Enders In Exile

Ender. "A colony ship. You'd go away again. Because you've already
done it once. Why not go again? Lightspeed travel, taking the ship to
one of the old formic planets."
    "Maybe."
    "After you've lost
everybody, what's left to lose?" asked Ender. "And you believe in what
Graff is doing. It's his real plan all along, isn't it? To spread the
human race out of the solar system so we aren't held as hostages to the
fate of a single planet. To spread ourselves out among star systems as
far as we can go, so that we're unkillable as a species. It's Graff's
great cause. And you also think that's worth doing."
    "I've never spoken a
word on the subject."
    "Whenever it's
discussed, you don't make that little lemon-sucking face when Graff's
arguments are presented."
    "Oh, now you think you
can read my face. I'm Maori, I don't show anything."
    "You're half-Maori, and
I've studied you for months."
    "You can't read my
mind. Even if you've deluded yourself into thinking you can read my
face."
    "The colonization
project is the only thing left out here in space that's worth doing."
    "I haven't been asked
to pilot anything," said Mazer. "I'm old for a pilot, you know."
    "Not a pilot, a
commander of a ship."
    "I'm lucky they let me
aim by myself when I pee," said Mazer. "They don't trust me. That's why
I'm going on trial."
    "When the trial's
over," said Ender, "they'll have no more use for you than they have for
me. They've got to send you somewhere far away so that the I.F. will be
safe for the bureaucrats again."
    Mazer looked away and
waited, but there was an air about him that told Ender that Mazer was
about to say something important.
    "Ender, what about
you?" Mazer finally asked. "Would you go?"
    "To a colony?" Ender
laughed. "I'm thirteen years old. On a colony, what would I be good
for? Farming? You know what my skills are. Useless in a colony."
    Mazer barked a laugh.
"Oh, you'll send
me
, but you won't go yourself."
    "I'm not sending
anybody," said Ender. "Least of all myself."
    "You've got to do
something
with your life," said Mazer.
    And there it was: The
tacit recognition that Ender wasn't going home. That he was never going
to lead a normal life on Earth.

    * * * * *
    One by one the other
kids got their orders, each saying good-bye before they left. It was
increasingly awkward with each one, because Ender was more and more a
stranger to them. He didn't hang out with them. If he happened to join
in a conversation, he didn't stay long and never really engaged.
    It wasn't a deliberate
choice, he just wasn't interested in doing the things they did or
talking about what they discussed. They were full of their studies,
their return to Earth. What they'd do. How they'd find a way to get
together again after they'd been home for a while. How much money
they'd get as severance pay from the military. What they might choose
as a career. How their families might have changed.
    None of that applied to
Ender. He couldn't pretend that it did, or that he had a future. Least
of all could he talk about what really preyed on his mind. They
wouldn't understand.
    He didn't understand it
himself. He had been able to let go of everything else, all the things
he'd concentrated on so hard for so long. Military tactics? Strategy?
Not even interesting to him now. Ways that he might have avoided
antagonizing Bonzo or Stilson in the first place? He had strong
feelings about that, but no rational ideas, so he didn't waste time
trying to think it through. He let go of it, just the way he let go of
his deep knowledge of everyone in his jeesh, his little army of
brilliant kids whom he led through the training that turned out to be
the war.
    Once, knowing and
understanding those kids had been part of his work, had been essential
to victory. During that time he had even come to think of them as his
friends. But he was never one of them; their relationship was too
unequal. He had loved them so he could know them, and he had known them
so he could use them. Now he had no use for them—not his
choice, there simply wasn't a purpose to be served by keeping the group
together. They didn't, as a group, exist. They were just a bunch of
kids who had been on a long, difficult camping trip together, that's
how Ender saw them now. They had pulled together to
make it back to civilization, but now they'd all go home to their
families. They weren't connected now. Except in memory.
    So Ender had let go of
them all. Even the ones who were still here. He saw how it