Enders In Exile

and returned it. "Isn't it
wonderful?" Alessandra asked.
    "I think it is, yes,"
said Ender.
    "Oh, yes, that
analytical voice, that dispassionate attitude."
    "What can I say?" said
Ender. "I am who I am."
    "I think this book has
changed my life," said Alessandra.
    "For the better, I
hope," said Ender. And then, glancing at her swollen belly, he asked,
"Changed your life more than that?"
    Alessandra smiled. "I
don't know yet. I'll tell you in a year."
    Ender did not say: In a
year I'll be on a starship and far away.
    Valentine finished her
penultimate volume and when it was published, she included the full
text of The Hive Queen at the end, with an introductory note:
    "We know so little of
the formics that it is impossible for me, as a historian, to tell of
this war from their point of view. So I will include an artistic
imagining of the history, because even if it can't be proved, I believe
this is the true story."
    Not long after,
Valentine came to Ender. "Peter read my book," she said.
    "I'm glad someone did,"
said Ender.
    "He sent me a message
about the last chapter. He said, 'I know who wrote it.'"
    "And was he right?"
    "He was."
    "Isn't he the clever
one."
    "He was moved, Ender."
    "People seem to be
liking it."
    "More than liking, and
you know it. Let me read what Peter said: 'If he can speak for the
buggers, surely he can speak for me.' "
    "What's that supposed
to mean?"
    "He wants you to write
about him. About his life."
    "When I last saw Peter
I was six and he had threatened to kill me just a few hours before."
    "So you're saying no."
    "I'm saying that I'll
talk to him and we'll see what happens."
    On the ansible, they
talked for an hour at a time, Peter in his late fifties, with a weak
heart that had the doctors worried, Ender still a boy of sixteen. But
Peter was still himself, and so was Ender, only now there was no anger
between them. Maybe because Peter had achieved everything he dreamed
of, and Ender hadn't stood in his way or even, at least in Peter's
mind, surpassed him.
    In Ender's mind, too.
"What you did," said Ender, "you knew you were doing."
    "Is that good or bad?"
    "Nobody had to trick
Alexander into conquering Persia," said Ender. "If they had, would we
call him 'the Great'?"
    When Peter had told of
his whole life, everything he did that mattered enough to come up in
these conversations, Ender spent only five days writing a slim volume
called "The Hegemon."
    He sent a copy to Peter
with a note: "Since the author will be 'Speaker for the Dead,' this
can't be published until after you die."
    Peter wrote back: "It
can't happen a moment too soon for me." But in a letter to Valentine,
he poured out his heart about what it meant to him to feel so
completely understood. "He didn't conceal any of the bad things I did.
But he kept them in balance. In perspective."
    Valentine showed the
letter to Ender and he laughed. "Balance! How can anybody know the
relative weight of sins and great achievements? Five chickens do
not
make a cow."

CHAPTER
20

    To: [email protected]
From:
Gov%[email protected]

Subj:
Is that job still open?
    Dear Hyrum,
    I have reasons of my
own that I won't go into, but I also believe that Shakespeare will be
well served if, when this colony ship leaves, I am on it. I will be
here throughout the arrival and establishment of the new colonists. The
present settlers have already passed through a profound change: The
colonists who arrived with me are now included in the term "old
settlers" in anticipation of the arrival of the ship. The old folks who
fought the formics are now called "originals" but there is no common
term to distinguish between their descendants and the people who
arrived with me.
    If I remained, then
both the governor of the new settlement and I would be appointees from
ColMin. If I leave, replaced by an elected council of the four
settlements, with an elected president and elected mayors, it will
create almost irresistible pressure on the new governor to limit
himself to a single two-year term, as I did, and allow himself to be
replaced by an elected mayor.
    Meanwhile, the "old
settlers" have planted their crops for them, but have built only half
enough houses. That is at my suggestion, so that the new colonists can
join with them in building the rest. They need to experience how much
work it takes, so they'll appreciate better just how much work was done
for
them by the old settlers. And working side by
side will help keep the two groups from being