Ender in exile

CHAPTER 20

To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@MinCol.gov

Subj: Is that job still open?

Dear Hyrum,

I have reasons of my own that I won't go into, but I also believe that Shakespeare will be well served if, when this colony ship leaves, I am on it. I will be here throughout the arrival and establishment of the new colonists. The present settlers have already passed through a profound change: The colonists who arrived with me are now included in the term "old settlers" in anticipation of the arrival of the ship. The old folks who fought the formics are now called «originals» but there is no common term to distinguish between their descendants and the people who arrived with me.

If I remained, then both the governor of the new settlement and I would be appointees from ColMin. If I leave, replaced by an elected council of the four settlements, with an elected president and elected mayors, it will create almost irresistible pressure on the new governor to limit himself to a single two-year term, as I did, and allow himself to be replaced by an elected mayor.

Meanwhile, the "old settlers" have planted their crops for them, but have built only half enough houses. That is at my suggestion, so that the new colonists can join with them in building the rest. They need to experience how much work it takes, so they'll appreciate better just how much work was done for them by the old settlers. And working side by side will help keep the two groups from being strangers — even though I have located them far enough away that your goal of separate development will also have a chance of being met. They can't be completely separated, however, or exogamy would be impractical and genes are more important than culture at this moment for the future health of this world's human stock.

Human stock. but we ARE having to concern ourselves with the physical bodies in just the way herders always have. Uncle Sel would be the first to laugh and say that this is exactly right. We're mammals before we're humans, and if we ever forget the mammal, then all that makes us human will be overwhelmed by the hungry beast.

I've been studying everything I can about Virlomi and the wars she fought. What an astonishing woman! Her Battle School records show only an ordinary student (in an admittedly extraordinary group). But Battle School is about war, not revolution or national survival; nor did your tests measure anyone's propensity for becoming a demigod. If you had such a test, I wonder what you would have found out about Peter, back when he was a child and not ruler of the world.

Speaking of Peter, he and I are in conversation; perhaps you knew. We're not messaging, we're using ansible bandwidth for conversation. It's bittersweet to see him at nearly sixty years of age. Hair turning steely grey, face lined, carrying a little weight (but still fit), and the lines of responsibility etched on his face. He's not the boy I knew and hated. But the existence of this man does not erase that boy from my memory. They are simply two separate people in my mind, who happen to have the same name.

I find myself admiring the man; even loving him. He has faced choices every bit as terrible as mine ever were — and he dealt with them with his eyes open. He knew before he made his decisions that people would die from them. And yet he has more compassion than he — or I, or Valentine for that matter — ever expected of him.

He tells me that in his childhood, after I was in Battle School, he decided that the only way to succeed in his work was to deceive people into thinking he was as lovable as me. (I thought he was joking, but he was not; I don't believe my reputation in Battle School was «lovable» but Peter was dealing with the way I was remembered at home.) So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth. Peter has made himself into a good man, even if he set out on that road for reasons that were far from pure.

This gives me great hope for myself. All I have to do now is find some work to do that will lay to rest the burden that I carry. Governing a colony has been interesting and valuable work, but it does not do for me what I hoped it would. I still wake up with dead formics and dead soldiers and dead children in my head. I still wake up with memories that tell me that I am what Peter used to be. When those go away, I can be myself again.

I know that it troubles you that I have this mindset. Well, that's your burden, isn't it? Let me assure you, however, that my burden is half of my own making. You and Mazer and the rest of the officers training and using me and the other children did what you did in a righteous cause — and it worked. Toward me you have the same responsibility that commanders always have for those soldiers who survive, but maimed. The soldiers are still responsible for the lives they make for themselves after the fact; it's bitterly ironic that your true answer to them is: It's not my fault that you lived. If you had been killed you would not have to deal with all these wounds. This is the portion of life that was given back to you; it was the enemy who took from you the wholeness that you do not have. My job was to make it so that your death or injuries meant something, and I have done that.

