Chapter 2: Trondheim

(Note: Nordic city names.) This is the name of the planet)

I am sorry that I am unable to accommodate your request for more details on the courtship and marriage section of Lusitanian Aboriginal customs. This must be very annoying to you, otherwise you would not have applied to the Alien Anthropological Society to criticize me for not cooperating with your research.

Whenever a self-proclaimed hemitrian complains that I have not been able to obtain useful data from my observations of the Picnino, I ask them to re-read the restrictions imposed on me by the law. I am only allowed to bring up to one assistant to visit the territory, I am not allowed to ask any questions that might reveal the expectations of the human beings, lest they try to imitate us, I cannot provide information to guide answers, I am not allowed to stay among them for more than four hours at a time, I am not allowed to use any technological products in front of them other than my clothes, including cameras, tape recorders, computers, and even writing on artificial paper with artificial pens: I am not even allowed to observe them without their knowledge.

In short: I can't tell you how the Pickniños reproduce because they chose not to do it in front of me.

Of course your research will be jeopardized! Of course our conclusions about pigs will be absurd! If we were forced to observe your university under the same restrictions as we observe the indigenous Lusitanian people, we would undoubtedly conclude that humans do not reproduce, do not form families by kinship, and that the entire life cycle is used to complete the metamorphosis from new students to old professors. We might even speculate that professors have a compelling power in human society. An effective investigation will quickly reveal the error of these conclusions - but in the case of the pig people, effective investigation is not allowed, not even to even think about it.

Anthropology is never an exact science; But these are the natural limitations inherent in the discipline. What hinders us, and hinders you through us, is artificial limitations. At the current state of work, we should probably send a questionnaire to the Pickniños and wait for them to throw back their academic papers as a response.

——

Jo?ofigueiraalvarez, (note: Pippo's full name) reply to Professor Petro Getarini, University of Illuria Aspira Sicily, Milano, Posthumous Publication in Interracial Studies, 22:4:49:193

News of Pippo's death isn't just locally important. It is transmitted instantly to all the worlds via Ansebo. The first alien species discovered after Ender's xenomorph extinction tortured the man assigned to observe them. Within hours, academics, scientists, politicians, and journalists began to speak out.

A unanimous conclusion was quickly reached. A fortuitous event against a confusing backdrop does not justify the failure of the Star Path Council's policy towards the Pig Clan. On the contrary, the fact that only one person died seems to justify the policy of near-inaction now. Therefore, we should do nothing but continue to observe in a gentler way. Pippo's successors were instructed to visit the pigs at most once every other day, never more than an hour at a time. He must not urge the pigs to answer their questions about what they should do with Pippo. It is an enhanced version of the old policy of inaction.

There is a lot of concern for the mental state of the Lusitanian people. The Ansebo free land was used to send them a lot of new entertainment to help them take their attention away from the horrific murder.

Then, having done what a stranger could do, the people of the Great Hundred returned to their local affairs. After all, they are light-years from Lusitania.

Outside of Lusitania, only one of the 500 billion humans in the world felt that the death of Jo?ofigueiraalvarez, commonly known as Pippo, had changed his life dramatically. Andrew Vikin is the capital of Reykjavík. It is borrowed here as the name of an alien city. The Dead Speak of the Dead in the university town, a city known as the inheritor of Nordic culture, perched on a steep hillside on the edge of a knife-edged fjord that runs through the frozen Trondheim World Equator. It's spring, the snow is melting, and the fragile flowers and plants are chasing the heat in the shining sun. Andrew sat on a sunny ridge, surrounded by a dozen students studying the history of interstellar colonization, half-heartedly listening to a fiery debate about whether a total human victory in the Zerg War constituted a necessary prerequisite for the expansion of the Zerg Race. This argument quickly degenerates into an insult at Ender, the humanoid monster who commanded Starfleet to commit the crime of exterminating the Zerg. In a way, Andrew tends to let his mind wander, a topic that he doesn't really hate, but he doesn't intend to let it attract his attention either.

