ld they have tested that weapon against a planet? I know, they took out Neptune!
"It happened just now," said Bean. "It happened at the home world of the Buggers. We just blew it up. They're all dead."
They finally began to realize that he was serious. They fired objections at him. He explained about the faster-than-light communications device. They didn't believe him.
Then another voice entered the conversation. "It's called the ansible."
They looked up to see Colonel Graff standing a ways off, down the tunnel.
Is Bean telling the truth? Was that a real battle?
"They were all real," said Bean. "All the so-called tests. Real battles. Real victories. Right, Colonel Graff? We were fighting the real war all along."
"It's over now," said Graff. "The human race will continue. The Buggers won't."
They finally believed it, and became giddy with the realization. It's over. We won. We weren't practicing, we were actually commanders.
And then, at last, a silence fell.
"They're all dead?" asked Petra.
Bean nodded.
Again they looked at Graff. "We have reports. All life activity has ceased on all the other planets. They must have gathered their queens back on their home planet. When the queens die, the Buggers die. There is no enemy now."
Petra began to cry, leaning against the wall. Bean wanted to reach out to her, but Dink was there. Dink was the friend who held her, comforted her.
Some soberly, some exultantly, they went back to their barracks. Petra wasn't the only one who cried. But whether the tears were shed in anguish or in relief, no one could say for sure.
Only Bean did not return to his room, perhaps because Bean was the only one not surprised. He stayed out in the tunnel with Graff.
"How's Ender taking it?"
"Badly," said Graff. "We should have broken it to him more carefully, but there was no holding back. In the moment of victory."
"All your gambles paid off," said Bean.
"I know what happened, Bean," said Graff. "Why did you leave control with him? How did you know he'd come up with a plan?"
"I didn't," said Bean. "I only knew that I had no plan at all."
"But what you said--'the enemy's gate is down.' That's the plan Ender used."
"It wasn't a plan," said Bean. "Maybe it made him think of a plan. But it was him. It was Ender. You put your money on the right kid."
Graff looked at Bean in silence, then reached out and put a hand on Bean's head, tousled his hair a little. "I think perhaps you pulled each other across the finish line."
"It doesn't matter, does it?" said Bean. "It's finished, anyway. And so is the temporary unity of the human race."
"Yes," said Graff. He pulled his hand away, ran it through his own hair. "I believed in your analysis. I tried to give warning. If the Strategos heeded my advice, the Polemarch's men are getting arrested here on Eros and all over the fleet."
"Will they go peacefully?" asked Bean.
"We'll see," said Graff.
The sound of gunfire echoed from some distant tunnel.
"Guess not," said Bean.
They heard the sound of men running in step. And soon they saw them, a contingent of a dozen armed marines.
Bean and Graff watched them approach. "Friend or foe?"
"They all wear the same uniform," said Graff. "You're the one who called it, Bean. Inside those doors"--he gestured toward the doors to the kids' quarters--"those children are the spoils of war. In command of armies back on Earth, they're the hope of victory. You are the hope."
The soldiers came to a stop in front of Graff. "We're here to protect the children, sir," said their leader.
"From what?"
"The Polemarch's men seem to be resisting arrest, sir," said the soldier. "The Strategos has ordered that these children be kept safe at all costs."
Graff was visibly relieved to know which side these troops were on. "The girl is in that room over there. I suggest you consolidate them all into those two barrack rooms for the duration."
"Is this the kid who did it?" asked the soldier, indicating Bean.
"He's one of them."
"It was Ender Wiggin who did it," said Bean. "Ender was our commander."
"Is he in one of those rooms?" asked the soldier.
"He's with Mazer Rackham," said Graff. "And this one stays with me."
The soldier saluted. He began positioning his men in more advanced positions down the tunnel, with only a single guard outside each door to prevent the kids from going out and getting lost somewhere in the fighting.
Bean trotted along beside Graff as he headed purposefully down the tunnel, beyond the farthest of the guards.
"If the Strategos did this right, the ansibles have already been secured. I don't know about you, but I want to be where the news is coming in. And going out."
"Is Russian a hard language to learn?" asked Bean.
"Is that what passes for humor with you?" asked Graff.
"It was a simple question."
"Bean, you're a great kid, but shut up, OK?"
Bean laughed. "OK."
"You don't mind if I still call you Bean?"
"It's my name."
"Your name should have been Julian Delphiki. If you'd had a birth certificate, that's the name that would have been on it."
"You mean that was true?"
"Would I lie about something like that?"
Then, realizing the absurdity of what he had just said, they laughed. Laughed long enough to still be smiling when they passed the detachment of marines protecting the entrance to the ansible complex.
"You think anybody will ask me for military advice?" asked Bean. "Because I'm going to get into this war, even if I have to lie about my age and enlist in the marines."
24
HOMECOMING
"I thought you'd want to know. Some bad news."
"There's no shortage of that, even in the midst of victory."
"When it became clear that the IDL had control of Battle School and was sending the kids home under I.F. protection, the New Warsaw Pact apparently did a little research and found that there was one student from Battle School who wasn't under our control. Achilles."
