Ender in Exile

by Orson Scott Card

  "I don't know what people will do," said Ender, "but yes, I think of it as something holy. I don't want to make money from it. What would I use money for? I want everyone to read it. I want everyone to know who the hive queens were. What we lost when we took them out of existence."

  "We saved our lives, Ender."

  "No," said Ender. "That's what we thought we were doing, and that's what we should be judged for--but what we really did was slaughter a species that wanted desperately to make peace with us, to try to understand us--but they never understood what speech and language were. This is the first time they've had a chance to find a voice."

  "Too late," said Valentine.

  "Tragedies are like that," said Ender.

  "And their tragic flaw was...muteness?"

  "Their tragic flaw was arrogance--they thought they could terraform any world that didn't have intelligence of the kind they knew how to recognize--beings that spoke to each other mind to mind."

  "The way the gold bugs speak to us."

  "The gold bugs are grunting--mentally," said Ender.

  "You found one," said Valentine. "I asked you if you found 'formics' and you said no, but you found one."

  Ender said nothing.

  "I will never ask again," said Valentine.

  "Good," said Ender.

  "And that one--it's alone."

  Ender shrugged.

  "You didn't kill it. It didn't kill you. It told you--no, showed you--all the memories that you put into your book."

  "For someone who was never going to ask again, you sure have a lot of questions, missy," said Ender.

  "Don't you dare talk down to me."

  "I'm a fifty-four-year-old man," said Ender.

  "You may have been born fifty-four years ago," said Valentine, "but you're only sixteen, and no matter how old you are, I'm two years older."

  "When the colony ship arrives, I'm getting on it," said Ender.

  "I think I knew that," said Valentine.

  "I can't stay here. I have to take a long journey. To get away from every living human."

  "The ships only go from world to world, with people on all of them."

  "But they take time doing it," said Ender. "If I take voyage after voyage, eventually I'll leave behind the human race as it now is."

  "That's a long, lonely journey."

  "Only if I go alone."

  "Is that an invitation?"

  "To come with me as long as you find it interesting," said Ender.

  "Fair enough," said Valentine. "My guess is that you'll be better company now that you aren't in a perpetual funk."

  "I don't think so," said Ender. "I intend to remain in stasis through every voyage."

  "And miss the play readings on the way?"

  "Can you finish your book before it's time to leave?" asked Ender.

  "Probably," she said. "Certainly this volume."

  "I thought this was the last one."

  "Last but one," said Valentine.

  "You've covered every aspect of the Formic Wars and you're writing the last battle now."

  "There are two great knots to unravel."

  Ender closed his eyes. "I think my book unravels one of them," he said.

  "Yes," said Valentine. "I'd like to include it at the end of my last volume."

  "It's not copyrighted," said Ender. "You can do what you want."

  "Do you want to know what the other knot is?" asked Valentine.

  "I assume it's Peter bringing the whole world together after the war was over," said Ender.

  "What does that have to do with a history of the Formic Wars?" she said. "The last knot is you."

  "I'm a Gordian knot. Don't unravel, just slice."

  "I'm going to write about you."

  "I won't read it."

  "Fine," said Valentine. "I won't show it to you."

  "Can't you please wait?" He wanted to say: Until I'm dead. But he didn't get that specific.

  "Maybe a while," said Valentine. "We'll see."

  Ender filled his days now with the business of the new colony, laying the groundwork for their arrival, making sure there were plenty of surplus crops being grown at all four of the villages as well as the new colony site, so that the newcomers could have failed harvests for two, even three years, and there'd still be no hunger. "And we'll need money," said Ender. "Here where we all know each other, this sort of ad hoc communism we've been using has worked out. But for trade to work well, we need a medium of exchange."

  "Po and I found you the gold bugs," said Sel Menach. "So you've got the gold. Make coins."

