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myself."
    "You've got to do
something
with your life," said Mazer.
    And there it was: The
tacit recognition that Ender wasn't going home. That he was never going
to lead a normal life on Earth.

    * * * * *
    One by one the other
kids got their orders, each saying good-bye before they left. It was
increasingly awkward with each one, because Ender was more and more a
stranger to them. He didn't hang out with them. If he happened to join
in a conversation, he didn't stay long and never really engaged.
    It wasn't a deliberate
choice, he just wasn't interested in doing the things they did or
talking about what they discussed. They were full of their studies,
their return to Earth. What they'd do. How they'd find a way to get
together again after they'd been home for a while. How much money
they'd get as severance pay from the military. What they might choose
as a career. How their families might have changed.
    None of that applied to
Ender. He couldn't pretend that it did, or that he had a future. Least
of all could he talk about what really preyed on his mind. They
wouldn't understand.
    He didn't understand it
himself. He had been able to let go of everything else, all the things
he'd concentrated on so hard for so long. Military tactics? Strategy?
Not even interesting to him now. Ways that he might have avoided
antagonizing Bonzo or Stilson in the first place? He had strong
feelings about that, but no rational ideas, so he didn't waste time
trying to think it through. He let go of it, just the way he let go of
his deep knowledge of everyone in his jeesh, his little army of
brilliant kids whom he led through the training that turned out to be
the war.
    Once, knowing and
understanding those kids had been part of his work, had been essential
to victory. During that time he had even come to think of them as his
friends. But he was never one of them; their relationship was too
unequal. He had loved them so he could know them, and he had known them
so he could use them. Now he had no use for them—not his
choice, there simply wasn't a purpose to be served by keeping the group
together. They didn't, as a group, exist. They were just a bunch of
kids who had been on a long, difficult camping trip together, that's
how Ender saw them now. They had pulled together to
make it back to civilization, but now they'd all go home to their
families. They weren't connected now. Except in memory.
    So Ender had let go of
them all. Even the ones who were still here. He saw how it hurt
them—the ones who had wanted to be closer than mere
pals—when he didn't let things change, didn't let them into
his thoughts. He couldn't explain to them that he wasn't keeping them
out, that there was simply no way they'd understand what it was that
occupied him whenever he wasn't forced to think about something else:
    The hive queens.
    It made no sense, what
the formics had done. They weren't stupid. Yet they had made the
strategic mistake of grouping all their queens—not "their"
queens, they
were
the queens, the queens
were
the formics—they had all gathered on their home planet, where
Ender's use of the M.D. Device could—and
did—destroy them utterly, all at once.
    Mazer had explained
that the hive queens must have gathered on their home planet years
before they could have known that the human fleet
had
the M.D. Device. They knew—from the way Mazer had defeated
their main expedition to Earth's star system—that their
greatest weakness was that if you found the hive queen and killed her,
you had killed the whole army. So they withdrew from all their forward
positions, put the hive queens together on their home world, and then
protected that world with everything they had.
    Yes, yes, Ender
understood
that
.
    But Ender had used the
M.D. Device early on in the invasion of the formic worlds, to destroy a
formation of ships. The hive queens had instantly understood the
capabilities of the weapon and never allowed their ships to get close
enough together for the