Enders In Exile

onto it," said Ender.
    "Don't talk about
dying!" Abra said. He meant to sound angry. Instead his voice shook and
he sounded scared.
    "I'm a good swimmer,"
said Ender. "I'm going to test the water to make sure it won't make me
sick, and I'll only swim where there's no current, all right? And
you're free to swim with me, if you want."
    "I don't like to swim."
He'd never really learned, not well.
    "So—don't go
climbing into any caves or fiddling with machinery, all right?" said
Ender. "Because machinery really
is
scary."
    "Only because you don't
understand it."
    "Right," said Ender.
"But what if something went wrong? What if I had to take
your
mangled or incinerated body back to your parents?"
    Abra laughed. "So I can
let the governor die, but you can't let one dumb kid get killed."
    "Exactly right," said
Ender. "Because I'm responsible for you, but you're only responsible
for reporting my death if it happens."
    So Ender went back to
the skimmer and got the water testing equipment. And since Abra knew
perfectly well Ender was going to have to test the river anyway, he
realized that Ender wasn't really taking a break, he was giving
Abra
a break. Well, two could play this game. Abra would use
the time to scout out the crest of the far ridge and see what lay on
the other side. That was useful. That was a real job that would have to
be done. So while Ender swam around in the river, Abra would be adding
to the map.
    It was a longer walk
than Abra thought it would be. The far hills looked deceptively close.
The higher he got, though, the easier it was to spot the place where
Ender was, in fact, swimming. He wondered if Ender could also see him.
He turned and waved a couple of times, but Ender didn't wave back,
probably because he would look like a speck to Ender, just as Ender
looked like a speck to him. Or else Ender wasn't looking, and that was
fine, too. It meant Ender trusted him not to screw up and get hurt or
lost.
    At the top of the hill,
Abra could see why the river in the valley behind him
widened—there was an irrigation dam between the hills so the
widening of the river was really a pond behind the dam. The drop wasn't
very severe, though, and certain sluices were permanently open so that
the river flowed permanently into three channels. One was the original
riverbed, and the other two carried water through slightly higher
canals skirting the north side of the valley. Here on the south side of
the river, the canals were permanently empty, and so Abra could easily
see the difference that the irrigation made. Both sides of the lower
valley were lush with life, but on the wet side, trees were growing,
and on the drier side, it was grass and low shrubs.
    But as he gazed at the
south side—the grassy side—he realized that there
was something wrong with the landscape. Instead of being a smooth flood
plain, like the upper valley behind him where Ender was, there were
several mounds in the plain below him. And there was nothing natural
about the way they were laid out.
    The formics had to have
built them. But what were they for?
    And now that he looked
closely, he could see that there were even-more-artificial-looking
structures here and there. They didn't look like normal formic
buildings, either. This was something new and strange, and even though
they were overgrown with grass and vines, they were still plainly
visible.
    Abra scrambled down the
slope—not running, because it was unfamiliar ground, and the
last thing he wanted was to sprain an ankle and become a
burden on Ender. He came to the largest of the artificial mounds. It
was steep-sided but covered with grass, so climbing it wasn't very
hard. He reached the top and realized that it was hollow inside, and
there was water gathered in it.
    Abra walked the ridge
line and found that at one end, two ridges extended out like legs,
making a widening vale between them. And when he turned around, he
realized that there were also low ridges that could be arms, and where
a head would be, a large white rock glistened in the sunlight, looking
for all the world like a skull.
    It was shaped like a
man. Not like a formic—a man.
    He felt a thrill go
through him—of fear, of dread, of excitement. Such a place as
this could not exist. And yet it did.
    He heard a voice
calling his name. He looked up and saw that Ender had driven the
skimmer over the ridge from the other valley and was looking for him.
Abra waved and called out, "Ho, Ender!"
    Ender saw him and
skimmed over