I am an astonishingly fast writer. Are you sure we have no genes of Winston Churchill in us? Some dalliance of his, for instance, with a Pole-in-exile during World War II? I feel him to be a kindred spirit of mine, except for the political ambitions, the constant blood alcohol level, and walking around the house naked. He did those things, by the way, not me.
Love,
Your equally sarcastic, just-analytical-enough,
not-yet-wounded-nor-satisfied daughter,
Valentine
Graff had disappeared from Eros soon after the court martial, but now he was back. It seems that as Minister of Colonization, he could not miss the opportunity for publicity that the departure of the first colony ship would offer.
“Publicity is good for the Dispersal Project,” said Graff when Mazer laughed at him.
“And you don’t love the camera?”
“Look at me,” said Graff. “I’ve lost twenty-five kilos. I’m a mere shadow of myself.”
“All through the war, you gain weight, bit by bit. You balloon during the court martial. And now you lose weight. Was it Earth gravity?”
“I didn’t go to Earth,” said Graff. “I was busy turning Battle School into the assembly point for the colonists. No one understood why I insisted that all the beds be adult-sized. Now they talk about my foresight.”
“Why are you lying to me? You weren’t in charge when Battle School was built.”
Graff shook his head. “Mazer, I wasn’t in charge of anything when I talked you into coming home, was I?”
“You were in charge of the get-Rackham-home-to-help-train-Ender-Wiggin project.”
“But no one knew there was such a project.”
“Except you.”
“So I was also in charge of the make-sure-Battle-School-is-fitted-out for-the-Human-Genome-Dispersal-Project project.”
“And that’s why you’re losing weight,” said Mazer. “Because you finally got the funding and authority to carry out the real project that you’ve had in mind all along.”
“Winning the war was the most important thing. I had my mind on my job of training children! Who knew we’d win it in circumstances that gave us all these uninhabited already-terraformed completely habitable planets? I expected Ender to win, or Bean if Ender failed, but I thought we’d then be battling the buggers world to world, and racing to found new colonies in the opposite direction, so we wouldn’t be vulnerable to their counterattack.”
“So you’re here to have your picture taken with the colonists.”
“I’m here to have my smiling picture taken with you and Ender and the colonists.”
“Ah,” said Mazer. “The court martial crowd.”
“The cruelest thing about that court martial was the way they savaged Ender’s reputation. Fortunately, most people remember the victory, not the evidence from the court martial. Now we place another image in their minds.”
“So you actually care about Ender.”
Graff looked hurt. “I have always loved that boy. It would take a moral idiot not to. I know deep goodness when I see it. I hate having his name tied to the murder of children.”
“He did kill them.”
“He didn’t know that he did.”
“Those weren’t like winning the war while thinking it was a game, Hyrum,” said Mazer. “He knew he was in a real fight for his life, and he knew that he had to win decisively. He had to know that the death of his opponent was always a possibility.”
“So you’re saying he’s as guilty as our enemies said he was?”
“I’m saying that he killed them and he knew what he was doing. Not the exact outcome, but that he was taking actions that could cause real and permanent damage to those boys.”
“They were going to kill him!”
“Bonzo was,” said Mazer. “Stilson was a petty bully.”
“But Ender was so untrained he had no idea of the damage he was doing, or that his shoes had steel toes. Weren’t we clever to keep him safe by insisting he wear shoes like that.”
“Hyrum, I think Ender’s actions were perfectly justified. He didn’t choose to fight those boys, so the only choice he had was how thoroughly to win.”
“Or lose.”
“Ender never has the choice to lose, Hyrum. It’s not in him, even when he thinks it is.”
“All I know is that he promised to try to work a picture with me and you into his schedule.”
Mazer nodded. “And you think that meant that he’d do it.”
“He doesn’t have a schedule. I thought he was being ironic. Except for hanging with Valentine, what does he have to do?”
Mazer laughed. “What he’s been doing for more than a year—studying the formics so obsessively that we all worried about his mental health. Only I have to say that with the colonists’ arrival, he’s been preparing to be governor in more than just name.”
“Admiral Morgan will be disappointed.”
“Admiral Morgan expects to get his way,” said Mazer, “because he doesn’t realize Ender is serious about governing the colony. What Ender was doing was memorizing the dossiers of all the colonists—their test results, family relationships with other colonists and with family members who were left home, their towns and countries of origin and what those places look like and what’s been going on there in the past year, during the time they were signing up.”
“And Admiral Morgan doesn’t get the point?”
“Admiral Morgan is a leader,” said Mazer. “He gives orders and they’re passed down the chain. Knowing the grunts is the job of the petty officers.”
Graff laughed. “And people wonder why we used children to command the final campaign.”
“Every officer learns how to function within the system that promoted him,” said Mazer. “The system is still sick—it always has been and always will be. But Ender learned how real leadering is done.”
“Or was born knowing it.”
“So he’s greeting every colonist by name and making a point of conversing with them all for at least a half hour.”
“Can’t he do that on the ship after they take off?”
