Graff loved and respected Ender, but he was not above allowing something very unfortunate to happen to him if it served the larger purpose. Hadn’t Graff proved it over and over?

  Well, my dear MinCol, by the time we get to Shakespeare Colony, you will almost certainly be either dead or very, very old. I wonder if you’ll still be running everything then?

  Poor Peter. Aspiring to rule the world, while Graff had already done it. The difference was that Peter needed to be known to rule the world; all the outward forms of government needed to be seen to lead to Peter’s throne. Whereas Graff only needed to use his control of whatever he wanted to control in order to accomplish his single, lofty purpose.

  But aren’t they the same person, apart from that? Manipulators, letting anyone else pay whatever cost was required to accomplish the end in view. It was a good end, in Graff’s case. Valentine agreed with it, believed in it, happily cooperated with it. But wasn’t Peter’s goal also a good one? The end of war, because the world was united under a single good government. If he brought it off, wouldn’t it be as much a blessing to the human race as anything Graff accomplished?

  She had to give both Peter and Graff credit for this: They weren’t monsters. They didn’t require that all costs be paid by others, none by themselves. They would also make whatever personal sacrifices were required. They really did serve a cause bigger than themselves.

  But couldn’t that also have been said of Hitler? Unlike Stalin and Mao, who wallowed in luxury while others did all the work and made all the sacrifices, Hitler lived sparingly and truly believed himself to be living for a cause greater than himself. That’s precisely what made him such a monster. So Valentine was not quite sure that Peter’s and Graff’s self-sacrifices were quite enough to absolve them of monsterhood.

  Well, they would both be someone else’s problem now. Let Rackham watch out for Graff and kill him if he gets out of hand, which he probably won’t. And let Father and Mother do their pathetic best to keep Peter from becoming the devil. Do they even realize that Peter’s whole good-son attitude was an act? That Peter had obviously made the conscious decision several years back to pretend to be just like the boy Ender had been? All an act, dear parents—do you see it? Sometimes I think you do, but other times you are so oblivious.

  You will be lost in the past by the time I get where I’m going, all of you. My present will be Ender and whatever he’s doing. He is my whole flock, and I must shepherd him without ever letting him see the crook I use to guide him and protect him.

  What am I thinking? Who’s the megalomaniac here? I think I will know better than Ender what is good for him, where he should go, what he should do, and what he should be protected from?

  Yet that is exactly what I think, because it’s true.

  Ender was so sleepy he could hardly stand, yet he stood, through all the pictures, making the smile as warm and real as he could. These are the pictures Mother and Father will see. The pictures for Peter’s children, if he has any, to remember that once they had an Uncle Ender who did something very famous before he was in his teens and then went away. This is how he looked when he left. See? He’s very happy. See, Mom and Dad? You didn’t hurt me when you let them take me. Nothing has hurt me. I’m fine. Look at my smile. Don’t see how tired I am, or how glad I am to go, when they let me go.

  Then at last the pictures were done. Ender shook hands with Mazer Rackham and wanted to say, I wish you were coming. But he could not say he wished that, because he knew that Mazer did not want to go, and so it would be a selfish wish. So he said only this: “Thank you for all you taught me, and for standing by me.” He did not add “standing by me at the trial” because the words might be picked up by some stray microphone.

  Then he shook hands with Hyrum Graff and said, “I hope this new job works out for you.” It was a joke, and Graff got it, or at least enough to smile a little. Maybe the thinness of Graff’s smile was because he had heard Ender thank Mazer and wondered why Ender had no thanks for him. But Graff had not been his teacher, only his master, and it was not the same. Nor had Graff stood by him, as far as Ender could tell. Hadn’t Graff’s whole program of teaching been to get Ender to believe to the depth of his soul that there would never be anyone standing by him?

  “Thanks for the nap,” he said to Graff.

  Graff chuckled out loud. “May you always have as many as you need.”

  Then Ender paused, looking at nothing, at the empty room, and thought, Good-bye, Mom. Good-bye, Dad. Good-bye, Peter. Good-bye, all the men and women and children of Earth. I’ve done all I could for you, and had all I could receive from you, and now someone else is responsible for you all.

  Ender walked up the ramp to the shuttle, Valentine directly behind him.

  The shuttle took them off Eros for the last time. Good-bye, Eros, and all the soldiers on it, the ones who fought for me and the other children, the ones who manipulated us and lied to us for the good of humanity, the ones who conspired to defame me and keep me from returning to Earth, all of you, good and bad, kind and selfish, good-bye to you, I am no longer one of you, neither your pawn nor your savior. I resign my commission.

  Ender said nothing to Valentine beyond the trivial comments of travel. It was only about a half hour of jockeying until the shuttle was docked against the surface of the transport ship. It had been meant to carry soldiers and their weapons into war. Now it was carrying a vast amount of equipment and supplies for the agricultural and manufacturing needs of Shakespeare Colony, and more people to join them, to improve their gene pool, to help buy them enough productivity that there’d be leisure for science and creativity and luxury, a life closer to what the societies of Earth offered.

  But all of that had been loaded, and all the people. Ender was last. Ender and Valentine.

