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Bean's son will be brilliant--like his father, plus his mother. And Randi may be feeding him with stories that will bend his character in awkward ways.
Why am I telling you all this? Because Ganges Colony is our first effort at colonizing a world that was NOT originally a formic possession. They are traveling at a slightly smaller fraction of lightspeed, so they will not arrive until the XBs have a chance to do their work and have the planet ready for colonization.
If you are happy governing Shakespeare and wish to spend the rest of your life there, then this information will not be of any particular interest to you. But if, after a few years, you decide that government is not your metier, I would ask you to travel by courier to Ganges. Of course, the colony will not even be established by the time you have spent five (or even ten) years on Shakespeare. And the voyage to Ganges will be of such a distance that you can leave Shakespeare and reach Ganges within fourteen (or nineteen) years of its founding. At that point, the boy (named Randall Firth) will be adult size--no, larger--and may be so shockingly brilliant that Virlomi has no chance of keeping him from being a danger to the peace and safety of the colony. Or he may already be the dictator. Or the freely elected governor that saved them from Virlomi's madness. Or he might already be dead. Or a complete nonentity. Who knows?
Again: The choice is yours. I have no claim upon you; Bean and Petra have no claim upon you. But if it should be interesting to you, more interesting than remaining on Shakespeare, this would be a place where you could go and perhaps help a young governor, Virlomi, who is brilliant but also prone to the occasional very poor decision.
Alas, it's all a pig in a poke. By the time you would have to leave Shakespeare with time enough to be effective on Ganges, the Ganges colonists won't even have debarked from their ship! We might be sending you to a colony with no problems at all and therefore nothing for you to do.
Thus you see how I plan for things that can't be planned for. But sometimes I'm oh so glad that I did. But if you decide you want no part of my plans from now on, I will understand better than anyone!
Your friend,
Hyrum Graff
PS: On the chance that your captain has not informed you, five years after you left, the I.F. agreed with my urgent request and launched a series of couriers, one departing every five years, to each of the colonies. These ships are not the huge behemoths that carry colonists, but they have room for some serious cargo and we are hoping they become the instrument of trade among the colonies. Our endeavor will be to have a ship call on each colony world every five years--but then they will travel colony to colony and return to Earth only after making a full circuit. The crews will have the option of completing the whole voyage, or training their replacements on any colony world and remaining behind while someone else completes their mission. Thus no one will be trapped on any one world for their whole life, and no one will be trapped in the same spaceship for the rest of their life. As you can guess, we did not lack for volunteers.
Vitaly Kolmogorov lay in bed, waiting to die and getting rather impatient about it.
"Don't hurry things," said Sel Menach. "It sets a bad example."
"I'm not hurrying anything. I'm just feeling impatient. I have a right to feel what I feel, I think!"
"And a right to think what you think, I feel," said Sel.
"Oh, now he develops a sense of humor."
"You're the one who decided this was your deathbed, not me," said Sel. "Black humor seems appropriate, though."
"Sel, I asked you to visit me for a reason."
"To depress me."
"When I'm dead, the colony will need a governor."
"There's a governor coming from Earth, isn't there?"
"Technically, from Eros."
"Ah, Vitaly, we all come from Eros."
"Very funny, and very classical. I wonder how much longer there'll be anybody capable of being amused by puns based on Earth-system asteroids and Greek gods."
"Anyway, Vitaly, please don't tell me you're appointing me governor."
"Nothing of the kind," said Vitaly. "I'm giving you an errand."
"And no one but an aging xenobiologist will do."
"Exactly," said Vitaly. "There is a message--encrypted, and no, I won't give you the key--a message waiting in the ansible queue. I ask only this: When I'm well and thoroughly dead, but before they've chosen a new governor, please send the message."
"To whom?"
"The message already knows where it's going."
"Very clever message. Why doesn't it figure out when you're dead, and go by itself?"
"Promise?"