That is what I have learned from the soldiers here. They still remember their comrades who fell; they still miss the life they left behind on Earth, the families they never saw again, the places they can revisit only in their dreams and memories. Yet they do not blame me. They're proud of what we did together. Almost every one of them has said to me, at one time or another, "It was worth it." Because we won.

So I say that to you. Whatever burden I'm carrying, it was worth it because we won.

So I appreciate your warning about this little book that's going around, The Hive Queen. Unlike you, I don't believe it's nonsense; I think this "Speaker for the Dead" has said something truthful, whether it's factual or not. Suppose the hive queens were every bit as beautiful and well-meaning as they are in this Speaker for the Dead's imagination. That does not change the fact that during the war they could not tell us that their intentions had changed and they regretted what they had done. It does not change our blamelessness (though blamelessness does not relieve us of responsibility).

I have a suspicion that I cannot verify: I think that even though the individual formics were so dependent on the hive queens that when the queens died, so did the soldiers and workers, that does not mean that they were a single organism, or that the hive queens did not have to take the deep needs, the will of the individuals, into account. And because the formics were individually so very stupid, the hive queens could not explain subtleties to them. Isn't it possible that if the hive queens had refused to fight those initial battles, letting us slaughter them like true pacifists, the survival instinct of the individual formics would have asserted itself with so much strength as to overwhelm the power of their mistresses? We would have had the battles anyway — only the formics would have fought without coherence or real intelligence. This in turn might have caused formics everywhere to rebel against their queens. Even a dictator has to respect the will of the pawns, for without their obedience, he has no power. Those are my thoughts about The Hive Queen, since you asked. And about everything else, because you need to hear my thoughts as much as I need to say them. You were my hive queen, and I was your formic, during this war. Twice I wanted to reject your overlordship; twice, Bean stepped in and put me back under the yoke. But all that I did, I did of my own free will, like any good soldier or servant or slave. The task of the tyrant is not to compel, but to persuade even the unwilling that compliance better serves their interest than resistance.

So if you wish to send this arriving ship to Ganges Colony, I will go and see what I can do to help Virlomi deal with Bean's kidnapped son and his very strange mother (though it is not her spitting on you that proves her to be strange; there are — or were — hundreds who would have stood in line for the privilege). I have a feeling that Virlomi will indeed find herself over her head, because her colony is so overwhelmingly Indian. It will make all her decisions seem unjust to the non-Indians, and if this Randall Firth is anything like as smart as his father, and if his mother has raised him to hate any who ever stood in Achilles Flandres's way, which certainly includes Virlomi, then this is the wedge that Randall will exploit to try to destroy her and gain power.

And while there are those in the I.F. and even in ColMin who believe that nothing that happens in the colonies can threaten Earth, I'm glad you recognize that this is not so. A warrior-rebel in a colony world can capture the imagination of millions on Earth. Billions, perhaps. And The Hive Queen may turn out to be part of this. A clever demagogue from the colonies can wrap himself in the mantle of the vanished hive queens, playing upon the powerful sentiment that the colony worlds were somehow «wronged» by Earth and are owed something. It is irrational, but there are precedents for even more illogical leaps of judgment.

Even if you cannot or no longer wish to send me to Ganges, however, I will be aboard that ship, so I hope our flight plan will send me somewhere interesting. Valentine has not yet decided whether to come with me, but since, because of working on her histories, she has remained completely detached from this colony, emotionally and socially, I think she'll come with me, having no incentive to remain here without me.

Your lifelong worker bee,

Ender

Achilles came to the hut where Governor Virlomi lived in her lofty poverty. She made such a show of having the simplest of habitations — but it was completely unnecessary to build adobe walls and a thatched roof, with so much fine lumber nearby. Virlomi's every action was calculated to enhance her prestige among the Indian colonists. But the whole display filled Achilles with contempt.

"Randall Firth," he said to the «friend» standing outside. Virlomi had said, "My friends stand watch to protect my time," she said, "so I can meditate sometimes." But her «friends» ate at the common table and drew their full share at harvest, so that their service to her was, in effect, paid. They were cops or guards, and everyone knew it. But no, the Indians all said, they really are volunteers, they really do a full day's labor besides.

