Enders In Exile

and
wickedness, and every brand of stupidity. There's meanness and
heartlessness and . . . I don't even know which of them is me."
    He fondled the teapot.
"I don't even have a soul to hear me talk."
    He sipped from the cup
before the teabag had really done its job. It was weak, but he didn't
mind having it weak. He didn't really mind much of anything these days,
as long as he kept breathing in and out and there was no pain.

    "Going to say it
anyway," said Graff. "Poor fool of a boy. Pacifism only
works with an enemy that can't bear to do murder against the innocent.
How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like
that
?"

    * * * * *
    Petra Arkanian Delphiki
Wiggin was visiting with her son Andrew and his wife Lani and their two
youngest children, the last ones still at home, when the letter came
from Ender.
    She came into the room
where the family was playing a card game, her face awash with tears,
brandishing the letter, unable to speak.
    "Who died!" Lani cried
out, but Andrew came up to her and folded her into a giant hug. "This
isn't grief, Lani. This is joy."
    "How can you tell?"
    "Mother tears things
when she's grieving, and this letter is only wrinkled and wet."
    Petra slapped him
lightly but still she laughed enough that she could talk. "Read it
aloud, Andrew. Read it out loud. Our last little boy is found. Ender
found him for me. Oh, if only Julian could know it! If only I could
talk to Julian again!" And then she wept some more, until he started to
read. The letter was so short. But Andrew and Lani, because they had
children of their own, understood exactly what it meant to her, and
they joined her in her tears, until the teenagers left the room in
disgust, one of them saying, "Call us when you get some
control
."
    "Nobody has control of
anything," said Petra. "We're all beggars at the throne of fate. But
sometimes he has mercy!"

    * * * * *
    Because it was not
carrying Randall Firth into exile, the starship did not have to go back
to Eros by the most direct route. It added four months to the
subjective voyage—six years to the realtime
trip—but it was cleared at IFCom and the captain didn't mind.
He would drop off his passengers wherever they wanted, for even if no
one at IFCom understood just who Andrew and Valentine Wiggin were, the
captain knew. He would justify the detour to his superiors. His crew
had started when he did, and also remembered, and did not mind.
    In their stateroom,
Valentine nursed Ender back to health between shifts of writing her
history of Ganges Colony.
    "I read that stupid
letter of yours," she said one day.
    "Which? I write so
many," he answered.
    "The one that I was
only supposed to see if you died."
    "Not my fault the
doctor put me under total anesthetic to reset my nose and pull out the
shards of bone that didn't fit back in place."
    "I suppose you want me
to forget what I read."
    "Why not? I have."
    "You have not," she
said. "You're not just hiding from your infamy, with all this voyaging,
are you?"
    "I'm also enjoying the
company of my sister, the professional nosy person."
    "That
case—you're looking for a place where you can open it."
    "Val," said Ender, "do
I ask you about your plans?"
    "You don't have to. My
plan is to follow you around until I get too bored to stand it anymore."
    "Whatever you think you
know," said Ender, "you're wrong."
    "Well, as long as you
explain it so clearly."
    Then, a little later:
"Val, you know something? I thought for a minute there that he was
really going to kill me."
    "Oh, you poor thing. It
must have been
devastating
to realize you had bet
wrong on the outcome."
    "I had thought that if
it came to that moment, if I really knew that I was going to die, it
would come as a relief. None of this would be my problem anymore.
Someone else could clean up the mess."
    "Yes, me, I'm so
grateful that you were going to dump it all on me."
    "But when he was coming
back to finish me off—I knew he planned a kick or two in the
head, and my head was already so foggy from concussion that I knew it
would finish me—when he came walking up to me, I wasn't
relieved at all. I wanted to get up. Would have if I could."
    "And run away, if you
had any brains."
    "No, Val," said Ender
sadly. "I wanted to get up and kill him first. I didn't want to die. It
didn't matter what I thought I deserved, or how I thought it would
bring me peace, or at least oblivion. None of that was in my head by
then. It was just: Live. Live, whatever it takes. Even if you