CHAPTER 7
To: [email protected], [email protected]
From: vwiggin%[email protected]/citizen
Subj: Ender is fine
By «fine» I mean of course that his body and mind seem to be functioning normally. He was happy to see me. We talked easily. He seems at peace about everything. No hostility toward anyone. He spoke of both of you with real affection. We shared lots of childhood memories.
But as soon as that conversation ended, I saw him almost visibly crawl inside a shell. He is obsessed with the formics. I think he's burdened with guilt over having destroyed them. He knows that this is not appropriate — that he did not know what he was doing, they were trying to destroy us so it was self-defense anyway — but the ways of conscience are mysterious. We evolved consciences so that we would internalize community values and police ourselves. But what happens when you have a hyperactive conscience and make up rules that nobody else knows about, just so you can punish yourself for breaking them?
Nominally, he is governor, but I have been warned by two different people that Admiral Quincy Morgan has no intention of letting Ender govern anything. If Peter were in such a position, he would already be conspiring to have Morgan removed before the voyage began. But Ender just chuckles and says, 'Imagine that.' When I pressed him, he said, 'He can't have a contest if I won't play.' And when I pressed him harder, he got irritable and said, 'I was born for one war. I won it and I'm done.'
So now I'm torn. Do I try to maneuver for him? Or do what he asks and ignore the whole situation? He thinks I should spend my time on the voyage either in stasis, so we'd be the same age when we arrived, both fifteen — or, if I'm awake, then I should write a history of Battle School. Graff has promised to give me all the documents about Battle School — though I can get those from the public records, since they all came out in the court martial.
Here's my philosophical question: What is love? Does my love for Ender mean that I do what I think is good for him, even if he asks me not to? Or does love mean I do what he asks, even though I think he would find being a figurehead governor a hellish experience?
It's like piano lessons, dear parents. So many adults complain about the hideous experience of being forced to practice and practice. And yet there are others who say to their parents, 'Why didn't you MAKE me practice so today I'd be able to play well?'
Love, Valentine
To: vwiggin%[email protected]/citizen
From: [email protected]
Subj: re: Ender is fine
Dear Valentine,
Your father says that you will be irritated if I say how shocking it is to discover that one of my children does not know everything, and admits it, and even asks her parents for advice. For the past five years, you and Peter have been as closed off as twins with a private language. Now, only a few weeks out from under Peter's influence, you have discovered parents again. I find this gratifying. I hereby declare you to be my favorite child.
We continue to be devastated — a slow, corrosive kind of devastation — that Ender chooses not to write to us. You say nothing of anger toward us. We do not understand. Doesn't he realize we were forbidden to write to him? Why doesn't he read our letters now? Or does he read them and then choose not to poke the reply box and say even as little as 'Got your letters'?
As to your questions, the answers are easy. You are not his mother or father. We are the ones with the right to meddle and do what's good for him whether he likes it or not. You are his sister. Think of yourself as companion, friend, confidante. Your responsibility is to receive what he gives, and to give him what he asks only if you think it's good. You do not have either the right or the responsibility to give him what he specifically asks you not to give. That would be no gift; that is neither friend nor sister.
Parents are a special case. He has built a wall exactly in the place where Battle School first built it. It keeps us out. He thinks he does not need us. He is mistaken. I suspect we are exactly what he is hungry for. It is a mother who can provide the ineffable comfort to a wounded soul. It is a father who can say, 'Ego te absolvo' and 'well done, thou good and faithful servant' and be believed by the inmost soul.
If you were better educated and hadn't lived in an atheistic establishment, you would understand those references. When you look them up, please remember that I did not have to.
Love,
Your sarcastic, overly analytical,
deeply wounded yet quite satisfied,
Mother
To: [email protected], [email protected]
From: vwiggin%[email protected]/citizen
Subj: Ender is fine
I know all about Father's confessionals and your King James Version and I did not have to look anything up either. Do you think your and Father's religions were a secret from your children? Even Ender knew, and he left home when he was six.
I am taking your advice because it is wise and because I have no better ideas. And I'm going to follow Ender's and Graff's advice, too, and write a history of Battle School. My goal is a simple one: to get it published as quickly as possible so it can be part of the task of erasing the vile slanders of the court martial, rehabilitating the reputations of the children who won this war and the adults who trained and aimed them. Not that I don't still hate them for taking Ender from us. But I find it quite possible to hate someone and still see their side of the argument between us. This is perhaps the only worthwhile gift Peter ever gave me.
Peter has not written to me, nor I to him. If he asks, tell him that I think about him often, I notice that I don't see him anymore, and if that counts as 'missing him,' then he is missed.
Meanwhile, I had a chance to meet Petra Arkanian in transit and I have spoken — well, literally WRITTEN — to 'Bean,' Dink Meeker, Han Tzu, and have letters out to several others. The better I understand from them what Ender went through (since Ender's not telling), the better I will know what I should be doing but am not because, as you point out, I am not his mother and he has asked me not to do it. Meanwhile, I am pretending that it's only about writing the book.
I am an astonishingly fast writer. Are you sure we have no genes of Winston Churchill in us? Some dalliance of his, for instance, with a Pole-in-exile during World War II? I feel him to be a kindred spirit of mine, except for the political ambitions, the constant blood alcohol level, and walking around the house naked. He did those things, by the way, not me.
Love,
Your equally sarcastic, just-analytical-enough,
not-yet-wounded-nor-satisfied daughter,
Valentine
Graff had disappeared from Eros soon after the court martial, but now he was back. It seems that as Minister of Colonization, he could not miss the opportunity for publicity that the departure of the first colony ship would offer.
'Publicity is good for the Dispersal Project,' said Graff when Mazer laughed at him.
'And you don't love the camera?'
'Look at me,' said Graff. 'I've lost twenty-five kilos. I'm a mere shadow of myself.'
'All through the war, you gain weight, bit by bit. You balloon during the court martial. And now you lose weight. Was it Earth gravity?'
'I didn't go to Earth,' said Graff. 'I was busy turning Battle School into the assembly point for the colonists. No one understood why I insisted that all the beds be adult-sized. Now they talk about my foresight.'
'Why are you lying to me? You weren't in charge when Battle School was built.'