At this time, the jewel-like microcomputer built into his ear told him about the tragic death of Pippo, an alien racist in Lusitania, which immediately caught Andrew's attention. He interrupted his students.

"What do you know about the pigs?" he asked.

"They are our only hope of salvation," said one student, who was more influenced by Calvinism than by Lutheranism. (Note: Calvinism and Lutheranism are the two major denominations of Protestant Christianity, and Calvinism is more demanding and cumbersome.) ）

Andrew immediately looked at the student Prikte, who knew that she could not stand such mystical arguments. "They do not exist for any human purpose, not even salvation. Prikte said with extreme contempt. "They are true xenomorphs (note: the original text "raman", made up of ra+man. ), like the Zerg. ”

Andrew nodded, but frowned again. "You're using a word that's not yet a lingua franca. ”

"It should be," Prikte said. "It is time for everyone in Trondheim, every Norse in the world to read the history of Trondheim's Wutan of Demosthenes. ”

"We should, but we don't," one student sighed.

"Stop her from swaggering and talking about people," said another. "Prikte is the only one I know of who can swagger while sitting (note: "" is a pun intended, and it means "swaggering" and "swaggering" at the same time. ). ”

Prikte closed her eyes. "The Norse language divides non-tribal creatures into four classes. The first class is called strangers, or outsiders (note: utl?nning, ut+lan+ing, people who live in other places), strangers who we think belong to our world, but belong to another city or country. The second class is framling—the word Demosthenes simply changed from the Old Norse word fr?mling. This is a stranger who we recognize as human beings, but belong to another world. The third is xenomorphism, which we admit to being human beings, but strangers belonging to other races. The fourth is a true alien, xenobiotic, which includes all animals and cannot communicate with them. They are alive, but we can't guess the motives or reasons for their actions. They may be intellectual, they may be self-aware, but we can't know for sure. ”

Andrew noticed that some of the students were irritated. He made them aware of it. "You think you're annoyed by Prikte's arrogant attitude, but that's not the case. Prikte wasn't arrogant; You are only ashamed that you have not read the history of your own people in Demosthenes, so you are annoyed with Prictus in shame because of your sins she did not. ”

"I thought it was said that people don't believe in the concept of sin. The speaker is an atheistic organization, so students have this question. What about it. An angry boy said.

Andrew smiled. "You believe, Sdelka, and your actions are driven by that belief. So original sin is real to you, and to understand you, the speaker must believe sin. ”

Sdelka refused to throw in the towel. "What do these conversations about aliens, aliens, aliens, and aliens have to do with Ender's xenoextinction?"

Andrew turned to Prikte. She thought for a moment. "It has to do with the stupid argument we just had. From these Norse classifications of the living, we can see that Ender was not really an xenoexterminist, because when he destroyed the Zerg, we only saw them as xenobiotics, and it was not until many years later, when the first deceased said that the Worm Queen and the Overlord, humans first learned that the bugs were not xenobiotic at all, but xenogeneous, and there was no understanding among the Zerg before. ”

"Xenoextinction is xenoextinction," Sdelka said. "Because Ender doesn't know they're alien, that doesn't make them survive a few. ”

Andrew lamented Sdelka's unforgiving attitude, which prevailed among Calvinists in Reykjavík in judging good and evil without regard to people's motives. There is good and evil in action, they say, and since the deceased said that the only creed of the people is that good and evil are entirely about motives rather than actions, students like Sdelka are quite hostile to Andrew. Luckily, Andrew isn't averse to this attitude – he understands the motivation behind it.

