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"Sel, you don't keep secrets. You say whatever's on your mind. Deception isn't in you. That's why you'll be such a splendid governor, and why I'm not telling you a single thing that you can't tell everybody as soon as you know it."

"I can't lie? Well, then, I won't bother promising you to accept the governorship, because I won't do it. I won't have to. They'll choose somebody else. Nobody likes me but you, Vitaly. I'm a grumpy old man who bosses people around and makes clumsy assistants cry. Whatever I did for this colony is long in the past."

"Oh shut up," said Vitaly. "You'll do what you do and I'll do what I do. Which in my case is die."

"I'm going to do that too, you know. Probably before you."

"Then you'll have to get a move on."

"This new governor--has he any idea of what it will take for these new people to live here? The injections? The regular diet of modified pig, so they can get the proteins that starve the worms? I hope they haven't sent us any vegetarians. It really stinks that these new people will outnumber us from the moment they get off the ship."

"We need them," said Vitaly.

"I know. The gene pool needs them, the farms and factories need them."

"Factories?"

"We're tinkering with one of the old formic solar power generators. We think we can get it to run a loom."

"The industrial revolution! Only thirty-six years after we got this planet! And you say you haven't done anything for the people lately."

"I'm not doing it," said Sel. "I just talked Lee Tee into giving it a look."

"Oh, well, if that's all."

"Say it."

"Say what? I said what I was going to say."

"Say that persuading somebody to try something is exactly the way you've governed for the past three-and-a-half decades."

"I don't have to say what you already know."

"Don't die," said Sel.

"I'm so touched," said Vitaly. "But don't you see? I want to. I'm done. Used up. I went off to war and we fought it and won it and then Ender Wiggin won the battle of the home world and all the buggers down here died. Suddenly I'm not a soldier anymore. And I was a soldier, Sel. Not a bureaucrat. Definitely not a governor. But I was admiral, I was in command, it was my duty, and I did it."

"I'm not as dutiful as you."

"I'm not talking about you now, dammit, you'll do whatever you want. I'm talking about me. I'm telling you what to say at my damn funeral!"

"Oh."

"I didn't want to be governor. I fully expected to die in the war, but the truth is, I no more thought about the future than you did. We were coming to this place, we were trained to be ready to survive on this formic colony world, but I thought that would all be your job, you and the other techs, while I commanded the fighting, the struggle against the hordes of formics coming over the hill, burrowing up underneath us--you have no idea the nightmares I had about the occupation, the clearing, the holding. I was afraid there wouldn't be enough bullets in the world. I thought we'd die."

"Then Ender Wiggin disappointed you."

"Yes. Selfish little brat. I'm a soldier, and he took my war out from under me."

"And you loved him for it."

"I did my duty, Sel. I did my duty."

"So have I," said Sel. "But I won't do yours."

"You will when I'm gone."

"You won't be alive to see."


Tags: Orson Scott Card Ender's Saga Science Fiction