"We have powerful friends."
"Ender, Jakt and I are leaving today. We're bringing our three children."
"Your first one--"
"Yes, Syfte, the one who was making me fat when you left, she's almost twenty-two now. A very lovely girl. And a good friend, the children's tutor, named Plikt."
"I have a student by that name," said Ender, thinking back to conversations only a couple of months ago.
"Oh, yes, well, that was twenty-two years ago, Ender. It's not an emergency--you have twenty-two years to prepare for me. Actually longer, more like thirty years. We're taking the voyage in several hops, the first few in the wrong direction, so that nobody can be sure we're going to Lusitania."
Coming here. Thirty years from now. I'll be older than she is now. Coming here. By then I'll have my family, too. Novinha's and my children, if we have any, all grown, like hers.
And then, thinking of Novinha, he remembered Miro, remembered what Olhado had suggested several days ago, the day they found the nesting place for the hive queen.
"Would you mind terribly," said Ender, "if I sent someone to meet you on the way?"
"Meet us? In deep space? No, don't send someone to do that, Ender--it's too terrible a sacrifice, to come so far when the computers can guide us in just fine--"
"It's not really for you, though I want him to meet you. He's one of the xenologers. He was badly injured in an accident. Some brain damage; like a bad stroke. He's--he's the smartest person in Lusitania, says someone whose judgment I trust, but he's lost all his connections with our life here. Yet we'll need him later. When you arrive. He's a very good man, Val. He can make the last week of your voyage very educational."
"Can your friend arrange to get us course information for such a rendezvous? We're navigators, but only on the sea."
"Jane will have the revised navigational information in your ship's computer when you leave."
"Ender--for you it'll be thirty years, but for me--I'll see you in only a few weeks." She started to cry.
"Maybe I'll come with Miro to meet you."
"Don't!" she said. "I want you to be as old and crabbed as possible when I arrive. I couldn't put up with you as the thirty-year-old brat I see on my terminal."
"Thirty-five."
"You'll be there when I arrive!" she demanded.
"I will," he said. "And Miro, the boy I'm sending to you. Think of him as my son."
She nodded gravely. "These are such dangerous times, Ender. I only wish we had Peter."
"I don't. If he were running our little rebellion, he'd end up Hegemon of all the Hundred Worlds. We just want them to leave us alone."
"It may not be possible to get the one without the other," said Val. "But we can quarrel about that later. Good-bye, my dear brother."
He didn't answer. Just looked at her and looked at her until she smiled wryly and switched off the connection.
Ender didn't have to ask Miro to go; Jane had already told him everything.
"Your sister is Demosthenes?" asked Miro. Ender was used to his slurred speech now. Or maybe his speech was clearing a little. It wasn't as hard to understand, anyway.
"We were a talented family," said Ender. "I hope you like her."
"I hope she likes me." Miro smiled, but he looked afraid.
"I told her," said Ender, "to think of you as my son."
Miro nodded. "I know," he said. And then, almost defiantly, "She showed me your conversation with her."
Ender felt cold inside.