Enders In Exile

to me."
    "I'm a
fifty-four-year-old man," said Ender.
    "You may have been born
fifty-four years ago," said Valentine, "but you're only sixteen, and no
matter how old you are, I'm two years older."
    "When the colony ship
arrives, I'm getting on it," said Ender.
    "I think I knew that,"
said Valentine.
    "I can't stay here. I
have to take a long journey. To get away from every living human."
    "The ships only go from
world to world, with people on all of them."
    "But they take time
doing it," said Ender. "If I take voyage after voyage, eventually I'll
leave behind the human race as it now is."
    "That's a long, lonely
journey."
    "Only if I go alone."
    "Is that an invitation?"
    "To come with me as
long as you find it interesting," said Ender.
    "Fair enough," said
Valentine. "My guess is that you'll be better company now that you
aren't in a perpetual funk."
    "I don't think so,"
said Ender. "I intend to remain in stasis through every voyage."
    "And miss the play
readings on the way?"
    "Can you finish your
book before it's time to leave?" asked Ender.
    "Probably," she said.
"Certainly this volume."
    "I thought this was the
last one."
    "Last but one," said
Valentine.
    "You've covered every
aspect of the Formic Wars and you're writing the last battle now."
    "There are two great
knots to unravel."
    Ender closed his eyes.
"I think my book unravels one of them," he said.
    "Yes," said Valentine.
"I'd like to include it at the end of my last volume."
    "It's not copyrighted,"
said Ender. "You can do what you want."
    "Do you want to know
what the other knot is?" asked Valentine.
    "I assume it's Peter
bringing the whole world together after the war was over," said Ender.
    "What does that have to
do with a history of the Formic Wars?" she said. "The last knot is you."
    "I'm a Gordian knot.
Don't unravel, just slice."
    "I'm going to write
about you."
    "I won't read it."
    "Fine," said Valentine.
"I won't show it to you."
    "Can't you please
wait?" He wanted to say: Until I'm dead. But he didn't get that
specific.
    "Maybe a while," said
Valentine. "We'll see."
    Ender filled his days
now with the business of the new colony, laying the groundwork for
their arrival, making sure there were plenty of surplus crops being
grown at all four of the villages as well as the new colony site, so
that the newcomers could have failed harvests for two, even three
years, and there'd still be no hunger. "And we'll need money," said
Ender. "Here where we all know each other, this sort of ad hoc
communism we've been using has worked out. But for trade to work well,
we need a medium of exchange."
    "Po and I found you the
gold bugs," said Sel Menach. "So you've got the gold. Make coins."
    Abra figured out how to
adapt an oil press to make a coin stamper, and one of the chemists came
up with an alloy that wouldn't constantly be shedding gold as the coins
passed from hand to hand. One of the talented youngsters drew a picture
of Sel Menach and one of the old women drew, from memory, the face of
Vitaly Kolmogorov. Sel insisted that Kolmogorov get the cheaper coin,
"Because that's the face they'll see the most. You always give the
greatest man the smallest denomination."
    They practiced using
the money, so the prices would be set before the new colonists arrived.
It was a joke at first. "Five chickens don't make a cow." And instead
of calling the coins "fives" and "ones," they became "sels" and "vits."
"Render unto Sel that which is Sel's, but hang on to Vit." "Sel wise,
Vit foolish."
    Ender wrestled with
trying to set a value for the coins relative to the international
dollar of the Hegemony, but Valentine stopped him. "Let it find its own
value, tied to whatever people eventually pay for whatever it is we
eventually export to other worlds." So the currency floated within
their own private universe.
    The first edition of
The Hive Queen sold slowly at first, but then faster and faster. It was
translated into many languages, even though almost everyone on Earth
had a working knowledge of Common, since that was the official language
of Peter's "Free People of Earth"—the propagandistic name he
had chosen for his new international government.
    Meanwhile, free copies
circulated on the nets, and one day it was included in a message one of
the xenobotanists received. She started telling everyone in Miranda
about it, and copies were printed out and handed around.
Ender and Valentine made no comment; when Alessandra pressed a copy on
Ender, he accepted it, waited a while,