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?