Ender in exile

CHAPTER 12

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Strange encounter

Dear Ender,

Yes, I'm still alive. I've been going into stasis for ten months out of each year so that I can see this project through. This is only possible because I have a staff that I literally trust with my life. Actuarial tables suggest that I will still be alive when you reach Shakespeare.

I'm writing to you now, however, because you were close to Bean. I have attached documentation concerning his genetic illness. We know now that Bean's real name was Julian Delphiki; he was kidnapped as a frozen embryo and was the sole survivor of an illegal genetic experiment. The alteration in his genes made him extraordinarily intelligent. Alas, it also affected his growth pattern. Very small in childhood — the Bean you knew. No growth spurt at puberty. Just a steady onward progress until death from giantism. Bean, not wishing to be hospitalized and pathetic at the end of his life, has embarked on a lightspeed voyage of exploration. He will live as long as he lives, but to all intents and purposes, he is gone from Earth and from the human race.

I don't know if anyone has told you, but Bean and Petra married. Despite Bean's fear that any children he might have would inherit his condition, they fertilized nine eggs — because they were hoaxed, alas, by a doctor who claimed he could repair the genetic malady in the children. Petra gave birth to one, but the other eight embryos were kidnapped — echoing what happened to Bean himself as an embryo — and implanted in surrogates who did not know the source of their babies. After a search both deep and wide, we found seven of the lost babies. The last was never found. Till now.

I say this because of a strange encounter earlier today. I'm at Ellis Island — our nickname for what used to be Battle School. All the colonists pass through here to be sorted out and sent on to wherever their ship is being sorted out — Eros is too far away in its orbit right now to be convenient, so we're refitting and launching the ships from closer in.

I was giving an orientation lecture, full of my usual wit and wisdom, to a group that was going to Ganges Colony. Afterward, a woman came up to me — American, by her accent — carrying a baby. She said nothing. She just spat on my shoe and walked on.

Naturally, this piqued my interest — I'm a sucker for a flirtatious woman. I looked her up. Which is to say, I had one of my friends on Earth do a thorough background check on her. It turns out that her colony name is a phony — not that unusual, and we don't care, you can be whoever you want to be, as long as you're not a child molester or serial killer. In her previous life, she was married to a grocery store assistant manager who was completely sterile. So the boy she has with her is not her ex-husband's — again, not that unusual. What's unusual is that it also isn't hers.

I am about to confess something that I'm somewhat ashamed of. I promised Bean and Petra that no record of their children's genetic prints would remain anywhere. But I kept a copy of the record we used in the search for the children, on the chance that someday I might run into the last missing child.

Somehow, this woman, Randi Johnson (nee Alba), now known as Nichelle Firth, was implanted with Bean's and Petra's missing child. This child is afflicted with Bean's genetic giantism. He will be brilliant, but he will die in his twenties (or earlier) of growth that simply does not stop.

And he is being raised by a woman who, for some reason, thinks it is important to spit on me. I am not personally offended by this, but I am interested, because this action makes me suspect that, unlike the other surrogates, she may have some knowledge of whose child she bore. Or, more likely, she might have been told false stories. In any event, I cannot quiz her on this because by the time I secured this information, she was gone.

She is going to Ganges Colony, which, like yours, is headed by a young Battle School graduate. Virlomi was not as young as you when she left — she had had enough years on Earth post — Battle School to become the savior of India under Chinese occupation, and then the instigator of an ill-fated (and ill-planned) invasion of China. She became quite the self-destructive fanatic by the end of her rise to power, believing her own propaganda. She is back to sanity now, and instead of trying to decide whether to honor her for the liberation of her own people or condemn her for the invasion of the nation of their oppressors, she has been made the head of a colony that, for the first time, takes into account the culture of origin on Earth. Most of the colonists are Indians of the Hindu persuasion — but not all.

Bean's son will be brilliant — like his father, plus his mother. And Randi may be feeding him with stories that will bend his character in awkward ways.

Why am I telling you all this? Because Ganges Colony is our first effort at colonizing a world that was NOT originally a formic possession. They are traveling at a slightly smaller fraction of lightspeed, so they will not arrive until the XBs have a chance to do their work and have the planet ready for colonization.

If you are happy governing Shakespeare and wish to spend the rest of your life there, then this information will not be of any particular interest to you. But if, after a few years, you decide that government is not your metier, I would ask you to travel by courier to Ganges. Of course, the colony will not even be established by the time you have spent five (or even ten) years on Shakespeare. And the voyage to Ganges will be of such a distance that you can leave Shakespeare and reach Ganges within fourteen (or nineteen) years of its founding. At that point, the boy (named Randall Firth) will be adult size — no, larger — and may be so shockingly brilliant that Virlomi has no chance of keeping him from being a danger to the peace and safety of the colony. Or he may already be the dictator. Or the freely elected governor that saved them from Virlomi's madness. Or he might already be dead. Or a complete nonentity. Who knows?

