Ender in exile

CHAPTER 18

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov

To: Gov%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Unexpected colonists

Dear Ender,

I'm glad to hear that things are going so well in Shakespeare Colony. The successful assimilation of the new colonists is not being matched everywhere, and we have granted the petition of the governor of Colony IX that we not send them colonists — or a new governor — after all. In short, they have declared themselves even more independent than you have. (Your declaration that Shakespeare would accept no more offworld governors was cited as having prompted them to decide whether they wanted new colonists, so in a way this is all your fault, don't you think?)

Unfortunately, their declaration came when I already had a ship with several thousand colonists, a new governor, and a huge amount of supplies most of the way toward their planet. They left not very long after your ship. Now they're thirty-nine lightyears from home, and the party they were invited to has been canceled.

However, Shakespeare is close to the route they were taking, and at this moment, they are in such a position that we can bring them out of lightspeed, start turning them as soon as that becomes feasible, and get them to your planet in about a year.

These colonists will all be strangers to you. They have their own governor — again, someone you do not know or even know of. It would almost certainly work best if they establish their own settlement, accepting guidance and medical help and supplies from you, but governing themselves.

Since you have already divided your colony into four villages, the settlement they form will be larger than any of yours. It will be a far more difficult assimilation than when your ship arrived, and I suggest a federation of two colonies rather than incorporating them in your colony. Or, if you prefer, a federation of five cities, though having the new colonists outnumbered four-to-one in such a federation will cause its own tensions.

If you tell me not to send them, I will follow your wishes; I can keep them on a holding pattern, even putting most of the crew in stasis, until one of the planets we're terraforming is ready for them.

But if anyone can adapt to this situation, and induce his colony to accept the newcomers, it is you.

I am attaching full information, including bios and manifest.

— Hyrum

From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov

To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Re: Unexpected colonists

Dear Hyrum,

We'll find a site for them and have habitations prepared when they arrive. We will put them near a formic city, so they can mine their technology and farm their fields, as we did; and because you've given us a year's notice, we'll have time to plant fields and orchards for them with human-adapted local crops and genetically altered Earth crops. The people of Shakespeare voted on this and are embracing the project with enthusiasm. I will leave shortly to choose an appropriate site.

— Andrew

In all eleven years of Abra's life, only one thing had ever happened that mattered: the arrival of Ender Wiggin.

Until then, it was all work. Children were expected to do whatever was within their ability, and Abra had the misfortune to be clever with his hands. He could untie knots and tie them before he could make sentences. He could see how machinery worked and when he became strong enough to use adult tools, he could fix it or adapt it. He understood the flow of power through the metal parts. And so there were jobs for him to do even when other children were playing.

His father, Ix, was proud of his son, and so Abra was proud of himself. He was glad to be a child who was needed for grownup tasks. He was much smaller than his older brother Po, who had gone along with Uncle Sel to find the gold bugs; but he was sent to help rig the low trolley that people rode into and out of the cave, and on which food was taken to the colony of bugs, and gold carcasses removed.

Yet Abra also looked wistfully as the children his age (he couldn't call them friends, because he spent so little time with them) headed for the swimming hole, or climbed trees in the orchard, or shot at each other with wooden weapons.

Only his mother, Hannah, saw him. She urged him sometimes to go with the others, to leave whatever job he was doing. But it was too late. Like a baby bird that a child has handled, so it has the scent of man on it, Abra was marked by his work with adults. There was no resentment on their part. They just didn't think of him as one of them. If he had tried to come along, it would have seemed to all of them as inappropriate as if some adult had insisted on playing their games with them. It would ruin things. Especially because Abra was secretly convinced that he would be very bad at children's games. When he was little, and tried to build with blocks, he would weep when other children knocked down his structures. But the other children couldn't seem to understand why he would build, if not to see things get knocked down.

Here is what Ender's coming meant to Abra: Ender Wiggin was the governor, and yet he was young, the same age as Po. Adults talked to Ender as if he were one of them. No, as if he were their superior. They brought problems to him for solutions. They laid their disputes before him and abided by his decisions, listening to his explanations, asking him questions, coming to accept his understanding.

I am like him, thought Abra. Adults consult me about their machines the way they consult Ender about their other problems. They stand and listen to my explanations. They do what I tell them they should do to fix the problem. He and I live the same life — we are not really children. We have no friends.

