Enders In Exile

science, but my parents chose each
other partly because they were each so brilliant, and then the
International Fleet asked them to have a third child because my older
brother and sister were so brilliant but still were not quite what the
I.F. wanted. Does that mean that I'm not
really
me? Who would I be, if my parents hadn't given birth to me?"
    Abra was having a hard
time following the conversation. It made him sleepy. He yawned.
    Then Ender came up with
a comparison Abra understood. "It's like saying, What would this pump
be, if it weren't a pump?"
    "That's just dumb. It
is
a pump. If it weren't a pump, it wouldn't
be
anything at all."
    "So now you understand."
    Abra whispered the next
question. "So you're like my father, and you don't believe people have
souls?"
    "No," said Ender. "I
don't know about souls. I just know that while we're alive, in these
bodies, we can only do what our body can do. My parents believe in
souls. I've known people who were absolutely sure. Smart people. Good
people. So just because I don't understand it doesn't mean I'm sure it
can't be true."
    "That's like what Papa
says."
    "See? He doesn't
disbelieve
in souls."
    "But Mom talks like . .
. she says that she can look in my eyes and see into my soul."
    "Maybe she can."
    "Like you can look into
a gold bug larva and see what it's thinking?"
    "Maybe," said Ender. "I
can't see what it's thinking, though. I can only see what it pushes
into my mind. I try to push thoughts into
its
mind, but I don't think I'm actually pushing. I think the ability to
communicate by thoughts belongs completely to the larva. It pushes
things into my mind, and then takes from my mind whatever I show it.
But I'm not doing anything."
    "Then how can you be
better at it than other people, if you're not doing anything?"
    "
If
I'm really better—and remember, your father and Po can't
really know whether I am or not—then maybe it's because I
have a mind that it's easier for a gold bug to get inside of."
    "Why?" asked Abra. "Why
would a human being born on Earth have a brain that was easier for a
gold bug to get inside of?"
    "I don't know," said
Ender. "That's one of the things I came to this world to find out."
    "That's not even true,"
said Abra. "You couldn't have come here to find out why your brain was
easier for the buggers to understand because you didn't know your brain
could do that until you got here!"
    Ender laughed. "You
just don't have any tolerance for kuso, do you?"
    "What's kuso?"
    "Mierda," said Ender.
"Bullshit."
    "Were you lying to me?"
    "No," said Ender.
"Here's the thing. I had dreams when I was fighting the war on Eros. I
didn't know I was fighting the war, but I was. I had one dream where a
bunch of formics were vivisecting me. Only instead of cutting open my
body, they were cutting up my memories and displaying them like
holographs and trying to make sense of them. Why did I have that dream,
Abra? After I won the war and found out that I had really been fighting
the hive queens and not just a computer simulation, or my teacher, I
thought back to some of my dreams and I wondered. Were they trying just
as hard to understand me as I was trying to understand them? Was that
dream because on some level I was aware that they were getting inside
my head, and it frightened me?"
    "Wow," said Abra. "But
if they could read your mind, why couldn't they beat you?"
    "Because my victories
weren't
in
my mind," said Ender. "That's the
weird thing. I thought through the battles, yes, but I didn't
see
them like Bean did. Instead, I saw the
people
.
The soldiers under me. I knew what those kids were capable of. So I put
them in a situation where their decisions would be crucial, told them
what I wanted them to do, and then I trusted them to make the decisions
that would achieve my objective. I didn't actually know what they'd do.
So being inside my head would never show the hive queens what I was
planning, because I had no plan, not of a kind they could use against
me."
    "Is that why you
thought that way? So they couldn't read your plans?"
    "I didn't know the game
was real. I've only thought of these things afterward. Trying to
understand."
    "But if that's true,
then you were communicating with the
buggers—formics—hive queens all along."
    "I don't know. Maybe
they were
trying,
but they couldn't make sense of
it. I'm sure they didn't push anything into my head, or at least not
clearly enough for me to understand it. And what could they take
from
my thoughts? I