Speaker for the Dead Chapter 6 Summary

Olhado

• The epigraph is from Libo's note. He writes that piggie stories are always about warfare and always end with the death of the hero.
• Over there where the plot is, Ender is flying on the ship, learning Portuguese (he already speaks Spanish, so its not that much of a shift) and being bored.
• He comes out of spaceflight after eight days for him… but twenty-two years have passed on Lusitania.
• Five days after he left (22 years ago), Novinha canceled her call for a Speaker.
• But Novinha's daughter Ela called for a speaker several weeks earlier to speak the death of her father Marcos Ribeira.
• And Novinha's son Miro called for a speaker four years earlier to speak the death of Libo, who it turns out was also killed by the piggies.
• So it's all good then, except for the everybody-dying part. Speaker for the Dead is a kind of ghoulish profession.
• After Libo died, Starways cut back on contact, but Libo's daughter Ouanda refused, and there was no majority for censuring her.
• Miro was also apprenticed to Libo and is also working with the piggies.
• The Hive Queen likes the world and is in mental communication with something or other, maybe the piggies, maybe not.
• We're on the planet now, with Novinha's children, of which there are a lot.
• They're listening to Bishop Peregrino in church. The kids are Ela (who called for the Speaker), Quim, who is super into being Catholic, and Grego, who is a mischief-maker.
• There's also Olhado, who has electronic eyes.
• Ela is glad her dad is dead, but still angry at him because he poisoned all their lives.
• The Bishop is talking about how evil speakers for the dead are, and Ela realizes that a speaker is coming now, though she thought her call would take twenty-two years to answer. She is not happy about this.
• Meanwhile, Mayor Bosquinha has picked up Ender. They chat, but she doesn't want to talk about the piggies.
• Ender reveals that he spoke the death of the founder of the Filhos de Mente and helped get him sainted. The Mayor is surprised; she hasn't yet figured out that Ender is the protagonist and is super cool in every way.
• They give Ender a little hut since there's not much call for hotels out here in the middle of space.
• The Hive Queen is really certain that this is her new home, which freaks Ender out a little.
• She says it's easy to talk to whatever it is she's talking to.
• (The Hive Queen thinks philotically, which means on the ansible wavelength. The technical term for this is "sci-fi pseudoscience gibberish.")
• The Hive Queen fades out, Jane fades in. Got to give Ender someone to talk to.
• Jane tells him about the town and the fence that keeps the piggies out or humans in, depending on how you look at it.
• Ender asks Jane to get him more information about lots of things then goes to find the Ribeiras
• No one will point him to the Ribeiras's house; the Bishop has scared them all.
• But he eventually stumbles upon a boy with metal eyes, who says he'll take him. Then it turns out that this is Olhado, Novinha's fourth child, and he's there with Quara, his younger sister.
• We switch to Miro outside the fence; he's chatting with a piggie named Leaf-eater who wants Miro to bring the Speaker to the piggies.
• Miro says he will but needs to make sure it's safe first.
• Leaf-Eater is impatient and Miro thinks he's hostile; he prefers the Piggie named Human.
• Miro sees through the fence that Olhado and Quara are bringing the Speaker. He's worried that the Speaker will tell his mom, Novinha, that Miro called the Speaker (because Miro doesn't know that his mom called the Speaker originally).