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Sel visibly shuddered "No! What would I do there? Here's where everyone and everything I love and care about are" Then he got that wistful look again "No, I just can't help but think that it's just a damn shame that I didn't find this place thirty or twenty or even ten years ago So busy, so ht around the settlement, always meant to make this trip, and if I'd only done it back then, there'd have been more of them alive, and I'd have had more years to take part in the work Missed opportunity, ret"

"But you're glad that you found them now"

"Yes I as, finds others This is so I helped to find With not aI noticed I don't know if itwe found, the one that was still alive And those larvae, they're voracious"

"They only eat carrion?" asked Ender

"No, no, they went down on the turtles just fine Not Earth turtles, but we call thes, that was cannibalis the else But they waited until they were dead You see?"

Ender nodded He saw perfectly A rudihts of others Whatever these gold bugs were, they were not ive Ender his chance to get inside the formic mind, at least at one remove

CHAPTER 17

To: [email protected]

From: Gov[email protected]

Subj: Let's have a very quiet revolution

Dear Hyrum,

I have been warovernor here, in no s-distance intervention, as well as the enthusiasm of the natives

We are still bringing colonists down fro can be constructed for theinal, Miranda; and Falstaff, Polonius, and Mercutio There was soe, but it quickly dissipated when people conteht look like

You do understand, don't you, that local self-government is inevitable in the colonies, and the sooner the better Well-intentioned as you are, and vital as it is that Earth continue to pay the astronoht in the faint hope that it will eventually pay for itself, there is no way that the IF can force an unwanted governor on an unwilling populace--not for long

Far better that IF ships coood relations and deliver colonists and supplies to compensate for the burden they place on the local economy