Enders In Exile

Shakespeare. And the voyage to
Ganges will be of such a distance that you can leave Shakespeare and
reach Ganges within fourteen (or nineteen) years of its founding. At
that point, the boy (named Randall Firth) will be adult
size—no, larger—and may be so shockingly brilliant
that Virlomi has no chance of keeping him from being a danger to the
peace and safety of the colony. Or he may already be the dictator. Or
the freely elected governor that saved them from Virlomi's madness. Or
he might already be dead. Or a complete nonentity. Who knows?
    Again: The choice is
yours. I have no claim upon you; Bean and Petra have no claim upon you.
But if it should be interesting to you, more interesting than remaining
on Shakespeare, this would be a place where you could go and perhaps
help a young governor, Virlomi, who is brilliant but also prone to the
occasional very poor decision.
    Alas, it's all a pig in
a poke. By the time you would have to leave Shakespeare with time
enough to be effective on Ganges, the Ganges colonists won't even have
debarked from their ship! We might be sending you to a colony with no
problems at all and therefore nothing for you to do.
    Thus you see how I plan
for things that can't be planned for. But sometimes I'm oh so glad that
I did. But if you decide you want no part of my plans from now on, I
will understand better than anyone!
    Your friend,
Hyrum Graff

    PS: On the chance that
your captain has not informed you, five years after you left, the I.F.
agreed with my urgent request and launched a series of couriers, one
departing every five years, to each of the colonies. These ships are
not the huge behemoths that carry colonists, but they have room for
some serious cargo and we are hoping they become the instrument of
trade among the colonies. Our endeavor will be to have a ship call on
each colony world every five years—but then they will travel
colony to colony and return to Earth only after making a full circuit.
The crews will have the option of completing the whole voyage, or
training their replacements on any colony world and remaining
behind while someone else completes their mission. Thus no one will be
trapped on any one world for their whole life, and no one will be
trapped in the same spaceship for the rest of their life. As you can
guess, we did not lack for volunteers.
    Vitaly Kolmogorov lay
in bed, waiting to die and getting rather impatient about it.
    "Don't hurry things,"
said Sel Menach. "It sets a bad example."
    "I'm not hurrying
anything. I'm just
feeling
impatient. I have a
right to feel what I feel, I think!"
    "And a right to think
what you think, I feel," said Sel.
    "Oh,
now
he develops a sense of humor."
    "You're the one who
decided this was your deathbed, not me," said Sel. "Black humor seems
appropriate, though."
    "Sel, I asked you to
visit me for a reason."
    "To depress me."
    "When I'm dead, the
colony will need a governor."
    "There's a governor
coming from Earth, isn't there?"
    "Technically, from
Eros."
    "Ah, Vitaly, we all
come from Eros."
    "Very funny, and very
classical. I wonder how much longer there'll be anybody capable of
being amused by puns based on Earth-system asteroids and Greek gods."
    "Anyway, Vitaly, please
don't tell me you're appointing me governor."
    "Nothing of the kind,"
said Vitaly. "I'm giving you an errand."
    "And no one but an
aging xenobiologist will do."
    "Exactly," said Vitaly.
"There is a message—encrypted, and no, I won't give you the
key—a message waiting in the ansible queue. I ask only this:
When I'm well and thoroughly dead, but before they've chosen a new
governor, please send the message."
    "To whom?"
    "The message already
knows where it's going."
    "Very clever message.
Why doesn't it figure out when you're dead, and go by itself?"
    "Promise?"
    "Yes, of course."
    "And promise me
something else."
    "I'm getting old. Don't
count on my remembering too many promises all at once."
    "When they elect you
governor, do it."
    "They will not."
    "If they don't, then
fine," said Vitaly. "But when they do elect you, as everyone but you
fully expects they will, do it."
    "No."
    "And here's why you
must," said Vitaly. "You are best qualified for the job because you
don't want it."
    "Nobody in their right
mind wants it."
    "Too many men crave it,
not because they want to do it, but because they fancy the honor of it.
The prestige. The rank." Vitaly laughed, and the laugh turned into an
ugly coughing jag till he was able to get a drink of water and