Ender in exile

CHAPTER 11

To: vwiggin%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy ==PosIDreq

From: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

Subj: How clean is your desk?

My desk is completely tamper-proof — though the ship's computer tries to install snoops many times a day. Also, I'm assuming every room, corridor, toilet, and cupboard on this ship is wired at least for sound. On a voyage like this, with no outsider force to buttress the captain's authority, the danger of mutiny is ever present, and it is not paranoia for Morgan to monitor all conversations of people he thinks pose a danger to the ship's internal security.

It is unfortunate but predictable that he would regard me as such a danger. I have authority that does not depend in any way on him or his good wishes. His threat to have me put in stasis and returned to Eros — eighty years from now — is one that he can, in fact, carry out, and even though he might be censured it would not be regarded as a criminal act. There is a strong presumption that the captain of a ship is always to be believed when he makes a charge of mutiny or conspiracy. It is dangerous for me even to encrypt this message. However, there is no other safe way for us to talk. (You'll notice that unlike Peter, I required proof that you be alive, not just your finger inserted into holospace.)

I am doing things that are certainly driving Quincy crazy. I get almost daily (monthly) messages from Acting Governor Kolmogorov, keeping me abreast of events in Shakespeare Colony as they transpire. Morgan has no idea what we say to each other; he simply has to pass along the encrypted notes when they come through the ansible.

I also get all the scientific papers and reports filed by the chem and bio teams. XB Sel Menach is the Linnaeus and Darwin of this planet. He is facing the ONLY non-formic-homeworld biota yet discovered (besides Earth's, of course), and he has done a brilliant job of making the genetic adaptations that create human-edible varieties of native plants and animals, and varieties of Earth species that can thrive on this world. Without him, we would probably be coming to a ragged and destitute colony; instead, they generate surpluses of food and will be able to resupply this ship for immediate departure (inshallah).

All of this scientific information is available to Admiral Morgan, if he's interested. He seems not to be. I am the only person who is accessing the Shakespeare Colony XB papers on this ship, since our XBs are in stasis and won't wake up until we drop from relativistic speeds.

You can see why I chose not to go into stasis — I had visions of Admiral Morgan not bothering to rouse me until he was firmly in control of the colony, say six months after arrival. It wouldn't have been within his rights, but it would certainly have been in his power. And who is to contradict him, with his forty marines whose sole duty is to make sure his will is uncontested, and a crew whose survival and freedom are tied to his pleasure?

Now, though, anything I do is a potential provocation — that's what he made very clear with his actions and threats. I don't think that was his purpose — I think he really believed he was facing some kind of attack. But he was too hasty to leap to the conclusion that I was responsible for it, and he was paranoid enough to try to resolve it as if it were an attack on his authority, rather than on the ship itself. We are on notice, and not a word can pass between us that mocks him, denigrates him, or questions his decisions.

Nor can we trust anyone else. While Governor Kolmogorov is completely in my confidence (and vice versa), no one else on the planet can be trusted to agree that having a fifteen-year-old boy as their governor is a good idea. Therefore I can take no preemptive actions using my future authority as governor. So my only alternative is to appear as if I really look up to Quincy in a fatherly way, and intend to be guided by him in every way. When you see me sucking up shamelessly, it is the moral equivalent of war. I am passing an army under his nose, masquerading as a bunch of simple farmers. That you and I are the entire army is not a problem for me — as long as you're willing to pretend to be all innocence. You and Peter were doing that for years, weren't you?

This letter is not going to be followed by many others — only in a real emergency. I don't want him wondering what we're saying to each other. He has the right to seize our desks and force us to disclose all contents. Therefore, you will eradicate this message, as will I. Of course, I AM taking the precaution of copying it, fully secure, to Graff. In case there is someday a court martial determining whether Morgan was right to put me in stasis and take me back to Eros, I want this to be available as evidence of my state of mind after our little incident over Peter's message.

There is always the chance, however, that Morgan's plan is even more dire — that he plans to send the ship back rather than taking it, while he remains on Shakespeare as governor-for-life. By the time anyone from Eros can be sent to put down his rebellion, he will have finished out his lifespan or be so old as to be not worth prosecuting.

