ENDER IN EXILE

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.