Ender in Exile

by Orson Scott Card

  Even if you cannot or no longer wish to send me to Ganges, however, I will be aboard that ship, so I hope our flight plan will send me somewhere interesting. Valentine has not yet decided whether to come with me, but since, because of working on her histories, she has remained completely detached from this colony, emotionally and socially, I think she'll come with me, having no incentive to remain here without me.

  Your lifelong worker bee,

  Ender

  Achilles came to the hut where Governor Virlomi lived in her lofty poverty. She made such a show of having the simplest of habitations--but it was completely unnecessary to build adobe walls and a thatched roof, with so much fine lumber nearby. Virlomi's every action was calculated to enhance her prestige among the Indian colonists. But the whole display filled Achilles with contempt.

  "Randall Firth," he said to the "friend" standing outside. Virlomi had said, "My friends stand watch to protect my time," she said, "so I can meditate sometimes." But her "friends" ate at the common table and drew their full share at harvest, so that their service to her was, in effect, paid. They were cops or guards, and everyone knew it. But no, the Indians all said, they really are volunteers, they really do a full day's labor besides.

  A full day's labor...for an Indian. It gets a little hot and they go lie down when regular fullsize people have to take up the slack for them.

  No wonder my father, Achilles the Great, led the Chinese to conquer the Indians. Someone had to teach them how to work. Nothing, though, could teach them how to think.

  Inside the hut, Virlomi was spinning yarn by hand. Why? Because Gandhi did it. They had four spinning jennies and two power looms, and spare parts to keep them running for a hundred years, by which time they should have the ability to manufacture new ones. There was no need for homespun. Even Gandhi only did it because he was protesting against the way English power looms were putting Indians out of work. What was Virlomi trying to accomplish?

  "Randall," she said.

  "Virlomi," he answered.

  "Thank you for coming."

  "No one can resist a command from our beloved governor."

  Virlomi lifted weary eyes to him. "And yet you always find a way."

  "Only because your power here is illegitimate," said Achilles. "Even before we founded our colony, Shakespeare declared its independence and started electing governors to two-year terms."

  "And we did the same," said Virlomi.

  "They always elect you," said Achilles. "The person appointed by ColMin."

  "That's democracy."

  "Democracy only because the deck was stacked. Literally. With Indians. And you play this holy-woman game to keep them in your thrall."

  "You have far too much time to read," said Virlomi, "if you know words like 'thrall.'"

  Such an easy opening. "Why do you feel the need to discourage citizens from educating themselves?" asked Achilles.

  Virlomi's pleasant expression didn't crack. "Why must everything be political with you?"

  "Wouldn't it be nice if other people ignored politics, so you could have it all to yourself?"

  "Randall," said Virlomi, "I didn't bring you here because of your agitation among the non-Indian colonists."

  "And yet that's why I came."

  "I have an opportunity for you."

  Achilles had to give her credit: Virlomi kept on plugging away. Maybe that's one of the attributes of Indian goddesshood. "Are you going to offer me another placeholder job to assuage my ego?"

  "You keep saying that you're trapped on this world, that you've never been anywhere else, so your entire life will be lived under the dominion of Indians, surrounded by Indian culture."

  "Your spies have reported accurately."

  He expected her to get sidetracked on whether her informants were spies or not, since they were ordinary citizens who freely attended public events and then talked about them afterward. But apparently she was as weary of that topic as he was. And besides, she clearly had an urgent agenda.

  "A starship is arriving here in about a month," said Virlomi. "It comes from Shakespeare Colony, and it's bringing us several of their highly successful hybrids and genetic alterations to augment our agricultural resources. A very important visit."

  "I'm not a farmer," said Achilles.

  "When starships come here," said Virlomi, "it's never permanent. They come, and then they go."

  Now Achilles understood exactly what she was offering him. If it was an offer, and not an involuntary exile. "Go where?" he asked.

  "In this case, I am assured that the pilot is taking his starship back to Earth--well, near to Earth--so that the samples from Shakespeare, along with our own poor offerings, can be examined, propagated, studied, and shared with all the colonies. Some may even be cultivated on Earth itself, because the high yields and climatic adaptations are so favorable."

  "Are they naming one of the species after you?" asked Achilles.

  "I'm offering you a chance to go to that big wide world and see it for yourself. Indians are only about a quarter of Earth's population at the moment, and there are many places you can go where you'll almost never see an Indian."

  "It's not Indians that I don't like," said Achilles blandly.

  "Oh?"

  "It's smug authoritarian government pretending to be democratic."

  "Indians are in the majority here. By definition democratic, even if smug," said Virlomi.

  "Earth is ruled by an evil dictatorship."

  "Earth is ruled by an elected Congress, and presided over by an elected hegemon."

  "A hegemony established through the murder of--"

  "Of the man you mistakenly believe to be your father," said Virlomi.

  That sentence struck Achilles like a blow with a sledgehammer. In all his life, he and his mother had kept his parentage a secret, just as no one had ever heard him called by his secret--but true--name, Achilles. It was always Randall this and Randall that; only in moments of tender privacy did Mother ever speak to him as Achilles. Only in his own mind did he call himself that name.