Well, Ender had his sister, of course, but she was a strange recluse, who would stay indoors all day, except for her morning walk in summer, her afternoon walk in winter. They said she was writing books. All the adult scientists wrote things and sent them off to the other worlds, and then read the papers and books that were sent back. But what she was writing wasn't science at all. It was history. The past. Why would that matter, when there was so much to do and discover in the present? Ender could not possibly be interested in such things. Abra could not even imagine what they would talk about. "Today I gave Lo and Amato permission to divorce." "Did it happen a hundred years ago?" "No." "Then I don't care."

Abra also had siblings. Po treated him well. They all did. But they did not play with him. They played with each other.

Which was fine. Abra didn't want to "play." He wanted to do things that were real, things that mattered. He took as much pleasure from fixing machines and building things as they ever did from their games and mock fights and knocking-down. And now that Mother said he didn't have to go to school anymore, so there wouldn't be the constant humiliation of being unable to read and write, Abra spent his free time following Ender Wiggin everywhere.

Governor Wiggin noticed him, because he spoke to Abra from time to time — explaining things sometimes; just as often asking him questions. But mostly he let Abra tag along, and if other adults who were talking about serious matters sometimes glanced at Abra as if to ask Ender why he had this child with him, Ender simply ignored their silent question and soon they all carried on as if Abra were not there.

So when Ender left on his expedition to search for an appropriate site for the new starship to land and found another colony, no one even questioned the fact that Abra would be going with him. Father did take Abra aside and talk to him, though. "This is a heavy responsibility," he said. "You are not to do anything dangerous. If something happens to the governor, your first responsibility is to report it to me by satfone. Your location will already be tracked and we'll send help at once. Don't try to deal with it yourself until we have been notified. Do you understand?"

Of course Abra understood. To Father, Abra was merely going along as backup. Mother's advice was a bit less pessimistic about Abra's value. "Don't argue with him," she said. "Listen first, argue after."

"Of course, Mom."

"You say 'of course, but you aren't good at listening, Abra, you always think you know what people are going to say, and you have to let them say it because sometimes you're wrong."

Abra nodded. "I'll listen to Ender, Mother."

She rolled her eyes — even though she yelled at the other children when they did that to her. "Yes, I suppose you will. Only Ender is wise enough to know more than my Abra!"

"I don't think I know everything, Mom." How could he get her to see that he only got impatient with adults when they thought they understood machinery and didn't? The rest of the time, he didn't speak at all. But since most of the time adults thought they knew what had gone wrong with a broken machine, and most of the time they were mistaken, most of his conversation with adults consisted of correcting them — or ignoring them. What else would they talk about except machinery, and Abra knew it better than they did. With Ender, though, it was almost never about machines. It was about everything, and Abra drank it all in.

"I'll try to keep Po from marrying Alessandra before you get home," said Mom.

"I don't care," said Abra. "They don't have to wait for me. It's not like they'll need me for the wedding night."

"Sometimes your face just needs slapping, Abra," said Mom. "But Ender puts up with you. The boy's a saint. Santo André."

"San Énder," said Abra.

"His Christian name is Andrew," said Mom.

"But the name that makes him holy is Ender," said Abra.

"My son the theologian. And you say you don't think you know everything!" Mother shook her heads, apparently disgusted with him.

Abra never understood how such arguments began, or why they usually ended with adults shaking their heads and turning away from him. He took their ideas seriously (except for their ideas about machinery); why couldn't they do the same for him?

Ender did. And he was going to spend days — weeks, maybe — with Ender Wiggin. Just the two of them.

They loaded the skimmer with supplies for three weeks, though Ender said he didn't think they'd be gone that long. Po came along to see them off, Alessandra clinging to him like a fungus, and he said, "Try not to be a nuisance, Abra."

"You're jealous that he's taking me and not you," said Abra.

Alessandra spoke up. A talking fungus, apparently. "Po doesn't want to go anywhere." Meaning, of course, that he couldn't bear to be away from her for a single second.

Po's face stayed blank, however, so that Abra knew perfectly well that while he might be completely imasen over the girl, he would still rather go on the trip with Ender than stay behind with her. Contrary to Mother's opinion of him, however, Abra said nothing at all. He didn't even wink at Po. He just kept his face exactly as blank as Po's. It was the Mayan way of laughing at somebody right in front of them, without being rude or starting a fight.

