It was like the immune system of an organism. Each hive queen had to make sure that any food their workers grew was used only to nurture her workers, her children, her mates, and herself. So any formic—queen or worker—that tried to infiltrate her territory and use her resources had to be driven off or killed.

Yet they had stopped fighting with each other and now cooperated.

If they could do that with each other, the implacable enemies that had driven each other's evolution long enough to become the brilliant sentient beings they were, then why couldn't they have done it with us? With the humans? Why couldn't they have tried to communicate with us? Made some sort of settlement with us, just as they had done with each other? Divided the galaxy between us? Live and let live?

In any of these battles, Ender knew that if he had seen a sign of an effort to communicate, he would have known instantly that it wasn't a game—there would have been no reason for the teachers to simulate any attempt to parley. They didn't regard that as Ender's business—they wouldn't train him for it. If some effort at communication had really happened, surely the adults would have stopped Ender at once, pretended that the "exercise" was over, and tried to deal with it on their own.

But the hive queens did not attempt to communicate. Nor did they use the obvious strategy of dispersal to save themselves. They had sat there, waiting for Ender to come. And then Ender had won, the only way he could: with devastating force.

It was how Ender always fought. To make sure that there was no further fighting. To use this victory to ensure that there was no more danger.

Even if I had known the war was real, I would have tried to do exactly what I did.

So in his mind he now asked the hive queens, over and over, though he knew they were dead and could not answer: Why?

Why did you decide to let me kill you?

His rational mind introduced all the other possibilities—including the chance that perhaps they were really quite stupid. Or perhaps they had so little experience at running a society of equals that they were unable to reach a rational decision together. Or, or, or, or, over and over he ran through possible explanations.

Ender's study now, when he wasn't pursuing the schoolwork that someone—Graff, still? Or Graff's rivals?—kept assigning him, was to read over the reports from the soldiers that he had once unknowingly commanded. On every formic colony world, humans now walked. And from every exploratory team the reports were the same: All the formics dead and rotting, with vast farms and factories now available for the taking. The soldiers-turned-explorers were always alert to the possibility of ambush, but as the months passed and there were no attacks, their reports became full of the things they were learning from the xenobiologists that had been sent with them: Not only can we breathe the air on every formic world, we can eat most of their food.

And so every formic planet became a human colony, the soldiers settling down to live among the relics of their enemies. There were not enough women among them, but they began to work out social patterns that would maximize reproduction and keep from having too many males without a hope of mating. Within a generation or two, if babies came in the usual proportions, half male and half female, the normal human pattern of monogamy could be restored.

But Ender took only peripheral interest in what the humans were doing on the new worlds. What he studied were the formic artifacts. The patterns of formic settlement. The warrens that had once been the hive queens' breeding grounds, full of larvae that were so hard-toothed they could gnaw through rock, creating more and more tunnels. They had to farm on the surface, but they went underground to breed, to raise their young, and the young themselves were every bit as lethal and powerful as the adults. Chewing through rock—the explorers found the larval bodies, rotting quickly but still there to be photographed, dissected, studied.

"So this is how you spend your days," said Petra. "Looking at pictures of formic tunnels. Is this a return-to-the-womb thing?"

Ender smiled and set aside the pictures he had been studying. "I thought you'd already gone home to Armenia."

"Not till I see how this stupid court martial turns out," she said. "Not until the Armenian government is ready to receive me in high style. Which means they have to decide whether they want me."

"Of course they want you."

"They don't know what they want. They're politicians. Is it good for them to have me back? Is keeping me up here worse for them than having me come home? It's so very, very hard when you have no convictions except your lust to remain in power. Aren't we glad we're not in politics?"

Ender sighed. "É. I will never hold office again. Commander of Dragon Army was too much for me, and that was just a kids' game."

"That's what I tried to assure them. I don't want anybody's job. I'm not going to endorse anybody for office. I want to live with my family and see if they remember who I am. And vice versa."

"They'll love you," said Ender.

"And you know this because . . . ?"

"Because I love you."

She looked at him in consternation. "How can I possibly answer a comment like that?"

"Oh. What was I supposed to say?"

"I don't know. Am I supposed to write scripts for you now?"

"OK," said Ender. "Should it have been banter? 'They'll love you because somebody has to, and it sure isn't anybody up here.' Or maybe the ethnic slur: 'They'll love you because hey, they're Armenian and you're a female.' "

"What does that mean?"

"I got that from an Azeri I talked to during that whole flap about Sinterklaas Day back in Battle School. Apparently the idea is that Armenians know that the only people who think Armenian women are . . . I don't have to explain ethnic insults, Petra. They're infinitely transferable."

"When are they letting you go home?" asked Petra.

Instead of sidestepping the question or giving it a lazy answer, Ender answered truthfully for once. "I'm thinking maybe it won't happen."

"What do you mean? You think this stupid court martial is going to end up convicting you?"

"I'm the one on trial, aren't I?"

"Definitely not."

"Only because I'm a child and therefore not responsible. But it's all about what an evil little monster I am."

"It is not."

"I've seen the highlights on the nets, Petra. What the world is seeing is that the savior of the world has a little problem—he kills children."

"You defended yourself from bullies. Everybody understands that."

"Except the people who post comments about how I'm a worse war criminal than Hitler or Pol Pot. A mass murderer. What makes you think I want to go home and deal with all that?"

Petra wasn't playing now. She sat down next to him and took his hands. "Ender, you have a family."

"Had."

"Oh, don't say that! You have a family. Families still love their children even if they've been away for eight years."

"I've only been away for seven. Almost. Yes, I know they love me. Some of them at least. They love who I was. A cute little six-year-old. I must have been so huggable. Between killing other children, that is."

"So is that what this obsession with formic porn is?"

"Porn?"

"The way you study it. Classic addiction. Got to have more and more of it. Explicit photos of rotting larva bodies. Autopsy shots. Slides of their molecular structure. Ender, they're gone, and you didn't kill them. Or if you did, then we did. But we didn't. We played a game! We were training for war, that's all it was."

"And if it had really been just a game?" asked Ender. "And then they assigned us to the fleet after we graduated, and we actually piloted those ships or commanded those squadrons? Wouldn't we have done it for real?"

"Yes," said Petra. "But we didn't. It didn't happen."

"It happened. They're gone."

"Well, studying the structure of their bodies and the biochemistry of their cells is not going to bring them back."

"I'm not trying to bring them back," said Ender. "What a nightmare that would be."

"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."