Page 353 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Marc o!" said Navio. "You couldn't possibly have been summoned to Speak his death, he only passed away a few weeks ago--"
"I have been asked to Speak several deaths, Dom Navio, and I choose to begin with Marc o's."
Navio grimaced. "What if I ask for proof of your authority?" Jane whispered in Ender's ear. "Let's dazzle the dear boy." Immediately, Navio's terminal came alive with official documents, while one of Jane's most authoritative voices declared, "Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead, has accepted the call for an explanation of the life and death of Marcos Maria Ribeira, of the city of Milagre, Lusitania Colony."
It was not the document that impressed Navio, however. It was the fact that he had not actually made the request, or even logged on to his terminal. Navio knew at once that the computer had been activated through the jewel in the Speaker's ear, but it meant that a very high-level logic routine was shadowing the Speaker and enforcing compliance with his requests. No one on Lusitania, not even Bosquinha herself, had ever had authority to do that. Whatever this Speaker was, Navio concluded, he's a bigger fish than even Bishop Peregrino can hope to fry.
"All right," Navio said, forcing a laugh. Now, apparently, he remembered how to be jovial again. "I meant to help you anyway-- the Bishop's paranoia doesn't afflict everyone in Milagre, you know."
Ender smiled back at him, taking his hypocrisy at face value.
"Marcos Ribeira died of a congenital defect." He rattled off a long pseudo-Latin name. "You've never heard of it because it's quite rare, and is passed on only through the genes. Beginning at the onset of puberty, in most cases, it involves the gradual replacement of exocrine and endocrine glandular tissues with lipidous cells. What that means is that bit by bit over the years, the adrenal glands, the pituitary, the liver, the testes, the thyroid, and so on, are all replaced by large agglomerations of fat cells."
"Always fatal? Irreversible?"
"Oh, yes. Actually, Marc o survived ten years longer than usual. His case was remarkable in several ways. In every other recorded case-- and admittedly there aren't that many-- the disease attacks the testicles first, rendering the victim sterile and, in most cases, impotent. With six healthy children, it's obvious that Marcos Ribeira's testes were the last of his glands to be affected. Once they were attacked, however, progress must have been unusually fast-- the testes were completely replaced with fat cells, even though much of his liver and thyroid were still functioning."
"What killed him in the end?"
"The pituitary and the adrenals weren't functioning. He was a walking dead man. He just fell down in one of the bars, in the middle of some ribald song, as I heard."