"Ender, what did they mean? Building this for you?"

Ender was silent for a long time. "I'm not going to tell you the whole truth, Abra. Because I don't want anyone to know. I don't even want them to know what we found there. I hope it's all decayed and crumbled away before people go back there. But even if it's not, nobody else will understand it. And in the far future, nobody will believe that the formics made that place. They'll think it's something that human colonists did."

"You don't have to tell me everything," said Abra. "And I won't tell anybody else what we found."

"I know you won't," said Ender. He hesitated again. "I don't want to lie to you. So I'll only tell you true things. I found the answer, Abra."

"To what?"

"My question."

"Can't you tell me any of it?"

"You've never asked the question. I hope to God you never know what it is."

"But the message really was for you."

"Yes, Abra. They left a message that told me why they died."

"Why?"

"No, Abra. It's my burden, truly. Mine alone." Ender reached out a hand, gripped Abra by the arm. "Let there be no rumors of what Ender Wiggin found when he came to this place."

"There never will be," said Abra.

"You mean that at the age of eleven, you're prepared to take a secret to your grave?"

"Yes," said Abra without hesitation. "But I hope I don't have to do that very soon."

Ender laughed. "I hope the same. I hope you live a long, long time."

"I'll keep the secret all my life. Even though I don't actually know what it is."

Ender came into the house where Valentine was working on the next-to-last volume of her history of the Formic Wars. He set his own desk on the table across from her. She looked up at him. He smiled—a jokey, mechanical smile—and started typing.

She wasn't fooled. The smile was fake, but the happiness behind it was real.

Ender was actually happy.

What happened on that trip to lay out the new colony?

He didn't say. She didn't ask. It was enough for her that he was happy.