unite in brutal war against him?
Fortunately, Ender did not want to be a conqueror. So he wouldn't be hurt by missing out on the chance to try it.
Still, he'd love to have a chance to explain things to Demosthenes.
Not that the man would ever consent to be alone in a room with the killer hero.
Mazer never discussed the actual court martial with Ender, but they could talk about Graff.
'Hyrum Graff is the consummate bureaucrat,' Mazer told him. 'He's always thinking ten steps ahead of everyone else. It doesn't really matter what office he holds. He can use anybody — below him or above him or complete strangers who've never met him — to accomplish whatever he thinks is needful for the human race.'
'I'm glad he chooses to use this power of his for good.'
'I don't know that he does,' said Mazer. 'He uses it for what he believes is good. But I don't know that he's particularly good at knowing what 'good' is.'
'In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term — it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.'
'The things the modern fleet teaches to its admirals.'
'You're an admiral too, and look where it got you.'
'Tutor to a bratty boy who saves the human race but doesn't do his chores.'
'Sometimes I wish I were bratty,' said Ender. 'I dream about it — about defying authority. But even when I absolutely decide to, what I can't get rid of is responsibility. People counting on me — that's what controls me.'
'So you have no ambition except duty?' asked Mazer.
'And I have no duties now,' said Ender. 'So I envy Colonel. Mister Graff. All those plans. All that purpose. I wonder what he plans for me.'
'Are you sure he does?' asked Mazer. 'Plan anything for you, I mean?'
'Maybe not,' said Ender. 'He worked awfully hard to shape this tool. But now that it will never be needed again, maybe he can set me down and let me rust and never think of me.'
'Maybe,' said Mazer. 'That's the thing we have to keep in mind. Graff is not. nice.'
'Unless he needs to be.'
'Unless he needs to seem to be,' said Mazer. 'He's not above lying his face off to frame things in such a way that you'll want to do what he wants you to do.'
'Which is how he got you here, to be my trainer during the war?'
'Oh, yes,' said Mazer, with a sigh.
'Going home now?' asked Ender. 'I know you have family.'
'Great-grandchildren,' said Mazer. 'And great-great-grandchildren. My wife is dead and my only surviving child is gaga with senility, my grandchildren tell me. They say it lightly, because they've accepted that their father or uncle has lived a full life and he's getting really old. But how can I accept it? I don't know any of these people.'
'Hero's welcome won't be enough to make up for losing fifty years, is that it?' asked Ender.
'Hero's welcome,' muttered Mazer. 'You know what the hero's welcome is? They're still deciding whether to charge me along with Graff. I think they probably will.'
'So if they charge you along with Graff,' said Ender, 'then you'll be acquitted along with him.'
'Acquitted?' said Mazer ruefully. 'We won't be jailed or anything. But we'll be reprimanded. A note of censure placed in our files. And Graff will probably be cashiered. The people who brought this court martial can't be made to look foolish for doing it. They have to turn out to have been correct.'
Ender sighed. 'So for their pride, you both get slapped. And Graff maybe loses his career.'
Mazer laughed. 'Not so bad, really. My record was full of notes of reprimand before I beat the buggers in the Second Formic War. My career has been forged out of reprimands and censures. And Graff? The military was never his career. It was just a way to get access to the influence and power he needed in order to accomplish his plans. Now he doesn't need the military anymore, so he's willing to be drummed out of it.'
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