However, I do not believe that is in his character. He is a creature of bureaucracy — he wants supremacy, not autonomy. Also, my judgment of him so far is that he can only do perfidious acts that he can morally justify in his own mind. Thus he must work himself into a frenzy over my supposed sabotage of ansible communications in order to justify what would have amounted to a coup d'etat against me as governor.

This only refers to what he consciously plans, not what he unconsciously desires. That is, he will think that he is responding to events as they unfold, but in fact he will be interpreting events to justify actions that he wants to take — even though he does not know he wants to take them. Thus when we arrive on Shakespeare, there is always the chance that he will find there's an «emergency» that requires him to stay longer than the ship can stay, «forcing» him to send it back and remain behind.

The need to understand Quincy is why I am remaining so close to the Toscanos. The mother is clearly betting on Quincy rather than me as the future power, though in her mind she is no doubt merely hedging her bets, to make sure that no matter who governs, either she or her daughter will be married to the powerful figure.

But the mother has no intention of letting her daughter out from under her thumb, as she would be if we married and I actually become governor in fact as well as name. So, deliberately or not, the mother will be my enemy in this; however, at present she is my best guide to Quincy's state of mind, since she is with him as often as possible. I must get to know this man. Our future depends on knowing what he is going to do before he does it.

Meanwhile, you have no idea what a relief it is to me that there is someone who shares this with me. In all my years in Battle School, the closest I came to having a confidant was Bean. Yet I could only burden him up to a certain point; this letter is my first exercise in genuine candor since I talked to you on the lake in North Carolina so long ago.

Oh, wait. It was only three years. Less? Time is so confusing. Thank you for being with me, Valentine. I only hope that I can keep it from being a meaningless exercise that takes us back to Eros in stasis, with eighty years of human history gone and absolutely nothing accomplished except my being defeated by a bureaucrat.

Ender

What Virlomi hadn't counted on was the way it would affect her, returning to Battle School after all that she had been through, all that she had done.

She turned herself over to her enemies when she could see there was nothing left to the war but slaughter. She knew with a sinking desperation in her heart that it was all her fault. She had been warned, by friends and would-be friends: This is too much. It was enough to drive the Chinese out of India and liberate your homeland. Don't seek to punish them.

She had been the same kind of fool that Napoleon and Hitler and Xerxes and Hannibal had been: She thought that because she had never been defeated, she could not be. She had bested enemies with far greater strength than hers; she thought she always would.

Worst of all, she told herself, I believed my own legend. I had deliberately cultivated the notion of myself as goddess, but at first I remembered that I was pretending.

In the end, it was the Free People of Earth — the FPE, Peter Wiggin's Hegemony under a new name — that defeated her. It was Suriyawong, a Thai from Battle School who had once loved her, who arranged her surrender. At first she refused — but she could see that the only difference between surrendering now and waiting until all her men had died was her pride. And her pride was not worth the life of a single soldier.

"Satyagraha," Suriyawong said to her. "Bear what must be born."

Satyagraha was her final cry to her people. I command you to live and bear this.

So she saved the life of her armies and surrendered her own body to Suriyawong. And, through him, to Peter Wiggin.

Wiggin, who had shown mercy to her in his victory. That was more than his little brother, the legendary Ender, had shown to the formics. Had they, too, seen in him the hand of death, repudiating them? Had they any gods, to pray to or resign themselves to or curse as they saw their destruction? Perhaps they had it easier, to be obliterated from the universe.

Virlomi remained alive. They could not kill her — she was still worshiped throughout India; if they executed her or imprisoned her, India would be a continuous revolution, impossible to govern. If she simply disappeared, she would become a legend of the goddess who left and would someday return.

So she made the vids they asked her to make. She begged her people to vote to freely join the Free People of Earth, to accept the rule of the Hegemon, to demobilize and dismantle their army, and in return, to have the freedom to govern themselves.

Han Tzu did the same for China, and Alai, once her husband until she betrayed him, did so for the Muslim world. More or less, it worked.

All of them accepted exile. But Virlomi knew that only she deserved it.

Their exile consisted of being made governors of colonies. Ah, if only I had been appointed when Ender Wiggin was, and had never returned to Earth to shed so much blood! Yet it was only because she had so spectacularly won India's freedom from an overwhelming Chinese army, had united an ununitable country, that she was deemed capable of governing. Only because of the monstrous things I did, she thought, am I being entrusted with the foundation of a new world.