The journey was a strange experience for Abra. At first, of course, they simply skimmed along above the fields of home. Familiar ground. Then they followed the road to Falstaff, which was due west of Miranda; this was also familiar, since Abra's married sister Alma lived there with her husband, that big stupid eemo Simon, who always tickled younger children until they wet themselves and then made fun of them for peeing themselves like babies. Abra was relieved that Ender only paused to greet the mayor of the village and then moved on without any further delay.

They camped the first night in a grassy glen, sheltered from the wind that was coming up. It brought a storm in the night, but they were snug inside a tent, and without Abra even asking, Ender told him stories about Battle School and what the game was like, in the battleroom, and how it wasn't really a game at all, it was training and testing them for command. "Some people are born to lead," said Ender. "They just think that way, whether they want to lead or not. While others are born craving authority, but they have no ability to lead. It's very sad."

"Why would people want to do something they're not good at?" Abra tried to imagine himself wanting to be a scholar, in spite of his reading problem. It was just absurd.

"Leading is a strange thing," said Ender. "People see it happening, but they don't have a clue how it works."

"I know," said Abra. "Most people are like that with machines. But they try to fix them anyway and make everything worse."

"So you understand exactly," said Ender. "They don't see what a leader does, they just see how everybody respects a good leader, and they want to have the attention and respect without understanding what you actually have to do to earn it."

"Everybody respects you," said Abra.

"And yet I do almost nothing," said Ender. "I have to learn other people's jobs well enough to help them at their work, because I just don't have enough work of my own to do. Leading this colony is too easy to be a fulltime job."

"Easy for you," said Abra.

"I suppose," said Ender. "But then, even when I'm doing other jobs, I'm still doing my job as governor. Because I'm always getting to know people. You can't lead people you don't know or at least understand. In war, for instance, if you don't know what your soldiers can do, how can you lead them into battle and hope to succeed? The enemy, too. You have to know the enemy."

Abra thought about that as they lay there in the darkness inside the tent. He thought about it so long that maybe he even dreamed for a while, about Ender sitting down and talking to the buggers — only the newcomers called them formics — and then exchanging Christmas gifts with them. But maybe he only imagined it while awake, because he was awake when he whispered, "Is that why you spend so much time with the gold bugs?"

It was as if Ender had been thinking about the same thing, because he didn't give one of those impatient adult answers, like, What are you talking about? He knew that Abra was still holding to the thread of their prior conversation. In fact, Ender sounded sleepy, and Abra wondered if he had been dozing and Abra's voice had woken him and still Ender knew what he was talking about.

"Yes," said Ender. "I understood the hive queens well enough to defeat them. But not well enough to understand why they let me."

"They let you?"

"No, they fought hard against me, to prevent my victory. But they also brought themselves together where I could kill them all in a single battle. And they knew I had the weapon that could do it. A weapon they understood better than we did, because we got it from them. We still don't fully understand the science of it. But they must have. And yet they gathered together and waited for me. I don't understand it. So. I try communicating with the gold bug larvae. To get some idea of how the hive queens thought."

"Po says nobody's better at it than you."

"Does he?"

"He says everybody else has to work and work to get a glimmer of an image into or out of the gold bugs' heads, but you could do it the very first time."

"I didn't realize I was all that unusual," said Ender.

"They talk about it when you're not there. Po talks about it with Papa."

"Interesting," said Ender. He didn't sound like he felt flattered, or like he was acting modest — Ender truly sounded like he thought of his unusual talent for talking with the gold bugs as a simple fact.

When he thought about it, this made sense to Abra. You shouldn't be proud of being good at something, if you were born with it. That would be as dumb as being proud of having two legs, or speaking a language, or pooping.

Because he was with Ender, Abra felt free to say what he had just thought of, and Ender laughed. "That's right, Abra. Something you work to achieve, that's one thing. Why not be proud of it? Why not feel good about it? But something you were born with, that's just the way you are. Do you mind if I quote you?"

Abra wasn't sure what he meant by quoting. Was he going to write a scholarly paper? A letter to somebody? "Go ahead," said Abra.

"So. I'm unusually good at talking to the gold bugs," said Ender. "I had no idea. It's not talking, though. It's more like they show you what they remember, and put a feeling with it. Like, here's my memory of food, and they put hunger with it. Or the same image of food, plus a feeling of revulsion or fear, meaning, this is poisonous or I don't like the taste or. you get the idea."

"No words," said Abra.

"Exactly."

