Enders In Exile

human race.
    I don't know if anyone
has told you, but Bean and Petra married. Despite Bean's fear that any
children he might have would inherit his condition, they fertilized
nine eggs—because they were hoaxed, alas, by a doctor who
claimed he could repair the genetic malady in the children. Petra gave
birth to one, but the other eight embryos were
kidnapped—echoing what happened to Bean himself as an
embryo—and implanted in surrogates who did not know the
source of their babies. After a search both deep and wide, we found
seven of the lost babies. The last was never found. Till now.
    I say this because of a
strange encounter earlier today. I'm at Ellis Island—our
nickname for what used to be Battle School. All the colonists pass
through here to be sorted out and sent on to wherever their ship is
being sorted out—Eros is too far away in its orbit right now
to be convenient, so we're refitting and launching the ships from
closer in.
    I was giving an
orientation lecture, full of my usual wit and wisdom, to a group that
was going to Ganges Colony. Afterward, a woman came up to
me—American, by her accent—carrying a baby. She
said nothing. She just spat on my shoe and walked on.
    Naturally, this piqued
my interest—I'm a sucker for a flirtatious woman. I looked
her up. Which is to say, I had one of my friends on Earth do a thorough
background check on her. It turns out that her colony name is a
phony—not that unusual, and we don't care, you can be whoever
you want to be, as long as you're not a child molester or serial
killer. In her previous life, she was married to a grocery store
assistant manager who was completely sterile. So the boy she has with
her is not her ex-husband's—again, not that unusual. What's
unusual is that it also isn't hers.
    I am about to confess
something that I'm somewhat ashamed of. I promised Bean and Petra that
no record of their children's genetic prints would remain anywhere. But
I kept a copy of the record we used in the search for the children, on
the chance that someday I might run into the last missing child.
    Somehow, this woman,
Randi Johnson (nee Alba), now known as Nichelle Firth, was implanted
with Bean's and Petra's missing child. This child is afflicted with
Bean's genetic giantism. He will be brilliant, but he will die in his
twenties (or earlier) of growth that simply does not stop.
    And he is being raised
by a woman who, for some reason, thinks it is important to spit on me.
I am not personally offended by this, but I am interested, because this
action makes me suspect that, unlike the other surrogates, she may have
some knowledge of whose child she bore. Or, more likely, she might have
been told false stories. In any event, I cannot quiz her on this
because by the time I secured this information, she was gone.
    She is going to Ganges
Colony, which, like yours, is headed by a young Battle School graduate.
Virlomi was not as young as you when she left—she had had
enough years on Earth post–Battle School to become the savior
of India under Chinese occupation, and then the instigator of an
ill-fated (and ill-planned) invasion of China. She became quite the
self-destructive fanatic by the end of her rise to power, believing her
own propaganda. She is back to sanity now, and instead of trying to
decide whether to honor her for the liberation of her own people or
condemn her for the invasion of the nation of their oppressors, she has
been made the head of a colony that, for the first time, takes into
account the culture of origin on Earth. Most of the colonists are
Indians of the Hindu persuasion—but not all.
    Bean's son will be
brilliant—like his father, plus his mother. And Randi may be
feeding him with stories that will bend his character in awkward ways.
    Why am I telling you
all this? Because Ganges Colony is our first effort at colonizing a
world that was NOT originally a formic possession. They are traveling
at a slightly smaller fraction of lightspeed, so they will not arrive
until the XBs have a chance to do their work and have the planet ready
for colonization.
    If you are happy
governing Shakespeare and wish to spend the rest of your life there,
then this information will not be of any particular interest to you.
But if, after a few years, you decide that government is not your
metier, I would ask you to travel by courier to Ganges. Of course, the
colony will not even be established by the time you
have spent five (or even ten) years on