"Sdelka, Prikte, let me give you another example. Imagine that the pigs—who have learned the language of the stars, and some of their languages have learned—imagine that we find them, unexplained, unprovoked, and suddenly condemned to death by the alien scientists who have been sent to observe them. ”

Prikte quickly grasped the gist of the question. "How do we know there's no anger here? What seems harmless to us may be intolerable to them. ”

Andrew smiled. "Even so. But the alien didn't hurt them in any way, he didn't speak much, he didn't cost them anything—he didn't deserve to die in agony by any of the standards we can think of. Does this incredible murder mean that the pigs are xenogenesis and not xenospecies?"

This time it was Sdelka who spoke quickly. "Murder is murder. This discussion of xenogenesis or xenogeneia is meaningless. If the pigs murder, then they are evil, just as the Zerg are evil. If the act is evil, then the actor is evil. ”

Andrew nodded. "That's where our dilemma lies. That's where the trouble is. Is this an evil act?or, somehow, at least for the pigs, a good deed?is the pigs alien or alien? Sdalka, be quiet for a moment. I am fully aware of the Calvinist dogma you are arguing with, but even John Calvin would call your dogma stupid. ”

"How do you know how Calvin will be—"

"Because he's dead," Andrew cried, "so I have the right to speak on his behalf!"

The students laughed, and Sdelka was stubbornly silent. Andrew knew that the boy was very smart, and that he would abandon his Calvinist faith before his college education was completed, even though the disappearance of his faith would be a long and painful process.

"Talman (Note: Norse. "Wise man", "spokesman"), speaks man," said Prikte. "You speak as if your assumption is true, as if the pigs really killed the alien scientists. ”

Andrew nodded heavily. "Yes, it's true".

This is unpleasant; it stirs up echoes of conflict between the ancient wormmen.

"Now, look inside yourselves," Andrew said. "You will find that underneath your hatred of Ender the Xenoexterminator and your grief over the death of the Zerg there are much uglier feelings: your fear of strangers, strangers or aliens. When you think he killed someone you know and respect, it doesn't matter what he looks like. Now he's alien, or worse, Degas, the terrible beast that haunts the night with its mouth wide open. If the only gun in your village is in your hand, and the beasts that have torn apart one of your compatriots come again, will you stop and ask yourself if they have the right to live, or will they take action to save your village, the people you know, the people who depend on you?"

"According to your arguments, we should kill those naïve and helpless pig Ro now?" called Sdelka.

"My argument? I asked a question. A question is not an argument, unless you think you know my answer, and I promise, Sdelka, you don't know. Think about it. Class. ”

"Shall we discuss this tomorrow?" they asked.

"If you will. Andrew said. But he knew that if they discussed, he wouldn't be involved. For them, the argument about Ender the Xenoexterminator is only philosophical. After all, the Zerg War was 3,000 years ago: now it was 1948 CE from the creation of the Galactic Codex, and Ender destroyed the Zerg in 1180 BC. But for Andrew, things are not so far away. His interstellar travels lasted longer than any of his students could imagine, and he had never been on any planet for more than six months since he was twenty-five years old before arriving on Trondheim. Traveling at the speed of light between worlds allows him to leap forward like a stone flake on the water of time. His students did not know that their deceased speaker, who was certainly not yet thirty-five years old, had very vivid memories of the events of 3,000 years ago—in fact, they were only twenty years before him, half of his life. They didn't know how the question of Ender's ancient crimes had tormented him deeply, and how he had answered it in a thousand ways, but none of them satisfied him. They only knew that their teacher was the Speaker of the Dead, and they did not know that when he was a baby, his sister, Valentine, could not pronounce Andrew's name, so she called him Ender, the name that was notorious before he was fifteen. So, let the unforgivable Sdelka and the analytic Prixta ponder the big question of Ender's crimes, and for Andrew Wiggin, the man of the dead, this is not an academic question.

And now, walking along a damp grassy slope in the cold air, Ender, Andrew, the Speaker, is thinking about the pigs, who have committed an unjustified murder, similar to what the Zerg did when they first visited the humans. Is it some kind of inevitable thing that when strangers meet, the meeting will inevitably be bloodied? The Zerg kill humans by accident, but only because they have a swarm mind, and for them, the value of individual life is like a finger, and killing one or two people is just their way of letting us know that they are next to them. Do pigs also kill humans for the same reason?