"The way I see machinery," said Abra. "I have to find words to explain it to people, but when I see it, I just know. I don't think the machinery is talking to me, though. No feelings."

"It may not be talking," said Ender, "but that doesn't mean you can't hear."

"Exactly! Yes! That's right!" Abra almost shouted the words, and his eyes filled with tears, and he didn't even know why. Or. yes he did. No adult had ever known what it felt like before.

"I had a friend once, and I think he saw battles that way. I had to think things through, the way the forces were arranged, but Bean just saw. He didn't even realize that other people took longer to understand — or never did at all. To him it was simply obvious."

"Bean? Is that a name?"

"He was an orphan. It was a street name. He didn't find out his real name until later, when people who cared about him did enough research to find out that he had been kidnapped as an embryo and genetically altered to make him such a genius."

"Oh," said Abra. "So that's not what he really was."

"No, Abra," said Ender. "We really are what our genes make us. We really have whatever abilities they give. It's what we start with. Just because his genes were shaped deliberately, by a criminal scientist, doesn't mean they're any less his than our genes, which are shaped by random selection between the genes of our father and the genes of our mother. I was shaped deliberately, too. Not by illegal science, but my parents chose each other partly because they were each so brilliant, and then the International Fleet asked them to have a third child because my older brother and sister were so brilliant but still were not quite what the I.F. wanted. Does that mean that I'm not really me? Who would I be, if my parents hadn't given birth to me?"

Abra was having a hard time following the conversation. It made him sleepy. He yawned.

Then Ender came up with a comparison Abra understood. "It's like saying, What would this pump be, if it weren't a pump?"

"That's just dumb. It is a pump. If it weren't a pump, it wouldn't be anything at all."

"So now you understand."

Abra whispered the next question. "So you're like my father, and you don't believe people have souls?"

"No," said Ender. "I don't know about souls. I just know that while we're alive, in these bodies, we can only do what our body can do. My parents believe in souls. I've known people who were absolutely sure. Smart people. Good people. So just because I don't understand it doesn't mean I'm sure it can't be true."

"That's like what Papa says."

"See? He doesn't disbelieve in souls."

"But Mom talks like. she says that she can look in my eyes and see into my soul."

"Maybe she can."

"Like you can look into a gold bug larva and see what it's thinking?"

"Maybe," said Ender. "I can't see what it's thinking, though. I can only see what it pushes into my mind. I try to push thoughts into its mind, but I don't think I'm actually pushing. I think the ability to communicate by thoughts belongs completely to the larva. It pushes things into my mind, and then takes from my mind whatever I show it. But I'm not doing anything."

"Then how can you be better at it than other people, if you're not doing anything?"

"If I'm really better — and remember, your father and Po can't really know whether I am or not — then maybe it's because I have a mind that it's easier for a gold bug to get inside of."

"Why?" asked Abra. "Why would a human being born on Earth have a brain that was easier for a gold bug to get inside of?"

"I don't know," said Ender. "That's one of the things I came to this world to find out."

"That's not even true," said Abra. "You couldn't have come here to find out why your brain was easier for the buggers to understand because you didn't know your brain could do that until you got here!"

Ender laughed. "You just don't have any tolerance for kuso, do you?"

"What's kuso?"

"Mierda," said Ender. "Bullshit."

"Were you lying to me?"

"No," said Ender. "Here's the thing. I had dreams when I was fighting the war on Eros. I didn't know I was fighting the war, but I was. I had one dream where a bunch of formics were vivisecting me. Only instead of cutting open my body, they were cutting up my memories and displaying them like holographs and trying to make sense of them. Why did I have that dream, Abra? After I won the war and found out that I had really been fighting the hive queens and not just a computer simulation, or my teacher, I thought back to some of my dreams and I wondered. Were they trying just as hard to understand me as I was trying to understand them? Was that dream because on some level I was aware that they were getting inside my head, and it frightened me?"

"Wow," said Abra. "But if they could read your mind, why couldn't they beat you?"

"Because my victories weren't in my mind," said Ender. "That's the weird thing. I thought through the battles, yes, but I didn't see them like Bean did. Instead, I saw the people. The soldiers under me. I knew what those kids were capable of. So I put them in a situation where their decisions would be crucial, told them what I wanted them to do, and then I trusted them to make the decisions that would achieve my objective. I didn't actually know what they'd do. So being inside my head would never show the hive queens what I was planning, because I had no plan, not of a kind they could use against me."

