“And D-4 is easy to make out of local materials. Afraima, we did it!”
“I haven’t even checked to see if it works on the amaranth.”
“That would be too lucky.”
“Or blessed. Did you ever think God might want us to succeed here?”
“He could have killed this mold before we got here,” said Sel.
“That’s right, sound impatient with his gift and piss God off.”
It was banter, but there was truth behind it. Afraima was a serious Jew—she had renamed herself in Hebrew to a word meaning “fertile” when they held the vote on mating, in hopes that it would somehow induce God to let her have a Jewish husband. Instead, the governor simply assigned her to work for the only orthodox Jew among the colonists. Governor Kolmogorov had respect for religion. So did Sel.
He just wasn’t sure that God knew this place. What if the Bible was exactly right about the creation of that particular sun, moon, and earth—only that was the whole of God’s creation, and worlds like this one were the creation of alien gods with six limbs, or trilateral symmetry or something, like some of the life forms here—the ones that seemed to Sel to be the native species.
Soon they were back in the lab, with the amaranth samples that had been treated the same way. “So that’s it—good enough for starters, anyway.”
“But it takes so long to make it,” said Afraima.
“Not our problem. The chems can figure out how to make it faster and in larger quantities, now that we know which one works. It doesn’t seem to have damaged either plant, does it?”
“You are a genius, Dr. Menach.”
“No Ph.D.”
“I define the word ‘doctor’ as ‘person who knows enough to make species-saving discoveries.’”
“I’ll put it on my resume.”
“No,” she said.
“No?”
Her hand touched his arm. “I’m just coming into my fertile period, doctor. I want your seed in this field.”
He tried to make a joke of it. “Next thing you’ll be quoting from the Song of Solomon.”
“I’m not proposing romance, Dr. Menach. We have to work together, after all. And I’m married to Evenezer. He won’t have to know the baby isn’t his.”
This sounded like she had really thought things through. Now he was genuinely embarrassed. And chagrined. “We have to work together, Afraima.”
“I want the best possible genes for my baby.”
“All right,” he said. “You stay here and head up the adaptation studies. I’ll go work in the fields.”
“What do you mean? There are plenty of people who can do that.”
“It’s either fire you or fire me. We’re not working together anymore after this.”
“But no one had to know!”
“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” said Sel. “You’re supposed to be the believer.”
“But the daughters of Midian—”
“Slept with their own father because it was more important to have babies than to practice exogamy.” Sel sighed. “It’s also important to respect the rules of monogamy absolutely, so we don’t see the colony torn up with conflict over women.”
“All right, forget I said anything,” said Afraima.
“I can’t forget it,” said Sel.
“Then why don’t you—”
“I lost the lottery, Afraima. It’s now illegal for me to have offspring. Especially by poaching another man’s mate. But I also can’t take the libido suppressants because I need to be sharp and energetic in order to conduct my study of the life forms on this world. I can’t have you in here, now that you’ve offered yourself to me.”
“It was just an idea,” she said. “You need me to work with you.”
“I need someone,” said Sel. “Doesn’t have to be you.”
“But people will wonder why you fired me. Evenezer will guess that there was something between us.”
“That’s your problem.”
“What if I tell them that you got me pregnant?”
“You’re definitely fired. Right now. Irrevocably.”
“I was kidding!”
“Get your brain back inside your head. There’ll be a paternity test. DNA. Meanwhile, your husband will be made a figure of ridicule, and every other man will look at his wife, wondering if she’s offering herself to someone else to put a cuckoo in the nest. So you’re out. For the sake of everyone.”
“If you make it that obvious, then it’ll do the same damage to people’s trust in marriage as if we’d actually done it!”
Sel sat down on the greenhouse floor and buried his face in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” said Afraima. “I only half meant it.”
“You mean that if I had said yes, you’d have told me you were just kidding and left me humiliated for having agreed to adultery?”
“No,” she said. “I’d do it. Sel, you’re the smartest, everyone knows it. And you shouldn’t be cut off without having children. It’s not right. We need your genes in the pool.”
“That’s the genetic argument,” said Sel. “Then there’s the social argument. Monogamy has been proven, over and over, to be the optimum social arrangement. It’s not about genes, it’s about children—they have to grow up into the society we want them to maintain. We voted on this.”
“And I vote to carry one baby of yours. Just one.”
“Please leave,” said Sel.
“I’m the logical one, since I’m Jewish and so are you.”
“Please go. Close the door behind you. I have work to do.”
“You can’t turn me away,” she said. “It would hurt the colony.”
“So would killing you,” said Sel, “but you’re making that more and more tempting the longer you stay here to torture me.”
“It’s only torture because you want me.”
“My body is human and male,” said Sel, “and so of course I want to engage in mating behavior regardless of consequences. My logical functions are being suppressed already so it’s a good thing I made the decision irrevocably. Don’t make me turn my decision into a painful reality by cutting the little suckers off.”