A full day's labor. for an Indian. It gets a little hot and they go lie down when regular fullsize people have to take up the slack for them.

No wonder my father, Achilles the Great, led the Chinese to conquer the Indians. Someone had to teach them how to work. Nothing, though, could teach them how to think.

Inside the hut, Virlomi was spinning yarn by hand. Why? Because Gandhi did it. They had four spinning jennies and two power looms, and spare parts to keep them running for a hundred years, by which time they should have the ability to manufacture new ones. There was no need for homespun. Even Gandhi only did it because he was protesting against the way English power looms were putting Indians out of work. What was Virlomi trying to accomplish?

"Randall," she said.

"Virlomi," he answered.

"Thank you for coming."

"No one can resist a command from our beloved governor."

Virlomi lifted weary eyes to him. "And yet you always find a way."

"Only because your power here is illegitimate," said Achilles. "Even before we founded our colony, Shakespeare declared its independence and started electing governors to two-year terms."

"And we did the same," said Virlomi.

"They always elect you," said Achilles. "The person appointed by ColMin."

"That's democracy."

"Democracy only because the deck was stacked. Literally. With Indians. And you play this holy-woman game to keep them in your thrall."

"You have far too much time to read," said Virlomi, "if you know words like 'thrall.»

Such an easy opening. "Why do you feel the need to discourage citizens from educating themselves?" asked Achilles.

Virlomi's pleasant expression didn't crack. "Why must everything be political with you?"

"Wouldn't it be nice if other people ignored politics, so you could have it all to yourself?"

"Randall," said Virlomi, "I didn't bring you here because of your agitation among the non-Indian colonists."

"And yet that's why I came."

"I have an opportunity for you."

Achilles had to give her credit: Virlomi kept on plugging away. Maybe that's one of the attributes of Indian goddesshood. "Are you going to offer me another placeholder job to assuage my ego?"

"You keep saying that you're trapped on this world, that you've never been anywhere else, so your entire life will be lived under the dominion of Indians, surrounded by Indian culture."

"Your spies have reported accurately."

He expected her to get sidetracked on whether her informants were spies or not, since they were ordinary citizens who freely attended public events and then talked about them afterward. But apparently she was as weary of that topic as he was. And besides, she clearly had an urgent agenda.

"A starship is arriving here in about a month," said Virlomi. "It comes from Shakespeare Colony, and it's bringing us several of their highly successful hybrids and genetic alterations to augment our agricultural resources. A very important visit."

"I'm not a farmer," said Achilles.

"When starships come here," said Virlomi, "it's never permanent. They come, and then they go."

Now Achilles understood exactly what she was offering him. If it was an offer, and not an involuntary exile. "Go where?" he asked.

"In this case, I am assured that the pilot is taking his starship back to Earth — well, near to Earth — so that the samples from Shakespeare, along with our own poor offerings, can be examined, propagated, studied, and shared with all the colonies. Some may even be cultivated on Earth itself, because the high yields and climatic adaptations are so favorable."

"Are they naming one of the species after you?" asked Achilles.

"I'm offering you a chance to go to that big wide world and see it for yourself. Indians are only about a quarter of Earth's population at the moment, and there are many places you can go where you'll almost never see an Indian."

"It's not Indians that I don't like," said Achilles blandly.

"Oh?"

"It's smug authoritarian government pretending to be democratic."

"Indians are in the majority here. By definition democratic, even if smug," said Virlomi.

"Earth is ruled by an evil dictatorship."

"Earth is ruled by an elected Congress, and presided over by an elected hegemon."

"A hegemony established through the murder of —»

"Of the man you mistakenly believe to be your father," said Virlomi.

That sentence struck Achilles like a blow with a sledgehammer. In all his life, he and his mother had kept his parentage a secret, just as no one had ever heard him called by his secret — but true — name, Achilles. It was always Randall this and Randall that; only in moments of tender privacy did Mother ever speak to him as Achilles. Only in his own mind did he call himself that name.