"Is that why you thought that way? So they couldn't read your plans?"

"I didn't know the game was real. I've only thought of these things afterward. Trying to understand."

"But if that's true, then you were communicating with the buggers — formics — hive queens all along."

"I don't know. Maybe they were trying, but they couldn't make sense of it. I'm sure they didn't push anything into my head, or at least not clearly enough for me to understand it. And what could they take from my thoughts? I don't know. Maybe it didn't happen at all. Maybe I only dreamed about them because I kept thinking about them. What will I do when I face real hive queens? If this simulation were a real battle, how would a hive queen think? That sort of thing."

"What does Papa think?" asked Abra. "He's really smart and he knows more than anybody about the gold bugs now."

"I haven't discussed this with your father."

"Oh." Abra digested that thought in silence.

"Abra," said Ender. "I haven't talked about this with anybody."

"Oh." Abra felt overwhelmed by Ender's trust. He could not speak.

"Let's go to sleep," said Ender. "I want us to be wide awake and on our way at first light. This new colony needs to be several days' journey away, even by skimmer. And once we find the general area, I have to mark out specific places for buildings and fields and a landing strip for the shuttle and all that."

"Maybe we'll find another gold bug cave."

"Maybe," said Ender. "Or some other metal. Like the bauxite cave you found."

"Just because the aluminum bugs were all dead doesn't mean we won't find another cave that has living bugs, right?" said Abra.

"We might have found the only survivors," said Ender.

"But Papa says the odds are against that. He says it would be too co-incidental if the longest-surviving gold bugs just happened to be the ones that Uncle Sel and Po happened to discover."

"Your father's not a mathematician," said Ender. "He doesn't understand probability."

"What do you mean?"

"Sel and Po did find the cave with living gold bug larvae in it. Therefore the chance of their finding it, in this causal universe, is one hundred percent. Because it happened."

"Oh."

"But since we don't know how many other bug caves there are, or where they're situated, any guess at how likely we are to find one isn't about probability — it's just a guess. There's not enough data for mathematical probabilities."

"We know there was a second one," said Abra. "So it's not like we know nothing."

"But from the data we actually have, one cave with living gold bugs and one with dead aluminum ones, what would you conclude?"

"That we have as much chance of finding live ones as dead. That's what Father says."

"But that isn't really true," said Ender. "Because in the cave Sel and Po found, the bugs weren't thriving. They had almost died out. And in the other cave, they had died out. So now what are the odds?"

Abra thought hard about it. "I don't know," he said. "It depends on how big each colony was, and whether they would think of eating their own parents' bodies like these bugs did, and maybe other stuff I don't even know about."

"Now you're thinking like a scientist," said Ender. "Now, please think like a sleeping person. We have a long day tomorrow."

They traveled all day the next day, and it all began to look the same to Abra. "What's wrong with any of these places?" said Abra. "The. formics farmed there, and they did fine. And a landing strip could go there."

"Too close," said Ender. "Not enough room for the newcomers to develop their own culture. So close that if they became envious of Falstaff village, they might try to take it over."

"Why would they do that?"

"Because they're human," said Ender. "And, specifically, because then they'd have people who knew everything that we know and can do everything we do."

"But they'd still be our people," said Abra.

"Not for long," said Ender. "Now that the villages are separate, the Falstaffians will start thinking about what's good for Falstaff. They might resent Miranda for thinking we should be their boss, and maybe they'd want to join these new people voluntarily."

Abra thought about that for about ten clicks. "What would be wrong with that?" he said.

This time it took Ender a moment of thought before he was able to answer. "Ah, Falstaff joining the new people voluntarily. Well, I don't know if anything would be wrong with it. I just know that what I want to happen is for all the villages — including the new one — to be separate enough to develop their own traditions and cultures, and far enough apart that they won't fight over the same resources, yet close enough to intermarry and trade. I'm hoping that there's some perfect distance apart that will make it so they don't start fighting each other, or at least not for a long time."

"As long as we have you as governor, we'll just win anyway," said Abra.

"I don't care who wins," said Ender. "It's having a war at all that would be terrible."

"That's not how you felt when you beat the formics!"

"No," said Ender. "When the survival of the human race is at stake, you can't help but care who wins. But in a war between colonists on this planet, why would I care which side won? Either way, there'd be killing and loss and grief and hate and bitter memories and the seeds of wars to come. And both sides would be human, so no matter what, humans would lose. And lose and keep on losing. Abra, I sometimes say prayers, did you know that? Because my parents prayed. I sometimes talk to God even though I don't know anything about him. I ask him: Let the wars end."

