"I know you won't," said Ender. He hesitated again. "I don't want to lie to you. So I'll only tell you true things. I found the answer, Abra."
"To what?"
"My question."
"Can't you tell me any of it?"
"You've never asked the question. I hope to God you never know what it is."
"But the message really was for you."
"Yes, Abra. They left a message that told me why they died."
"Why?"
"No, Abra. It's my burden, truly. Mine alone." Ender reached out a hand, gripped Abra by the arm. "Let there be no rumors of what Ender Wiggin found when he came to this place."
"There never will be," said Abra.
"You mean that at the age of eleven, you're prepared to take a secret to your grave?"
"Yes," said Abra without hesitation. "But I hope I don't have to do that very soon."
Ender laughed. "I hope the same. I hope you live a long, long time."
"I'll keep the secret all my life. Even though I don't actually know what it is."
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 Rumpelstiltskin 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.