  But Virlomi knew. How?

  "I watched your supposed father murder children in cold blood," said Virlomi. "He murdered a good friend of mine. There was no provocation."

  "That's a lie," said Achilles.

  "Ah. You have a witness who will contradict me?"

  "There was provocation. He was trying to unite the world and establish peace."

  "He was a psychotic who murdered everyone who ever helped him--or saw him helpless."

  "Not everyone," said Achilles. "He let you live."

  "I didn't help him. I didn't thwart him. I stayed invisible, until at last I was able to escape from him. Then I set out to liberate my country from the cruel oppression he had unleashed upon us."

  "Achilles Flandres was establishing world peace, and you brought war back to a country that he had pacified."

  "But you have no problem with admitting that you believe the fantasy that he is your father."

  "I think my mother knows more than anyone else about that."

  "Your mother knows only what she was told. Because she's a surrogate--not your genetic mother. Your embryo was implanted in her. She was lied to. She has passed that lie down to you. You are nothing but another of Achilles' kidnap victims. And your imprisonment by him continues to this day. You are his last and most pathetic victim."

  Achilles' hand lashed out before he could stop himself. The blow he struck was not hard--not as hard as his height and strength could have made it.

  "I have been assaulted," said Virlomi quietly.

  Two of her "friends" came into the hut. They took Achilles by the arms.

  "I charge Randall Firth with assault on the governor. Under penalty of perjury, Randall, do you admit that you struck me?"

  "What an absurd lie," said Achilles.

  "I thought you'd say that," said Virlomi. "Three vids from different angles should substantiate the charge and the perjury. When you're convicted, Randall
, I will recommend that your sentence be exile. To Earth--the place you seem to think would be infinitely preferable to Ganges. Your mother can go with you or not, as she chooses."

  She played me like a fish, thought Achilles. My father would never have stood for this. Humiliation--the unbearable offense. That's how my father lived, and that's how I will live.

  "The whole recording," said Achilles. "That's what they'll see--how you goaded me."

  Virlomi rose smoothly to her feet and came close to him, putting her mouth close to his ear. "The whole recording," said Virlomi, "will show who you think your father is, and your approval of his actions, which still are seen as the epitome of evil by the entire human race."

  She stepped back from him. "You can decide for yourself whether the whole record or an edited portion will be shown."

  Achilles knew that this was the point where he was expected to make threats, to bluster pathetically. But the recording was still running.

  "I see that you know how to manipulate a child," said Achilles. "I'm only sixteen, and you provoked me to anger."

  "Ah, yes, sixteen. Big for your age, aren't you?"

  "In heart and mind, as well as skin and bone," said Achilles--his standard answer. "Remember, Your Excellency the Governor, that setting me up is one thing, and knocking me out is another."

  He turned--and then waited as the men clinging to his arms scrambled to move around again to be beside him. They left the hut together. Then Achilles stopped abruptly. "You do know that I can shake you off like house flies if I feel like it."

  "Oh, yes, Mr. Firth. Our presence was as witnesses. Otherwise our taking hold of you was merely symbolic."

  "And you hoped I'd knock one of you down on camera."

  "We hope that all men and women can live together without violence."

  "But you don't mind being the victim of violence, if you can use it to discredit or destroy your enemy."

  "Are you our enemy, Mr. Firth?"

  "I hope not," said Achilles. "But your goddess wants me to be."

  "Oh, she is not a goddess, Mr. Firth." They laughed as if the idea were absurd.

  As Achilles walked away, he was already formulating his next move. She was going to use his father's reputation against him--and he did not believe she would keep it a secret, since she was right and any link between him and Achilles the Great would permanently besmirch him.

  If my father is widely believed to be the worst man in human history, then I must find a worse one to link her with.

  As for the claim that Mother was only a surrogate, Randall would not let Virlomi's lie come between him and his mother. It would break her heart for him even to question her motherhood of him. No, Virlomi, I will not let you turn me into a weapon to hurt my mother.

  CHAPTER 21

  To: AWiggin%Ganges@ColLeague.adm

  From: hgraff%retlist@IFCom.adm

  Subj: Welcome back to the human universe

  Of course my condolences on the passing of your parents. But I understand from them that you and they corresponded to great mutual satisfaction before they died. The passing of your brother must have come as more of a surprise. He was young, but his heart gave out. Pay no attention to the foolish rumors that always attend the death of the great. I saw the autopsy, and Peter had a weak heart, despite his healthy lifestyle. It was quick, a clot that stopped his life while he slept. He died at the peak of his power and his powers. Not a bad way to go. I hope you'll read the excellent essay on his life written by supposedly the same author as The Hive Queen. It's called The Hegemon, and I've attached it here.

  An interesting thing happened to me while you were in stasis, sailing from Shakespeare to Ganges. I was fired.

  Here is something I hadn't foreseen (believe it; I have foreseen very little in my long life; I survived and accomplished things because I adapted quickly), though I should have: When you spend ten months of every year in stasis, there is a side effect: Your underlings and superiors begin to regard your awakenings as intrusions. The ones who were fiercely loyal to you retire, pursue their careers into other avenues, or are maneuvered out of office. Soon, everyone around you is loyal to themselves, their careers, or someone who wants your job.

