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"Can't you please wait?" He wanted to say: Until I'm dead. But he didn't get that specific.
"Maybe a while," said Valentine. "We'll see."
Ender filled his days now with the business of the new colony, laying the groundwork for their arrival, making sure there were plenty of surplus crops being grown at all four of the villages as well as the new colony site, so that the newcomers could have failed harvests for two, even three years, and there'd still be no hunger. "And we'll need money," said Ender. "Here where we all know each other, this sort of ad hoc communism we've been using has worked out. But for trade to work well, we need a medium of exchange."
"Po and I found you the gold bugs," said Sel Menach. "So you've got the gold. Make coins."
Abra figured out how to adapt an oil press to make a coin stamper, and one of the chemists came up with an alloy that wouldn't constantly be shedding gold as the coins passed from hand to hand. One of the talented youngsters drew a picture of Sel Menach and one of the old women drew, from memory, the face of Vitaly Kolmogorov. Sel insisted that Kolmogorov get the cheaper coin, "Because that's the face they'll see the most. You always give the greatest man the smallest denomination."
They practiced using the money, so the prices would be set before the new colonists arrived. It was a joke at first. "Five chickens don't make a cow." And instead of calling the coins "fives" and "ones," they became "sels" and "vits." "Render unto Sel that which is Sel's, but hang on to Vit." "Sel wise, Vit foolish."
Ender wrestled with trying to set a value for the coins relative to the international dollar of the Hegemony, but Valentine stopped him. "Let it find its own value, tied to whatever people eventually pay for whatever it is we eventually export to other worlds." So the currency floated within their own private universe.
The first edition of The Hive Queen sold slowly at first, but then faster and faster. It was translated into many languages, even though almost everyone on Earth had a working knowledge of Common, since that was the official language of Peter's "Free People of Earth"--the propagandistic name he had chosen for his new international government.
Meanwhile, free copies circulated on the nets, and one day it was included in a message one of the xenobotanists received. She started telling everyone in Miranda about it, and copies were printed out and handed around. Ender and Valentine made no comment; when Alessandra pressed a copy on Ender, he accepted it, waited a while, and returned it. "Isn't it wonderful?" Alessandra asked.
"I think it is, yes," said Ender.
"Oh, yes, that analytical voice, that dispassionate attitude."
"What can I say?" said Ender. "I am who I am."
"I think this book has changed my life," said Alessandra.
"For the better, I hope," said Ender. And then, glancing at her swollen belly, he asked, "Changed your life more than that?"
Alessandra smiled. "I don't know yet. I'll tell you in a year."
Ender did not say: In a year I'll be on a starship and far away.
Valentine finished her penultimate volume and when it was published, she included the full text of The Hive Queen at the end, with an introductory note:
"We know so little of the formics that it is impossible for me, as a historian, to tell of this war from their point of view. So I will include an artistic imagining of the history, because even if it can't be proved, I believe this is the true story."
Not long after, Valentine came to Ender. "Peter read my book," she said.
"I'm glad someone did," said Ender.
"He sent me a message about the last chapter. He said, 'I know who wrote it.'"
"And was he right?"
"He was."
"Isn't he the clever one."
"He was moved, Ender."
"People seem to be liking it."
"More than liking, and you know it. Let me read what Peter said: 'If he can speak for the buggers, surely he can speak for me.'"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"He wants you to write about him. About his life."
"When I last saw Peter I was six and he had threatened to kill me just a few hours before."
