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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 months."
    "You can't read my
mind. Even if you've deluded yourself into thinking you can read my
face."
    "The colonization
project is the only thing left out here in space that's worth doing."
    "I haven't been asked
to pilot anything," said Mazer. "I'm old for a pilot, you know."
    "Not a pilot, a
commander of a ship."
    "I'm lucky they let me
aim by myself when I pee," said Mazer. "They don't trust me. That's why
I'm going on trial."
    "When the trial's
over," said Ender, "they'll have no more use for you than they have for
me. They've got to send you somewhere far away so that the I.F. will be
safe for the bureaucrats again."
    Mazer looked away and
waited, but there was an air about him that told Ender that Mazer was
about to say something important.
    "Ender, what about
you?" Mazer finally asked. "Would you go?"
    "To a colony?" Ender
laughed. "I'm thirteen years old. On a colony, what would I be good
for? Farming? You know what my skills are. Useless in a colony."
    Mazer barked a laugh.
"Oh, you'll send
me
, but you won't go yourself."
    "I'm not sending
anybody," said Ender. "Least of all