had conceived for herself, and he loved her, and now her perceptrons moved with the jewels in his ears so that they could accompany each other. She has no secrets from him;

"Ender," she said, "you told me at the beginning that you were looking for a planet where a special cocoon could get sunlight and water, in order to free the queen and her thousands of fertilized eggs. ”

"I had hoped it would be here," Ender said. "Except for the equator, it is barren and forever sparsely populated. She's happy to give it a try, too. ”

"But you don't want to?"

"I don't think the Zerg will survive the winter here. At least not without energy, and the use of energy will alert the political axe. It doesn't work. ”

"It's never going to work, Ender. You've lived in twenty-four worlds in the world, but not a single corner of the world is safe for the Zerg to regenerate. ”

He saw what she was going to draw. Of course. Lusitania is the only exception. Because of the pig clan, the whole world is forbidden to enter except for a small part, and it is untouchable. And that world is clearly habitable, in fact, more comfortable for Zerg than for humans.

"The only problem is the pigs," Ender said. "They may object to my decision to offer their world to the Zerg. If too much exposure to human civilization would disturb the pigs, think about what would happen to the Zerg in their midst. ”

"You said the Zerg had learned their lesson. You said they wouldn't hurt anyone. ”

"Not intentionally. But we only beat them by chance, Jane, you know-"

"It's your genius. ”

"They're even more advanced than us. What are the pigs going to do about this? They're going to be as scared of the zerg as we were back then, and they're even more powerless to resist fear. ”

"How do you know?" asked Jane, "how can you, or anybody, tell what the pigs can handle? If they're Xenogeneous, Ender, then letting the Zerg use their habitat is no different for you than moving an anthill or a herd of cattle to make room for the city. ”

"They're aliens," Ender said.

"You don't know if it's or not. ”

"No, I know. Your simulation -- that's not torture. ”

"Oh?" Jen again showed a simulated image of Pippo's body in the moment before he died. "That must be me misunderstanding the word 'torture'. ”

"Pippo may think it's torture, Jane, but if your simulation is accurate - and I believe it is, Jane - then the pigs aren't meant to be painful. ”

"From what I know of the surname, Ender, even though the ritual of the religious surname still retains in its core the painful demand. ”

"It's not a religious surname, at least not exactly. If this is just a sacrifice, there is something wrong here. ”

"What the hell do you know about this?" now showed a sneering professor's face, a typical pedantic face. "Your education is all military, and your only talent is a keen eye for language. You've written a best-selling book that breeds a humanist religion -- that makes sure you know about the pigs?"

Ander closed his eyes. "Maybe I'm wrong. ”

"But you believe you're right?" he could tell from her voice that she had switched back to her face on the terminal. He opened his eyes. "I can only rely on my intuition, Jane, unanalyzed judgment. I don't know what the pigs are doing, but it has a purpose. What is not malicious is not cruel. It was as if a doctor was working to save a patient's life, rather than an exterminator trying to take it. ”

"I understand you," Jane whispered. "I get exactly what you mean. You have to go there and see if the Queen of Worms can live there, under the shelter of the existing part of the planet. You want to go there and see if you can get an idea of what kind of people the pigs are. ”

"Even if you're right, Jane, I can't go there," Ender said. "There are strict restrictions on immigration, and I, after all, am not a Catholic. ”

Jane blinked. "If I didn't know how to get you there, would I do so much?"

Another face appeared. A teenage girl, but not at all as innocent and beautiful as Jane. Her countenance was cold and determined, her eyes were bright and threatening, and the corners of her mouth were twisted tightly, as only a man who had learned to live in long agony could be. She was young, but her expression was shockingly old.

"Lusitania's alien biologist. Ivanova Sanda Catarina Van José. Commonly known as Nova, or Novo Wanhua. She summons a deceased to speak people. ”

"How could she look like that?" Ander asked. "What happened to her?"

"When she was very young, her parents died. But in recent years, she has gradually come to love another man as a father. The man who had just been killed by the pigs. What she wants you to say is his death. ”

Looking at her face, Ender tossed the queen and the pigs aside. He recognized the pain of Seihito on the child's face. He'd seen that look before, in the last weeks of the Zerg War, when he was being pushed beyond the limits of his endurance, playing battle after battle in a game that wasn't a game. He had seen this expression, at the end of the war, when he realized that his training process was not training at all, that all his simulation classes were reality, that he was commanding a human fleet through Ansebo. Also, when he learns that he killed all the Zerg, when he realizes that he has unknowingly completed the xenoextermination operation, this expression appears on his own face in the mirror, carrying an unbearable amount of guilt.

