Ender in Exile

  "Nonsense," said Graff. "Ender always has plans within plans."

  "I believe you're thinking of you."

  "Ender is better at this than I am."

  "I doubt it," said Mazer. "Peacetime bureaucratic maneuvering? Nobody does it better than you."

  "I wish I were going with them."

  "Then go," said Mazer, laughing. "But you wish nothing of the kind."

  "Why not?" said Graff. "I can run ColMin by ansible. I can see first-hand what our colonists have accomplished during the years they've been waiting for relief. And the advantages of relativistic travel will keep me alive to see the end of my great project."

  "Advantages?"

  "To you, a horrible sacrifice. But you'll notice that I did not marry, Mazer. I had no secret reproductive dysfunction. My libido and my desire for a family are as strong as any man's. But I decided years ago to marry Mother Eve posthumously and adopt all her children as my own. They were all living in the same crowded house, where one bad fire would kill the whole bunch of them. My job was to move them out into widely dispersed houses so they'd go on living forever. Collectively, that is. So no matter where I go, no matter whom I'm with, I am surrounded by my adopted children."

  "You really are playing God."

  "I most certainly am not playing."

  "You old actor--you think there were auditions and you got the part."

  "Maybe I'm an understudy. When he forgets a bit of business, I fill in."

  "So what are you going to do about getting a picture with Ender?"

  "Simple enough. I'm the man who decides when the ship will go. There will be a technical malfunction at the last minute. Ender, having done his duty, will be encouraged to take a nap. When he wakes up, we'll take some pictures, and then the technical problems will be miraculously resolved and the ship will sail."

  "Without you on board," said Mazer.

  "I have to be here to keep fighting for the project," said Graff. "If I weren't here to stymie my enemies at every step, the project would be killed within months. There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn't think of."

  Valentine enjoyed watching the way Graff and Rackham treated Ender. Graff was one of the most powerful men in the world; Rackham was still regarded as a legendary hero. Yet both of them quietly deferred to Ender. They never ordered him to do anything. It was always, "Will it be all right for you to stand here for the picture?" "Would 0800 be a good time for you?" "Whatever you're wearing will be fine, Admiral Wiggin."

  Of course Valentine knew that calling him "Admiral Wiggin" was for the benefit of the admirals and generals and political brass who were watching, most of them seething because they weren't in the picture. But as she watched, she saw many instances of Ender expressing an opinion--or just seeming to be hesitant about something. Graff usually deferred to Ender. And when he didn't, Rackham smilingly made Ender's point for him, and insisted on it.

  They were taking care of him.

  It was genuine love and respect. They might have created him like a tool in a forge, they might have hammered him and ground him into the shape they wanted, and then plunged him into the heart of the enemy. But now they truly loved this weapon they had made, they cared about him.

  They thought he was damaged. Dented from all he had been through. They thought his passivity was a reaction to trauma, to finding out what he had really done--the deaths of the children, of the formics, of the thousands of human soldiers who had perished during that last campaign when Ender thought he was playing a game.

  They just don't know him the way I do, thought Valentine.

  Oh, she knew the danger of such a thought. She was constantly on the alert, lest she entrap herself in a web of her own conceit. She had not assumed she knew Ender. She had approached him like a stranger, watching everything to see what he did, what he said, and what he seemed to mean by all he did and said.

  Gradually, though, she learned to recognize the child behind the young man. She had seen him obeying his parents--immediately, without question, though he surely could have argued or pleaded his way out of onerous tasks. Ender accepted responsibility and accepted also the idea that he would not always get to decide which responsibilities were his, or when they needed to be carried out. So he obeyed his parents with few hesitations.

  But it was more than that. Ender really was damaged, they were right. Because his obedience was more than that of the happy child springing up at his parents' request. It had strong overtones of the kind of obedience Ender had given to Peter--compliance in order to avoid conflict.

  Somewhere between the two attitudes: eagerness versus resignation mixed with dread.

  Ender was eager for the voyage, for the work he would do. But he understood that being governor was the price he was paying for his ticket. So he was acting the part, performing all his duties, including the pictures, including the formal good-byes, the speeches from the very commanders who had allowed his name to be so badly tarnished during the court martial of Graff and Rackham.

  Ender stood there smiling--a real smile, as if he liked the man--while Admiral Chamrajnagar bestowed on him the highest medal the International Fleet could offer. Valentine watched the whole thing sourly. Why wasn't that medal given during the court martial, when it would have been an open repudiation of the terrible things being said about Ender? Why had the court martial been opened to the public, when Chamrajnagar had the complete power to suppress it all? Why was there even a court martial? No law required it. Chamrajnagar had never, for a moment, been Ender's friend--though Ender gave him the victory that he could not otherwise have achieved.

  Unlike Graff and Rackham, Chamrajnagar showed no sign of real respect for Ender. Oh, he called him Admiral, too, with only a couple of instances of "my boy"--both immediately corrected by Rackham, to Chamrajnagar's visible annoyance. Of course, Chamrajnagar could do nothing about Rackham, either--except make sure he was in all the pictures, too, since having two heroes associated with the great Polemarch would be an even more memorable picture.

  What was plain to Valentine was that Chamrajnagar was very happy, and the happiness clearly came from the prospect of having Ender get on that starship and go away. Things could not go quickly enough for Chamrajnagar.

  Yet they all waited for the pictures to be printed out in physical form so that Ender, Rackham, and Chamrajnagar could all sign copies of that most excellent souvenir.

  Rackham and Ender were each given signed copies with a great flourish, as if Chamrajnagar imagined he was honoring them.

  Then, at last, Chamrajnagar was gone--"to the observation station, to watch the great vessel sail forth on its mission of creation instead of destruction." In other words, to have his picture taken with the ship in the background. Valentine doubted any of the press would be allowed to take pictures of the event that did not include Chamrajnagar's smiling face.

  So it was actually a great concession that the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender had been allowed to exist at all. Perhaps Chamrajnagar did not even know it had been taken. It was the official fleet photographer, but perhaps he was disloyal enough to take a picture he knew that his boss would hate.

  Valentine knew Graff well enough to know that appearances of the Polemarch's pictures would be rare compared to the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender, which would be pasted on every possible surface on Earth: electronic, virtual, and physical. It would serve Graff's purpose to have everyone on Earth reminded that the I.F. existed for only two purposes now--to support the colonization program, and to punish from space any power on Earth that dared to use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons.

  Chamrajnagar had not yet reconciled himself to the idea that most of the continued funding for the I.F. and its bases and stations came through Graff's hands as Minister of Colonization--MinCol. At the same time, Graff was perfectly aware that it was fear of what a disgruntled I.F. might do--like seizing worldwide power from the politicians, which the Warsaw Pact had tried to
do--that kept the funding coming to his project.

  What Chamrajnagar would never understand was why he was somehow the adjunct in all of this, why his lobbying came to nothing--except for allowing Ender's diminishment in the court martial.

  Which led Valentine once again to her suspicion that Graff, too, could have prevented the court martial if he had wanted to, that perhaps it was a price he paid in order to gain some other advantage. Even if all it did for Graff was "prove" that not everything was going his way, that would be a great source of complacency for Graff's rivals and opponents, and Valentine well knew that complacency was the best possible attitude for one's rivals and opponents to have.

  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."