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 to someone else. You never felt that I was fully your son.
Yet I am your son. There is in me, in the abilities I have, in the choices that I make without realizing that I've chosen, in my deep feelings about the religions that you believed in secretly, which I have studied when I could, there is in all these things a trace of you. You are the explanation of much that is un-explainable.