But Virlomi knew. How?

"I watched your supposed father murder children in cold blood," said Virlomi. "He murdered a good friend of mine. There was no provocation."

"That's a lie," said Achilles.

"Ah. You have a witness who will contradict me?"

"There was provocation. He was trying to unite the world and establish peace."

"He was a psychotic who murdered everyone who ever helped him — or saw him helpless."

"Not everyone," said Achilles. "He let you live."

"I didn't help him. I didn't thwart him. I stayed invisible, until at last I was able to escape from him. Then I set out to liberate my country from the cruel oppression he had unleashed upon us."

"Achilles Flandres was establishing world peace, and you brought war back to a country that he had pacified."

"But you have no problem with admitting that you believe the fantasy that he is your father."

"I think my mother knows more than anyone else about that."

"Your mother knows only what she was told. Because she's a surrogate — not your genetic mother. Your embryo was implanted in her. She was lied to. She has passed that lie down to you. You are nothing but another of Achilles' kidnap victims. And your imprisonment by him continues to this day. You are his last and most pathetic victim."

Achilles' hand lashed out before he could stop himself. The blow he struck was not hard — not as hard as his height and strength could have made it.

"I have been assaulted," said Virlomi quietly.

Two of her «friends» came into the hut. They took Achilles by the arms.

"I charge Randall Firth with assault on the governor. Under penalty of perjury, Randall, do you admit that you struck me?"

"What an absurd lie," said Achilles.

"I thought you'd say that," said Virlomi. "Three vids from different angles should substantiate the charge and the perjury. When you're convicted, Randall, I will recommend that your sentence be exile. To Earth — the place you seem to think would be infinitely preferable to Ganges. Your mother can go with you or not, as she chooses."

She played me like a fish, thought Achilles. My father would never have stood for this. Humiliation — the unbearable offense. That's how my father lived, and that's how I will live.

"The whole recording," said Achilles. "That's what they'll see — how you goaded me."

Virlomi rose smoothly to her feet and came close to him, putting her mouth close to his ear. "The whole recording," said Virlomi, "will show who you think your father is, and your approval of his actions, which still are seen as the epitome of evil by the entire human race."

She stepped back from him. "You can decide for yourself whether the whole record or an edited portion will be shown."

Achilles knew that this was the point where he was expected to make threats, to bluster pathetically. But the recording was still running.

"I see that you know how to manipulate a child," said Achilles. "I'm only sixteen, and you provoked me to anger."

"Ah, yes, sixteen. Big for your age, aren't you?"

"In heart and mind, as well as skin and bone," said Achilles — his standard answer. "Remember, Your Excellency the Governor, that setting me up is one thing, and knocking me out is another."

He turned — and then waited as the men clinging to his arms scrambled to move around again to be beside him. They left the hut together. Then Achilles stopped abruptly. "You do know that I can shake you off like houseflies if I feel like it."

"Oh, yes, Mr. Firth. Our presence was as witnesses. Otherwise our taking hold of you was merely symbolic."

"And you hoped I'd knock one of you down on camera."

"We hope that all men and women can live together without violence."

"But you don't mind being the victim of violence, if you can use it to discredit or destroy your enemy."

"Are you our enemy, Mr. Firth?"

"I hope not," said Achilles. "But your goddess wants me to be."

"Oh, she is not a goddess, Mr. Firth." They laughed as if the idea were absurd.

As Achilles walked away, he was already formulating his next move. She was going to use his father's reputation against him — and he did not believe she would keep it a secret, since she was right and any link between him and Achilles the Great would permanently besmirch him.

If my father is widely believed to be the worst man in human history, then I must find a worse one to link her with.

As for the claim that Mother was only a surrogate, Randall would not let Virlomi's lie come between him and his mother. It would break her heart for him even to question her motherhood of him. No, Virlomi, I will not let you turn me into a weapon to hurt my mother.