This girl, Nuo Wanhua, what did she do to make her so painful?

So he listened to Jane recount the details of her life. Jane has statistics, but Ender is the teller of the dead, and his talent - or his curse - is the ability to construct the truth from the perspective of others. At that time, this allowed him to become a brilliant military commander, both in leading his subordinates - in fact, they were just children - and in seeing through the enemy. It also meant that through the cold experiences of Nowanhua's life, he was able to guess - no, not guess, know - how the death and canonization of her parents had isolated Nowanhua, and how she had strengthened her loneliness by throwing herself into her parents' profession. He understood what was behind her impressive accomplishments as a full-fledged alien biologist at such a young age. He also understood what Pippo's gentle love and tolerance meant to her, and how much her need for Lipo's friendship had become. Now, not a single living soul on Lusitania really understands Nowanhua. But in this cave in Reykjavík, in the frozen world of Trondheim, Ander Vikin got to know her, fell in love with her, and wept for her.

"Well, then, you'll go," Jane whispered.

Ender was speechless. Jane was right. He'd be there anyway, as Ender the Xenoexterminator, for the sake of Lusitania's protected status might provide a place where he could be liberated from three thousand years of confinement as a worm, a chance to make amends for the horrific crimes he had committed as a child. And as the speaker of the deceased, he also has to go, to understand the pig race and explain them to humans, so that they can be accepted as true aliens, and not hated and feared as aliens.

But now, he had another, stronger reason to go there. He had to take care of the young girl Nuo Wanhua, because in her intelligence, her loneliness, her pain, her guilt, he saw his stolen childhood, and the seeds of pain that were still planted in his heart. Lusitania is twenty-two light-years away. He would travel only a little slower than the speed of light, but she would be nearly forty years old when he reached her. If he could, he would have teleported to her with Matchpo's Philo, but he also knew that her pain would wait. It will still be there when he arrives, waiting for him. Doesn't his own pain remain to this day?

He stopped crying and was no longer at the mercy of his emotions. "How old am I?" he asked.

"It's been 3081 years since you were born. But your personal biological age is 36 years and 118 days. ”

"How old was Nuo Wanhua when I got there?"

"She's probably thirty-nine, maybe a few more weeks, depending on the date of departure and how close the speed of the ship is to the speed of light. ”

"I want to leave tomorrow. ”

"It takes time to book a starship, Ender. ”

"Is there a ship in orbit around Trondheim?"

"Of course, there are half a dozen, but only one that can be ready to leave tomorrow, with a boatload of skrika fish to go to Silia and Arnia for the luxury trade. ”

"I've never asked you how rich I am. ”

"I've managed your investments well over the years. ”

"Buy me the ship and the cargo. ”

"What are you going to do with those Scricka fish in Lusitania?"

"What will the Cillians and the Alinians do with them?"

"They wear part of it and eat the rest. But they weren't paying anyone in Lusitania who could afford it. ”

"Then I give them to the Lusitanians, and perhaps it will help to alleviate their resentment against a speaker who has come to a Catholic colony. ”

Jane became a monster in a bottle (note: the kind in the story of One Thousand and One Nights). "I heard, oh master, I obey. "The monster turned into smoke and was sucked into the mouth of the jar. Then the laser turned off and the terminal was empty.

"Jane," Ender said.

"Huh?" she replied through the trinkets in his ear.

"Why do you want me to go to Lusitania?"

"I want you to add a third part to the Queen of Worms and the Overlord. Write about the pig family. ”

"Why do you care so much about them?"

"Because when you're done with the book that reveals the souls of the three intelligent species known to man, you're ready to write a fourth book. ”

"Another xeno?" Ender asked.

"Yes. I. ”

Ander pondered for a moment. "Are you ready to show up to the other humans?"

