Enders In Exile

Ender,
    I'm glad to hear that
things are going so well in Shakespeare Colony. The successful
assimilation of the new colonists is not being matched everywhere, and
we have granted the petition of the governor of Colony IX that we not
send them colonists—or a new governor—after all. In
short, they have declared themselves even more independent than you
have. (Your declaration that Shakespeare would accept no more offworld
governors was cited as having prompted them to decide whether they
wanted new colonists, so in a way this is all your fault, don't you
think?)
    Unfortunately, their
declaration came when I already had a ship with several thousand
colonists, a new governor, and a huge amount of supplies most of the
way toward their planet. They left not very long after your ship. Now
they're thirty-nine lightyears from home, and the party they were
invited to has been canceled.
    However, Shakespeare is
close to the route they were taking, and at this moment, they are in
such a position that we can bring them out of lightspeed, start turning
them as soon as that becomes feasible, and get them to your planet in
about a year.
    These colonists will
all be strangers to you. They have their own governor—again,
someone you do not know or even know of. It would almost certainly work
best if they establish their own settlement, accepting guidance and
medical help and supplies from you, but governing themselves.
    Since you have already
divided your colony into four villages, the settlement they form will
be larger than any of yours. It will be a far more difficult
assimilation than when your ship arrived, and I suggest a federation of
two colonies rather than incorporating them in your colony. Or, if you
prefer, a federation of five cities, though having the new colonists
outnumbered four-to-one in such a federation will cause its own
tensions.
    If you tell me not to
send them, I will follow your wishes; I can keep them on a holding
pattern, even putting most of the crew in stasis, until one of the
planets we're terraforming is ready for them.
    But if anyone can adapt
to this situation, and induce his colony to accept the newcomers, it is
you.
    I am attaching full
information, including bios and manifest.
    —Hyrum

    From: Gov%[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subj: Re: Unexpected colonists
    Dear Hyrum,
    We'll find a site for
them and have habitations prepared when they arrive. We will put them
near a formic city, so they can mine their technology and farm their
fields, as we did; and because you've given us a year's notice, we'll
have time to plant fields and orchards for them with human-adapted
local crops and genetically altered Earth crops. The people of
Shakespeare voted on this and are embracing the project with
enthusiasm. I will leave shortly to choose an appropriate site.
    —Andrew

    In all eleven years of
Abra's life, only one thing had ever happened that mattered: the
arrival of Ender Wiggin.
    Until then, it was all
work. Children were expected to do whatever was within their ability,
and Abra had the misfortune to be clever with his hands. He could untie
knots and tie them before he could make sentences. He could see how
machinery worked and when he became strong enough to use adult tools,
he could fix it or adapt it. He understood the flow of power through
the metal parts. And so there were jobs for him to do even when other
children were playing.
    His father, Ix, was
proud of his son, and so Abra was proud of himself. He was glad to be a
child who was needed for grownup tasks. He was much smaller than his
older brother Po, who had gone along with Uncle Sel to find the gold
bugs; but he was sent to help rig the low trolley that people rode into
and out of the cave, and on which food was taken to the colony of bugs,
and gold carcasses removed.
    Yet Abra also looked
wistfully as the children his age (he couldn't call them friends,
because he spent so little time with them) headed for the swimming
hole, or climbed trees in the orchard, or shot at each other with
wooden weapons.
    Only his mother,
Hannah, saw him. She urged him sometimes to go with the others, to
leave whatever job he was doing. But it was too late. Like a baby bird
that a child has handled, so it has the scent of man on it, Abra was
marked by his work with adults. There was no resentment on their part.
They just didn't think of him as one of them. If he had tried to come
along, it would have seemed to all of them as inappropriate