Enders In Exile

calm the
spasms in his chest. "I won't miss
that
sort of
thing when I'm dead."
    "Rank?"
    "I was speaking of my
cough. That constant tickling deep in my chest. Wheezing. Flatulence.
Blurred vision no matter how good my glasses are and no matter how much
light I have. All the nasty decay of old age."
    "What about your bad
breath?"
    "
That
is designed to make
you
glad I'm dead. Sel, I'm
serious about this. If someone else is elected governor, it will be
someone who wants the job and won't be happy to give it up when the new
governor comes."
    "That's what they get
for deciding, clear off in Eros, that along with supplies, equipment,
and expertise, they'll also send us a dictator."
    "I was a dictator at
first," said Vitaly.
    "When we were starting
and survival looked impossible, yes, you kept things calm till we could
find a way to handle the things this planet came up with to kill us
off. But those days are over."
    "No they're not," said
Vitaly. "Let me lay it out plainly. The ship that is coming to us
contains two admirals. One is our future governor. And one is the
captain of the ship. Guess which one believes he should be our
governor."
    "The captain of the
ship, of course, or you wouldn't have said it that way."
    "A bureaucrat. A
climber. I didn't know him before we set out on our own voyage, but I
know the type."
    "So the ship is
bringing us everything we need, plus a power struggle."
    "I don't want war here.
I don't want bloodshed. I don't want the newcomers to have to conquer
an upstart acting governor here on Shakespeare. I want our colony to be
ready to welcome the new colonists and all they bring with
them—and to unify behind the governor that was appointed for
us back on Eros. They knew what they were doing when they appointed
him."
    "You know who it is,"
said Sel. "You know, and you haven't told a soul."
    "Of course I know,"
said Vitaly. "I've been corresponding with him for the past thirty-five
years. Ever since the colony ship launched."
    "And didn't breathe a
word. Who is it? Anyone I'd have heard of?"
    "How do I know what
you've heard and haven't heard?" said Vitaly. "I'm a dying man, don't
bother me."
    "So you still aren't
telling."
    "When he comes out of
lightspeed, he'll make contact with you. Then you can deal with telling
the colonists about him—whatever he tells you, you can tell
them."
    "But you don't trust me
to keep the secret."
    "Sel, you don't keep
secrets. You say whatever's on your mind. Deception isn't in you.
That's why you'll be such a splendid governor, and why I'm not telling
you a single thing that you can't tell everybody as soon as you know
it."
    "I can't lie? Well,
then, I won't bother promising you to accept the governorship, because
I won't do it. I won't have to. They'll choose somebody else. Nobody
likes me but you, Vitaly. I'm a grumpy old man who bosses people around
and makes clumsy assistants cry. Whatever I did for this colony is long
in the past."
    "Oh shut up," said
Vitaly. "You'll do what you do and I'll do what I do. Which in my case
is die."
    "I'm going to do that
too, you know. Probably before you."
    "Then you'll have to
get a move on."
    "This new
governor—has he any idea of what it will take for these new
people to live here? The injections? The regular diet of modified pig,
so they can get the proteins that starve the worms? I hope they haven't
sent us any vegetarians. It really stinks that these new people will
outnumber us from the moment they get off the ship."
    "We need them," said
Vitaly.
    "I know. The gene pool
needs them, the farms and factories need them."
    "Factories?"
    "We're tinkering with
one of the old formic solar power generators. We think we can get it to
run a loom."
    "The industrial
revolution! Only thirty-six years after we got this planet! And you say
you haven't done anything for the people lately."
    "I'm not
doing
it," said Sel. "I just talked Lee Tee into giving it a look."
    "Oh, well, if that's
all."
    "Say it."
    "Say what? I said what
I was going to say."
    "Say that persuading
somebody to
try
something is exactly the way
you've governed for the past three-and-a-half decades."
    "I don't have to say
what you already know."
    "Don't die," said Sel.
    "I'm so touched," said
Vitaly. "But don't you see? I want to. I'm done. Used up. I went off to
war and we fought it and won it and then Ender Wiggin won the battle of
the home world and all the buggers down here died. Suddenly I'm not a
soldier anymore. And I
was
a soldier, Sel. Not a
bureaucrat.