Enders In Exile

strangers—even
though I have located them far enough away that your goal of separate
development will also have a chance of being met. They can't be
completely separated, however, or exogamy would be impractical and
genes are more important than culture at this moment for the future
health of this world's human stock.
    Human stock . . . but
we ARE having to concern ourselves with the physical bodies in just the
way herders always have. Uncle Sel would be the first to laugh and say
that this is exactly right. We're mammals before we're humans, and if
we ever forget the mammal, then all that makes us human will be
overwhelmed by the hungry beast.
    I've been studying
everything I can about Virlomi and the wars she fought. What an
astonishing woman! Her Battle School records show only an ordinary
student (in an admittedly extraordinary group). But Battle School is
about war, not revolution or national survival; nor did your tests
measure anyone's propensity for becoming a demigod. If you had such a
test, I wonder what you would have found out about Peter, back when he
was a child and not ruler of the world.
    Speaking of Peter, he
and I are in conversation; perhaps you knew. We're not messaging, we're
using ansible bandwidth for conversation. It's bittersweet to see him
at nearly sixty years of age. Hair turning steely grey, face lined,
carrying a little weight (but still fit), and the lines of
responsibility etched on his face. He's not the boy I knew and hated.
But the existence of this man does not erase that boy from my memory.
They are simply two separate people in my mind, who happen to have the
same name.
    I find myself admiring
the man; even loving him. He has faced choices every bit as terrible as
mine ever were—and he dealt with them with his eyes open. He
knew before he made his decisions that people would die from them. And
yet
he has more compassion than he—or I, or Valentine for that
matter—ever expected of him.
    He tells me that in his
childhood, after I was in Battle School, he decided that the only way
to succeed in his work was to deceive people into thinking he was as
lovable as me. (I thought he was joking, but he was not; I don't
believe my reputation in Battle School was "lovable" but Peter was
dealing with the way I was remembered at home.) So from then on, he
looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and
then did it. But he has now learned something very important about
human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then
you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy
eventually becomes the truth. Peter has made himself into a good man,
even if he set out on that road for reasons that were far from pure.
    This gives me great
hope for myself. All I have to do now is find some work to do that will
lay to rest the burden that I carry. Governing a colony has been
interesting and valuable work, but it does not do for me what I hoped
it would. I still wake up with dead formics and dead soldiers and dead
children in my head. I still wake up with memories that tell me that I
am what Peter used to be. When those go away, I can be myself again.
    I know that it troubles
you that I have this mindset. Well, that's your burden, isn't it? Let
me assure you, however, that my burden is half of my own making. You
and Mazer and the rest of the officers training and using me and the
other children did what you did in a righteous cause—and it
worked. Toward me you have the same responsibility that commanders
always have for those soldiers who survive, but maimed. The soldiers
are still responsible for the lives they make for themselves after the
fact; it's bitterly ironic that your true answer to them is: It's not
my fault that you lived. If you had been killed you would not have to
deal with all these wounds. This is the portion of life that was given
back to you; it was the enemy who took from you the wholeness that you
do not have. My job was to make it so that your death or injuries meant
something, and I have done that.
    That is what I have
learned from the soldiers here. They still remember their comrades who
fell; they still miss the life they left behind on Earth, the families
they
never saw again, the places they can revisit only in their dreams and
memories. Yet they do not blame me. They're proud of what we did
together. Almost every one of them has said to me, at one time or
another, "It was worth it." Because we won.
    So I say that to