"Anyway, Graff, it was a great relief to us. I know we quarreled, and I know the prosecution used tapes of our conversations against you. But by then I knew that you were right, and I offered to testify for you."
"I know, Anderson. My lawyers told me."
"So what will you do now?"
"I don't know. Still relaxing. I have a few years of leave accrued. Enough to take me to retirement, and I have plenty of salary that I never used, sitting around in banks. I could live on the interest. Maybe I'll do nothing."
"It sounds nice. But I couldn't stand it. I've been offered the presidency of three different universities, on the theory that I'm an educator. They don't believe me when I say that all I ever cared about at the Battle School was the game. I think I'll go with the other offer."
"Commissioner?"
"Now that the wars are over, it's time to play games again. It'll be almost like vacation, anyway. Only twenty-eight teams in the league. Though after years of watching those children flying, football is like watching slugs bash into each other."
They laughed. Graff sighed and pushed the raft with his foot.
"That raft. Surely you can't float on it."
Graff shook his head. "Ender built it."
"That's right. This is where you took him."
"It's even been deeded over to him. I saw to it that he was amply rewarded. He'll have all the money he ever needs."
"If they ever let him come back to use it."
"They never will."
"With Demosthenes agitating for him to come home?"
"Demosthenes isn't on the nets anymore."
Anderson raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"
"Demosthenes has retired. Permanently."
"You know something, you old farteater. You know who Demosthenes is."
"Was."
"Well, tell me!"
"No."
"You're no fun anymore, Graff."
"I never was."
"At least you can tell me why. There were a lot of us who thought Demosthenes would be Hegemon someday."
"There was never a chance of that. No, even Demosthenes' mob of political cretins couldn't persuade the Hegemon to bring Ender back to Earth. Ender is far too dangerous."
"He's only eleven. Twelve, now."
"All the more dangerous because he could so easily be controlled. In all the world, the name of Ender is one to conjure with. The child-god, the miracle worker, with life and death in his hands. Every petty tyrant-to-be would like to have the boy, to set him in front of an army and watch the world either flock to join or cower in fear. If Ender came to Earth, he'd want to come here, to rest, to salvage what he can of his childhood. But they'd never let him rest."
"I see. Someone explained that to Demosthenes?"
Graff smiled. "Demosthenes explained it to someone else. Someone who could have used Ender as no one else could have, to rule the world and make the world like it."
"Who?"
"Locke."
"Locke is the one who argued for Ender to stay on Eros."
"All is not always as it seems."
"It's too deep for me, Graff. Give me the game. Nice, neat rules. Referees. Beginnings and endings. Winners and losers and then everybody goes home to their wives."
"Get me tickets to some games now and then, all right?"
"You won't really stay here and retire, will you?"
"No."
"You're going into the Hegemony, aren't you?"
"I'm the new Minister of Colonization."
"So they're doing it."
"As soon as we get the reports back on the bugger colony worlds. I mean, there they are, already fertile, with housing and industry in place, and all the buggers dead. Very convenient. We'll repeal the population limitation laws—"
"Which everybody hates—"
"And all those thirds and fourths and fifths get on starships and head out for worlds known and unknown."
"Will people really go?"
"People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world."
"What the hell, maybe they can."
At first Ender believed that they would bring him back to Earth as soon as things quieted down. But things were quiet now, had been quiet for a year, and it was plain to him now that they would not bring him back at all, that he was much more useful as a name and a story than he would ever be as an inconvenient flesh-and-blood person.
And there was the matter of the court martial on the crimes of Colonel Graff. Admiral Chamrajnagar tried to keep Ender from watching it, but failed—Ender had been awarded the rank of admiral, too, and this was one of the few times he asserted the privileges the rank implied. So he watched the videos of the fights with Stilson and Bonzo, watched as the photographs of the corpses were displayed, listened as the psychologists and lawyers argued whether murder had been committed or the killing was in self-defense. Ender had his own opinion, but no one asked him, Throughout the trial, it was really Ender himself under attack. The prosecution was too clever to charge him directly, but there were attempts to make him look sick, perverted, criminally insane.
"Never mind," said Mazer Rackham. "The politicians are afraid of you, but they can't destroy your reputation yet. That won't be done until the historians get at you in thirty years."
Ender didn't care about his reputation. He watched the videos impassively, but in fact he was amused. In battle I killed ten billion buggers, who were as alive and wise as any man, who had not even launched a third attack against us, and no one thinks to call it a crime.
All his crimes weighed heavy on him, the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo no heavier and no lighter than the rest.
And so, with that burden, he waited through the empty months until the world that he had saved decided he could come home.
One by one, his friends reluctantly left him, called home to their families, to be received with heroes' welcomes in their towns. Ender watched the videos of their homecomings, and was touched when they' spent much of their time praising Ender Wiggin, who taught them everything, they said, who taught them and led them into victory. But if they called for him to be brought home, the words were censored from the videos and no one heard the plea.
For a time, the only work in Eros was cleaning up after the bloody League War and receiving the reports of the starships, once warships, that were now exploring the bugger colony worlds.
But now Eros was busier than ever, more crowded than it had ever been during the war, as colonists were brought here to prepare for their voyages to the empty bugger worlds. Ender took part in the work, as much as they would let him, but it did not occur to them that this twelve-year-old boy might be as gifted at peace as he was at war. But he was patient with their tendency to ignore him, and learned to make his proposals and suggest his plans through the few adults who listened to him, and let them present them as their own. He was concerned, not about getting credit, but about getting the job done.
The one thing he could not bear was the worship of the colonists. He learned to avoid the tunnels where they lived, because they would always recognize him—the world had memorized his face—and the they would scream and shout and embrace him and congratulate him and show him the children they had named after him and tell him how he was so young it broke their hearts and they didn't blame him for any of his murders because it wasn't his fault he was just a child—
He hid from them as best he could.