"No, you're trying to persuade yourself that you deserve the merdicious things they're saying about you in the court martial, because if that's true, then you don't deserve to go back to Earth."

Ender shook his head. "I want to go home, Petra, even if I can't stay. And I'm not conflicted about the war. I'm glad we fought and I'm glad we won and I'm glad it's over."

"But you keep your distance from everybody. We understood, or sympathized, or pretended we did. But you've kept us all at arm's length. You make this show of dropping everything whenever one of us comes around to chat, but it's an act of hostility."

What an outrageous thing to say. "It's common courtesy!"

"You never even say, 'Just a sec, you just drop everything. It's so. obvious. The message is: 'I'm really busy but I still think you're my responsibility so I'll drop whatever I'm doing because you need my time.»

"Wow," said Ender. "You sure understand a lot of things about me. You're so smart, Petra. A girl like you — they could really make something out of you in Battle School."

"Now that's a real answer."

"Not as real as what I said before."

"That you love me? You're not my therapist, Ender. Or my priest. Don't coddle me, don't tell me what you think I need to hear."

"You're right," said Ender. "I shouldn't drop everything when one of my friends drops by." He picked his papers back up again.

"Put those down."

"Oh, now it's OK because you asked me so rudely."

"Ender," Petra said, "we all came back from the war. You didn't. You're still in it. Still fighting. something. We talk about you all the time. Wondering why you won't turn to us. Hoping there's somebody you talk to."

"I talk to anybody and everybody. I'm quite the chatterbox."

"There's a stone wall around you and those words you just said are some of the bricks."

"Bricks in a stone wall?"

"So you are listening!" she said triumphantly. "Ender, I'm not trying to violate your privacy. Keep it all in. Whatever it is."

"I'm not keeping anything in," said Ender. "I don't have any secrets. My whole life is on the nets, it belongs to the human race now, and I'm really not that worried about it. It's like I don't even live in my body. Just in my mind. Just trying to solve this question that won't leave me alone."

"What question?"

"The question I keep asking the hive queens, and they never answer."

"What question?"

"I keep asking them, 'Why did you die?»

Petra searched his face for. what, a sign that he was joking? "Ender, they died because we —»

"Why were they still on that planet? Why weren't they in ships, speeding away? They chose to stay, knowing we had that weapon, knowing what it did and how it worked, they stayed for the battle, they waited for us to come."

"They fought us as hard as they could. They didn't want to die, Ender. They didn't commit suicide by human soldier."

"They knew we had beaten them time after time. They had to think it was at least a possibility that it would happen again. And they stayed."

"So they stayed."

"It's not like they had to prove their loyalty or courage to the footsoldiers. The workers and soldiers were like their own body parts. That would be like saying, 'I have to do this because I want my hands to know how brave I am.»

"I can see you've given this a lot of thought. Obsessive, borderline crazy thought. But whatever keeps you happy. You are happy, you know. People all over Eros talk about it — how cheerful that Wiggin boy always is. You've got to cut back on the whistling, though. It's driving people crazy."

"Petra, I've done my life's work. I don't think they're going to let me go back to Earth, not even to visit. I hate that, I'm angry about it, but I also understand it. And in a way it's fine with me. I've had all the responsibility I want. I'm done. I'm retired. No more duty to anybody. So now I get to think about what actually bothers me. The problem I have to solve."

He slid the pictures forward on the library table. "Who are these people?" he asked.

Petra looked at the pictures of the dead larvae and formic workers and said, "They aren't people, Ender. They're formics. And they're gone."

"For years I've bent every thought to understanding them, Petra. To knowing them better than I know any human being in my life. To loving them. So I could use that knowledge to defeat them and destroy them. Now they're destroyed, but that doesn't mean that I can switch off my attention to them."

Petra's face lit up. "I get it. I finally get it!"

"Get what?"

"Why you're so weird, Ender Wiggin, sir. It's not weird at all."

"If you think I'm not weird, Petra, it proves you don't understand me."

"The rest of us, we fought a war and we won it and we're going home. But you, Ender, you were married to the formics. When the war ended you were widowed."

Ender sighed and rolled his chair back from the table.

"I'm not joking," said Petra. "It's like when my great-grandpa died. Great-grandma had always taken care of him, it was pathetic the way he bossed her around, and she just did whatever he wanted, and my mother would say to me, 'Don't you ever marry a man who treats you like that, but when he died, you'd think Great-grandma would have been liberated. Free at last! But she wasn't. She was lost. She kept looking for him. She kept talking about things she was working on for him. Can't do this, can't do that, Babo wouldn't like it, until my grandpa — her son — said, 'He's gone.»

"I know the formics are gone, Petra."

"And so did Great-grandma. That's what she said. 'I know. I just can't figure out why I'm not gone too.»

Ender slapped his forehead. "Thank you, doctor, you finally revealed my innermost motivations and now I'm able to get on with my life."

Petra ignored his sarcasm. "They died without giving you answers. That's why you hardly notice what's going on around you. Why you can't act like a regular friend to anybody. Why you don't even seem to care that there are people down there on Earth who are trying to keep you from ever coming home. You win the victory and they want to exile you for life and you don't care because all you can think about is your lost formics. They're your dead wife and you can't let go."

"It wasn't much of a marriage," said Ender.

"You're still in love."

"Petra, cross-species romance just isn't for me."

"You said it yourself. You had to love them to defeat them. You don't have to agree with me now. It will come to you later. You'll wake up in a cold sweat and you'll shout, 'Eureka! Petra was right! Then you can start fighting for the right to return to the planet you saved. You can start caring about something again."

"I care about you, Petra," said Ender. What he didn't say was: I already care about understanding the hive queens, but you don't count that because you don't get it.

She shook her head. "No getting through the wall," she said. "But I thought it was worth one last try. I'm right, though. You'll see. You can't let these hive queens deform the rest of your life. You have to let them be dead and move on."

Ender smiled. "I hope you find happiness at home, Petra. And love. And I hope you have the babies that you want and a good life full of meaning and accomplishment. You are so ambitious — and I think you'll have it all, true love and domesticity and great achievements."

Petra stood up. "What makes you think I want babies?" she said.

"I know you," said Ender.

"You think you know me."

"The way you think you know me?"

"I'm not a lovesick girl," said Petra, "and if I were, it wouldn't be over you."

"Ah, so it bothers you when somebody presumes to know your deepest inner motivation."

"It bothers me that you're such an oomo."

"Well, you've cheered me up marvelous well, Miss Arkanian. We oomos are grateful when the fine folk from the big house come to visit us."