Alessandra threw her arms around her mother and sobbed. "Mama, I never understood till now, I never knew."
Mother held her tight and looked over her shoulder at the neighbors who were watching, awestruck. "Yes," she said, "I am a terrible daughter. But I am a very, very good mother!"
Several of the neighbors applauded and laughed, though others clucked their tongues and turned away. Alessandra did not care.
"Let me look at you," said Mother.
Alessandra stepped back. Mother inspected her face. "A bruise, I think, but not too bad. It will heal quickly. I think there won't be a trace of it left by the time you meet that fine young man with prospects."
CHAPTER
6
To: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov
From: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov
Subj: Naming the colony
I agree that calling this place Colony I is going to get tiresome. I agree that naming it now instead of REnaming it when you and your colony ship get here in fifty years will be much better.
But your suggestion of "Prospero" would not play well here right now. We're burying former fighter pilots at the rate of one every other day while our xenobiologist struggles to find drugs or treatments that will control or eliminate the airborne worms that we inhale and that burrow through our veins until they're so perforated we bleed out internally.
Sel (the XB) assures me that the drug he just gave us will slow them down and buy us time. So there's a chance there'll actually be a colony here when you arrive. If you have questions about the dustworm itself, you'll have to ask him at SMenach%Colony1@colmin.gov\xbdiv.
My address is my job title but my name is Vitaly Kolmogorov and my permanent title is Admiral. Do you have a name? Whom am I writing to?
To: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov
From: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov
Subj: Re: Naming the colony
Dear Admiral Kolmogorov,
I have read with great relief the recent report that the dustworm has been completely controlled by the drug cocktail your xb Sel Menach developed. The worm is being named for him, but the actual name will be held up while committees argue endlessly about whether Latin should be used for naming xenospecies. Some are arguing for a different language for each colony world; others for standardization across all the colonies; others for linguistic differentiation between species native to each planet and the species from the formic home world that were transplanted to all the colony worlds. Thus the Earthbound keep themselves busy while you do the real work of trying to establish a bridgehead in an alien ecosphere.
I am part of the problem, with my fussing about the colony's name. Please forgive my wasting your time on this; yet it must be done, and you have already prevented me from a faux pas that would have hurt the relations between your colonists and the Ministry and its minions (including me). You were right that Prospero doesn't work, but for some reason I am quite drawn to using a name from The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Perhaps Tempest itself, or Miranda, or Ariel. I suspect Caliban would not be a good choice. Gonzalo? Sycorax?
As to my name, there is debate about whether to inform your colonists of who I am. I am strictly forbidden to tell even you, the "acting" governor. Meanwhile, my name is being bandied about on the nets, with no great secret made of the fact that I am appointed governor of Colony I. The information will simply not be transmitted to you by ansible. So easy to deceive you or leave you ignorant—something that I will keep in mind when I receive information from ColMin as governor 40 years from now. Unless I can get them to change this foolish practice before I depart.
I believe that the powers-that-be think that having a child of thirteen appointed as governor of your colony might hurt morale among your colonists, though it will be forty years before I arrive. At the same time, others think that having the victorious commander as governor will help morale. While they decide, I trust both your powers of deduction and your discretion.
To: GovNom%Colony1@colmin.gov
From: GovAct%Colony1@colmin.gov
Subj: Re: Naming the colony
Dear Governor-Nominate Wiggin,
I am impressed with the alacrity with which ColMin acted on your petition for ansible bandwidth to be made available for unrestricted access to the nets by colonists, at the discretion of the governors.
My first thought was to inform everyone in the colony about the identity of their governor-in-transit. The name of Ender Wiggin is revered here. After our own victory, we studied your battles and debated about just which superlative was most appropriate when applied to your degree of military brilliance. But I have also seen the reports of the court martial of Col. Graff and Admiral Rackham. Your reputation was savaged and I don't want to provide an incentive for the colonists, when they finally have the leisure for connecting to the home of humanity, to brood about whether you are a savior or a sociopath. Not that any of the soldiers and pilots among us has the slightest doubt that you are the former; but there will be children born here during the fifty years of your voyage who did not fight under your command.
I confess to having had to reread The Tempest upon receiving your list of names. Sycorax indeed! And yet, obscure as the name is in the play, it is astonishingly appropriate for our situation. The mother of Caliban, the witch who made the unmapped island rich with magic—Sycorax would then be the appropriate name for the hive queen who once ruled this world but now is gone, leaving behind so many artifacts . . . and traps.
Our xb—a remarkable young man, who refuses to hear of our gratitude for his having saved our lives—says that the formic bodies were riddled with damage from the dustworms. Apparently the individual formics were regarded as so expendable that there was no attempt to control or prevent the disease. The waste of life! Fortunately, Sel has found that the dustworm life cycle has a phase that requires feeding on a certain species of plant. He is working on a means of wiping out that entire plant species. Ecocide, he calls it—a monstrous biological crime. He broods with guilt. Yet the alternative is to keep injecting ourselves forever, or to genetically alter all the children born to us in this world so our blood is poisonous to the dust-worms.
In short, Sel IS Prospero. The hive queen was Sycorax. The formics, Caliban. So far, no Ariels, though every female of reproductive age is venerated here. We're about to have a lottery for mating purposes. I have taken myself out of the running, lest I be accused of making sure I got one of them. No one likes this unromantic, unfree plan—but we voted on the method of allocating scarce reproductive resources and Sel persuaded a majority that this was the way to go. We have no time for wooing here, or for hurt feelings, or rejection.