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He sipped from the cup before the teabag had reall
y done its job. It was weak, but he didn't mind having it weak. He didn't really mind much of anything these days, as long as he kept breathing in and out and there was no pain.
"Going to say it anyway," said Graff. "Poor fool of a boy. Pacifism only works with an enemy that can't bear to do murder against the innocent. How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like that?"
Petra Arkanian Delphiki Wiggin was visiting with her son Andrew and his wife Lani and their two youngest children, the last ones still at home, when the letter came from Ender.
She came into the room where the family was playing a card game, her face awash with tears, brandishing the letter, unable to speak.
"Who died!" Lani cried out, but Andrew came up to her and folded her into a giant hug. "This isn't grief, Lani. This is joy."
"How can you tell?"
"Mother tears things when she's grieving, and this letter is only wrinkled and wet."
Petra slapped him lightly but still she laughed enough that she could talk. "Read it aloud, Andrew. Read it out loud. Our last little boy is found. Ender found him for me. Oh, if only Julian could know it! If only I could talk to Julian again!" And then she wept some more, until he started to read. The letter was so short. But Andrew and Lani, because they had children of their own, understood exactly what it meant to her, and they joined her in her tears, until the teenagers left the room in disgust, one of them saying, "Call us when you get some control."
"Nobody has control of anything," said Petra. "We're all beggars at the throne of fate. But sometimes he has mercy!"
Because it was not carrying Randall Firth into exile, the starship did not have to go back to Eros by the most direct route. It added four months to the subjective voyage--six years to the realtime trip--but it was cleared at IFCom and the captain didn't mind. He would drop off his passengers wherever they wanted, for even if no one at IFCom understood just who Andrew and Valentine Wiggin were, the captain knew. He would justify the detour to his superiors. His crew had started when he did, and also remembered, and did not mind.
In their stateroom, Valentine nursed Ender back to health between shifts of writing her history of Ganges Colony.
"I read that stupid letter of yours," she said one day.
"Which? I write so many," he answered.
"The one that I was only supposed to see if you died."
"Not my fault the doctor put me under total anesthetic to reset my nose and pull out the shards of bone that didn't fit back in place."
"I suppose you want me to forget what I read."
"Why not? I have."
"You have not," she said. "You're not just hiding from your infamy, with all this voyaging, are you?"
"I'm also enjoying the company of my sister, the professional nosy person."
"That case--you're looking for a place where you can open it."
"Val," said Ender, "do I ask you about your plans?"
"You don't have to. My plan is to follow you around until I get too bored to stand it anymore."
"Whatever you think you know," said Ender, "you're wrong."
"Well, as long as you explain it so clearly."
Then, a little later: "Val, you know something? I thought for a minute there that he was really going to kill me."
"Oh, you poor thing. It must have been devastating to realize you had bet wrong on the outcome."
"I had thought that if it came to that moment, if I really knew that I was going to die, it would come as a relief. None of this would be my problem anymore. Someone else could clean up the mess."
"Yes, me, I'm so grateful that you were going to dump it all on me."
"But when he was coming back to finish me off--I knew he planned a kick or two in the head, and my head was already so foggy from concussion that I knew it would finish me--when he came walking up to me, I wasn't relieved at all. I wanted to get up. Would have if I could."
