Speaker for the Dead

"And me," said Olhado.
      "Yes, you," said Ender.
      "You killed more people than anybody in history."
      "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me."
      "But when you Spoke for Father, you made me feet sorry for him. You make people love each other and forgive each other. How could you kill all those millions of people in the Xenocide?"
      "I thought I was playing games. I didn't know it was the real thing. But that's no excuse, Olhado. If I had known the battle was real, I would have done the same thing. We thought they wanted to kill us. We were wrong, but we had no way to know that." Ender shook his head. "Except that I knew better. I knew my enemy. That's how I beat her, the hive queen, I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. So I blew up her planet."
      "And today we found the place to bring her back to life." Olhado was very serious. "Are you sure she won't try to get even? Are you sure she won't try to wipe out humankind, starting with you?"
      "I'm as sure," said Ender, "as I am of anything."
      "Not absolutely sure," said Olhado.
      "Sure enough to bring her back to life," said Ender. "And that's as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it's true. When we're that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it."
      "I guess that's what you're doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is."
      "I'm more arrogant than that. I'm betting your life, too, and everybody else's, and I'm not so much as asking anyone else's opinion."
      "Funny," said Olhado. "If I asked somebody whether they'd trust Ender with a decision that might affect the future of the human race, they'd say, of course not. But if I asked them whether they'd trust the Speaker for the Dead, they'd say yes, most of them. And they wouldn't even guess that they were the same person."
      "Yeah," said Ender. "Funny."
      Neither of them laughed. Then, after a long time, Olhado spoke again. His thoughts had wandered to a subject that mattered more. "I don't want Miro to go away for thirty years."
      "Say twenty years."
      "In twenty years I'll be thirty-two. But he'd come back the age he is now. Twenty. Twelve years younger than me. If there's ever a girl who wants to marry a guy with reflecting eyes, I might even be married and have kids then. He won't even know me. I won't be his little brother anymore." Olhado swallowed. "It'd be like him dying."
      "No," said Ender. "It'd be like him passing from his second life to his third."
      "That's like dying, too," said Olhado.
      "It's also like being born," said Ender. "As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes."
     
     
     
      Valentine called the next day. Ender's fingers trembled as he keyed instructions into the terminal. It wasn't just a message, either. It was a call, a full ansible voice communication. Incredibly expensive, but that wasn't a problem. It was the fact that ansible communications with the Hundred Worlds were supposedly cut off; for Jane to allow this call to come through meant that it was urgent. It occurred to Ender right away that Valentine might be in danger. That Starways Congress might have decided Ender was involved in the rebellion and traced his connection with her.
      She was older. The hologram of her face showed weather lines from many windy days on the islands, floes, and boats of Trondheim. But her smile was the same, and her eyes danced with the same light. Ender was silenced at first by the changes the years had wrought in his sister; she, too, was silenced, by the fact that Ender seemed unchanged, a vision coming back to her out of her past.
      "Ah, Ender," she sighed. "Was I ever so young?"
      "And will I age so beautifully?"
      She laughed. Then she cried. He did not; how could he? He had missed her for a couple of months. She had missed him for twenty-two years.
      "I suppose you've heard," he said, "about our trouble getting along with Congress."
      "I imagine that you were at the thick of it."
      "Stumbled into the situation, really," said Ender. "But I'm glad I was here. I'm going to stay."
      She nodded, drying her eyes. "Yes. I thought so. But I had to call and make sure. I didn't want to spend a couple of decades flying to meet you, and have you gone when I arrive."
      "Meet me?" he said.
      "I got much too