Enders In Exile

say."
    "Dr. Menach, I'm truly
sorry. We're scientists, I start to think of human reproduction just
like the animals. I didn't mean to be disloyal to Evenezer, I didn't
mean to make you miserable. I just felt a wave of desire. I just knew
that if I was going to have a baby, it should be yours, it should be
the baby most worth having. But I'm still a rational person. A
scientist. I will do exactly as you said—all business. As if
we disliked each other and neither could ever
desire the other. Let me stay until I need to quit this work to have
babies."
    "All right. Get up,
take the formula to chem, and leave me alone to work on the next
problem."
    "And what is that?
After the dustworm and the corn and amaranth mold, what are we working
on?"
    "The next problem I'm
working on," said Sel, "is burying myself in whatever tedious task I
can find that does not involve you in any way. Will you
please
go away now?"
    She went.
    Sel wrote his report
and sent it to the governor's machine so it could be queued up for
ansible transmission. If it turned out that the mold was something that
cropped up on other worlds, his solution might work there, too.
Besides, that's what science was—the sharing of information,
the pooling of knowledge.
    That's my gene pool,
Afraima, he thought. The meme pool, the collective knowledge of
science. What I discover here, what I learn, the problems I
solve—those will be my children. They will be part of every
generation that lives on this planet.
    When the report was
done, Afraima was still not back. Good, thought Sel. Let her spend all
day with chem.
    Sel walked through the
village and out into the communal fields. Fernão McPhee was
foreman on duty. "Give me a job," Sel said to him.
    "I thought you were
working on the mold problem."
    "I think it's solved.
It's up to chem now to figure out how to deliver it to the plants."
    "I've already got all
the crews working on all the jobs. Your time is too valuable to waste
on manual labor."
    "Everybody does manual
labor. The governor does manual laborer."
    "The crews are full.
You don't know the jobs, you know
your
job, which
is much more important. Go do your job, don't bother me!"
    He said it jokingly,
but he meant it. And what could Sel answer? I need you to give me a
hot, sweaty job so I can work off the steam from my beautiful assistant
having offered me her body to put babies into!
    "You're no help to me
at all," said Sel to Fernão.
    "Then we're even."
    So Sel went on a long
walk. Out beyond the fields, into the woods, gathering samples. When
you don't have an emergency to deal with, you do science. You collect,
classify, analyze, observe. Always work to do.
    No fantasizing about
her, about what might have happened. Sexual fantasies are scripts for
future behavior. What good will it do to say no today, and yes six
months from now, after rehearsing the adultery over and over in my mind?
    It would be so much
easier if I weren't determined to do what's best for everybody. Whoever
said virtue was its own reward was full of crap.

CHAPTER
7

    To: [email protected], [email protected]
From: vwiggin%[email protected]/citizen
Subj: Ender is fine
    By "fine" I mean of
course that his body and mind seem to be functioning normally. He was
happy to see me. We talked easily. He seems at peace about everything.
No hostility toward anyone. He spoke of both of you with real
affection. We shared lots of childhood memories.
    But as soon as that
conversation ended, I saw him almost visibly crawl inside a shell. He
is obsessed with the formics. I think he's burdened with guilt over
having destroyed them. He knows that this is not
appropriate—that he did not know what he was doing, they were
trying to destroy us so it was self-defense anyway—but the
ways of conscience are mysterious. We evolved consciences so that we
would internalize community values and police ourselves. But what
happens when you have a hyperactive conscience and make up rules that
nobody else knows about, just so you can punish yourself for breaking
them?
    Nominally, he is
governor, but I have been warned by two different people that Admiral
Quincy Morgan has no intention of letting Ender govern anything. If
Peter
were in such a position, he would already be conspiring to have Morgan
removed before the voyage began. But Ender just chuckles and says,
"Imagine that." When I pressed him, he said, "He can't have a contest
if I won't play." And when I pressed him harder, he got irritable and
said, "I