"They have ended," said Abra. "On earth. The Hegemon united the whole world and nobody's at war anywhere."

"Yes," said Ender. "Wouldn't it be ridiculous if they finally got peace on Earth and we just started up the whole warfare thing again here on Shakespeare?"

"The Hegemon is your brother, right?" asked Abra.

"He's Valentine's brother," said Ender.

"But she's your sister," said Abra.

"He's Valentine's brother," said Ender, and his face looked sort of dark and Abra didn't ask him what in the world he was talking about.

On the third day of their trip, as the sun got to about two hands above the western horizon — time on clocks and watches meant nothing here, since they had all been made on Earth for Earth days, and nobody liked any of the schemes for dividing up the Shakespearian day into hours and minutes — Ender finally stopped the skimmer on the crest of a hill overlooking a broad valley with overgrown orchards and fields with forty years' growth of trees in them. There were tunnel entrances in some of the surrounding hills, and chimneys that showed there had been manufacturing here.

"This place looks as likely as any," said Ender. So, just like that, the site of the new colony was chosen.

They pitched the tent and Ender fixed dinner and he and Abra walked down into the valley together and looked inside a couple of the caves. No bugs, of course, since this wasn't that kind of settlement, but there was machinery of a kind that they hadn't seen before and Abra wanted to plunge right in and figure it all out but Ender said, "I promise you'll be the first one to get a look at these machines, but not now. Not tonight. That's not our mission. We have to lay out a colony. I have to determine where the fields will be, the water source — we have to find the formic sewer system, we have to see if we can wake up their generating equipment. All the things that Sel Menach's generation did, long before you were born. But before too long, we'll have time for the formic machines. And then, believe me, they'll let you spend days and weeks on them."

Abra wanted to wheedle like a little kid, but he knew Ender was right. And so he accepted Ender's promise and stayed with him for the rest of that night's walk.

The sun had set before they got back to camp — they had only a faint light in the sky when they turned in to sleep. This time their conversation consisted of Ender asking Abra to tell stories that his parents had told him, his father's Mayan stories and his mother's Chinese stories and the Catholic stories they both had in common, and that took until Abra could hardly keep his eyes open, and then they slept.

The next day, Ender and Abra marked out fields and laid out streets, recording everything on the holomaps in Ender's field desk, which were automatically transmitted to the orbiting computer. No need even to call Papa on the satfone, because he would get all this information automatically and he could see the work they were doing.

Late in the afternoon, Ender sighed and said, "You know, this is actually kind of boring."

"Really?" said Abra sarcastically.

"Even slaves get time off now and then."

"Who?" Abra was afraid this was some school-learning thing that he didn't know because he couldn't read and stopped going to school.

"You have no idea how happy it makes me that you don't know what I'm talking about."

Well, if Ender was happy, Abra was happy.

"For the next hour, I say we do whatever we want," said Ender.

"Like what?" asked Abra.

"What, you mean I have to decide for you what you think would be fun?"

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to see if the river's good for swimming."

"That's dangerous and you shouldn't do it alone."

"If I drown, call your father to come get you."

"I could drive the skimmer home, you know."

"But you couldn't get my corpse up onto it," said Ender.

"Don't talk about dying!" Abra said. He meant to sound angry. Instead his voice shook and he sounded scared.

"I'm a good swimmer," said Ender. "I'm going to test the water to make sure it won't make me sick, and I'll only swim where there's no current, all right? And you're free to swim with me, if you want."

"I don't like to swim." He'd never really learned, not well.

"So — don't go climbing into any caves or fiddling with machinery, all right?" said Ender. "Because machinery really is scary."

"Only because you don't understand it."

"Right," said Ender. "But what if something went wrong? What if I had to take your mangled or incinerated body back to your parents?"

Abra laughed. "So I can let the governor die, but you can't let one dumb kid get killed."

"Exactly right," said Ender. "Because I'm responsible for you, but you're only responsible for reporting my death if it happens."

So Ender went back to the skimmer and got the water testing equipment. And since Abra knew perfectly well Ender was going to have to test the river anyway, he realized that Ender wasn't really taking a break, he was giving Abra a break. Well, two could play this game. Abra would use the time to scout out the crest of the far ridge and see what lay on the other side. That was useful. That was a real job that would have to be done. So while Ender swam around in the river, Abra would be adding to the map.