  Abra figured out how to adapt an oil press to make a coin stamper, and one of the chemists came up with an alloy that wouldn't constantly be shedding gold as the coins passed from hand to hand. One of the talented youngsters drew a picture of Sel Menach and one of the old women drew, from memory, the face of Vitaly Kolmogorov. Sel insisted that Kolmogorov get the cheaper coin, "Because that's the face they'll see the most. You always give the greatest man the smallest denomination."

  They practiced using the money, so the prices would be set before the new colonists arrived. It was a joke at first. "Five chickens don't make a cow." And instead of calling the coins "fives" and "ones," they became "sels" and "vits." "Render unto Sel that which is Sel's, but hang on to Vit." "Sel wise, Vit foolish."

  Ender wrestled with trying to set a value for the coins relative to the international dollar of the Hegemony, but Valentine stopped him. "Let it find its own value, tied to whatever people eventually pay for whatever it is we eventually export to other worlds." So the currency floated within their own private universe.

  The first edition of The Hive Queen sold slowly at first, but then faster and faster. It was translated into many languages, even though almost everyone on Earth had a working knowledge of Common, since that was the official language of Peter's "Free People of Earth"--the propagandistic name he had chosen for his new international government.

  Meanwhile, free copies circulated on the nets, and one day it was included in a message one of the xenobotanists received. She started telling everyone in Miranda about it, and copies were printed out and handed around. Ender and Valentine made no comment; when Alessandra pressed a copy on Ender, he accepted it, waited a while, and returned it. "Isn't it wonderful?" Alessandra asked.

  "I think it is, yes," said Ender.

  "Oh, yes, that analytical voice, that dispassionate attitude."

  "What can I say?" said Ender. "I am who I am."

  "I think this book has changed my life," said Alessandra.

  "For the better, I hope," said Ender. And then, glancing at her swollen belly, he asked, "Changed your life more than that?"

  Alessandra smiled. "I don't know yet. I'll tell you in a year."

  Ender did not say: In a year I'll be on a starship and far away.

  Valentine finished her penultimate volume and when it was published, she included the full text of The Hive Queen at the end, with an introductory note:

  "We know so little of the formics that it is impossible for me, as a historian, to tell of this war from their point of view. So I will include an artistic imagining of the history, because even if it can't be proved, I believe this is the true story."

  Not long after, Valentine came to Ender. "Peter read my book," she said.

  "I'm glad someone did," said Ender.

  "He sent me a message about the last chapter. He said, 'I know who wrote it.'"

  "And was he right?"

  "He was."

  "Isn't he the clever one."

  "He was moved, Ender."

  "People seem to be liking it."

  "More than liking, and you know it. Let me read what Peter said: 'If he can speak for the buggers, surely he can speak for me.'"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "He wants you to write about him. About his life."

  "When I last saw Peter I was six and he had threatened to kill me just a few hours before."

  "
So you're saying no."

  "I'm saying that I'll talk to him and we'll see what happens."

  On the ansible, they talked for an hour at a time, Peter in his late fifties, with a weak heart that had the doctors worried, Ender still a boy of sixteen. But Peter was still himself, and so was Ender, only now there was no anger between them. Maybe because Peter had achieved everything he dreamed of, and Ender hadn't stood in his way or even, at least in Peter's mind, surpassed him.

  In Ender's mind, too. "What you did," said Ender, "you knew you were doing."

  "Is that good or bad?"

  "Nobody had to trick Alexander into conquering Persia," said Ender. "If they had, would we call him 'the Great'?"

  When Peter had told of his whole life, everything he did that mattered enough to come up in these conversations, Ender spent only five days writing a slim volume called "The Hegemon."

  He sent a copy to Peter with a note: "Since the author will be 'Speaker for the Dead,' this can't be published until after you die."

  Peter wrote back: "It can't happen a moment too soon for me." But in a letter to Valentine, he poured out his heart about what it meant to him to feel so completely understood. "He didn't conceal any of the bad things I did. But he kept them in balance. In perspective."

  Valentine showed the letter to Ender and he laughed. "Balance! How can anybody know the relative weight of sins and great achievements? Five chickens do not make a cow."

  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 stupi
d, 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.