“He’s meeting the ones who are going into stasis. The ones who are staying awake he’ll meet after launch. So when he says he’ll try to fit you into his schedule, he was not being ironic. Most of the colonists are sleepers and he barely has time for a real conversation with all of them.”
Graff sighed. “Isn’t he even sleeping?”
“I think he figures he’ll have time to sleep after launch—when Admiral Morgan is commanding his vessel and Ender will have no official duties that he doesn’t assign to himself. At least that’s how Valentine and I decode his behavior.”
“He doesn’t talk to her?”
“Of course he does. He just doesn’t admit to having any plans or any reasons for the things he does.”
“Why would he keep secrets from her?”
“I’m not sure they’re secrets,” said Mazer. “I think he might not know that he has plans of any kind. I think he’s greeting the colonists because that’s what they need and expect. It’s a duty because it means a lot to them, so he does it.”
“Nonsense,” said Graff. “Ender always has plans within plans.”
“I believe you’re thinking of you.”
“Ender is better at this than I am.”
“I doubt it,” said Mazer. “Peacetime bureaucratic maneuvering? Nobody does it better than you.”
“I wish I were going with them.”
“Then go,” said Mazer, laughing. “But you wish nothing of the kind.”
“Why not?” said Graff. “I can run ColMin by ansible. I can see first-hand what our colonists have accomplished during the years they’ve been waiting for relief. And the advantages of relativistic travel will keep me alive to see the end of my great project.”
“Advantages?”
“To you, a horrible sacrifice. But you’ll notice that I did not marry, Mazer. I had no secret reproductive dy
sfunction. My libido and my desire for a family are as strong as any man’s. But I decided years ago to marry Mother Eve posthumously and adopt all her children as my own. They were all living in the same crowded house, where one bad fire would kill the whole bunch of them. My job was to move them out into widely dispersed houses so they’d go on living forever. Collectively, that is. So no matter where I go, no matter whom I’m with, I am surrounded by my adopted children.”
“You really are playing God.”
“I most certainly am not playing.”
“You old actor—you think there were auditions and you got the part.”
“Maybe I’m an understudy. When he forgets a bit of business, I fill in.”
“So what are you going to do about getting a picture with Ender?”
“Simple enough. I’m the man who decides when the ship will go. There will be a technical malfunction at the last minute. Ender, having done his duty, will be encouraged to take a nap. When he wakes up, we’ll take some pictures, and then the technical problems will be miraculously resolved and the ship will sail.”
“Without you on board,” said Mazer.
“I have to be here to keep fighting for the project,” said Graff. “If I weren’t here to stymie my enemies at every step, the project would be killed within months. There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn’t think of.”
Valentine enjoyed watching the way Graff and Rackham treated Ender. Graff was one of the most powerful men in the world; Rackham was still regarded as a legendary hero. Yet both of them quietly deferred to Ender. They never ordered him to do anything. It was always, “Will it be all right for you to stand here for the picture?” “Would 0800 be a good time for you?” “Whatever you’re wearing will be fine, Admiral Wiggin.”
Of course Valentine knew that calling him “Admiral Wiggin” was for the benefit of the admirals and generals and political brass who were watching, most of them seething because they weren’t in the picture. But as she watched, she saw many instances of Ender expressing an opinion—or just seeming to be hesitant about something. Graff usually deferred to Ender. And when he didn’t, Rackham smilingly made Ender’s point for him, and insisted on it.
They were taking care of him.
It was genuine love and respect. They might have created him like a tool in a forge, they might have hammered him and ground him into the shape they wanted, and then plunged him into the heart of the enemy. But now they truly loved this weapon they had made, they cared about him.
They thought he was damaged. Dented from all he had been through. They thought his passivity was a reaction to trauma, to finding out what he had really done—the deaths of the children, of the formics, of the thousands of human soldiers who had perished during that last campaign when Ender thought he was playing a game.
They just don’t know him the way I do, thought Valentine.
Oh, she knew the danger of such a thought. She was constantly on the alert, lest she entrap herself in a web of her own conceit. She had not assumed she knew Ender. She had approached him like a stranger, watching everything to see what he did, what he said, and what he seemed to mean by all he did and said.
Gradually, though, she learned to recognize the child behind the young man. She had seen him obeying his parents—immediately, without question, though he surely could have argued or pleaded his way out of onerous tasks. Ender accepted responsibility and accepted also the idea that he would not always get to decide which responsibilities were his, or when they needed to be carried out. So he obeyed his parents with few hesitations.
But it was more than that. Ender really was damaged, they were right. Because his obedience was more than that of the happy child springing up at his parents’ request. It had strong overtones of the kind of obedience Ender had given to Peter—compliance in order to avoid conflict.
Somewhere between the two attitudes: eagerness versus resignation mixed with dread.
Ender was eager for the voyage, for the work he would do. But he understood that being governor was the price he was paying for his ticket. So he was acting the part, performing all his duties, including the pictures, including the formal good-byes, the speeches from the very commanders who had allowed his name to be so badly tarnished during the court martial of Graff and Rackham.