It was a longer walk than Abra thought it would be. The far hills looked deceptively close. The higher he got, though, the easier it was to spot the place where Ender was, in fact, swimming. He wondered if Ender could also see him. He turned and waved a couple of times, but Ender didn't wave back, probably because he would look like a speck to Ender, just as Ender looked like a speck to him. Or else Ender wasn't looking, and that was fine, too. It meant Ender trusted him not to screw up and get hurt or lost.

At the top of the hill, Abra could see why the river in the valley behind him widened — there was an irrigation dam between the hills so the widening of the river was really a pond behind the dam. The drop wasn't very severe, though, and certain sluices were permanently open so that the river flowed permanently into three channels. One was the original riverbed, and the other two carried water through slightly higher canals skirting the north side of the valley. Here on the south side of the river, the canals were permanently empty, and so Abra could easily see the difference that the irrigation made. Both sides of the lower valley were lush with life, but on the wet side, trees were growing, and on the drier side, it was grass and low shrubs.

But as he gazed at the south side — the grassy side — he realized that there was something wrong with the landscape. Instead of being a smooth flood plain, like the upper valley behind him where Ender was, there were several mounds in the plain below him. And there was nothing natural about the way they were laid out.

The formics had to have built them. But what were they for?

And now that he looked closely, he could see that there were even-more-artificial-looking structures here and there. They didn't look like normal formic buildings, either. This was something new and strange, and even though they were overgrown with grass and vines, they were still plainly visible.

Abra scrambled down the slope — not running, because it was unfamiliar ground, and the last thing he wanted was to sprain an ankle and become a burden on Ender. He came to the largest of the artificial mounds. It was steep-sided but covered with grass, so climbing it wasn't very hard. He reached the top and realized that it was hollow inside, and there was water gathered in it.

Abra walked the ridge line and found that at one end, two ridges extended out like legs, making a widening vale between them. And when he turned around, he realized that there were also low ridges that could be arms, and where a head would be, a large white rock glistened in the sunlight, looking for all the world like a skull.

It was shaped like a man. Not like a formic — a man.

He felt a thrill go through him — of fear, of dread, of excitement. Such a place as this could not exist. And yet it did.

He heard a voice calling his name. He looked up and saw that Ender had driven the skimmer over the ridge from the other valley and was looking for him. Abra waved and called out, "Ho, Ender!"

Ender saw him and skimmed over to the base of the steep hill where Abra had climbed. "Come up," said Abra.

When Ender had scrambled up the slope — displacing a few turves in the process, since he was bigger than Abra and weighed more — Abra gestured to the body-like structure of the artificial hills. "Can you believe this?"

Apparently Ender didn't see it the way Abra did. He simply looked, and said nothing.

"It's like a giant died here," said Abra, "and the earth grew up to cover his carcass."

Abra heard a sharp intake of breath from Ender, so he knew now that he had seen.

Ender looked around and pointed wordlessly at some of the smaller, vine-covered structures. He pulled out his binoculars and looked for a long time. "Impossible," he muttered.

"What? What are they?"

Ender didn't answer. Instead he walked the length of the hill, toward the "head." Abra scrambled down onto the neck and up the chin. "Somebody had to build this," Abra said. He scratched at the white surface. "Look, this skull place, it's not rock, look at it. This is concrete."

"I know," said Ender. "They built it for me."

"What?"

"I know this place, Abra. The buggers built it for me."

"They were all dead before Grandpa and Grandma even got here," said Abra.

"You're right, it's impossible, but I know what I know." Ender put a hand on Abra's shoulder. "Abra, I shouldn't take you with me."

"Where?"

"Over there." Ender pointed. "It might be dangerous. If they knew me well enough to build this place, they might be planning to —»

"To get even with you," said Abra.

"For killing them," said Ender.

"So don't go, Ender. Don't do what they want you to do."

"If they want to get revenge, Abra, I don't mind. But perhaps they don't. Perhaps this is the closest they could come to talking. To writing me a note."

"They didn't know how to read and write." They didn't even know the idea of reading and writing — that's what Father said. So how would they know about leaving notes?

"Maybe they were learning when they died," said Ender.

"Well I'm sure as hell not sticking around here if you're taking off somewhere. I'm going with you."

