Ender nodded, chuckled. "I bet you're right. Graff is probably planning to exploit it somehow. The people who benefit from his being kicked out, he'll take advantage of how guilty they feel in order to get what he really wants. A consolation prize that turns out to be his real objective."
"Well, they can't very well give him medals for the exact same thing that he was court-martialed for," said Mazer.
"They'll give him his colonization project," said Ender.
"Oh, I don't know if guilt goes that far," said Mazer. "It would cost billions of dollars to equip and refit the fleet into colony ships, and there's no guarantee that anyone from Earth will volunteer to go away forever. Let alone crews for the ships."
"They have to do something with this huge fleet and all its personnel. The ships have to go somewhere. And there are those surviving I.F. soldiers on all the conquered worlds. I think Graff's going to get his colonies—we won't send ships to bring them home, we'll send new colonists to join them."
"I see you've mastered all of Graff's arguments."
"So have you," said Ender. "And I bet you'll go with them."
"Me? I'm too old to be a colonist."
"You'd pilot a ship," said Ender. "A colony ship. You'd go away again. Because you've already done it once. Why not go again? Lightspeed travel, taking the ship to one of the old formic planets."
"Maybe."
"After you've lost everybody, what's left to lose?" asked Ender. "And you believe in what Graff is doing. It's his real plan all along, isn't it? To spread the human race out of the solar system so we aren't held as hostages to the fate of a single planet. To spread ourselves out among star systems as far as we can go, so that we're unkillable as a species. It's Graff's great cause. And you also think that's worth doing."
"I've never spoken a word on the subject."
"Whenever it's discussed, you don't make that little lemon-sucking face when Graff's arguments are presented."
"Oh, now you think you can read my face. I'm Maori, I don't show anything."
"You're half-Maori, and I've studied you for months."
"You can't read my mind. Even if you've deluded yourself into thinking you can read my face."
"The colonization project is the only thing left out here in space that's worth doing."
"I haven't been asked to pilot anything," said Mazer. "I'm old for a pilot, you know."
"Not a pilot, a commander of a ship."
"I'm lucky they let me aim by myself when I pee," said Mazer. "They don't trust me. That's why I'm going on trial."
"When the trial's over," said Ender, "they'll have no more use for you than they have for me. They've got to send you somewhere far away so that the I.F. will be safe for the bureaucrats again."
Mazer looked away and waited, but there was an air about him that told Ender that Mazer was about to say something important.
"Ender, what about you?" Mazer finally asked. "Would you go?"
"To a colony?" Ender laughed. "I'm thirteen years old. On a colony, what would I be good for? Farming? You know what my skills are. Useless in a colony."
Mazer barked a laugh. "Oh, you'll send me, but you won't go yourself."
"I'm not sending anybody," said Ender. "Least of all myself."
"You've got to do something with your life," said Mazer.
And there it was: The tacit recognition that Ender wasn't going home. That he was never going to lead a normal life on Earth.
One by one the other kids got their orders, each saying good-bye before they left. It was increasingly awkward with each one, because Ender was more and more a stranger to them. He didn't hang out with them. If he happened to join in a conversation, he didn't stay long and never really engaged.
It wasn't a deliberate choice, he just wasn't interested in doing the things they did or talking about what they discussed. They were full of their studies, their return to Earth. What they'd do. How they'd find a way to get together again after they'd been home for a while. How much money they'd get as severance pay from the military. What they might choose as a career. How their families might have changed.
None of that applied to Ender. He couldn't pretend that it did, or that he had a future. Least of all could he talk about what really preyed on his mind. They wouldn't understand.
He didn't understand it himself. He had been able to let go of everything else, all the things he'd concentrated on so hard for so long. Military tactics? Strategy? Not even interesting to him now. Ways that he might have avoided antagonizing Bonzo or Stilson in the first place? He had strong feelings about that, but no rational ideas, so he didn't waste time trying to think it through. He let go of it, just the way he let go of his deep knowledge of everyone in his jeesh, his little army of brilliant kids whom he led through the training that turned out to be the war.