In her captivity on Earth — months spent in Thai and then Brazilian custody, watched over but never mistreated — she had begun to chafe and wish she could leave the planet and begin her new life.

What she hadn't counted on was that the new staging area was the space station that once was Battle School.

It was like waking up from a vivid dream and finding herself in the place of her childhood. The corridors were unchanged; the color-coded lights along the walls still did their service, guiding colonists to their dormitories. The barracks had been changed, of course — the colonists were not going to put up with the crowding and regimentation that the Battle School students had endured. Nor was there any nonsense about a game in zero gee. If the battleroom was being used for anything, they didn't tell her.

But the mess halls were there, both the officers' and soldiers' — though she ate now in the one that she had never entered as a student, the teachers' dining room. Her own colonists were not allowed there; it was her place of refuge from them. In their place, she was surrounded by Graff's people of the Ministry of Colonization. They were discreet, leaving her alone, which she was grateful for; they were aloof, keeping away from her, which she resented. Opposite responses, opposite assumptions about their motives; she knew they were being kind but it still hurt as if she were a leper, kept apart. If she wanted friendship, she could probably have it; they were probably waiting for her to let them know whether she would welcome their conversation. She longed for human company. But she never crossed the short space between her table and anyone else's. She ate alone. Because she did not believe she merited any human society.

What galled her was the worshipful way the colonists treated her. When she had been a student in Battle School, she was merely ordinary. Being a girl made her different, and she had to struggle to hold her own — but she was no Ender Wiggin, no legend. She wasn't much of a leader. That would come later, when she was back in India, with people she understood, blood of her blood.

The problem was that these colonists were overwhelmingly Indian. They had volunteered for the colonization program precisely because Virlomi would be the governor of the colony — several of them told her that they had competed in a lottery for the chance to come. When she went among them, to talk to them, get to know them, she found it nearly futile. They were in such awe of her they became tongue-tied, or when they managed to speak, their words were so formal, their language so lofty, that there was no chance of real communication.

They all acted as if they thought they were talking to a goddess.

I did my work too well during the war, she told herself. To Indians, defeat was not a sign of the disfavor of the gods. What mattered was how she bore it. And she could not help it — she kept her dignity, and to them she seemed godlike because of it.

Maybe this will make it easier to govern them. Or maybe it will make the day of their disillusionment a terrible thing to behold.

A group of colonists from Hyderabad came to her with a petition. "The planet has been named Ganges, for the holy river," they said, "and that is right. But can we not also remember the many of us from the south? We speak Telugu, not Hindi or Urdu. Can we not have a part of this new colony that belongs to us?"

Virlomi answered them in fluent Telugu — she had learned it because she could not have fully united India if she spoke only Hindi and English — and told them that she would do what the colonists allowed her to do.

It was the first test of her leadership. She went among the people and asked them, dormitory by dormitory, whether they would accept naming the village they would build in the new world "Andhra," after the province whose capital was Hyderabad.

Everyone agreed with her proposal instantly. The world would be named Ganges, but the first village would be Andhra.

"Our language must be Common," she said. "This breaks my heart, to submerge the beautiful languages of India, but we must all be able to speak to each other with one voice, one language. Your children must learn Common in their homes, as the first language. You may also teach them Hindi or Telugu or any other language, but Common first."

"The language of the Raj," said one old man. Immediately the other colonists shouted at him to be respectful to Virlomi.

But Virlomi only laughed. "Yes," she said. "The language of the Raj. Conquered once by the British, and again by the Hegemony. But it is the language we all have in common. We of India because the British ruled us for so long, and then we did so much business with America; the non-Indians because it is a requirement to speak Common or you cannot come on this voyage."

The old man laughed with her. "So you remember," he said. "We have a longer history with this so-called 'Common' than anyone but the English and the Americans themselves."

"We have always been able to learn the languages of our conquerors and then make them our own. Our literature becomes their literature, and theirs becomes ours. We speak it our own way, and think our own thoughts behind their words. We are who we are. Nothing changes."

This was how she spoke to the Indian colonists. But there were others, about a fifth of the colonists, who were not from India. Some had chosen her because she was famous, and her struggle for freedom had captured their imagination. She was the creator of the Great Wall of India, after all, and so they thought of her as a celebrity and sought after her for that reason.

