Enders In Exile

you."
    "Ender is better at
this than I am."
    "I doubt it," said
Mazer. "Peacetime bureaucratic maneuvering? Nobody does it better than
you."
    "I wish I were going
with them."
    "Then go," said Mazer,
laughing. "But you wish nothing of the kind."
    "Why not?" said Graff.
"I can run ColMin by ansible. I can see firsthand what our colonists
have accomplished during the years they've been waiting for relief. And
the advantages of relativistic travel will keep me alive to see the end
of my great project."
    "Advantages?"
    "To you, a horrible
sacrifice. But you'll notice that I did not marry, Mazer. I had no
secret reproductive dysfunction. My libido and my desire for a family
are as strong as any man's. But I decided years ago to marry Mother Eve
posthumously and adopt all her children as my own. They were all living
in the same crowded house, where one bad fire would kill the whole
bunch of them. My job was to move them out into widely dispersed houses
so they'd go on living forever. Collectively, that is. So no matter
where I go, no matter whom I'm with, I am surrounded by my adopted
children."
    "You really are playing
God."
    "I most certainly am
not
playing.
"
    "You old
actor—you think there were auditions and you got the part."
    "Maybe I'm an
understudy. When he forgets a bit of business, I fill in."
    "So what are you going
to do about getting a picture with Ender?"
    "Simple enough. I'm the
man who decides when the ship will go. There will be a technical
malfunction at the last minute. Ender, having done his duty, will be
encouraged to take a nap. When he wakes up, we'll take some pictures,
and then the technical problems will be miraculously resolved and the
ship will sail."
    "Without you on board,"
said Mazer.
    "I have to be here to
keep fighting for the project," said Graff. "If I weren't here to
stymie my enemies at every step, the project would be killed within
months. There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to
see any vision they didn't think of."

    Valentine enjoyed
watching the way Graff and Rackham treated Ender. Graff was one of the
most powerful men in the world; Rackham was still regarded as a
legendary hero. Yet both of them quietly deferred to Ender. They never
ordered him to do anything. It was always, "Will it be all right for
you to stand here for the picture?" "Would 0800 be a good time for
you?" "Whatever you're wearing will be fine, Admiral Wiggin."
    Of course Valentine
knew that calling him "Admiral Wiggin" was for the benefit of the
admirals and generals and political brass who were watching, most of
them seething because they weren't in the picture. But as she watched,
she saw many instances of Ender expressing an opinion—or just
seeming to be hesitant about something. Graff usually deferred to
Ender. And when he didn't, Rackham smilingly made Ender's point for
him, and insisted on it.
    They were taking care
of him.
    It was genuine love and
respect. They might have created him like a tool in a forge, they might
have hammered him and ground him into the shape they wanted, and then
plunged him into the heart of the enemy. But now they truly loved this
weapon they had made, they cared about him.
    They thought he was
damaged. Dented from all he had been through. They thought his
passivity was a reaction to trauma, to finding out what he had really
done—the deaths of the children, of the formics, of the
thousands of human soldiers who had perished during that last campaign
when Ender thought he was playing a game.
    They just don't know
him the way I do, thought Valentine.
    Oh, she knew the danger
of such a thought. She was constantly on the alert, lest she entrap
herself in a web of her own conceit. She had not assumed she knew
Ender. She had approached him like a stranger, watching everything to
see what he did, what he said, and what he seemed to
mean
by all he did and said.
    Gradually, though, she
learned to recognize the child behind the young man. She had seen him
obeying his parents—immediately, without question, though he
surely could have argued or pleaded his way out of onerous tasks. Ender
accepted responsibility and accepted also the idea that he would not
always get to decide which responsibilities were his, or when they
needed to be carried out. So he obeyed his parents with few hesitations.
    But it was more than
that. Ender really
was
damaged, they were right.
Because his obedience was more than that of the happy child springing
up at his parents' request. It had