“So that’s it? You castrate yourself, one way or the other. Well, I’m a human female, and I hunger for the mate that will give me the best offspring.”
“Then look for somebody big and strong and healthy if you want to commit adultery, and don’t let me catch you because I’ll turn you in.”
“Brain. I want your brain.”
“Well, the kid would probably have your brain and my face. Now go and get the reports on the D-4 treatment and take it over to chem.”
“I’m not fired?”
“No,” said Sel. “I’m resigning. I’m going out into the fields and leaving you here.”
“I’m just the backup XB. I can’t do the work.”
“You should have thought of that before you made it impossible for us to work together.”
“Who ever heard of a man who didn’t want a little roll in the hay on the side?”
“This colony is my life now, Afraima. Yours too. You don’t shit in your own soup. Can I put it any plainer than that?”
She began to cry.
“What have I done that God would punish me like this?” said Sel. “What comes next? Interpreting dreams for Pharaoh’s baker and butler?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You have to stay on as the XB, you really are a genius at it. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Now I’ve ruined everything.”
“Yes, you have indeed,” said Sel. “But you’re right about all my solutions, too. They’d be almost as damaging as your original idea. So here’s what we’ll do.”
She waited, the tears still coming out of her eyes.
“Nothing,” he said. “You will never mention this again. Never. You won’t touch me. You’ll dress with perfect modesty around me. Your communication with me will be work only. Scientific language, as formal as possible. People will think y
ou and I detest each other. Because I can’t afford to drug down my libido and still try to do this work. Get it?”
“Yes.”
“Forty years till the colony ship arrives with a new XB and I can quit this lousy job.”
“I didn’t mean to make you miserable. I thought you’d be happy.”
“My hormones were thrilled. They thought it was the best idea they’d ever heard.”
“Well, then I feel better,” she said.
“You feel better because I’m going to be going through hell for the next forty years?”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “As soon as I’m having babies, I’ll get fat and unattractive and way too busy to come here to help. Child production is everything, right? And soon the next generation will provide you with an apprentice to train. The most it will bother you is a few months. Maybe a year.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Dr. Menach, I’m truly sorry. We’re scientists, I start to think of human reproduction just like the animals. I didn’t mean to be disloyal to Evenezer, I didn’t mean to make you miserable. I just felt a wave of desire. I just knew that if I was going to have a baby, it should be yours, it should be the baby most worth having. But I’m still a rational person. A scientist. I will do exactly as you said—all business. As if we disliked each other and neither could ever desire the other. Let me stay until I need to quit this work to have babies.”
“All right. Get up, take the formula to chem, and leave me alone to work on the next problem.”
“And what is that? After the dustworm and the corn and amaranth mold, what are we working on?”
“The next problem I’m working on,” said Sel, “is burying myself in whatever tedious task I can find that does not involve you in any way. Will you please go away now?”
She went.
Sel wrote his report and sent it to the governor’s machine so it could be queued up for ansible transmission. If it turned out that the mold was something that cropped up on other worlds, his solution might work there, too. Besides, that’s what science was—the sharing of information, the pooling of knowledge.
That’s my gene pool, Afraima, he thought. The meme pool, the collective knowledge of science. What I discover here, what I learn, the problems I solve—those will be my children. They will be part of every generation that lives on this planet.
When the report was done, Afraima was still not back. Good, thought Sel. Let her spend all day with chem.
Sel walked through the village and out into the communal fields. Fernão McPhee was foreman on duty. “Give me a job,” Sel said to him.
“I thought you were working on the mold problem.”
“I think it’s solved. It’s up to chem now to figure out how to deliver it to the plants.”
“I’ve already got all the crews working on all the jobs. Your time is too valuable to waste on manual labor.”
“Everybody does manual labor. The governor does manual laborer.”
“The crews are full. You don’t know the jobs, you know your job, which is much more important. Go do your job, don’t bother me!”
He said it jokingly, but he meant it. And what could Sel answer? I need you to give me a hot, sweaty job so I can work off the steam from my beautiful assistant having offered me her body to put babies into!
“You’re no help to me at all,” said Sel to Fernão.
“Then we’re even.”
So Sel went on a long walk. Out beyond the fields, into the woods, gathering samples. When you don’t have an emergency to deal with, you do science. You collect, classify, analyze, observe. Always work to do.
No fantasizing about her, about what might have happened. Sexual fantasies are scripts for future behavior. What good will it do to say no today, and yes six months from now, after rehearsing the adultery over and over in my mind?
It would be so much easier if I weren’t determined to do what’s best for everybody. Whoever said virtue was its own reward was full of crap.
CHAPTER 7
To: [email protected], [email protected]
From: vwiggin%[email protected]/citizen
Subj: Ender is fine
By “fine” I mean of course that his body and mind seem to be functioning normally. He was happy to see me. We talked easily. He seems at peace about everything. No hostility toward anyone. He spoke of both of you with real affection. We shared lots of childhood memories.
