"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.
CHAPTER 13
To: GovDes%
[email protected]/voy
From: GovAct%
[email protected] Re: You will get this when I'm dead
Dear Ender,
I put it bluntly in the subject line. No beating around the bush. I'm writing this as I feel the seeds of death in me. I will arrange for it to be sent after they have done with me.
I expect my successor to be Sel Menach. He doesn't want the job, but he is widely liked and universally trusted, which is vital. He will not try to cling to his office when you arrive. But if it is not him, you'll be on your own and I wish you luck.
You know how hard it will be for my little community. For thirty-six years, we've been living and giving in marriage. The new generation has already restored the gender balance; there are grandchildren nearly of marrying age. Then your ship will come and suddenly we will be five times the population, and only one in five will be of our original group. It will be hard. It will change everything. But I believe that I know you now, and if I'm right, then my people have nothing to fear. You will help the new colonists adapt to our ways, wherever our ways make sense for this place. You will help my people adapt to the new colonists, wherever they must because the ways of Earth make sense.
In a way, Ender, we are the same age, or at least in the same stage of life. We long since left our families behind. As far as the world is concerned, we stepped into an open grave and disappeared. This has been the afterlife for me, the career after my career ended, the life after my life ended. And it has been a good one. It has been heaven. Busy, frightening, triumphant, and finally peaceful. May it be the same for you, my friend. Howev
er long it is, may you be glad of each day of it.
I have never forgotten that I owe our victory, and therefore this second life, to you and the other children who led us in the war. I thank you again from this grave of mine.
With love and respect,
Vitaly Denisovitch Kolmogorov
"I don't like what you're doing to Alessandra," said Valentine.
Ender looked up from what he was reading. "And what would that be?"
"You know perfectly well that you've made her fall in love with you."
"Have I?"
"Don't pretend to be oblivious to it! She looks at you like a hungry puppy."
"I've never owned a dog. They didn't allow team mascots in Battle School, and there weren't any strays."
"And you deliberately made her do it."
"If I can make a woman fall in love with me at will, I should have bottled it and sold it and gotten rich on Earth."
"You didn't make a woman fall in love with you, you made an emotionally dependent, shy, sheltered girl fall in love with you, and that's pathetically easy. All it took was being extraordinarily nice to her."
"You're right. If I hadn't been so selfish, I would have slapped her."
"Ender, it's me you're talking to. Do you think I haven't been watching? You seek out opportunities to praise her. To ask her advice on the most meaningless things. To thank her all the time for nothing at all. And you smile at her. Has anyone ever mentioned that when you smile, it would melt steel?"
"Inconvenient, in a spaceship. I'll smile less."
"You switch it on like...like the stardrive! That smile--with your whole face, as if you were taking your soul out and putting it into her hands."
"Val," said Ender. "This is kind of an important letter. What is your point?"
"What are you planning to do with her, now that you own her?"
"I don't own anybody," said Ender. "I haven't laid a hand on her--literally. Not shaking hands, not a pat on the shoulder, nothing. No physical contact. I also haven't flirted with her. No sexual innuendoes. No inside jokes. And I haven't gone off alone with her, either. Month after month, as her mother conspires to leave us alone, I've simply not done it. Even if it took walking out of a room quite rudely. What part of that is making her fall in love with me, exactly?"
"Ender, I don't like it when you lie to me."
"Valentine, if you want an honest answer, write me an honest letter."
She sighed and sat down on her bed. "I can't wait for this voyage to end."
"A bit more than two months to go. Almost over. And you did finish your book."
"Yes, and it's very good," said Valentine. "Especially when you consider I barely met any of them and you were almost no help to me."
"I answered every question you asked."
"Except to evaluate the people, to evaluate the school, to--"
"My opinions aren't history. It wasn't supposed to be 'Ender Wiggin's School Days as told to his sister, Valentine.'"
"I didn't come on this voyage to quarrel with you."
Ender looked at her with such overdone astonishment that she threw a pillow at him.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I've never been as mean to you as I was to Peter all the time."
"Then all's right with the world."
"But I'm angry at you, Ender. You shouldn't toy with a girl's feelings. Unless you really plan to marry her--"
"I do not," said Ender.
"Then you shouldn't lead her on."
"I have not," said Ender.
"And I say you have."
"No, Valentine," said Ender. "What I have done is exactly what is needed for her to have the thing she wants most."
"Which is you."
"Which is definitely not me." Ender sat beside her on her bed, leaned close to her. "You will help me most by scrutinizing someone else."
"I scrutinize everybody," said Val. "I judge everybody. But you're my brother. I get to boss you around."
"And you're my sister. I have to tickle you until you pee or cry. Or both." Which he proceeded to attempt, though he didn't really go quite that far. Or at least, she only peed a little. And then punched him hard in the arm and made him say, "Ow," in a really snotty, sarcastic way, so she knew he was pretending it didn't hurt, but it really did. Which he deserved. He really was being rotten to Alessandra, and he didn't even care, and worse yet, he thought he could deny it. Just pitiful.
