"He did kill them."

"He didn't know that he did."

"Those weren't like winning the war while thinking it was a game, Hyrum," said Mazer. "He knew he was in a real fight for his life, and he knew that he had to win decisively. He had to know that the death of his opponent was always a possibility."

"So you're saying he's as guilty as our enemies said he was?"

"I'm saying that he killed them and he knew what he was doing. Not the exact outcome, but that he was taking actions that could cause real and permanent damage to those boys."

"They were going to kill him!"

"Bonzo was," said Mazer. "Stilson was a petty bully."

"But Ender was so untrained he had no idea of the damage he was doing, or that his shoes had steel toes. Weren't we clever to keep him safe by insisting he wear shoes like that."

"Hyrum, I think Ender's actions were perfectly justified. He didn't choose to fight those boys, so the only choice he had was how thoroughly to win."

"Or lose."

"Ender never has the choice to lose, Hyrum. It's not in him, even when he thinks it is."

"All I know is that he promised to try to work a picture with me and you into his schedule."

Mazer nodded. "And you think that meant that he'd do it."

"He doesn't have a schedule. I thought he was being ironic. Except for hanging with Valentine, what does he have to do?"

Mazer laughed. "What he's been doing for more than a year — studying the formics so obsessively that we all worried about his mental health. Only I have to say that with the colonists' arrival, he's been preparing to be governor in more than just name."

"Admiral Morgan will be disappointed."

"Admiral Morgan expects to get his way," said Mazer, "because he doesn't realize Ender is serious about governing the colony. What Ender was doing was memorizing the dossiers of all the colonists — their test results, family relationships with other colonists and with family members who were left home, their towns and countries of origin and what those places look like and what's been going on there in the past year, during the time they were signing up."

"And Admiral Morgan doesn't get the point?"

"Admiral Morgan is a leader," said Mazer. "He gives orders and they're passed down the chain. Knowing the grunts is the job of the petty officers."

Graff laughed. "And people wonder why we used children to command the final campaign."

"Every officer learns how to function within the system that promoted him," said Mazer. "The system is still sick — it always has been and always will be. But Ender learned how real leadering is done."

"Or was born knowing it."

"So he's greeting every colonist by name and making a point of conversing with them all for at least a half hour."

"Can't he do that on the ship after they take off?"

"He's meeting the ones who are going into stasis. The ones who are staying awake he'll meet after launch. So when he says he'll try to fit you into his schedule, he was not being ironic. Most of the colonists are sleepers and he barely has time for a real conversation with all of them."

Graff sighed. "Isn't he even sleeping?"

"I think he figures he'll have time to sleep after launch — when Admiral Morgan is commanding his vessel and Ender will have no official duties that he doesn't assign to himself. At least that's how Valentine and I decode his behavior."

"He doesn't talk to her?"

"Of course he does. He just doesn't admit to having any plans or any reasons for the things he does."

"Why would he keep secrets from her?"

"I'm not sure they're secrets," said Mazer. "I think he might not know that he has plans of any kind. I think he's greeting the colonists because that's what they need and expect. It's a duty because it means a lot to them, so he does it."

"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 firsthand 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.