  At the bottom of the ladderway that would take them up into the ship, Ender stopped and faced Valentine. “You can still go back now,” he said. “You can see that I’ll be fine. The people of the colony that I’ve met so far are very nice and I won’t be lonely.”

  “Are you afraid to go up the ladder first?” asked Valentine. “Is that why you’ve stopped to make a speech?”

  So Ender went up the ladder and Valentine followed, making her the last of the colonists to cut the thread connecting them to Earth.

  Below them, the hatch of the shuttle closed, and then the hatch of the ship. They stood in the airlock until a door opened and there was Admiral Quincy Morgan, smiling, his hand already extended. How long did he strike that pose before the door opened, Ender wondered. Was he there, perhaps, for hours, posed like a mannequin?

  “Welcome, Governor Wiggin,” said Morgan.

  “Admiral Morgan,” said Ender, “I’m not governor of anything until I set foot on the planet. On this voyage, on your ship, I’m a student of the xenobiology and adapted agriculture of Shakespeare Colony. I hope, though, that when you’re not too busy, I’ll have a chance to talk to you and learn from you about the military life.”

  “You’re the one who’s seen combat,” said Morgan.

  “I played a game,” said Ender. “I saw nothing of war. But there are colonists on Shakespeare who made this voyage many years ago, and never had a hope of returning home to Earth. I want to get some idea of what their training was, their life.”

  “You’ll have to read books for that,” said Morgan, still smiling. “This is my first interstellar voyage, too. In fact, as far as I know, no one has ever made two of them. Even Mazer Rackham only made a single voyage, which ended at its starting place.”

  “Why, I believe you’re right, Admiral Morgan,” said Ender. “It makes us all pioneers together, here in your ship.” There—had he said “your ship” often enough to reassure Morgan that he knew the order of authority here?

  Morgan’s smile was unchanged. “I’ll be happy to talk to you any time. It’s an honor to have you on my ship, sir.”

  “Please don’t ‘sir’ me, sir,” said Ender. “We both know that I’m an admiral in name only, and I don’t want the colonists to hear anyone call me by a title other than Mr. Wiggin, and preferably not that. Let me be Ender. Or Andrew, if you want to be formal. Would that be all right, or would it interfere with shipboard discipline?”

  “I believe,” said Admiral Morgan, “that it won’t interfere with discipline, and so it shall be entirely as you prefer. Now Ensign Akbar will show you and your sister to your stateroom. Since so few passengers are making the voyage awake, most families have quarters of similar size. I say this because of your memo requesting that you not have an exorbitantly oversized space on the ship.”

  “Is your family aboard, sir?” asked Ender.

  “I wooed my superiors and they gave birth to my career,” said Morgan. “The International Fleet has been my only bride. Like you, I travel as a bachelor.”

  Ender grinned at him. “I think your bachelorhood and mine are both going to be much in question before long.”

  “Our mission is reproduction of the species beyond the bounds of Earth,” said Morgan. “But the voyage will go more smoothly if we guard our bachelorhood zealously while in transit.”

  “Mine has the safety of ignorant youth,” said Ender, “and yours the distance of authority. Thank you for the great honor of greeting us here. I’ve underslept a little the past few days, and I hope I’ll be forgiven for indulging myself in about eighteen hours of rest. I fear I’ll miss the beginning of acceleration.”

  “Everyone will, Mr. Wiggin,” said Morgan. “The inertia suppression on this ship is superb. In fact, we are already accelerating at the rate of two gravities, and yet the only apparent gravity is imparted by the centrifugal force of the spin of the ship.”

  “Which is odd,” said Valentine, “since centrifugal force is also inertial, and you’d think it would also be suppressed.”

  “The suppression is highly directionalized, and affects only the forward movement of the ship,” said Morgan. “I apologize for ignoring you so nearly completely, Ms. Wiggin. I’m afraid your brother’s fame and rank have distracted me and I forgot courtesy.”

  “None is owed to me,” said Valentine with a light laugh. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  With that they separated and Ensign Akbar led them to their stateroom. It was not a huge space, but it was well equipped, and it took the ensign several minutes to show them where their clothing, supplies, and desks had been stowed, and how to use the ship’s internal communications system. He insisted on setting down both their beds and then raising them up again and locking them out of the way, so Ender and Valentine had seen a complete demonstration. Then he showed them how to lower and raise the privacy screen that turned the stateroom into two sleeping areas.

  “Thank you,” said Ender. “Now I think I’ll take the bed down again so I can sleep.”

  Ensign Akbar was full of apologies and took both the beds down again, ignoring their protests that the point of his demonstration was so they could do it themselves. When he was finally done, he paused at the door. “Sir,” he said, “I know I shouldn’t ask. But. May I shake your hand, sir?”

  Ender thrust out his hand and smiled warmly. “Thank you for helping us, Ensign Akbar.”

  “It’s an honor to have you aboard this ship, sir.” Then Akbar saluted. Ender returned the salute and the ensign left and the door closed behind him.

  Ender went to his bed and sat down on it. Valentine sat on hers, directly across from him. Ender looked at her and started to laugh. She joined in his laughter.

