"Just because I'm white doesn't mean—" Then Ender saw the laughter in Ix's eyes and smiled. "I'm too eager not to give offense," said Ender. "So eager I was too quick to take offense."
"You'll get used to our Mayan sense of humor eventually," said Ix.
"No he won't," said Sel. "Nobody else has gotten used to it, anyway."
"Everybody but you, old man," said Ix.
Sel laughed along with the others, and then the conversation took another turn, with the marines describing their training, and talking about what life was like on Earth and in the high-tech society that moved throughout the solar system.
Ender noticed Sel getting a faraway look in his eyes, and misunderstood what it meant. As they prepared for sleep, Ender took a moment to ask Sel, "Do you ever give any thought to going back? Home? To Earth?"
Sel visibly shuddered. "No! What would I do there? Here's where everyone and everything I love and care about are." Then he got that wistful look again. "No, I just can't help but think that it's just a damn shame that I didn't find this place thirty or twenty or even ten years ago. So busy, so much work right around the settlement, always meant to make this trip, and if I'd only done it back then, there'd have been more of them alive, and I'd have had more years to take part in the work. Missed opportunity, my young friend! There is no life without regret."
"But you're glad that you found them now."
"Yes I am," said Sel. "Everybody misses some things, finds others. This is something I helped to find. With not a minute to spare." Then he smiled. "One thing I noticed. I don't know if it matters, but . . . the larva hadn't eaten the gold bug we found, the one that was still alive. And those larvae, they're voracious."
"They only eat carrion?" asked Ender.
"No, no, they went down on the turtles just fine. Not Earth turtles, but we call them that. They like living meat. But eating the gold bugs, that was cannibalism, you understand? That was their parents' generation. Eating them because there was nothing else. But they waited until they were dead. You see?"
Ender nodded. He saw perfectly. A rudimentary sense of respect for the living. For the rights of others. Whatever these gold bugs were, they were not mere animals. They weren't formics, but maybe they would give Ender his chance to get inside the formic mind, at least at one remove.
To: MinCol@ColMin.gov
From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov
Subj: Let's have a very quiet revolution
Dear Hyrum,
I have been warmly received as governor here, in no small part due to your long-distance intervention, as well as the enthusiasm of the natives.
We are still bringing colonists down from the ship as quickly as housing can be constructed for them. We are branching out into four settlements—the original, Miranda; and Falstaff, Polonius, and Mercutio. There was some enthusiasm for a Caliban village, but it quickly dissipated when people contemplated a future village school and what the mascot might look like.
You do understand, don't you, that local self-government is inevitable in the colonies, and the sooner the better. Well-intentioned as you are, and vital as it is that Earth continue to pay the astronomical (pun intended) expenses of starflight in the faint hope that it will eventually pay for itself, there is no way that the I.F. can force an unwanted governor on an unwilling populace—not for long.
Far better that I.F. ships come with ambassadorial status, to promote trade and good relations and deliver colonists and supplies to compensate for the burden they place on the local economy.
In token of which good counsel, I intend to serve for two years as governor, during which time I will sponsor the writing of a constitution. We will submit it to ColMin, not for approval—if we like it, it's our constitution—but for your judgment as to whether ColMin can recommend Shakespeare as a destination for colonists. That's where your power comes from—your ability to decide whether colonists can join an existing colony or not.
And perhaps some regulatory commission can meet by ansible, with a representative and single vote from every colony, to certify each other as worthy trading partners. In this way, a colony that sets up an intolerable government can be ostracized and cut off from trade and new colonists—but no one will commit the absurdity of trying to wage war (another word for enforcing policy) against a settlement that it takes half a lifetime to reach.
Does this letter constitute a declaration of independence? Not a very principled one. It's more a simple recognition that we're independent whether we make it official or not. These people survived for forty-one years completely on their own. They're glad to have received the supplies and the new breeding stock (plant, animal, human), but they did not have to have them.
