Enders In Exile

for the
development of a technological infrastructure.
    We arrive at an
extremely high level of technology—but with nothing under it
to hold it up. If we crash, we crash all the way down.
    "Look at this," said
Afraima.
    Dutifully, Sel stood up
from his microscope and walked over to hers. "Yes, what am I looking at
here?"
    "What do you see?" she
asked.
    "Don't play games with
me."
    "I'm asking for
independent verification. I can't tell you anything."
    So this was something
that mattered. He looked closely. "This is a section of maize leaf.
From the sterile section, so it's completely clean."
    "But it's not," she
said. "It's from D-4."
    Sel was so relieved he
almost wept; yet at the same moment, he was angry. Anger won, in the
moment. "No it's not," he said sharply. "You've mixed up the samples."
    "That's what I
thought," she said. "So I went back and got a new selection from D-4.
And then again. You're looking at my triple check."
    "And D-4 is easy to
make out of local materials. Afraima, we did it!"
    "I haven't even checked
to see if it works on the amaranth."
    "That would be too
lucky."
    "Or blessed. Did you
ever think God might
want
us to succeed here?"
    "He could have killed
this mold before we got here," said Sel.
    "That's right, sound
impatient with his gift and piss God off."
    It was banter, but
there was truth behind it. Afraima was a serious Jew—she had
renamed herself in Hebrew to a word meaning "fertile" when they held
the vote on mating, in hopes that it would somehow induce God to let
her have a Jewish husband. Instead, the governor simply assigned her to
work for the only orthodox Jew among the colonists. Governor Kolmogorov
had respect for religion. So did Sel.
    He just wasn't sure
that God knew this place. What if the Bible was exactly right about the
creation of that particular sun, moon, and earth—only that
was the whole of God's creation, and worlds like this one were the
creation of alien gods with six limbs, or trilateral symmetry or
something, like some of the life forms here—the ones that
seemed to Sel to be the native species.
    Soon they were back in
the lab, with the amaranth samples that had been treated the same way.
"So that's it—good enough for starters, anyway."
    "But it takes so long
to make it," said Afraima.
    "Not our problem. The
chems can figure out how to make it faster and in larger quantities,
now that we know which one works. It doesn't seem to have damaged
either plant, does it?"
    "You are a genius, Dr.
Menach."
    "No Ph.D."
    "I define the word
'doctor' as 'person who knows enough to make species-saving
discoveries.' "
    "I'll put it on my
resume."
    "No," she said.
    "No?"
    Her hand touched his
arm. "I'm just coming into my fertile period, doctor. I want your seed
in this field."
    He tried to make a joke
of it. "Next thing you'll be quoting from the Song of Solomon."
    "I'm not proposing
romance, Dr. Menach. We have to work together, after all. And I'm
married to Evenezer. He won't have to know the baby isn't his."
    This sounded like she
had really thought things through. Now he was genuinely embarrassed.
And chagrined. "We have to work together, Afraima."
    "I want the best
possible genes for my baby."
    "All right," he said.
"You stay here and head up the adaptation studies. I'll go work in the
fields."
    "What do you mean?
There are plenty of people who can do that."
    "It's either fire you
or fire me. We're not working together anymore after this."
    "But no one had to
know!"
    "Thou shalt not commit
adultery," said Sel. "You're supposed to be the believer."
    "But the daughters of
Midian—"
    "Slept with their own
father because it was more important to have babies than to practice
exogamy." Sel sighed. "It's also important to respect the rules of
monogamy absolutely, so we don't see the colony torn up with conflict
over women."
    "All right, forget I
said anything," said Afraima.
    "I can't forget it,"
said Sel.
    "Then why don't
you—"
    "I lost the lottery,
Afraima. It's now illegal for me to have offspring. Especially by
poaching another man's mate. But I also can't take the libido
suppressants because I need to be sharp and energetic in order to
conduct my study of the life forms on this world. I can't have you in
here, now that you've offered yourself to me."
    "It was just an
idea,
"
she said. "You need me to work with you."
    "I need someone," said
Sel. "Doesn't have to be you."
    "But people will wonder
why you fired me. Evenezer will guess that there was something