"Of course they want you."
"They don't know what they want. They're politicians. Is it good for them to have me back? Is keeping me up here worse for them than having me come home? It's so very, very hard when you have no convictions except your lust to remain in power. Aren't we glad we're not in politics?"
Ender sighed. "É. I will never hold office again. Commander of Dragon Army was too much for me, and that was just a kids' game."
"That's what I tried to assure them. I don't want anybody's job. I'm not going to endorse anybody for office. I want to live with my family and see if they remember who I am. And vice versa."
"They'll love you," said Ender.
"And you know this because . . . ?"
"Because I love you."
She looked at him in consternation. "How can I possibly answer a comment like that?"
"Oh. What was I supposed to say?"
"I don't know. Am I supposed to write scripts for you now?"
"OK," said Ender. "Should it have been banter? 'They'll love you because somebody has to, and it sure isn't anybody up here.' Or maybe the ethnic slur: 'They'll love you because hey, they're Armenian and you're a female.' "
"What does that mean?"
"I got that from an Azeri I talked to during that whole flap about Sinterklaas Day back in Battle School. Apparently the idea is that Armenians know that the only people who think Armenian women are . . . I don't have to explain ethnic insults, Petra. They're infinitely transferable."
"When are they letting you go home?" asked Petra.
Instead of sidestepping the question or giving it a lazy answer, Ender answered truthfully for once. "I'm thinking maybe it won't happen."
"What do you mean? You think this stupid court martial is going to end up convicting you?"
"I'm the one on trial, aren't I?"
"Definitely not."
"Only because I'm a child and therefore not responsible. But it's all about what an evil little monster I am."
"It is not."
"I've seen the highlights on the nets, Petra. What the world is seeing is that the savior of the world has a little problem—he kills children."
"You defended yourself from bullies. Everybody understands that."
"Except the people who post comments about how I'm a worse war criminal than Hitler or Pol Pot. A mass murderer. What makes you think I want to go home and deal with all that?"
Petra wasn't playing now. She sat down next to him and took his hands. "Ender, you have a family."
"Had."
"Oh, don't say that! You have a family. Families still love their children even if they've been away for eight years."
"I've only been away for seven. Almost. Yes, I know they love me. Some of them at least. They love who I was. A cute little six-year-old. I must have been so huggable. Between killing other children, that is."
"So is that what this obsession with formic porn is?"
"Porn?"
"The way you study it. Classic addiction. Got to have more and more of it. Explicit photos of rotting larva bodies. Autopsy shots. Slides of their molecular structure. Ender, they're gone, and you didn't kill them. Or if you did, then we did. But we didn't. We played a game! We were training for war, that's all it was."
"And if it had really been just a game?" asked Ender. "And then they assigned us to the fleet after we graduated, and we actually piloted those ships or commanded those squadrons? Wouldn't we have done it for real?"
"Yes," said Petra. "But we didn't. It didn't happen."
"It happened. They're gone."
"Well, studying the structure of their bodies and the biochemistry of their cells is not going to bring them back."
"I'm not trying to bring them back," said Ender. "What a nightmare that would be."
"No, you're trying to persuade yourself that you deserve the merdicious things they're saying about you in the court martial, because if that's true, then you don't deserve to go back to Earth."
Ender shook his head. "I want to go home, Petra, even if I can't stay. And I'm not conflicted about the war. I'm glad we fought and I'm glad we won and I'm glad it's over."
"But you keep your distance from everybody. We understood, or sympathized, or pretended we did. But you've kept us all at arm's length. You make this show of dropping everything whenever one of us comes around to chat, but it's an act of hostility."
What an outrageous thing to say. "It's common courtesy!"
"You never even say, 'Just a sec,' you just drop everything. It's so . . . obvious. The message is: 'I'm really busy but I still think you're my responsibility so I'll drop whatever I'm doing because you need my time.' "
"Wow," said Ender. "You sure understand a lot of things about me. You're so smart, Petra. A girl like you—they could really make something out of you in Battle School."
"Now that's a real answer."
"Not as real as what I said before."
"That you love me? You're not my therapist, Ender. Or my priest. Don't coddle me, don't tell me what you think I need to hear."
"You're right," said Ender. "I shouldn't drop everything when one of my friends drops by." He picked his papers back up again.
"Put those down."
"Oh, now it's OK because you asked me so rudely."
"Ender," Petra said, "we 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."