ENDER IN EXILE

"Still," he said. "You're a woman."

"How flattering that you noticed. I was disappointed that I didn't have any ship's captains falling in love with me."

"Perhaps the fact that Captain Hong brought his wife and family with him had an effect on that."

"Bit by bit, they're learning that you don't have to sacrifice everything to be a star voyager," said Valentine.

"Arithmetic—I'm still seventeen, and you're nearly twenty-one."

"I am twenty-one," she said. "Think of me as your Auntie Val."

"I will not," he said. "You finished your book?"

"I wrote a history of Shakespeare Colony, up to the time of your arrival. I couldn't have done it if you had been awake."

"Because I would have insisted on accuracy?"

"Because you wouldn't have let me have complete access to your correspondence with Kolmogorov."

"My correspondence is double-password encrypted."

"Oh, Ender, you're talking to me," said Valentine. "Do you think I wouldn't be able to guess 'Stilson' and 'Bonzo'?"

"I didn't use their names just like that, naked."

"To me they were naked, Ender. You think nobody really understands you, but I can guess your passwords. That makes me your password buddy."

"That makes you a snoop," said Ender. "I can't wait to read the book."

"Don't worry. I didn't mention your name. His emails are cited as 'letter to a friend' with the date."

"Aren't you considerate."

"Don't be testy. I haven't seen you in fourteen months and I missed you. Don't make me change my mind."

"I saw you yesterday, and you've snooped my files since then. Don't expect me to ignore that. What else did you snoop?"

"Nothing," said Valentine. "You have your luggage locked. I'm not a yegg."

"When can I read the book?"

"When you buy it and download it. You can afford to pay."

"I don't have any money."

"You haven't read Hyrum Graff's letter yet," said Valentine. "He got you a nice pension and you can draw on it without paying any taxes until you come of age."

"So you didn't confine yourself to your research topic."

"I can never know whether a letter contains useful data until I read it, can I?"

"So you read all the letters ever written in the history of the human race, in order to write this book?"

"Only the ones written since the founding of Colony One after the Third Formic War." She kissed his cheek. "Good morning, Ender. Welcome back to the world."

Ender shook his head. "Not Ender," he said. "Not here. I'm Andrew."

"Ah," she said. "Why not 'Andy,' then? Or 'Drew'?"

"Andrew," Ender repeated.

"Well, you should have told the governor that, because her letter of invitation is addressed to 'Ender Wiggin.' "

Ender frowned. "We never knew each other in Battle School."

"I imagine she thinks she knows you, having been so intimately involved with half your jeesh."

"Having had her army beaten into the ground by them," said Ender.

"That's a kind of intimacy, isn't it? A sort of Grant-and-Lee thing?"

"I suppose Graff had to warn her that I was coming."

"Your name was also on the manifest, and it included the fact that you were governor of Shakespeare until your two-year term ended. That narrows you down among all the possible Andrew Wiggins in the human race."

"Have you been down to the surface?"

"No one has. I asked the captain to let me wake you so you could be on the first shuttle. Of course he was pleased to do anything for the great Ender Wiggin. He's of that generation—he was on Eros when you won that final victory. He says he saw you in the corridors there, more than once."

Ender thought back to his brief meeting with the captain before going into stasis. "I didn't recognize him."

"He didn't expect you to. He really is a nice man. Much better at his job than old what's-his-name."

"Quincy Morgan."

"I remembered his name, Ender, I just didn't want to say it or hear it."

Ender cleaned himself up. Stasis left him with a sort of scum all over his body; his skin seemed to crackle just a little when he moved. This can't be good for you, he thought as he scrubbed it off and the skin protested by giving him little stabbing pains. But Graff does stasis ten months of the year and he's still going strong.

And he got me a pension. Isn't that nice. I can't imagine Ganges is using Hegemony money any more than Shakespeare was, but once interstellar trade starts up, maybe there'll start being some buying power in the FPE dollar.

Dried and dressed, Ender got his luggage out of storage and, in the privacy of Valentine's locked stateroom, from which she had discreetly absented herself, Ender opened the case containing the cocoon of the last hive queen in the universe.