  Everyone put on such a show of deference to me whenever I awoke. They reported on how all my decisions from my last awakening had been carried out--or had explanations as to why they had not.

  For three awakenings, I should have noticed how unconvincing those explanations had become, and how in effectively my orders had been carried out. I should have seen that the bureaucratic soup through which I had navigated for so many years had begun to congeal around me; I should have seen that my long absences were making me powerless.

  Just because I wasn't having any fun, I didn't realize that my months in stasis were, in effect, vacations. It was an attempt to prolong my tenure in office by not attending to business. When has this ever been a good idea?

  It was pure vanity, Ender. It could not work; it could not last. I awoke to find that my name was no longer on my office door. I was on the retired list of IFCom--and at a colonel's pay, to add insult to injury. As for any kind of pension from ColMin, that was out of the question, since I had not been retired, I had been dismissed for nonperformance of my duties. They cited years of missed meetings when I was in stasis; they cited my failure to seek any kind of leave; they even harked back to that ancient court martial to show a "pattern of negligent behavior." So...dismissed with cause, to live on a colonel's half pay.

  I think they actually assumed that I had managed to enrich myself during my tenure in office. But I was never that kind of politician.

  However, I also care little for material things. I am returning to Earth, where I still own a little property--I did make sure the taxes were kept up. I will be able to live in peaceful retirement on a lovely piece of land in Ireland that I fell in love with and bought during the years when I traveled the world in search of children to exploit and quite possibly destroy in Battle School. No one there will have any idea of who I am--or, rather, who I was. I have outlived my infamy.

  One thing about retirement, however: I will have no more ansible privileges. Even this letter is going to you with such a low priority that it will be years before it's transmitted. But the computers do not forget and cannot be misused by anyone vindictive enough to want to prevent my saying good-bye to old friends. I saw to the security of the system, and the leaders of the I.F. and the FPE understand the importance of maintaining the in dependence of the nets. You will see this message when you come out of stasis yourself upon arriving at Ganges four years from now.

  I write with two purposes. First, I want you to know that I understand and remember the great debt that I and all the world owe to you. Fifty-seven years ago, before you went to Shakespeare, I assembled your pay during the war (which was all retroactively at admiral rank), the cash bonuses voted for you and your jeesh during the first flush of gratitude, and your salary as governor of Shakespeare, and piggybacked them onto six different mutual funds of impeccable reputation.

  They will be audited continuously by the best software I could find, which, it may amuse you to know, is based on the kernel of the Fantasy Game (or "mind game," as it was also called in Battle School). The program's ability to constantly monitor itself and all data sources and inputs, and to reprogram itself in response to new information, made it seem the best choice to make sure your best interests, financially, were well watched out for. Human financial managers can be incompetent, or tempted to embezzle, or die, only to be replaced by a worse one.

  You may draw freely from the accruing interest, without paying taxes of any kind until you come of age--which, since so many children are voyaging, is now legally accounted using the sum of ship's time during voyages added to the days spent in real time between voyages, with stasis time counting zero. I have done my best to shore up your future against the vicissitudes of time.

  Which brings me to my second purpose. I am an old man who tho
ught he could manipulate time and live to see all his plans come to fruition. In a way, I suppose I have. I have pulled many strings, and most of my puppets have finished their dance. I have outlived most of the people I knew, and all of my friends.

  Unless you are my friend. I have come to think of you that way; I hope that I do not overstep my bounds, because what I offer you now is a friend's advice.

  In rereading the message in which you asked me to send you to Ganges, I have seen in the phrase "reasons of my own" the possibility that you are using starflight the way I was using stasis--as a way to live longer. In your case, though, you are not seeking to see all your plans to fruition--I'm not sure you even have plans. I think instead that you are seeking to put decades, perhaps centuries, between you and your past.

  I think the plan is rather clever, if you mean to outlast your fame and live in quiet anonymity somewhere, to marry and have children and rejoin the human race, but among people who cannot even conceive of the idea that their neighbor, Andrew Wiggin, could possibly have anything to do with the great Ender Wiggin who saved the world.

  But I fear that you are trying to distance yourself from something else. I fear that you think you can hide from what you (all unwittingly) did, the matters that were exploited in my unfortunate court martial. I fear that you are trying to outrun the deaths of Stilson, of Bonzo Madrid, of thousands of humans and billions of formics in the war you so brilliantly and impossibly won for us all.

  You cannot do it, Ender. You carry them with you. They will be freshly in your mind long after all the rest of the world has forgotten. You defended yourself against children who meant to destroy you, and you did it effectively; if you had not done so, would you have been capable of your great victories? You defended the human race against a nonverbal enemy who destroyed human lives carelessly in the process of taking what it wanted--our world, our home, our achievements, the future of planet Earth. What you blame yourself for, I honor you for. Please hear my voice in your head, as well as your own self-condemnation. Try to balance them.