Ender in Exile Page 0,12

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