But there were others who were assigned to Ganges Colony by the luck of the draw. It was Graff's decision, to allow no more than four-fifths of the colonists to come from India. His memo had been concise: "There may come a day when colonies can be founded by one group alone. But the law of these first colonies is that all humans are equal citizens. We are taking a risk letting you have so many Indians. Only the political realities in India made me bend from the normal policy of no more than one-fifth from any one nation. As it is, we have now demands from Kenyans and Darfurians and Kurds and Quechua speakers and Mayans and other groups that feel the need for a homeland that is exclusively their own. Since we're giving one to Virlomi's Indians, why not to them? Do they need to fight a bloody war in order to. etc., etc. That is why I have to be able to point to the twenty percent who are not Indian, and why I need to know that you will in fact make them equal citizens."

Yes, yes, Colonel Graff, you will have it all your way. Even after we arrive on Ganges and you are lightyears away and can no longer influence what we do, I will keep my word to you and encourage intermarriage and equal treatment and will insist on English — pardon me, Common — as the language of all.

But despite my best efforts, the twenty percent will be swallowed up. In six generations, five generations, three perhaps, visitors will come to Ganges and find blond and redheaded Indians, freckled white skins and ebony black skins, African faces and Chinese faces and yet they will all say, "I am Indian," and treat you with scorn if you insist that they are not.

Indian culture is too strong for anyone to control. I ruled India by bowing to Indian ways, by fulfilling Indian dreams. Now I will lead Ganges Colony — the village of Andhra — by teaching the Indians to pretend to be tolerant of the others, even as they befriend them and bring them inside our ways. They will soon realize that on this strange new world, we Indians will be the natives, and the others the interlopers, until they "go native" and become part of us. It can't be helped. This is human nature combined with Indian stubbornness and patience.

Still, Virlomi made it a point of reaching out to the non-Indians here in Battle School — here on the Way Station.

They accepted her well enough. Now her fluency in Battle School Common and its slang stood her in good stead. After the war, Battle School slang had caught on with children all over the world, and she was fluent in it. It intrigued the children and young people, and amused the adults. It made her more approachable to them, not so much of a celebrity.

In the barracks — no, the dormitory — that used to be for newly arrived students — launchies, as they were called — there was one woman with a babe in arms who remained steadfastly aloof. Virlomi was content with that — she didn't have to be everyone's favorite person — but soon it became clear, as she visited that barracks more and more, that Nichelle Firth was not just shy or aloof, she was actively hostile.

Virlomi became fascinated by her and tried to find out more about her. But the biography in her file was so sparse that it made Virlomi suspect it was bogus; there were several like that, belonging to people who were joining the colony specifically to leave all their past, even their identity, behind them.

There was no talking to the woman directly, however. Her face became a pleasant blank and she answered succinctly or not at all; when she chose not to answer, she smiled with a set jaw, so that despite the toothy grin Virlomi was aware of the anger behind it. She did not push the matter further.

But she did watch for Nichelle's reactions to things Virlomi and others said when Nichelle was within earshot, but not part of the group. What seemed to set her off, what made her huffy in her body language, was any mention of the Hegemony or Peter Wiggin or the wars on Earth or the Free People of Earth or the Ministry of Colonization. Also the names of Ender Wiggin, Graff, Suriyawong, and, above all, Julian Delphiki — «Bean» — seemed to make her hold tightly to her baby and start to whisper some sort of incantation to the child.

Virlomi introduced some of these names herself, as a test. Nichelle Firth was certainly not someone who had taken part in the war in any way — her picture got no response from Peter's staff when she sent an inquiry. Yet she seemed to take the events of recent history quite personally.

Only toward the end of the preparation period did it occur to her to try one other name. She worked it into a conversation with a pair of Belgians, but made sure they were near enough to Nichelle that she could hear them. "Achilles Flandres," she said, referring to him as the most famous Belgian in recent history. Of course they were offended and denied that he was really Belgian, but while she was smoothing things over with them, she was also watching Nichelle.

Her reaction was strong, yes, and at first glance seemed to be the same as always — hold the baby close, nuzzle it, speak to it.

But then Virlomi realized: She was not stiff. She was not huffy. Instead she was tender with the child. She was gentle and seemed happy. She was smiling.