But the voice in his ears mentions torture, the same ritual murder as the execution of a member of the Pig Clan itself. The pigs don't have a swarm mentality, they're not zergs, so Ander Viggin must know why they do it. (Note: The Zerg society is similar to that of bees.) The English name of the queen is "hivequeen", "queen of the swarm", which also hints at her ethnic surname. This translation is made for the sake of brevity and considering that their family names are buggers. ）

"When did you hear about the death of that alien scientist?"

Ender turned. It's Prikte. She did not go back to the cave where the students lived, but followed him.

"That's when it was. When we speak. He touched his ear, and implantable terminals are worth a lot of money, but they are not unusual.

"I just checked the news before class. There were no reports of this at the time. If an important message comes through Ansebo, there will be a side message that will be brought to attention. Unless you're the one you received directly from the Ansebo report. ”

Prikte apparently thinks she's in touch with a secret. And in fact, it is. "Saying that people have high-priority access to public information," he said.

"Has anyone asked you to speak for a dead xenographer?"

He shook his head. "Lusitania belongs to the Catholic concession. ”

"That's what I'm trying to say," she said, "where they don't have their own speakers." But if someone asks for it, they still have to let a speaker in. And Trondheim is the closest world to Lusitania. ”

"No one calls to speak. ”

Prikte tugged at his sleeve hard. "Why are you here?"

"You know why I'm here. I'm going to talk about Wu Tan's death. ”

"I know you're here with your sister Valentine. She's a much more popular teacher than you are – she answers questions with answers, while you answer with more questions. ”

That's because she knows some of the answers. ”

"Tell me, you have to tell me. I'll try to get to know you - I'm curious. For example, your name, where you come from, everything is kept secret. It's so secret that I can't even find out what level of access it is. God Himself does not have access to your files. ”

Ender grabbed her shoulders and looked down into her eyes. "It doesn't matter what level of access you have. ”

"You're more important than others guess, talk about people," she said. "Ansebo reported it to you, before it reported it to anyone else, didn't it? And no one could see what was going on about you. ”

"No one has ever tried. Why are you?"

"I want to be a talker. She said.

"Then do it. The computer will train you. It's different from religion – you don't have to memorize any doctrinal questions. Now I'm left to myself. He gently pushed her away. She staggered back, and he strode away.

"I want to speak for you," she cried.

"I'm not dead yet!" he called back.

"I know you're going to Lusitania! I know you want to!"

Then you know more than I do, Ander said silently. But he shivered as he walked, despite the twinkling sun and the fact that he wore a three-tiered sweater to protect against the cold. He didn't know that Prikte had such a lot of feelings in his heart. She was clearly here to get involved with him. The girl was so eager to ask him for something that frightened him. It had been years since he had had real contact with anyone but his sister Valentine and, of course, the dead whom he spoke for. In his life, only the dead are meaningful among others. He and Valentine were far away from them, centuries apart, several worlds.

The thought of taking root in the frozen soil of Trondheim made him cringe. What does Prikte want from him? It doesn't matter; How dare she ask him for something as if he belonged to her? Ander Viggin didn't belong to anyone. If she knew who he really was, she would hate him as an xenoexterminist, or worship him as the savior of humanity - Ender remembers how people used to see him that way. And he didn't like it. Even now, they see him only as the role he assumes, in the role of speaker, talman, falante, spieler (note: the pronoun of "speaker" in various languages. Spieler: German. "Voicer": falante, Portuguese, and talman, op. cit. Under the name of the person who speaks to the deceased in their city, country, or world.

He didn't want them to know him either. He does not belong to them, he does not belong to humanity. He has another mission; Not human. Nor the bloodthirsty pigs. At least that's what he thought.