There was no talking to the woman directly, however. Her face became a pleasant blank and she answered succinctly or not at all; when she chose not to answer, she smiled with a set jaw, so that despite the toothy grin Virlomi was aware of the anger behind it. She did not push the matter further.
But she did watch for Nichelle's reactions to things Virlomi and others said when Nichelle was within earshot, but not part of the group. What seemed to set her off, what made her huffy in her body language, was any mention of the Hegemony or Peter Wiggin or the wars on Earth or the Free People of Earth or the Ministry of Colonization. Also the names of Ender Wiggin, Graff, Suriyawong, and, above all, Julian Delphiki--"Bean"--seemed to make her hold tightly to her baby and start to whisper some sort of incantation to the child.
Virlomi introduced some of these names herself, as a test. Nichelle Firth was certainly not someone who had taken part in the war in any way--her picture got no response from Peter's staff when she sent an inquiry. Yet she seemed to take the events of recent history quite personally.
Only toward the end of the preparation period did it occur to her to try one other name. She worked it into a conversation with a pair of Belgians, but made sure they were near enough to Nichelle that she could hear them. "Achilles Flandres," she said, referring to him as the most famous Belgian in recent history. Of course they were offended and denied that he was really Belgian, but while she was smoothing things over with them, she was also watching Nichelle.
Her reaction was strong, yes, and at first glance seemed to be the same as always--hold the baby close, nuzzle it, speak to it.
But then Virlomi realized: She was not stiff. She was not huffy. Instead she was tender with the child. She was gentle and seemed happy. She was smiling.
And she was whispering the name "Achilles Flandres" over and over.
This was so disturbing that Virlomi wanted to go over to her and scream at her: How dare you venerate the name of that monster!
But she was too keenly aware of her own monstrous deeds. There were differences between her and Achilles, yes, but there were similarities, too, and it was not wise of her to condemn him too vehemently. So the woman felt some affinity for him. What of that?
Virlomi left the barracks then and searched again. No record of Achilles ever being in a place where he might have met this definitely American woman. Virlomi could not imagine her speaking French, not even badly. She didn't seem educated enough--like most Americans, she would have only the one language, spoken raggedly but loudly. The baby could not possibly be Achilles'.
But she had to check. The woman's behavior pointed so clearly toward that possibility.
She did not allow Firth mother-and-child to go into stasis and be stowed on the ship until she got back the results of a comparison between the baby's genetic print and the records of Achilles Flandres's genes.
No match. He could not possibly be the father.
All right then, thought Virlomi. The woman is strange. She'll be a problem. But not one that can't be handled with time. Far away from Earth, whatever it was that made her such a devotee of the monster will fade. She will accept the pressure of the friendship of others.
Or she won't, and then her offense will be self-punishing, as she earns ostracism from those whose friendship she refused. Either way, Virlomi would deal with it. How much trouble can one woman be, out of thousands of colonists? It's not as if Nichelle Firth was any kind of leader. No one would follow her. She would amount to nothing.
Virlomi gave orders clearing the Firths for stasis. But because of the delay, they were still there when Graff came in person to speak to those who were going to be awake during the voyage. It was only about a hundred colonists--most of them preferred the sleeping option--and Graff's job was to make clear to them that it was the ship's captain who ruled absolutely, and to impress on them the captain's almost unlimited powers of punishment. "You will do whatever you are asked to do by a crew member, and you will do it instantly."
"Or what?" asked someone.
Graff did not take umbrage--the voice sounded more frightened than challenging. "The captain's power extends to life and death. Depending on the seriousness of the infraction. And he is the sole judge of how serious your offense is. There are no appeals. Am I clear?"
Everyone understood. A few of them even took the last-minute option to travel in stasis--not because they intended to mutiny, but because they didn't like the idea of being cooped up for years with someone who had that kind of power over them.
When the meeting ended, there was a tremendous amount of noise and bustle, as some headed for the table where last-minute stasis could be arranged, and others headed for their dormitories, and a few gathered around Graff--the celebrity hounds, of course, since he was almost as famous, in his own way, as Virlomi, and he hadn't been available till now.
Virlomi was making her way to the stasis sign-up table when she heard a loud noise--many gasps and exclamations at once--from the people around Graff. She looked over but couldn't see what was going on. Graff was just standing there, smiling at somebody, and seemed perfectly normal. Only the glances--glares, really--of a few of the bystanders drew her eye to the woman huffing her way out of the room, clearly coming from Graff's little crowd.
It was Nichelle Firth, of course, holding her dear little infant Randall.
Well, whatever she had done, apparently it didn't bother Graff, though it bothered other people.
Still, it was a worry that Nichelle had sought out an opportunity to confront Graff. Her hostility led to action; bad news.
Why hasn't she been openly hostile to me? I'm just as famous as...
Famous, but why? Because the Hegemony defeated me and took me into captivity. And the enemies arrayed against me? Suriyawong. Peter Wiggin. The whole civilized world along with them. Pretty much the same list that opposed and hated Achilles Flandres.
No wonder she volunteered for my colony, and not one of the others. She thinks that I'm a kindred soul, having been beaten by the same foes. She doesn't understand--or at least she didn't when she signed up for my colony--that I agree with those who defeated me, that I was wrong and needed to be stopped. I am not Achilles. I am not like Achilles.
If the goddess wanted to punish Virlomi for having impersonated her to gain power and unite India, there would be no surer way than this: to have everyone think she was like Achilles--and like her for it.
Fortunately, Nichelle Firth was only one person, and nobody liked her because she liked nobody. Whatever her opinions were, they would not affect Virlomi.
I keep reassuring myself of that, thought Virlomi. Does that mean that in the deepest recesses of my mind, this woman's strange opinions are already affecting me?
Of course it does.
Satyagraha. This, too, I will bear.
CHAPTER 12
To: GovDes%[email protected]/voy
From: [email protected]
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 t
old 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."
&n
bsp; "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."
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