"But he was only there a couple of days."
"He passed our tests. He got in. He was the only one they could get."
"Did they? Get him?"
"All the security there was designed to keep inmates inside. Three guards dead, all the inmates released into the general population. They've all been recovered, except one."
"So he's loose."
"I wouldn't call it loose, exactly. They intend to use him."
"Do they know what he is?"
"No. His records were sealed. A juvenile, you see. They weren't coming for his dossier."
"They'll find out. They don't like serial killers in Moscow, either."
"He's hard to pin down. How many died before any of us suspected him?"
"The war is over for now."
"And the jockeying for advantage in the next war has begun."
"With any luck, Colonel Graff, I'll be dead by then."
"I'm not actually a colonel anymore, Sister Carlotta."
"They're really going to go ahead with that court-martial?"
"An investigation, that's all. An inquiry."
"I just don't understand why they have to find a scapegoat for victory."
"I'll be fine. The sun still shines on planet Earth."
"But never again on their tragic world."
"Is your God also their God, Sister Carlotta? Did he take them into heaven?"
"He's not my God, Mr. Graff. But I am his child, as are you. I don't know whether he looks at the Formics and sees them, too, as his children."
"Children. Sister Carlotta, the things I did to these children."
"You gave them a world to come home to."
"All but one of them."
It took days for the Polemarch's men to be subdued, but at last Fleetcom was entirely under the Strategos's command, and not one ship had been launched under rebel command. A triumph. The Hegemon resigned as part of the truce, but that only formalized what had already been the reality.
Bean stayed with Graff throughout the fighting, as they read every dispatch and listened to every report about what was happening elsewhere in the fleet and back on Earth. They talked through the unfolding situation, tried to read between the lines, interpreted what was happening as best they could. For Bean, the war with the Buggers was already behind him. All that mattered now was how things went on Earth. When a shaky truce was signed, temporarily ending the fighting, Bean knew that it would not last. He would be needed. Once he got to Earth, he could prepare himself to play his role. Ender's war is over, he thought. This next one will be mine.
While Bean was avidly following the news, the other kids were confined to their quarters under guard, and during the power failures in their part of Eros they did their cowering in darkness. Twice there were assaults on that section of the tunnels, but whether the Russians were trying to get at the kids or merely happened to probe in that area, looking for weaknesses, no one could guess.
Ender was under much heavier guard, but didn't know it. Utterly exhausted, and perhaps unwilling or unable to bear the enormity of what he had done, he remained unconscious for days.
Not till the fighting stopped did he come back to consciousness.
They let the kids get together then, their confinement over for now. Together they made the pilgrimage to the room where Ender had been under protection and medical care. They found him apparently cheerful, able to joke. But Bean could see a deep weariness, a sadness in Ender's eyes that it was impossible to ignore. The victory had cost him deeply, more than anybody.
More than me, thought Bean, even though I knew what I was doing, and he was innocent of any bad intent. He tortures himself, and I move on. Maybe because to me the death of Poke was more important than the death of an entire species that I never saw. I knew her--she has stayed with me in my heart. The Buggers I never knew. How can I grieve for them?
Ender can.
After they filled Ender in on the news about what happened while he slept, Petra touched his hair. "You OK?" she asked. "You scared us. They said you were crazy, and we said they were crazy."
"I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK."
There was more banter, but then Ender's emotions overflowed and for the first time any of them could remember, they saw Ender cry. Bean happened to be standing near him, and when Ender reached out, it was Bean and Petra that he embraced. The touch of his hand, the embrace of his arm, they were more than Bean could bear. He also cried.
"I missed you," said Ender. "I wanted to see you so bad."
"You saw us pretty bad," said Petra. She was not crying. She kissed his cheek.
"I saw you magnificent," said Ender. "The ones I needed most, I used up soonest. Bad planning on my part."
"Everybody's OK now," said Dink. "Nothing was wrong with any of us that five days of cowering in blacked-out rooms in the middle of a war couldn't cure."
"I don't have to be your commander anymore, do I?" asked Ender. "I don't want to command anybody again."
Bean believed him. And believed also that Ender never would command in battle again. He might still have the talents that brought him to this place. But the most important ones didn't have to be used for violence. If the universe had any kindness in it, or even simple justice, Ender would never have to take another life. He had surely filled his quota.
"You don't have to command anybody," said Dink, "but you're always our commander."
Bean felt the truth of that. There was not one of them who would not carry Ender with them in their hearts, wherever they went, whatever they did.
What Bean didn't have the heart to tell them was that on Earth, both sides had insisted that they be given custody of the hero of the war, young Ender Wiggin, whose great victory had captured the popular imagination. Whoever had him would not only have the use of his fine military mind--they thought--but would also have the benefit of all the publicity and public adulation that surrounded him, that filled every mention of his name.
So as the political leaders worked out the truce, they reached a simple and obvious compromise. All the children from Battle School would be repatriated. Except Ender Wiggin.
