"You still hate him," said Valentine.

"I never hated him," said Peter. "But at this moment, I certainly do hate you. Not a lot, but enough to make me want to piss on your bed."

It was a standing joke between them. She couldn't help it. It made her laugh. "Oh, Peter, you're such a boy."

Mother and Father took her decision surprisingly well. But they refused to come with her. "Val," Father said, "I think you're right — Ender won't be coming home. It broke our hearts to realize it. And it's wonderful of you to want to join him, even if neither of you ends up going with a colony. Even if it's just a few months in space. Even a few years. It's a good thing for him to be with you again."

"It would be better to have the two of you out there, too."

Father shook his head. Mother pressed a finger to each eye — her gesture that said, I'm not going to cry.

"We can't go," said Father. "Our work is here."

"They could spare you for a year or two."

"That's easy for you to say," said Father. "You're young. What's a couple of years to you? But we're older. Not old, but older than you. Time means something different to us. We love Ender, but we can't spend months or years just going out to visit him. We don't have that much time left."

"That's exactly the point," said Valentine. "You don't have much time — and still less time to get a chance to see Ender again."

"Val," said Mother, her voice quavering. "Nothing we do now will give us back the years we've lost."

She was right, and Valentine knew it. But she didn't see the relevance. "So you're going to treat him as if he's dead?"

"Val," said Father. "We know he's not dead. But we also know he doesn't want us. We've written to him — since the war ended. Graff — the one who's on trial — he wrote back. Ender doesn't want to write letters to us. He reads them, but he told Graff that he had nothing to say."

"Graff's a liar," said Valentine. "He probably hasn't shown Ender anything."

"That's possible," said Father. "But Ender doesn't need us. He's thirteen. He's becoming a man. He's done brilliantly since he left us, but he also went through terrible things, and we weren't there. I'm not sure he'll ever forgive us for letting him go."

"You had no choice," said Valentine. "They would have taken him to Battle School whether you liked it or not."

"I'm sure he knows that in his head," said Mother. "But in his heart?"

"So I'm going without you," she said. It had never crossed her mind that they wouldn't even want to go.

"You're going to leave us behind," said Father. "It's what children do. They live at home until they leave. Then they're gone. Even if they visit, even if they move back, it's never the same. You think it will be, but it won't. It happened with Ender, and it'll happen with you."

"The good thing," said Mother, who was crying a little now, "is that you won't be with Peter anymore."

Valentine couldn't believe her mother was saying such a thing.

"You've spent too much time with him," said Mother. "He's a bad influence on you. He makes you unhappy. He sucks you into his life so you can't have one of your own."

"That'll be our job now," said Father.

"Good luck," was all Valentine could say. Was it possible that her parents really did understand Peter? But if they did, why had they let him have his way for all these years?

"You see, Val," said Father, "if we went to Ender now, we'd want to be his parents, but we don't have any authority over him. Nor anything to offer him. He doesn't need parents anymore."

"A sister, now," said Mother. "A sister, he can use." She took Valentine's hand. She was asking for something.

So Valentine gave her the only thing she could think of that she might want. A promise. "I'll stick with him," said Valentine, "as long as he needs me."

"We would expect nothing less of you, dear," said Mother. She squeezed Valentine's hand and let go. Apparently that was what she had wanted.

"It's a kind and loving thing," said Father. "It's always been your nature. And Ender was always your darling baby brother."

Valentine winced at the old phrase from childhood. Darling baby brother. Ick. "I'll make sure to call him that."

"Do," said Mother. "Ender likes to be reminded of good things."

Did Mother really imagine that anything she knew about Ender at age six would still apply to him now, at age thirteen?

As if she had read Valentine's mind, Mother answered her. "People don't change, Val. Not their fundamental character. Whatever you're going to be as an adult is already visible to someone who really knows you from your birth onward."

Valentine laughed. "So. why did you let Peter live?"

They laughed, but uncomfortably. "Val," said Father, "we don't expect you to understand this, but some of the things that make Peter. difficult. are the very things that might also make him great someday."

"What about me?" asked Valentine. "As long as you're telling fortunes."

"Oh, Val," said Father. "All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier."

"No greatness, then."

"Val," said Mother, "goodness trumps greatness any day."

"Not in the history books," said Valentine.

"Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they?" said Father.

To: qmorgan%rearadmiral@ifcom.gov/fleetcom

From: chamrajnagar%polemarch@ifcom.gov/centcom

{self-shred protocol}

Subj: In or out?

My dear Quince, I'm quite aware of the difference between combat command and flying a colony ship for a few dozen lightyears. If you feel your usefulness in space is over, then by all means, retire with full benefits. But if you stay in, and remain in near space, I can't promise you promotion within the I.F.

We suddenly find ourselves afflicted with peace, you see. Always a disaster for those whose careers have not reached their natural apex.

The colony ship I have offered you is not, contrary to your too-often-stated opinion (try discretion now and then, Quince, and see if it might not work better), a way to send you to oblivion. Retirement is oblivion, my friend. A forty-or fifty-year voyage means that you will outlive all of us who remain behind. All your friends will be dead. But you'll be alive to make new friends. And you'll be in command of a ship. A nice, big, fast one.

This is what the whole fleet faces. We have heroes out there who fought this war that The Boy is credited with winning. Have we forgotten them? ALL our most significant missions will involve decades of flight. Yet we must send our best officers to command them. So at any given moment, most of our best officers will be strangers to everyone at CentCom because they've been in flight for half a lifetime.

Eventually, ALL the central staff will be star voyagers. They will look down their noses at anyone who has NOT taken decades-long flights between stars. They will have cut themselves loose from Earth's timeline. They will know each other by their logs, transmitted by ansible.

What I'm offering you is the only possible source of career-making voyages: colony ships.

And not only a colony ship, but one whose governor is a thirteen-year-old boy. Are you seriously going to tell me that you don't understand that you are not his "nanny," you are being entrusted with the highly responsible position of making sure that The Boy stays as far from Earth as possible, while also making sure that he is a complete success in his new assignment so that later generations cannot judge that he was not treated well.

Naturally, I did not send you this letter, and you did not read it. Nothing in this is to be construed as a secret order. It is merely my personal observation about the opportunity that you have been offered by a polemarch who believes in your potential to be one of the great admirals of the I.F.