Enders In Exile

strong overtones of the kind of
obedience Ender had given to Peter—compliance in order to
avoid conflict.
    Somewhere between the
two attitudes: eagerness versus resignation mixed with dread.
    Ender was eager for the
voyage, for the work he would do. But he understood that being governor
was the price he was paying for his ticket. So he was acting the part,
performing all his duties, including the pictures, including the formal
good-byes, the speeches from the very commanders who had allowed his
name to be so badly tarnished during the court martial of Graff and
Rackham.
    Ender stood there
smiling—a real smile, as if he liked the man—while
Admiral Chamrajnagar bestowed on him the highest medal the
International Fleet could offer. Valentine watched the whole thing
sourly. Why wasn't that medal given during the court martial, when it
would have been an open repudiation of the terrible things being said
about Ender? Why had the court martial been opened to the public, when
Chamrajnagar had the complete power to suppress it all? Why was there
even a court martial? No law required it. Chamrajnagar had never, for a
moment, been Ender's friend—though Ender gave him the victory
that he could not otherwise have achieved.
    Unlike Graff and
Rackham, Chamrajnagar showed no sign of real respect for Ender. Oh, he
called him Admiral, too, with only a couple of instances of "my
boy"—both immediately corrected by Rackham, to Chamrajnagar's
visible annoyance. Of course, Chamrajnagar could do nothing about
Rackham, either—except make sure he was in all the pictures,
too, since having two heroes associated with the great Polemarch would
be an even more memorable picture.
    What was plain to
Valentine was that Chamrajnagar was very happy, and the happiness
clearly came from the prospect of having Ender get on that starship and
go away. Things could not go quickly enough for Chamrajnagar.
    Yet they all waited for
the pictures to be printed out in physical form so that Ender, Rackham,
and Chamrajnagar could all sign copies of that most excellent souvenir.
    Rackham and Ender were
each given signed copies with a great flourish, as if Chamrajnagar
imagined he was honoring them.
    Then, at last,
Chamrajnagar was gone—"to the observation station, to watch
the great vessel sail forth on its mission of creation instead of
destruction." In other words, to have his picture taken with the ship
in the background. Valentine doubted any of the press would be allowed
to take pictures of the event that did
not
include Chamrajnagar's smiling face.
    So it was actually a
great concession that the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender had been
allowed to exist at all. Perhaps Chamrajnagar did not even know it had
been taken. It was the official fleet photographer, but perhaps he was
disloyal enough to take a picture he knew that his boss would hate.
    Valentine knew Graff
well enough to know that appearances of the Polemarch's pictures would
be rare compared to the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender, which
would be pasted on every possible surface on Earth: electronic,
virtual, and physical. It would serve Graff's purpose to have everyone
on Earth reminded that the I.F. existed for only two purposes
now—to support the colonization program, and to punish from
space any power on Earth that dared to use, or threaten to use, nuclear
weapons.
    Chamrajnagar had not
yet reconciled himself to the idea that most of the continued funding
for the I.F. and its bases and stations came through Graff's hands as
Minister of Colonization—MinCol. At the same time, Graff was
perfectly aware that it was fear of what a disgruntled I.F. might
do—like seizing worldwide power from the politicians, which
the Warsaw Pact had tried to do—that kept the funding coming
to
his
project.
    What Chamrajnagar would
never understand was why he was somehow the adjunct in all of this, why
his lobbying came to nothing—except for allowing Ender's
diminishment in the court martial.
    Which led Valentine
once again to her suspicion that Graff, too, could have prevented the
court martial if he had wanted to, that perhaps it was a price he paid
in order to gain some other advantage. Even if all it did for Graff was
"prove" that not everything was going his way, that would be a great
source of complacency for Graff's rivals and opponents, and Valentine
well knew that complacency was the best possible attitude for one's
rivals and opponents to have.
    Graff loved and
respected Ender,