Ender Wiggin would not be coming home. Neither party on Earth would be able to use him. That was the compromise.
And it had been proposed by Locke. By Ender's own brother.
When he learned that it made Bean seethe inside, the way he had when he thought Petra had betrayed Ender. It was wrong. It couldn't be borne.
Perhaps Peter Wiggin did it to keep Ender from becoming a pawn. To keep him free. Or perhaps he did it so that Ender could not use his celebrity to make his own play for political power. Was Peter Wiggin saving his brother, or eliminating a rival for power?
Someday I'll meet him and find out, thought Bean. And if he betrayed his brother, I'll destroy him.
When Bean shed his tears there in Ender's room, he was weeping for a cause the others did not yet know about. He was weeping because, as surely as the soldiers who died in those fighting ships, Ender would not be coming home from the war.
"So," said Alai, breaking the silence. "What do we do now? The Bugger War's over, and so's the war down there on Earth, and even the war here. What do we do now?"
"We're kids," said Petra. "They'll probably make us go to school. It's a law. You have to go to school till you're seventeen."
They all laughed until they cried again.
They saw each other off and on again over the next few days. Then they boarded several different cruisers and destroyers for the voyage back to Earth. Bean knew well why they traveled in separate ships. That way no one would ask why Ender wasn't on board. If Ender knew, before they left, that he was not going back to Earth, he said nothing about it.
Elena could hardly contain her joy when Sister Carlotta called, asking if she and her husband would both be at home in an hour. "I'm bringing you your son," she said.
Nikolai, Nikolai, Nikolai. Elena sang the name over and over again in her mind, with her lips. Her husband Julian, too, was almost dancing as he hurried about the house, making things ready. Nikolai had been so little when he left. Now he would be so much older. They would hardly know him. They would not understand what he had been through. But it didn't matter. They loved him. They would learn who he was all over again. They would not let the lost years get in the way of the years to come.
"I see the car!" cried Julian.
Elena hurriedly pulled the covers from the dishes, so that Nikolai could come into a kitchen filled with the freshest, purest food of his childhood memories. Whatever they ate in space, it couldn't be as good as this.
Then she ran to the door and stood beside her husband as they watched Sister Carlotta get out of the front seat.
Why didn't she ride in back with Nikolai?
No matter. The back door opened, and Nikolai emerged, unfolding his lanky young body. So tall he was growing! Yet still a boy. There was a little bit of childhood left for him.
Run to me, my son!
But he didn't run to her. He turned his back on his parents.
Ah. He was reaching into the back seat. A present, perhaps?
No. Another boy.
A smaller boy, but with the same face as Nikolai. Perhaps too careworn for a child so small, but with the same open goodness that Nikolai had always had. Nikolai was smiling so broadly he could not contain it. But the small one was not smiling. He looked uncertain. Hesitant.
"Julian," said her husband.
Why would he say his own name?
"Our second son," he said. "They didn't all die, Elena. One lived."
All hope of those little ones had been buried in her heart. It almost hurt to open that hidden place. She gasped at the intensity of it.
"Nikolai met him in Battle School," he went on. "I told Sister Carlotta that if we had another son, you meant to name him Julian."
"You knew," said Elena.
"Forgive me, my love. But Sister Carlotta wasn't sure then that he was ours. Or that he would ever be able to come home. I couldn't bear it, to tell you of the hope, only to break your heart later."
"I have two sons," she said.
"If you want him," said Julian. "His life has been hard. But he's a stranger here. He doesn't speak Greek. He's been told that he's coming just for a visit. That legally he is not our child, but rather a ward of the state. We don't have to take him in, if you don't want to, Elena."
"Hush, you foolish man," she said. Then, loudly, she called out to the approaching boys. "Here are my two sons, home from the wars! Come to your mother! I have missed you both so much, and for so many years!"
They ran to her then, and she held them in her arms, and her tears fell on them both, and her husband's hands rested upon both boys' heads.
Her husband spoke. Elena recognized his words at once, from the gospel of St. Luke. But because he had only memorized the passage in Greek, the little one did not understand him. No matter. Nikolai began to translate into Common, the language of the fleet, and almost at once the little one recognized the words, and spoke them correctly, from memory, as Sister Carlotta had once read it to him years before.
"Let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." Then the little one burst into tears and clung to his mother, and kissed his father's hand.
"Welcome home, little brother," said Nikolai. "I told you they were nice."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One book was particularly useful in preparing this novel: Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton University Press, 1986). The essays are not all of identical quality, but they gave me a good idea of the writings that might be in the library in Battle School.
I have nothing but fond memories of Rotterdam, a city of kind and generous people. The callousness toward the poor shown in this novel would be impossible today, but the business of science fiction is sometimes to show impossible nightmares.
I owe individual thanks to:
Erin and Phillip Absher, for, among other things, the lack of vomiting on the shuttle, the size of the toilet tank, and the weight of the lid;
Jane Brady, Laura Morefield, Oliver Withstandley, Matt Tolton, Kathryn H. Kidd, Kristine A. Card, and others wh