Ender looked amused when Abra said "hell." He shook his head, smiling. "No. You're too young to take the risk of —»

"Come on!" said Abra with disgust. "You're Ender Wiggin. Don't tell me what eleven-year-old kids can do!"

So they rode in the skimmer together until they got to the first set of structures. Ender stopped and they got off. The shape of the structures came from metal frameworks underlying and supporting the vines. Now Abra realized they were swings and slides, just like those in the town park in Miranda. The ones in Miranda were smaller, because they were just for the little kids. But there was no mistaking what they were.

But formics didn't have babies, they had larvae. Worms would hardly needs swings and slides.

"They made human stuff," said Abra.

Ender only nodded.

"They really were taking stuff out of your head," said Abra.

"That's one explanation," said Ender. Then they got on the skimmer and went on. Ender seemed to know the way.

They neared the farthest structure. It was a thick tower and some lower walls, all covered with ivy. There was a window near the top of the tower.

"You knew this would be here," said Abra.

"It was my nightmare," said Ender. "My memory of the fantasy game."

Abra had no idea what "the fantasy game" was, but he understood that this place represented one of those dreams that the formics were taking out of Ender when they vivisected him in that nightmare he had talked about.

Ender got out of the skimmer. "Don't come after me," he said. "If I'm not back in an hour, it means it's dangerous here, and you must go home at once and tell them everything."

"Eat it, Ender, I'm coming with you," said Abra.

Ender looked at him coldly. "Eat it yourself, Abra, or I'll stuff you with mud."

His words were jocular, and so was his tone. But his eyes were not joking, and Abra knew that he meant it.

So Abra stayed with the skimmer and watched Ender jog over to the castle — for that's what it was. And then Ender climbed up the outside of the tower and went in through the window.

Abra stayed, watching the tower, for a long time. He checked the skimmer's clock now and then. And finally his gaze began to wander. He watched birds and insects, small animals in the grass, clouds moving across the sky.

That's why he didn't see Ender come out of the tower. He only saw him walking toward the skimmer, carrying his jacket in a wad under his arm.

Only it wasn't a wad. There was something inside the jacket. But Abra didn't ask what Ender had found. He figured that if Ender wanted him to know, he'd tell him.

"We aren't building the new colony here," said Ender.

"OK," said Abra.

"Let's go back and strike camp," said Ender.

They searched for five more days, well to the east and south of the place they had first found, until they had another colony site. It was a bigger formic settlement, with a much larger area of fields and all the signs of a much larger annual rainfall. "This is the right place," said Ender. "Better climate, warmer. Good, rich soil."

They spent a week laying out the new site.

Then it was time to go home. The night before they left, lying out on the open ground — it was too hot at night inside the tent — Abra finally asked. Not what it was that Ender brought back from the tower — he would never ask that — but the deeper question.

"Ender, what did they mean? Building this for you?"

Ender was silent for a long time. "I'm not going to tell you the whole truth, Abra. Because I don't want anyone to know. I don't even want them to know what we found there. I hope it's all decayed and crumbled away before people go back there. But even if it's not, nobody else will understand it. And in the far future, nobody will believe that the formics made that place. They'll think it's something that human colonists did."

"You don't have to tell me everything," said Abra. "And I won't tell anybody else what we found."

"I know you won't," said Ender. He hesitated again. "I don't want to lie to you. So I'll only tell you true things. I found the answer, Abra."

"To what?"

"My question."

"Can't you tell me any of it?"

"You've never asked the question. I hope to God you never know what it is."

"But the message really was for you."

"Yes, Abra. They left a message that told me why they died."

"Why?"

"No, Abra. It's my burden, truly. Mine alone." Ender reached out a hand, gripped Abra by the arm. "Let there be no rumors of what Ender Wiggin found when he came to this place."

"There never will be," said Abra.

"You mean that at the age of eleven, you're prepared to take a secret to your grave?"

"Yes," said Abra without hesitation. "But I hope I don't have to do that very soon."

Ender laughed. "I hope the same. I hope you live a long, long time."

"I'll keep the secret all my life. Even though I don't actually know what it is."

Ender came into the house where Valentine was working on the next-to-last volume of her history of the Formic Wars. He set his own desk on the table across from her. She looked up at him. He smiled — a jokey, mechanical smile — and started typing.

She wasn't fooled. The smile was fake, but the happiness behind it was real.

Ender was actually happy.

What happened on that trip to lay out the new colony?

He didn't say. She didn't ask. It was enough for her that he was happy.