"With any luck, Colonel Graff, I'll be dead by then."
"I'm not actually a colonel anymore, Sister Carlotta."
"They're really going to go ahead with that court-martial?"
"An investigation, that's all. An inquiry."
"I just don't understand why they have to find a scapegoat for victory."
"I'll be fine. The sun still shines on planet Earth."
"But never again on their tragic world."
"Is your God also their God, Sister Carlotta? Did he take them into heaven?"
"He's not my God, Mr. Graff. But I am his child, as are you. I don't know whether he looks at the Formics and sees them, too, as his children."
"Children. Sister Carlotta, the things I did to these children."
"You gave them a world to come home to."
"All but one of them."
***
It took days for the Polemarch's men to be subdued, but at last Fleetcom was entirely under the Strategos's command, and not one ship had been launched under rebel command. A triumph. The Hegemon resigned as part of the truce, but that only formalized what had already been the reality.
Bean stayed with Graff throughout the fighting, as they read every dispatch and listened to every report about what was happening elsewhere in the fleet and back on Earth. They talked through the unfolding situation, tried to read between the lines, interpreted what was happening as best they could. For Bean, the war with the Buggers was already behind him. All that mattered now was how things went on Earth. When a shaky truce was signed, temporarily ending the fighting, Bean knew that it would not last. He would be needed. Once he got to Earth, he could prepare himself to play his role. Ender's war is over, he thought. This next one will be mine.
While Bean was avidly following the news, the other kids were confined to their quarters under guard, and during the power failures in their part of Eros they did their cowering in darkness. Twice there were assaults on that section of the tunnels, but whether the Russians were trying to get at the kids or merely happened to probe in that area, looking for weaknesses, no one could guess.
Ender was under much heavier guard, but didn't know it. Utterly exhausted, and perhaps unwilling or unable to bear the enormity of what he had done, he remained unconscious for days.
Not till the fighting stopped did he come back to consciousness.
They let the kids get together then, their confinement over for now. Together they made the pilgrimage to the room where Ender had been under protection and medical care. They found him apparently cheerful, able to joke. But Bean could see a deep weariness, a sadness in Ender's eyes that it was impossible to ignore. The victory had cost him deeply, more than anybody.
More than me, thought Bean, even though I knew what I was doing, and he was innocent of any bad intent. He tortures himself, and I move on. Maybe because to me the death of Poke was more important than the death of an entire species that I never saw. I knew her - she has stayed with me in my heart. The Buggers I never knew. How can I grieve for them?
Ender can.
After they filled Ender in on the news about what happened while he slept, Petra touched his hair. "You OK?" she asked. "You scared us. They said you were crazy, and we said they were crazy."
"I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK."
There was more banter, but then Ender's emotions overflowed and for the first time any of them could remember, they saw Ender cry. Bean happened to be standing near him, and when Ender reached out, it was Bean and Petra that he embraced. The touch of his hand, the embrace of his arm, they were more than Bean could bear. He also cried.
"I missed you," said Ender. "I wanted to see you so bad."
"You saw us pretty bad," said Petra. She was not crying. She kissed his cheek.
"I saw you magnificent," said Ender. "The ones I needed most, I used up soonest. Bad planning on my part."
"Everybody's OK now," said Dink. "Nothing was wrong with any of us that five days of cowering in blacked-out rooms in the middle of a war couldn't cure."
"I don't have to be your commander anymore, do I?" asked Ender. "I don't want to command anybody again."
Bean believed him. And believed also that Ender never would command in battle again. He might still have the talents that