Ender came into the house where Valentine was working on the next-to-last volume of her history of the Formic Wars. He set his own desk on the table across from her. She looked up at him. He smiled — a jokey, mechanical smile — and started typing.
She wasn't fooled. The smile was fake, but the happiness behind it was real.
Ender was actually happy.
What happened on that trip to lay out the new colony?
He didn't say. She didn't ask. It was enough for her that he was happy.
CHAPTER 19
To: jpwiggin%[email protected], twiggin%[email protected]
From: Gov%[email protected]
Subj: Third
Dear Mother and Father,
Some things cannot be helped. For you, it has been 47 years of silence from your third and youngest child. For me, it has been my six years in Battle School, where I lived for one reason only, to destroy the formics; the year after our victory, in which I learned that I had twice killed other children, that I destroyed an entire sentient species that I don't believe I ever understood, and that every mistake I made caused the deaths of men and women in places lightyears away; and then two years of a voyage in which I could never for a moment speak or show my true feelings about anything.
Through all of this, I have been trying to sort out what it meant that you gave life to me. To have a child, knowing that you have signed a contract to give him up to the government upon demand — isn't there a bit of the story of Rumpelstiltskin in this? In the fairy tale, someone happens to overhear the secret name that will free them from their pledge to give their child to the dwarf. In our case, the universe did not conspire in our favor, and when Rumpelstilt-skin showed up, you handed over the boy. Me.
I made a choice myself — though what I really understood at six years of age is hard to fathom. I thought I was already myself; I was aware of no deficiencies of judgment. But now, looking back, I wonder why I chose. It was partly a desire to flee from Peter's threats and oppression, since Valentine really couldn't stop him and the two of you had no idea what was going on among us children. It was partly a desire to save the people I knew, most particularly my own protector, Valentine, from the predations of the formics.
It was partly a hope that I might turn out to be a very important boy. It was partly the challenge of it, the hope of victory over the other children competing to be great commanders. It was partly a wish to leave a world where every day I was reminded that Thirds are illegal, unwanted, despised, taking more than their family's share of the world's resources.
It was partly my sense that while you cried (Mother) and you blustered (Father) it would make a positive difference in our family's life for me to go. No longer would you be the ones who had an extra child and yet were not suffering the penalties of law. With that monitor gone, there'd be no more visible excuse. I could hear you telling people, 'The government authorized his birth so he could enter military training, only when the time came, he refused to go.'
I existed for one reason only. When the time came, I believed I had no decent choice but to fulfil the purpose of my creation.
I did it, didn't I? I dominated the other children in Battle School, though I was not the best strategist (that was Bean). I led my jeesh and, unwittingly, many pilots to complete victory in the war — though again at a crucial moment it was Bean who helped me see my way through. I am not ashamed of having needed help. The task was too great for me, too great for Bean, and too great for any of the other children, but my role was to lead by getting the best from everyone.
But when the victory was won, I could not go home. There was Graff's court martial. There was the international situation, with nations fearing what might happen if America had the great war hero to command their Earthbound troops.
But I confess that there was something else. I became aware that both my brother and my sister were writing essays whose deliberate effect was to keep me from coming home to Earth again. Peter's reasons I could guess at; they were an outgrowth of our relationship as young children. Peter cannot live in the same world with me. Or at least he could not then.
Here was the mystery to me. I was a twelve-year-old boy during most of my year on Eros. I was barred from returning to Earth. My siblings were siding with those who wanted me kept away. And not once on any of the newsvids did I see a quotation or a statement from my parents, pleading with the powers-that-be to let their boy come home. Nor did I hear of any effort on your part to come and see me, since I could not go to you.
Instead, once Valentine showed up, I got hints, ranging from the blunt to the oblique, that for some reason it was my obligation to write to YOU. Through the two years of our voyage — forty years to you — Valentine reported to me on her correspondence with you, and told me that I should write, I must write. And through all of this, knowing that you could easily obtain my address and that your letters would get through to me as easily as they got through to Valentine, I never heard from you.
I have waited.
Now you are getting rather old. Peter is nearly sixty years of age and he rules the world — all his dreams have come true, though there seem to have been many nightmares along the way. From news reports I gather that you have been at his side almost continuously, working for him and his cause. You have made statements to the press in support of him, and at times of crisis you stood by him quite bravely. You have been admirable parents. You know how the job is done.
And still I waited.
Recently, having learned the answers to a set of questions unrelated to you, I determined that because half of this silence between us has been mine, I would wait no longer to write to you. Still, I do not understand how it became my obligation to open this door. How did I skip directly from the irresponsibility of a six-year-old to the complete responsibility that seemed to devolve on me to reestablish our relationship after it became possible again?
I thought: You were ashamed of me. My «victory» came along with the scandal of my killings; you wanted to put me from your mind. Who am I, then, to insist that you recognize me? Yet I killed Stilson when I was still a child living in your house. You cannot blame the Battle School for that. Why didn't you stand up and take responsibility for creating me, and for raising me those first six years?
I thought: You were so in awe of my great achievement that you felt unworthy to insist on a relationship, and as with royalty, you waited for me to invite you. Here, though, the fact that you are not too much in awe of Peter to be with him, though his achievements are arguably greater — peace on Earth, after all! — tells me that awe is not a powerful motive in your lives.
Then I thought: They have divided the family. Valentine is their co-parent, and she has been assigned to me, while they assigned themselves to Peter. Other people had taken care of training me to save the world; but who would train Peter, who would watch out for him, who would pull him up short if he overreached or became a tyrant? That was where you were needed; that was your life's work. Valentine would give her life to me, and you would give yours to Peter.
But if that was your thinking, then I think you made a poor choice. Valentine is as good as I remembered her to be, and as smart. But she cannot understand me or what I need, she does not know me well enough to trust me, and it drives her crazy. She is not my mother or father, she is only my sister, and yet she has been assigned — or assigned herself — to take on a motherly role. She does her best. I hope she is not too unhappy with the bargain she made, to come along on this voyage. The sacrifice she made in order to come with me was far too great. I fear she thinks the results in me have amounted to little of worth.
I do not know you, a man and a woman in their eighties. I knew a young man and woman in their early thirties, busy with their own extraordinary careers, raising extraordinary children who, for a time, each wore the monitor of the I.F. at the base of their skulls. There was always someone else watching over me. I always belonged