But as soon as that conversation ended, I saw him almost visibly crawl inside a shell. He is obsessed with the formics. I think he’s burdened with guilt over having destroyed them. He knows that this is not appropriate—that he did not know what he was doing, they were trying to destroy us so it was self-defense anyway—but the ways of conscience are mysterious. We evolved consciences so that we would internalize community values and police ourselves. But what happens when you have a hyperactive conscience and make up rules that nobody else knows about, just so you can punish yourself for breaking them?
Nominally, he is governor, but I have been warned by two different people that Admiral Quincy Morgan has no intention of letting Ender govern anything. If Peter were in such a position, he would already be conspiring to have Morgan removed before the voyage began. But Ender just chuckles and says, “Imagine that.” When I pressed him, he said, “He can’t have a contest if I won’t play.” And when I pressed him harder, he got irritable and said, “I was born for one war. I won it and I’m done.”
So now I’m torn. Do I try to maneuver for him? Or do what he asks and ignore the whole situation? He thinks I should spend my time on the voyage either in stasis, so we’d be the same age when we arrived, both fifteen—or, if I’m awake, then I should write a history of Battle School. Graff has promised to give me all the documents about Battle School—though I can get those from the public records, since they all came out in the court martial.
Here’s my philosophical question: What is love? Does my love for Ender mean that I do what I think is good for him, even if he asks me not to? Or does love mean I do what he asks, even though I think he would find being a figurehead governor a hellish experience?
It’s like piano lessons, dear parents. So many adults complain about the hideous experience of being forced to practice and practice. And yet there are others who say to their parents, “Why didn’t you MAKE me practice so today I’d be able to play well?”
Love, Valentine
To: vwiggin%[email protected]/citizen
From: [email protected]
Subj: re: Ender is fine
Dear Valentine,
Your father says that you will be irritated if I say how shocking it is to discover that one of my children does not know everything, and admits it, and even asks her parents for advice. For the past five years, you and Peter have been as closed off as twins with a private language. Now, only a few weeks out from under Peter’s influence, you have discovered parents again. I find this gratifying. I hereby declare you to be my favorite child.
We continue to be devastated—a slow, corrosive kind of devastation—that Ender chooses not to write to us. You say nothing of anger toward us. We do not understand. Doesn’t he realize we were forbidden to write to him? Why doesn’t he read our letters now? Or does he read them and then choose not to poke the reply box and say even as little as “Got your letters”?
As to your questions, the answers are easy. You are not his mother or father. We are the ones with the right to meddle and do what’s good for him whether he likes it or not. You are his sister. Think of yourself as companion, friend, confidante. Your responsibility is to receive what he gives, and to give him what he asks only if you think it’s good. You do not have either the right or the responsibility to give him what he specifically asks you not to give. That would be no gift; that is neither friend nor sister.
Parents are a special case. He has built a wall exactly in the place where Battle School first built it. It keeps us out. He thinks he does not need us. He is mistaken.
I suspect we are exactly what he is hungry for. It is a mother who can provide the ineffable comfort to a wounded soul. It is a father who can say, “Ego te absolvo” and “well done, thou good and faithful servant” and be believed by the inmost soul.
If you were better educated and hadn’t lived in an atheistic establishment, you would understand those references. When you look them up, please remember that I did not have to.
Love,
Your sarcastic, overly analytical,
deeply wounded yet quite satisfied,
Mother
To: [email protected], [email protected]
From: vwiggin%[email protected]/citizen
Subj: Ender is fine
I know all about Father’s confessionals and your King James Version and I did not have to look anything up either. Do you think your and Father’s religions were a secret from your children? Even Ender knew, and he left home when he was six.
I am taking your advice because it is wise and because I have no better ideas. And I’m going to follow Ender’s and Graff’s advice, too, and write a history of Battle School. My goal is a simple one: to get it published as quickly as possible so it can be part of the task of erasing the vile slanders of the court martial, rehabilitating the reputations of the children who won this war and the adults who trained and aimed them. Not that I don’t still hate them for taking Ender from us. But I find it quite possible to hate someone and still see their side of the argument between us. This is perhaps the only worthwhile gift Peter ever gave me.
Peter has not written to me, nor I to him. If he asks, tell him that I think about him often, I notice that I don’t see him anymore, and if that counts as “missing him,” then he is missed.
Meanwhile, I had a chance to meet Petra Arkanian in transit and I have spoken—well, literally WRITTEN—to “Bean,” Dink Meeker, Han Tzu, and have letters out to several others. The better I understand from them what Ender went through (since Ender’s not telling), the better I will know what I should be doing but am not because, as you point out, I am not his mother and he has asked me not to do it. Meanwhile, I am pretending that it’s only about writing the book.
The Ender Quintet (Omnibus) Page 179