Ender stood there smiling—a real smile, as if he liked the man—while Admiral Chamrajnagar bestowed on him the highest medal the International Fleet could offer. Valentine watched the whole thing sourly. Why wasn’t that medal given during the court martial, when it would have been an open repudiation of the terrible things being said about Ender? Why had the court martial been opened to the public, when Chamrajnagar had the complete power to suppress it all? Why was there even a court martial? No law required it. Chamrajnagar had never, for a moment, been Ender’s friend—though Ender gave him the victory that he could not otherwise have achieved.
Unlike Graff and Rackham, Chamrajnagar showed no sign of real respect for Ender. Oh, he called him Admiral, too, with only a couple of instances of “my boy”—both immediately corrected by Rackham, to Chamrajnagar’s visible annoyance. Of course, Chamrajnagar could do nothing about Rackham, either—except make sure he was in all the pictures, too, since having two heroes associated with the great Polemarch would be an even more memorable picture.
What was plain to Valentine was that Chamrajnagar was very happy, and the happiness clearly came from the prospect of having Ender get on that starship and go away. Things could not go quickly enough for Chamrajnagar.
Yet they all waited for the pictures to be printed out in physical form so that Ender, Rackham, and Chamrajnagar could all sign copies of that most excellent souvenir.
Rackham and Ender were each given signed copies with a great flourish, as if Chamrajnagar imagined he was honoring them.
Then, at last, Chamrajnagar was gone—“to the observation station, to watch the great vessel sail forth on its mission of creation instead of destruction.” In other words, to have his picture taken with the ship in the background. Valentine doubted any of the press would be allowed to take pictures of the event that did not include Chamrajnagar’s smiling face.
So it was actually a great concession that the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender had been allowed to exist at all. Perhaps Chamrajnagar did not even know it had been taken. It was the official fleet photographer, but perhaps he was disloyal enough to take a picture he knew that his boss would hate.
Valentine knew Graff well enough to know that appearances of the Polemarch’s pictures would be rare compared to the picture of Graff, Rackham, and Ender, which would be pasted on every possible surface on Earth: electronic, virtual, and physical. It would serve Graff’s purpose to have everyone on Earth reminded that the I.F. existed for only two purposes now—to support the colonization program, and to punish from space any power on Earth that dared to use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons.
Chamrajnagar had not yet reconciled himself to the idea that most of the continued funding for the I.F. and its bases and stations came through Graff’s hands as Minister of Colonization—MinCol. At the same time, Graff was perfectly aware that it was fear of what a disgruntled I.F. might do—like seizing worldwide power from the politicians, which the Warsaw Pact had tried to do—that kept the funding coming to his project.
What Chamrajnagar would never understand was why he was somehow the adjunct in all of this, why his lobbying came to nothing—except for allowing Ender’s diminishment in the court martial.
Which led Valentine once again to her suspicion that Graff, too, could have prevented the court martial if he had wanted to, that perhaps it was a price he paid in order to gain some other advantage. Even if all it did for Graff was “prove” that not everything was going his way, that would be a great source of complacency for Graff’s rivals and opponents, and Valentine well knew that complacency was the best possible attitude for one’s rivals and opponents to have.
Graff loved and respected Ender, but he was not above allowing something very unfortunate to happen to him if it served the larger purpose. Hadn’t Graff proved it over and over?
Well, my dear MinCol, by the time we get to Shakespeare Colony, you will almost certainly be either dead or very, very old. I wonder if you’ll still be running everything then?
Poor Peter. Aspiring to rule the world, while Graff had already done it. The difference was that Peter needed to be known to rule the world; all the outward forms of government needed to be seen to lead to Peter’s throne. Whereas Graff only needed to use his control of whatever he wanted to control in order to accomplish his single, lofty purpose.
But aren’t they the same person, apart from that? Manipulators, letting anyone else pay whatever cost was required to accomplish the end in view. It was a good end, in Graff’s case. Valentine agreed with it, believed in it, happily cooperated with it. But wasn’t Peter’s goal also a good one? The end of war, because the world was united under a single good government. If he brought it off, wouldn’t it be as much a blessing to the human race as anything Graff accomplished?
She had to give both Peter and Graff credit for this: They weren’t monsters. They didn’t require that all costs be paid by others, none by themselves. They would also make whatever personal sacrifices were required. They really did serve a cause bigger than themselves.
But couldn’t that also have been said of Hitler? Unlike Stalin and Mao, who wallowed in luxury while others did all the work and made all the sacrifices, Hitler lived sparingly and truly believed himself to be living for a cause greater than himself. That’s precisely what made him such a monster. So Valentine was not quite sure that Peter’s and Graff’s self-sacrifices were quite enough to absolve them of monsterhood.
Well, they would both be someone else’s problem now. Let Rackham watch out for Graff and kill him if he gets out of hand, which he probably won’t. And let Father and Mother do their pathetic best to keep Peter from becoming the devil. Do they even realize that Peter’s whole good-son attitude was an act? That Peter had obviously made the conscious decision several years back to pretend to be just like the boy Ender had been? All an act, dear parents—do you see it? Sometimes I think you do, but other times you are so oblivious.
The Ender Quintet (Omnibus) Page 180
