CHAPTER
13
To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy
From: GovAct%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov
Re: You will get this when I'm dead
Dear Ender,
I put it bluntly in the subject line. No beating around the bush. I'm writing this as I feel the seeds of death in me. I will arrange for it to be sent after they have done with me.
I expect my successor to be Sel Menach. He doesn't want the job, but he is widely liked and universally trusted, which is vital. He will not try to cling to his office when you arrive. But if it is not him, you'll be on your own and I wish you luck.
You know how hard it will be for my little community. For thirty-six years, we've been living and giving in marriage. The new generation has already restored the gender balance; there are grandchildren nearly of marrying age. Then your ship will come and suddenly we will be five times the population, and only one in five will be of our original group. It will be hard. It will change everything. But I believe that I know you now, and if I'm right, then my people have nothing to fear. You will help the new colonists adapt to our ways, wherever our ways make sense for this place. You will help my people adapt to the new colonists, wherever they must because the ways of Earth make sense.
In a way, Ender, we are the same age, or at least in the same stage of life. We long since left our families behind. As far as the world is concerned, we stepped into an open grave and disappeared. This has been the afterlife for me, the career after my career ended, the life after my life ended. And it has been a good one. It has been heaven. Busy, frightening, triumphant, and finally peaceful. May it be the same for you, my friend. However long it is, may you be glad of each day of it.
I have never forgotten that I owe our victory, and therefore this second life, to you and the other children who led us in the war. I thank you again from this grave of mine.
With love and respect,
Vitaly Denisovitch Kolmogorov
"I don't like what you're doing to Alessandra," said Valentine.
Ender looked up from what he was reading. "And what would that be?"
"You know perfectly well that you've made her fall in love with you."
"Have I?"
"Don't pretend to be oblivious to it! She looks at you like a hungry puppy."
"I've never owned a dog. They didn't allow team mascots in Battle School, and there weren't any strays."
"And you deliberately made her do it."
"If I can make a woman fall in love with me at will, I should have bottled it and sold it and gotten rich on Earth."
"You didn't make a woman fall in love with you, you made an emotionally dependent, shy, sheltered girl fall in love with you, and that's pathetically easy. All it took was being extraordinarily nice to her."
"You're right. If I hadn't been so selfish, I would have slapped her."
"Ender, it's me you're talking to. Do you think I haven't been watching? You seek out opportunities to praise her. To ask her advice on the most meaningless things. To thank her all the time for nothing at all. And you smile at her. Has anyone ever mentioned that when you smile, it would melt steel?"
"Inconvenient, in a spaceship. I'll smile less."
"You switch it on like . . . like the stardrive! That smile—with your whole face, as if you were taking your soul out and putting it into her hands."
"Val," said Ender. "This is kind of an important letter. What is your point?"
"What are you planning to do with her, now that you own her?"
"I don't own anybody," said Ender. "I haven't laid a hand on her—literally. Not shaking hands, not a pat on the shoulder, nothing. No physical contact. I also haven't flirted with her. No sexual innuendoes. No inside jokes. And I haven't gone off alone with her, either. Month after month, as her mother conspires to leave us alone, I've simply not done it. Even if it took walking out of a room quite rudely. What part of that is making her fall in love with me, exactly?"
"Ender, I don't like it when you lie to me."
"Valentine, if you want an honest answer, write me an honest letter."
She sighed and sat down on her bed. "I can't wait for this voyage to end."
"A bit more than two months to go. Almost over. And you did finish your book."
"Yes, and it's very good," said Valentine. "Especially when you consider I barely met any of them and you were almost no help to me."
"I answered every question you asked."
"Except to evaluate the people, to evaluate the school, to—"
"My opinions aren't history. It wasn't supposed to be 'Ender Wiggin's School Days as told to his sister, Valentine.' "
"I didn't come on this voyage to quarrel with you."
Ender looked at her with such overdone astonishment that she threw a pillow at him.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I've never been as mean to you as I was to Peter all the time."
"Then all's right with the world."
"But I'm angry at you, Ender. You shouldn't toy with a girl's feelings. Unless you really plan to marry her—"
"I do not," said Ender.
"Then you shouldn't lead her on."
"I have not," said Ender.
"And I say you have."
"No, Valentine," said Ender. "What I have done is exactly what is needed for her to have the thing she wants most."
"Which is you."
"Which is definitely not me." Ender sat beside her on her bed, leaned close to her. "You will help me most by scrutinizing someone else."
"I scrutinize everybody," said Val. "I judge everybody. But you're my brother. I get to boss you around."
"And you're my sister. I have to tickle you until you pee or cry. Or both." Which he proceeded to attempt, though he didn't really go quite that far. Or at least, she only peed a little. And then punched him hard in the arm and made him say, "Ow," in a really snotty, sarcastic way, so she knew he was pretending it didn't hurt, but it really did. Which he deserved. He really was being rotten to Alessandra, and he didn't even care, and worse yet, he thought he could deny it. Just pitiful.
All that afternoon, Ender thought about what Valentine said. He knew what he was planning, and it really was for Alessandra's good, but he had miscalculated if the girl was actually falling in love with him. It was supposed to be friendship, trust, gratitude maybe. Brother-and-sister. Only Alessandra wasn't Valentine. She couldn't keep up. She didn't leap to conclusions as quickly as Val—or at least not to the same conclusions. She couldn't really hold up her end.