All that afternoon, Ender thought about what Valentine said. He knew what he was planning, and it really was for Alessandra's good, but he had miscalculated if the girl was actually falling in love with him. It was supposed to be friendship, trust, gratitude maybe. Brother-and-sister. Only Alessandra wasn't Valentine. She couldn't keep up. She didn't leap to conclusions as quickly as Val--or at least not to the same conclusions. She couldn't really hold up her end.
Where am I going to find anyone I can marry? Ender wondered. Nowhere and never, if I compare them all to Valentine.
All right, yes, I knew I was causing Alessandra to have feelings. I like it when she looks at me like that. Petra never looked at me that way. Nobody did. It feels good. The hormones wake up and get excited. It's fun. I'm fifteen. I haven't said anything to mislead her about my intentions, and I haven't done anything, not ever, to signal any kind of physical attraction. So shoot me for liking that she likes me and doing the things that make her feel that way. What's the rule here? Either totally ignore her and grind her face in her nothingness, or marry her on the spot? Are those the only choices?
But gnawing at the back of his mind was this question: Am I Peter? Am I using other people for whatever plan I have? Does it make a difference that my intention is to have a result that will give her a chance at happiness? I'm not asking her, I'm not giving her a choice, I'm manipulating her. Shaping her world so she makes certain choices and takes certain actions that make other people do what I want them to do and...
And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say, "Tut-tut, what a botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll choose as we think they should?
If I tell her what I'm up to, she'll probably go along with me. Do it voluntarily.
But is she a good enough actor to keep her mother from knowing something's going on? Forcing it out of her? Alessandra was still so much her mother's creature that Ender didn't believe she could keep a secret from her mother, not for long. And if she does give away the game, then it will cost Alessandra nothing--she'll be right where she already is--while I will lose everything. Don't I have a right to count myself in the balance here, my own happiness, my own future? And on the off chance that I'd be a better governor than Admiral Morgan, don't I owe it to the colonists to make sure things work out to put me in as governor, rather than him?
It's still war, even if there are no weapons but smiles and words. I have to take the forces I have, the advantages of the terrain, and try to face a more powerful enemy under circumstances that neutralize his advantages. Alessandra is a person, yes--so is every soldier, every pawn in the great game. I was used to win a war. Now I'll use someone else. All for the "good of the whole."
But underneath all his moral reasoning, there was something else. He could feel it. An itch, a hunger, a yearning. It was his inner chimp, as he and Valentine called it. The animal that smelled womanhood on Alessandra. Did I choose this plan, these tools, because they were best? Or because they would put me near a girl who is pretty, who desires my affection?
So maybe Valentine was completely right.
But if she was...what then? I can't undo all the attention I've paid to Alessandra. Do I suddenly turn cold to her, for no reason at all? Is that any less manipulative?
Sometimes can't I switch off my brain and be the hairless chimp with an eye for an available female?
No.
"How long are you going to play this little game with Ender Wiggin?" asked Dorabella.
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"Game?" asked Alessandra.
"He's obviously interested in you," said Dorabella. "He always homes in on you, I've seen how he smiles at you. He likes you."
"Like a sister," sighed Alessandra.
"He's shy," said Dorabella.
Alessandra sighed.
"Don't sigh at me," said Dorabella.
"Oh, when I'm around you, I'm not allowed to exhale?"
"Don't make me pinch your nose and stuff cookies in your mouth."
"Mother, I can't control what he does."
"But you can control what you do."
"Ender isn't Admiral Morgan."
"No, he isn't. He's a boy. With no experience at all. A boy who can be led and helped and shown."
"Shown what, Mother? Are you suggesting that I do something physical?"
"Darling sweet fairy daughter of mine," said Dorabella, "it's not for you and it's not for me. It's for Ender Wiggin's own good."
Alessandra rolled her eyes. She was such a teenager.
"Eye-rolling is not an answer, darling sweet fairy daughter."
"Mother, people who are doing the most awful things always say it's for the other person's own good."
"But in this case, I'm quite right. You see, Admiral Morgan and I have become very close. Very very close."
"Are you sleeping with him?"
Dorabella's hand flew up, prepared to strike, before she even knew what she was doing. But she caught herself in time. "Oh, look," she said. "My hand thinks it belongs to your grandmother."
Alessandra's voice shook a little. "When you said you were very very close I wondered if you were implying--"
"Quincy Morgan and I have an adult relationship," said Dorabella. "We understand each other. I bring a brightness to his life that he has never had before, and he brings a manly stability that your father, bless his heart, never had. There is also physical attraction, but we are mature adults, masters of our libido, and no, I haven't let him lay a hand on me."
"Then what are we talking about here?" asked Alessandra.
"What I did not know, as a girl your age," said Dorabella, "was that between cold chastity and doing that which produces babies, there is a wide range of steps and stages that can signal to a young man that his advances are welcome, to a point."
"I'm quite aware of that, Mother. I saw other girls at school dressing like whores and putting it all on display. I saw the fondling and grabbing and pinching. We're Italians, I was in an Italian school, and all the boys planned to grow up to be Italian men."