Ender in Exile Page 0,28

warning the world about the Warsaw Pact's attempt to take over the fleet long before anybody else took the threat seriously."

"She was also crowing about how America could conquer the world once it had me."

"You can ask her about that."

"I have no such intention."

"Let me tell you one pure and simple truth. In everything she wrote about you, Ender, her only concern was to protect you from the terrible things people would have done to exploit you or destroy you if you ever set foot on Earth."

"I could have dealt with it."

"We'll never know, will we?"

"If I know you, sir, what you just told me is that you were behind this. Keeping me off Earth."

"Not really," said Graff. "I went along with it, yes."

Ender wanted to cry. From sheer moral exhaustion. "Because you know better than me what's in my best interest."

"In this case, Ender, I think you could have dealt with any challenge that came to you. Except one. Your brother, Peter, is determined to rule the world. You would have been either his tool or his enemy. Which would you have chosen?"

"Peter?" asked Ender. "Do you think he really has a chance of it?"

"He's done incredibly well so far - for a teenager."

"Isn't he twenty by now? No, I guess he'd still be seventeen. Or eighteen."

"I don't keep track of your family's birthdays," said Graff.

"If he's doing such a great job," said Ender, "why haven't I heard of him?"

"Oh, you have."

That meant Peter was using a pseudonym. Ender quickly thought through all the online personalities that might be considered close to some kind of world domination and when he got it, he sighed. "Peter is Locke."

"So, clever boy, who is Demosthenes?"

Ender rose to his feet and to his own chagrin he was crying, just like that. He didn't even know he was crying till his cheeks were wet and he couldn't see for the blur. "Valentine," he whispered.

"I'm going to leave my office now and let the two of you talk," said Graff.

When he left, the door stayed open. And then she came in.

CHAPTER 5

To: imo%[email protected]

From: hgraff%[email protected]

Subj: What are we screening for?

Dear Imo,

I've been giving our conversation a great deal of thought, and I think you may be right. I had the foolish idea that we should test for desirable and useful traits so that we could assemble ideally balanced teams to the colonies. But we're not getting such a flood of volunteers that we can afford to be really choosy. And as history shows us, when colonization is voluntary, people will self-select better than any testing system.

It's like those foolish attempts to control immigration to America based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically is "descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there." And we won't go into the way Australian colonists were selected!

Willingness is the single most important test, as you said. But that means all the other tests are. what?

Not useless, as you suggested. On the contrary, I think the test results are a valuable resource. Even if the colonists are all insane, shouldn't the governor have a good dossier on each individual's particular species of madness?

I know, you're not letting through anyone who needs to maintain functional sanity with drugs. Or known addicts and alcoholics and sociopaths, or people with genetic diseases, etc. We always agreed on that, to avoid overburdening the colonies. They'll develop their own genetic and brain-based quirks in a few generations anyway, but for now, let them have a little breathing room.

But the family you queried about, the ones with a plan for marrying off a daughter to the governor - surely you will agree with me that in the long history of motives for joining a faraway colony, marriage was one of the noblest and most socially productive.

- Hyrum

"Do you know what I did today, Alessandra?"

"No, Mother." Fourteen-year-old Alessandra set her book bag on the floor by the front door and walked past her mother to the sink, where she poured herself a glass of water.

"Guess!"

"Got the electricity turned back on?"

"The elves would not speak to me," said Mother. It had once been funny, this game that electricity came from elves. But it wasn't funny now, in the sweltering Adriatic summer, with no refrigeration for the food, no air-conditioning, and no vids to distract her from the heat.

"Then I don't know what you did, Mother."

"I changed our lives," said