Enders In Exile

in a wad under his arm.
    Only it wasn't a wad.
There was something inside the jacket. But Abra didn't ask what Ender
had found. He figured that if Ender wanted him to know, he'd tell him.
    "We aren't building the
new colony here," said Ender.
    "OK," said Abra.
    "Let's go back and
strike camp," said Ender.
    They searched for five
more days, well to the east and south of the place they had first
found, until they had another colony site. It was a bigger formic
settlement, with a much larger area of fields and all the signs of a
much larger annual rainfall. "This is the right place," said Ender.
"Better climate, warmer. Good, rich soil."
    They spent a week
laying out the new site.
    Then it was time to go
home. The night before they left, lying out on the open
ground—it was too hot at night inside the tent—Abra
finally asked. Not what it was that Ender brought back from the
tower—he would never ask that—but the deeper
question.
    "Ender, what did they
mean? Building this for you?"
    Ender was silent for a
long time. "I'm not going to tell you the whole truth, Abra. Because I
don't want anyone to know. I don't even want them to know what we found
there. I hope it's all decayed and crumbled away before people go back
there. But even if it's not, nobody else will understand it. And in the
far future, nobody will believe that the formics made that place.
They'll think it's something that human colonists did."
    "You don't have to tell
me everything," said Abra. "And I won't tell anybody else what we
found."
    "I know you won't,"
said Ender. He hesitated again. "I don't want to lie to you. So I'll
only tell you true things. I found the answer, Abra."
    "To what?"
    "My question."
    "Can't you tell me any
of it?"
    "You've never asked the
question. I hope to God you never know what it is."
    "But the message really
was for you."
    "Yes, Abra. They left a
message that told me why they died."
    "Why?"
    "No, Abra. It's my
burden, truly. Mine alone." Ender reached out a hand, gripped Abra by
the arm. "Let there be no rumors of what Ender Wiggin found when he
came to this place."
    "There never will be,"
said Abra.
    "You mean that at the
age of eleven, you're prepared to take a secret to your grave?"
    "Yes," said Abra
without hesitation. "But I hope I don't have to do that very soon."
    Ender laughed. "I hope
the same. I hope you live a long, long time."
    "I'll keep the secret
all my life. Even though I don't actually know what it is."

    * * * * *
    Ender came into the
house where Valentine was working on the next-to-last volume of her
history of the Formic Wars. He set his own desk on the table across
from her. She looked up at him. He smiled—a jokey, mechanical
smile—and started typing.
    She wasn't fooled. The
smile was fake, but the happiness behind it was real.
    Ender was actually
happy
.
    What happened on that
trip to lay out the new colony?
    He didn't say. She
didn't ask. It was enough for her that he was happy.

CHAPTER
19

    To: jpwiggin%[email protected], twiggin%[email protected]
From: Gov%[email protected]
Subj: Third
    Dear Mother and Father,
    Some things cannot be
helped. For you, it has been 47 years of silence from your third and
youngest child. For me, it has been my six years in Battle School,
where I lived for one reason only, to destroy the formics; the year
after our victory, in which I learned that I had twice killed other
children, that I destroyed an entire sentient species that I don't
believe I ever understood, and that every mistake I made caused the
deaths of men and women in places lightyears away; and then two years
of a voyage in which I could never for a moment speak or show my true
feelings about anything.
    Through all of this, I
have been trying to sort out what it meant that you gave life to me. To
have a child, knowing that you have signed a contract to give him up to
the government upon demand—isn't there a bit of the story of
Rumpelstiltskin in this? In the fairy tale, someone happens to overhear
the secret name that will free them from their pledge to give their
child to the dwarf. In our case, the universe did
not conspire in our favor, and when Rumpelstilt-skin showed up, you
handed over the boy. Me.
    I made a choice
myself—though what I really understood at six years of age is
hard to fathom. I thought I was already myself; I was aware of no
deficiencies of judgment. But now, looking back, I wonder why I chose.
It was partly a desire to flee from Peter's threats and oppression,
since