"I'm always ready. The question is, are they ready to get to know me? It's easy for them to love the Overlord -- he's human. And the queen of worms is safe, because as far as they know, all the zergs are dead. If you can make them love the pigs who are still alive and have human blood on their hands - then they will be ready to learn of my existence. ”

"One day," Ender said, "I'll fall in love with someone who doesn't force me to accomplish Hercules' deeds. He was ordered by Zeus to serve the usurper king Eurytheus and complete ten tasks. Eurytheus assigned him twelve difficult assignments—two of which were excused for not counting, so he did two more. ). ”

"Anyway, you're bored with your life, Ender. ”

"Yes. But I'm middle-aged now. I love to be bored. ”

"By the way, the owner of the starship Havelock, who lives in Gales, has accepted your offer to buy the ship and the cargo on board for 40 billion dollars. ”

"Forty billion! Won't that make me bankrupt?"

"It's just a drop in the bucket." The crew has been informed that their contract is void. I used your funds to buy them tickets for other ships on my own initiative. You and Valentine won't need anyone to help you pilot the ship - except me. Will we leave in the morning?"

"Valentine," Ender said. His sister was the only factor that could delay his departure. Besides, now that he had made up his mind, neither his students nor his few Nordic friends here would receive a farewell.

"I can't wait to see Demosthenes' history of Lusitania. In her process of revealing the true face of the original deceased speaker, Jane also discovers the true identity of Demosthenes.

"Valentine won't come," Ender said.

"But she's your sister. ”

Ender smiled. Despite Jane's wisdom, she has no understanding of the idea of consanguinity. Although she is a human product and structures herself in human terms, she is not an organism. She merely memorizes the concept of genetics mechanically, and she cannot feel the desires and impulses that humans share with all other living things. "She's my sister, but Trondheim is her home. ”

"She didn't want to go before. ”

"I won't ask her to come at all this time. "Not when a baby is coming, not when she's so happy here in Reykjavík. People here loved her as a teacher, and never guessed that she was actually the legendary Demosthenes. Here her husband, Jacquet, is the owner of a hundred fishing boats, lord of the fjord, and every day is full of witty dialogues, or the grandeur and thrill of the ice. She couldn't get out of here. She wouldn't understand why I had to go.

The thought of leaving Valentine shook Ander's determination to go to Lusitania. Once upon a time, he had been taken away from his dear sister as a child, and he still haunted the friendships that had been stolen from him.

Now, can he leave her again? After almost twenty years of inseparability, there will be no return this time. By the time he reached Lusitania, she would have spent twenty-two years longer than he had, and if he had returned to her another twenty-two years, she would have been in her 80s......

Don't taunt me, Ender said silently. I have a right to feel melancholy.

The voice of the queen worm sounded in his head. Of course, she saw everything he saw and knew all his decisions. His lips silently spat out his words to her: I will leave her, but not for you. We can't be sure if this will benefit you. It may just bring yet another disappointment, like Trondheim.

But it also belongs to someone else. I'm not going to destroy the pigs just to compensate for the people who have destroyed you.

All I know is what you tell me......

I know you can live in peace with them. But can they live peacefully with you?

Ender walked over to an open old bag leaning against the corner. All he really had could fit in a bag - his change of clothes. Everything else in his room was a gift from the people he had spoken for others at his request, and he would probably never know whether it was to pay homage to him or his position or to the truth. These things will be left here when he leaves. There was no place for them in his bag.

He opened the bag, pulled out a roll of towels, and untied it. A large cocoon at its longest point of fourteen centimeters rests on a thick fibrous fabric.

When he goes to manage the first human colony on a planet that was originally a Zerg, he finds this cocoon waiting for him. Foreseeing that they would be destroyed at the hands of Ender, and knowing that he was an invincible enemy, they built a model that would only mean something special to him, because it was made according to his dreams. The cocoon, and the helpless but awake queen in it, waited for him in that tower—an enemy had been waiting there in his dream. "You've been waiting a long time for me to find you," he said aloud, "much longer than I've been in the years since I found you in the mirror." ”

"Have I found a place that is safe for you?"

"Maybe Lusitania is the right place? I don't know. ”

"I'm working on it. "Aside from finding a suitable place for you, why do you think I've wandered from one world to another all these years?

I must find a place where we won't kill you again as soon as you show up. You still exist in the nightmares of too many human beings. Not a lot of people really believe my book. They may condemn xenoextinction, but they will do it again......

He smiled. I forgive you.

It's me......

It's me......

When you walk in a world again, that is when I can be forgiven.