Enders In Exile

the work.
Missed opportunity, my young friend! There is no life without regret."
    "But you're glad that
you found them now."
    "Yes I am," said Sel.
"Everybody misses some things, finds others. This is something I helped
to find. With not a minute to spare." Then he smiled. "One thing I
noticed. I don't know if it matters, but . . . the larva hadn't
eaten the gold bug we found, the one that was still alive. And those
larvae, they're voracious."
    "They only eat
carrion?" asked Ender.
    "No, no, they went down
on the turtles just fine. Not Earth turtles, but we call them that.
They like living meat. But eating the gold bugs, that was cannibalism,
you understand? That was their parents' generation. Eating them because
there was nothing else. But they waited until they were dead. You see?"
    Ender nodded. He saw
perfectly. A rudimentary sense of respect for the living. For the
rights of others. Whatever these gold bugs were, they were not mere
animals. They weren't formics, but maybe they would give Ender his
chance to get inside the formic mind, at least at one remove.

CHAPTER
17

    To: [email protected]
From: Gov%[email protected]
Subj: Let's have a very quiet revolution
    Dear Hyrum,
    I have been warmly
received as governor here, in no small part due to your long-distance
intervention, as well as the enthusiasm of the natives.
    We are still bringing
colonists down from the ship as quickly as housing can be constructed
for them. We are branching out into four settlements—the
original, Miranda; and Falstaff, Polonius, and Mercutio. There was some
enthusiasm for a Caliban village, but it quickly dissipated when people
contemplated a future village school and what the mascot might look
like.
    You do understand,
don't you, that local self-government is inevitable in the colonies,
and the sooner the better. Well-intentioned as you are, and vital as it
is that Earth continue to pay the astronomical (pun intended) expenses
of starflight in the faint hope that it will eventually pay for itself,
there is no way that the I.F. can force an unwanted governor on an
unwilling populace—not for long.
    Far better that I.F.
ships come with ambassadorial status, to promote trade and good
relations and deliver colonists and supplies to compensate for the
burden they place on the local economy.
    In token of which good
counsel, I intend to serve for two years as governor, during which time
I will sponsor the writing of a constitution. We will submit it to
ColMin, not for approval—if we like it, it's our
constitution—but for your judgment as to whether ColMin can
recommend Shakespeare as a destination for colonists. That's where your
power comes from—your ability to decide whether colonists can
join an existing colony or not.
    And perhaps some
regulatory commission can meet by ansible, with a representative and
single vote from every colony, to certify each other as worthy trading
partners. In this way, a colony that sets up an intolerable government
can be ostracized and cut off from trade and new
colonists—but no one will commit the absurdity of trying to
wage war (another word for enforcing policy) against a settlement that
it takes half a lifetime to reach.
    Does this letter
constitute a declaration of independence? Not a very principled one.
It's more a simple recognition that we're independent whether we make
it official or not. These people survived for forty-one years
completely on their own. They're glad to have received the supplies and
the new breeding stock (plant, animal, human), but they did not have to
have them.
    In a way, each of these
colonies is a hybrid—human by gene and cultural forebear, but
formic by infrastructure. The formics built well; we don't have to
clear land or search for water or process it, and their sewage systems
seem to have been built for the ages. A fine monument! They still serve
us by carrying away our poo. Because of what the formics prepared and
what good scientists like Sel Menach accomplished in the colonies, the
I.F. and ColMin don't have the clout that they might have had.
    I say all this along
with the sincere hope that we can eventually reach a point where every
colony is visited every single year. Not in your lifetime or mine,
probably, but that should be the goal.
    Though if history is
any guide, that ambition will seem absurdly modest within fifty years,
as ships may very well come and go every six months, or every month, or
every week of the year. May we both live to see