Again: The choice is yours. I have no claim upon you; Bean and Petra have no claim upon you. But if it should be interesting to you, more interesting than remaining on Shakespeare, this would be a place where you could go and perhaps help a young governor, Virlomi, who is brilliant but also prone to the occasional very poor decision.

Alas, it's all a pig in a poke. By the time you would have to leave Shakespeare with time enough to be effective on Ganges, the Ganges colonists won't even have debarked from their ship! We might be sending you to a colony with no problems at all and therefore nothing for you to do.

Thus you see how I plan for things that can't be planned for. But sometimes I'm oh so glad that I did. But if you decide you want no part of my plans from now on, I will understand better than anyone!

Your friend,

Hyrum Graff

PS: On the chance that your captain has not informed you, five years after you left, the I.F. agreed with my urgent request and launched a series of couriers, one departing every five years, to each of the colonies. These ships are not the huge behemoths that carry colonists, but they have room for some serious cargo and we are hoping they become the instrument of trade among the colonies. Our endeavor will be to have a ship call on each colony world every five years — but then they will travel colony to colony and return to Earth only after making a full circuit. The crews will have the option of completing the whole voyage, or training their replacements on any colony world and remaining behind while someone else completes their mission. Thus no one will be trapped on any one world for their whole life, and no one will be trapped in the same spaceship for the rest of their life. As you can guess, we did not lack for volunteers.

Vitaly Kolmogorov lay in bed, waiting to die and getting rather impatient about it.

"Don't hurry things," said Sel Menach. "It sets a bad example."

"I'm not hurrying anything. I'm just feeling impatient. I have a right to feel what I feel, I think!"

"And a right to think what you think, I feel," said Sel.

"Oh, now he develops a sense of humor."

"You're the one who decided this was your deathbed, not me," said Sel. "Black humor seems appropriate, though."

"Sel, I asked you to visit me for a reason."

"To depress me."

"When I'm dead, the colony will need a governor."

"There's a governor coming from Earth, isn't there?"

"Technically, from Eros."

"Ah, Vitaly, we all come from Eros."

"Very funny, and very classical. I wonder how much longer there'll be anybody capable of being amused by puns based on Earth-system asteroids and Greek gods."

"Anyway, Vitaly, please don't tell me you're appointing me governor."

"Nothing of the kind," said Vitaly. "I'm giving you an errand."

"And no one but an aging xenobiologist will do."

"Exactly," said Vitaly. "There is a message — encrypted, and no, I won't give you the key — a message waiting in the ansible queue. I ask only this: When I'm well and thoroughly dead, but before they've chosen a new governor, please send the message."

"To whom?"

"The message already knows where it's going."

"Very clever message. Why doesn't it figure out when you're dead, and go by itself?"

"Promise?"

"Yes, of course."

"And promise me something else."

"I'm getting old. Don't count on my remembering too many promises all at once."

"When they elect you governor, do it."

"They will not."

"If they don't, then fine," said Vitaly. "But when they do elect you, as everyone but you fully expects they will, do it."

"No."

"And here's why you must," said Vitaly. "You are best qualified for the job because you don't want it."

"Nobody in their right mind wants it."

"Too many men crave it, not because they want to do it, but because they fancy the honor of it. The prestige. The rank." Vitaly laughed, and the laugh turned into an ugly coughing jag till he was able to get a drink of water and calm the spasms in his chest. "I won't miss that sort of thing when I'm dead."

"Rank?"

"I was speaking of my cough. That constant tickling deep in my chest. Wheezing. Flatulence. Blurred vision no matter how good my glasses are and no matter how much light I have. All the nasty decay of old age."

"What about your bad breath?"

"That is designed to make you glad I'm dead. Sel, I'm serious about this. If someone else is elected governor, it will be someone who wants the job and won't be happy to give it up when the new governor comes."

"That's what they get for deciding, clear off in Eros, that along with supplies, equipment, and expertise, they'll also send us a dictator."

"I was a dictator at first," said Vitaly.

"When we were starting and survival looked impossible, yes, you kept things calm till we could find a way to handle the things this planet came up with to kill us off. But those days are over."

"No they're not," said Vitaly. "Let me lay it out plainly. The ship that is coming to us contains two admirals. One is our future governor. And one is the captain of the ship. Guess which one believes he should be our governor."

"The captain of the ship, of course, or you wouldn't have said it that way."

"A bureaucrat. A climber. I didn't know him before we set out on our own voyage, but I know the type."

"So the ship is bringing us everything we need, plus a power struggle."

"I don't want war here. I don't want bloodshed. I don't want the newcomers to have to conquer an upstart acting governor here on Shakespeare. I want our colony to be ready to welcome the new colonists and all they bring with them — and to unify behind the governor that was appointed for us back on Eros. They knew what they were doing when they appointed him."