  They laughed until Ender was forced to lie down and rub the tears out of his eyes.

  “May I ask,” said Valentine, “if we’re both laughing at the same thing?”

  “Why? What were you laughing at?”

  “Everything,” said Valentine. “The whole picture-taking thing before we left, and Morgan greeting us so warmly, as if he weren’t preparing to stab you in the back, and Ensign Akbar’s hero worship despite your insistence that you were just ‘Mr. Wiggin’—which is, of course, an affectation too. I was laughing at the whole of it.”

  “I see that all of that is funny, if you look at it that way. I was too busy to be amused with it. I was just trying to stay awake and say all the right things.”

  “So what were you laughing at?”

  “It was pure delight. Delight and relief. I’m not in charge of anything now. For the duration of the voyage, it’s Morgan’s ship, and I’m a free man for the first time in my life.”

  “Man?” asked Valentine. “You’re still shorter than me.”

  “But Val,” said Ender, “I have to shave every week now, or the whiskers show.”

  They laughed again, just a little. Then Valentine spoke the command to bring down the barrier between their beds. Ender stripped down to his underwear, crawled under a single sheet—nothing more was needed in this climate-controlled environment—and in moments he was asleep.

  CHAPTER 8

  To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

  From: MinCol@ColMin.gov

  Fwd: Report on Planet Making

  Dear Ender,

  I was conflicted about whether to send you this. On the one hand, it is fascinating, even heartening; on the other hand, I know you have suffered greatly because of the destruction of the formic home world and reminders might be painful. I risk the pain—your pain, so it was not much risk to me, was it?—because if there is anyone who should be receiving these reports, it is you.

  —Hyrum

  Forwarded Message:

  To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

  From: LPo%formcent@IFCom.gov/bda

  Subj: Report on Planet Making

  Dear Hyrum,

  I’m not sure you’re in the need-to-know loop, since it will be a long time before the subject planet will be ready for colonization, but since there is also no further enemy presence there, I thought you’d want to know something of the aftermath—our official “damage assessment” reports. (You’ll note that in my new assignment, I do NOT get to follow normal military abbreviations and call my area “DamAss” or “AssDam.” We have to use mere initials, BDA. As the kids say, kuso.)

  SecureLinka7977@rTTu7&!a***********bdA.gov

  I’ve set it so your full name is a nonce password for the next week.

  In case you don’t have time to read the whole report at the above site, here’s the gist: The former formic home world, destroyed last year by molecular disruption, is re-forming. Our follow-up ship, instead of trying to salvage a losing battle, is finding that its mission is astronomical: to watch the formation of a planet out of, quite literally, elemental dust.

  Since the md field broke everything into its constituent atoms, it is coalescing with remarkable quickness. Our observer ship has recently been in a position to see the dust cloud with the star directly behind it, and during the passage sufficient spectrometry and mass measurements were taken to assure us that the vast majority of the atoms have re-formed into the common, expected molecules, and that the gravity of the cloud was sufficient to hold most of the material in place. There has been some loss from escape velocity and further loss to solar gravity, solar wind, etc., but our best estimate is that the new planet will be at no less than 80 percent of the original mass, and perhaps more. At that size, there will still be atmosphere, potentially breathable. There will also be molten core and mantle, ocean, and the probability of tectonic movement of thicker areas of crust—i.e., continents.

  In short, while no artifacts of the former civilization can possibly be found, the planet itself will be back in a nice wad, in stellar orbit, within the next thousand years, and perhaps cool enough to explore in ten thousand years. Colonizable in a hundred thousand, if we seed it with oxygenating bacteria and other life as soon as the oceans are fully formed.

  We humans can be destructive, but the universe’s thirst for creation goes on unslaked.

  —Li

  Public spaces were few on the “Good Ship Lollipop” (as Valentine called it), also known as “IFcoltrans1” (which was painted on its side and broadcast continuously from its beacon), or “Mrs. Morgan” (as the ship’s officers and crew called it behind their captain’s back).

  There was the mess hall, where no one could linger long, since one dining shift or another started every hour. The library was for serious research by ship’s personnel; passengers had full access to the contents of the library on their own desks in their staterooms and so were not particularly welcome in the library itself.

  The officers’ and crew’s lounges were open to passengers by invitation only, and such invitations were rare. The theater was good for viewing holos and vids, or for gathering all the passengers for a meeting or announcement, but private conversations tended to be shushed, with some hostility.

  For conviviality, this left the observation deck, whose walls offered a view only when the stardrive was off and the ship was maneuvering close to a planet; and the few open spaces in the cargo hold—which would increase in number and size as they used up supplies during the voyage.

  It was to the observation deck, then, that Ender betook himself every day after breakfast. Valentine was surprised at his apparent sociability. On Eros, he had been private, reluctant to converse, obsessed with his studies. Now he greeted everyone who entered the observation deck and chatted amiably with anyone who wanted his time.

  “Why do you let them interrupt you?” asked Valentine one night, after they returned to their stateroom.

  “They don’t interrupt me,” said Ender. “My purpose is to converse with them; I do my other work when no one wants me.”

  “So you’re being their governor.”