"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."

Petra's voice was angry and defiant when she fired her parting shot. "Well, I actually love you and care about you, Ender Wiggin." Then she turned and walked away.

"And I love and care about you, only you wouldn't believe me when I said it!"

At the door she turned back to face him. "Ender Wiggin, I wasn't being sarcastic or patronizing when I said that."

"Neither was I!"

But she was gone.

"Maybe I've been trying to study the wrong alien species," he said softly.

He looked at the display above his desk. It was still in motion, though muted, showing bits from Mazer's testimony. He looked so cold, so aloof, as if he had contempt for the whole business. When they asked about Ender's violence and whether that made it hard to train him, Mazer turned to face the judges and said, "I'm sorry, I misunderstood, isn't this a court martial? Aren't we all soldiers here, trained to commit acts of violence?"

The judge gaveled him down and reprimanded him, but the point was made. Violence was what the military existed for—controlled violence, directed against appropriate targets. Without actually having to say a word about Ender, Mazer had made it clear that violence wasn't a drawback, it was the point.

It made Ender feel better. He could switch off the newslink and get back to work.

He stood up to reach across the table and retrieve the photos that Petra had moved. The face of a dead formic farmer from one of the faroff planets stared up at him, the torso open and the organs arranged neatly around the corpse.

I can't believe you gave up, Ender said silently to the picture. I can't believe that a whole species lost its will to live. Why did you let me kill you?

"I will not rest until I know you," he whispered.

But they were gone. Which meant that he could never, never rest.