And she was whispering the name "Achilles Flandres" over and over.

This was so disturbing that Virlomi wanted to go over to her and scream at her: How dare you venerate the name of that monster!

But she was too keenly aware of her own monstrous deeds. There were differences between her and Achilles, yes, but there were similarities, too, and it was not wise of her to condemn him too vehemently. So the woman felt some affinity for him. What of that?

Virlomi left the barracks then and searched again. No record of Achilles ever being in a place where he might have met this definitely American woman. Virlomi could not imagine her speaking French, not even badly. She didn't seem educated enough — like most Americans, she would have only the one language, spoken raggedly but loudly. The baby could not possibly be Achilles'.

But she had to check. The woman's behavior pointed so clearly toward that possibility.

She did not allow Firth mother-and-child to go into stasis and be stowed on the ship until she got back the results of a comparison between the baby's genetic print and the records of Achilles Flandres's genes.

No match. He could not possibly be the father.

All right then, thought Virlomi. The woman is strange. She'll be a problem. But not one that can't be handled with time. Far away from Earth, whatever it was that made her such a devotee of the monster will fade. She will accept the pressure of the friendship of others.

Or she won't, and then her offense will be self-punishing, as she earns ostracism from those whose friendship she refused. Either way, Virlomi would deal with it. How much trouble can one woman be, out of thousands of colonists? It's not as if Nichelle Firth was any kind of leader. No one would follow her. She would amount to nothing.

Virlomi gave orders clearing the Firths for stasis. But because of the delay, they were still there when Graff came in person to speak to those who were going to be awake during the voyage. It was only about a hundred colonists — most of them preferred the sleeping option — and Graff's job was to make clear to them that it was the ship's captain who ruled absolutely, and to impress on them the captain's almost unlimited powers of punishment. "You will do whatever you are asked to do by a crew member, and you will do it instantly."

"Or what?" asked someone.

Graff did not take umbrage — the voice sounded more frightened than challenging. "The captain's power extends to life and death. Depending on the seriousness of the infraction. And he is the sole judge of how serious your offense is. There are no appeals. Am I clear?"

Everyone understood. A few of them even took the last-minute option to travel in stasis — not because they intended to mutiny, but because they didn't like the idea of being cooped up for years with someone who had that kind of power over them.

When the meeting ended, there was a tremendous amount of noise and bustle, as some headed for the table where last-minute stasis could be arranged, and others headed for their dormitories, and a few gathered around Graff — the celebrity hounds, of course, since he was almost as famous, in his own way, as Virlomi, and he hadn't been available till now.

Virlomi was making her way to the stasis sign-up table when she heard a loud noise — many gasps and exclamations at once — from the people around Graff. She looked over but couldn't see what was going on. Graff was just standing there, smiling at somebody, and seemed perfectly normal. Only the glances — glares, really — of a few of the bystanders drew her eye to the woman huffing her way out of the room, clearly coming from Graff's little crowd.

It was Nichelle Firth, of course, holding her dear little infant Randall.

Well, whatever she had done, apparently it didn't bother Graff, though it bothered other people.

Still, it was a worry that Nichelle had sought out an opportunity to confront Graff. Her hostility led to action; bad news.

Why hasn't she been openly hostile to me? I'm just as famous as.

Famous, but why? Because the Hegemony defeated me and took me into captivity. And the enemies arrayed against me? Suriyawong. Peter Wiggin. The whole civilized world along with them. Pretty much the same list that opposed and hated Achilles Flandres.

No wonder she volunteered for my colony, and not one of the others. She thinks that I'm a kindred soul, having been beaten by the same foes. She doesn't understand — or at least she didn't when she signed up for my colony — that I agree with those who defeated me, that I was wrong and needed to be stopped. I am not Achilles. I am not like Achilles.

If the goddess wanted to punish Virlomi for having impersonated her to gain power and unite India, there would be no surer way than this: to have everyone think she was like Achilles — and like her for it.

Fortunately, Nichelle Firth was only one person, and nobody liked her because she liked nobody. Whatever her opinions were, they would not affect Virlomi.

I keep reassuring myself of that, thought Virlomi. Does that mean that in the deepest recesses of my mind, this woman's strange opinions are already affecting me?

Of course it does.

Satyagraha. This, too, I will bear.