"You know who it is," said Sel. "You know, and you haven't told a soul."

"Of course I know," said Vitaly. "I've been corresponding with him for the past thirty-five years. Ever since the colony ship launched."

"And didn't breathe a word. Who is it? Anyone I'd have heard of?"

"How do I know what you've heard and haven't heard?" said Vitaly. "I'm a dying man, don't bother me."

"So you still aren't telling."

"When he comes out of lightspeed, he'll make contact with you. Then you can deal with telling the colonists about him — whatever he tells you, you can tell them."

"But you don't trust me to keep the secret."

"Sel, you don't keep secrets. You say whatever's on your mind. Deception isn't in you. That's why you'll be such a splendid governor, and why I'm not telling you a single thing that you can't tell everybody as soon as you know it."

"I can't lie? Well, then, I won't bother promising you to accept the governorship, because I won't do it. I won't have to. They'll choose somebody else. Nobody likes me but you, Vitaly. I'm a grumpy old man who bosses people around and makes clumsy assistants cry. Whatever I did for this colony is long in the past."

"Oh shut up," said Vitaly. "You'll do what you do and I'll do what I do. Which in my case is die."

"I'm going to do that too, you know. Probably before you."

"Then you'll have to get a move on."

"This new governor — has he any idea of what it will take for these new people to live here? The injections? The regular diet of modified pig, so they can get the proteins that starve the worms? I hope they haven't sent us any vegetarians. It really stinks that these new people will outnumber us from the moment they get off the ship."

"We need them," said Vitaly.

"I know. The gene pool needs them, the farms and factories need them."

"Factories?"

"We're tinkering with one of the old formic solar power generators. We think we can get it to run a loom."

"The industrial revolution! Only thirty-six years after we got this planet! And you say you haven't done anything for the people lately."

"I'm not doing it," said Sel. "I just talked Lee Tee into giving it a look."

"Oh, well, if that's all."

"Say it."

"Say what? I said what I was going to say."

"Say that persuading somebody to try something is exactly the way you've governed for the past three-and-a-half decades."

"I don't have to say what you already know."

"Don't die," said Sel.

"I'm so touched," said Vitaly. "But don't you see? I want to. I'm done. Used up. I went off to war and we fought it and won it and then Ender Wiggin won the battle of the home world and all the buggers down here died. Suddenly I'm not a soldier anymore. And I was a soldier, Sel. Not a bureaucrat. Definitely not a governor. But I was admiral, I was in command, it was my duty, and I did it."

"I'm not as dutiful as you."

"I'm not talking about you now, dammit, you'll do whatever you want. I'm talking about me. I'm telling you what to say at my damn funeral!"

"Oh."

"I didn't want to be governor. I fully expected to die in the war, but the truth is, I no more thought about the future than you did. We were coming to this place, we were trained to be ready to survive on this formic colony world, but I thought that would all be your job, you and the other techs, while I commanded the fighting, the struggle against the hordes of formics coming over the hill, burrowing up underneath us — you have no idea the nightmares I had about the occupation, the clearing, the holding. I was afraid there wouldn't be enough bullets in the world. I thought we'd die."

"Then Ender Wiggin disappointed you."

"Yes. Selfish little brat. I'm a soldier, and he took my war out from under me."

"And you loved him for it."

"I did my duty, Sel. I did my duty."

"So have I," said Sel. "But I won't do yours."

"You will when I'm gone."

"You won't be alive to see."

"I have hopes of an afterlife," said Vitaly. "I'm not a scientist, I'm allowed to say so."

"Most scientists believe in God," said Sel. "Certainly most of us here."

"But you don't believe I'll be alive to see what you're doing."

"I'd like to think that God has better things for you to do. Besides, the heaven around here is a formic heaven. I hope God will let whatever part of you lives on go back to the heaven where all the humans are."

"Or the hell," said Vitaly.

"I forgot what pessimists you Russians are."

"It's not pessimism. I just want to be where all my friends are. Where my father is, the old bastard."

"You didn't like him? But you want to be with him?"

"I want to beat up the old drunkard! Then we'll go fishing."

"So it won't be heaven for the fish."

"It'll be hell for everybody. But with good moments."

"Just like our lives right now," said Sel.

Vitaly laughed. "Soldiers shouldn't do theology."

"Xenobiologists shouldn't do government."

"Thank you for making my deathbed so full of uncertainty."

"Anything to keep you entertained. And now, if you don't mind, I have to feed the pigs."

Sel left and Vitaly lay there, wondering if he should get out of bed and just send the message himself.

No, his decision was right. He didn't want to have any sort of conversation with Ender. Let him get the letter when it's too late to answer it, that was the plan and it was a good one. He's a smart kid, a good boy. He'll do what he needs to do. I don't want him asking my advice because he doesn't need it and he might follow it.