Enders In Exile

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."
    "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