Enders In Exile

be studied at great length using far more
sophisticated equipment—the new equipment the xenos on the
new colony ship would bring.
    At night, Sel lay awake
for long hours, thinking of what he and Po had seen, classifying it in
his mind, trying to make sense of the biology of this world.
    But when he woke up, he
could not remember having had any great insights the night before, and
certainly had none by morning light. No great
breakthroughs; just a continuation of the work he had already done.
    I should have gone
north, into the jungles.
    But jungles are far
more dangerous to explore. I'm an old man. Jungles could kill me. This
temperate plateau, colder than the colony because it's a little closer
to the poles and higher in elevation, is also safer—at least
in summer—for an old man who needs open country to hike
through and nothing unusually dangerous to snag or snap at him.
    On the fifth day, they
crossed a path.
    There was no mistaking
it. It was not a road, certainly not, but that was no surprise, the
formics had built few roads. What they made were paths, and those
inadvertent, the natural result of thousands of feet treading the same
route.
    Those feet had trodden
here, though it was forty years before. Trodden so long and often that
after all these years, and overgrown as it was, the naked eye could
trace the path of it through the pebbly soil of a narrow alluvial
valley.
    There was no question
now of pursuing any more flora and fauna. The formics had found
something of value here, and archaeology took precedence, at least for
a few hours, over xenobiology.
    The path wound upward
into the hills, but not terribly far before it led to a number of cave
entrances.
    "These aren't caves,"
said Po.
    "Oh?"
    "They're tunnels. These
are too new, and the land hasn't shaped itself around them the way that
it does with real caves. These were dug as doorways. All the same
height, do you see?"
    "That damnably
inconvenient height that makes it such a pain for humans to go inside."
    "It's not our purpose
here, sir," said Po. "We've found the spot. Let's call for others to
explore the tunnels. We're here for the living, not the dead."
    "I have to know what
they were doing here. Certainly not farming—there's no trace
of their crops gone wild here. No orchards. No middens,
either—this wasn't a great settlement. And yet there was so
much traffic, along that single path."
    "Mining?" asked Po.
    "Can you think of any
other purpose? There's something in those tunnels that the formics
thought was worth the trouble of digging out. In large quantities. For
a long time."
    "Not such large
quantities," said Po.
    "No?" said Sel.
    "It's like steel-making
back on Earth. Even though the purpose was smelting iron to make steel,
and they mined coal only to fire their smelters and foundries, they
didn't carry the coal to the iron, they carried the iron to the
coal—because it took far more coal than iron to make steel."
    "You must have gotten
very good marks in geography."
    "My parents and I were
born here, but I'm human. Earth is still my home."
    "So you're saying that
whatever they took out of these tunnels, it wasn't in such large
quantities that it was worth building a city here."
    "They put their cities
where the food was, or the fuel. Whatever they got here, they took
little enough of it that it was more economical to carry it to their
cities, instead of building a city here to process it."
    "You may grow up to
amount to something, Po."
    "I'm already grown up,
sir," said Po. "And I already amount to something. Just not enough to
get any girl to marry me."
    "And knowing the
principles of Earth's economic history will attract a mate?"
    "As surely as that
bunny-toad's antlers, sir."
    "Horns," said Sel.
    "So we're going in?"
    Sel mounted one of the
little oil lamps into the flared top of his walking stick.
    "And here I thought
that opening at the top of your stick was decoration," said Po.
    "It
was
decorative," said Sel. "It was also the way the tree grew out of the
ground."
    Sel rolled up his
blankets and put half the remaining food into his pack, along with
their testing equipment.
    "Are you planning to
spend the night down there?"
    "What if we find
something wonderful, and then have to climb back out of the tunnels
before we get a chance to explore?"
    Dutifully, Po packed
up. "I don't think we'll need the tent in there."
    "I doubt there'll be
much rain," Sel agreed.
    "Then again, caves can
be drippy."
    "We'll pick a dry spot."
    "What