Peter has not written to me, nor I to him. If he asks, tell him that I think about him often, I notice that I don't see him anymore, and if that counts as "missing him," then he is missed.
Meanwhile, I had a chance to meet Petra Arkanian in transit and I have spoken--well, literally WRITTEN--to "Bean," Dink Meeker, Han Tzu, and have letters out to several others. The better I understand from them what Ender went through (since Ender's not telling), the better I will know what I should be doing but am not because, as you point out, I am not his mother and he has asked me not to do it. Meanwhile, I am pretending that it's only about writing the book.
I am an astonishingly fast writer. Are you sure we have no genes of Winston Churchill in us? Some dalliance of his, for instance, with a Pole-in-exile during World War II? I feel him to be a kindred spirit of mine, except for the political ambitions, the constant blood alcohol level, and walking around the house naked. He did those things, by the way, not me.
Love,
Your equally sarcastic, just-analytical-enough,
not-yet-wounded-nor-satisfied daughter,
Valentine
Graff had disappeared from Eros soon after the court martial, but now he was back. It seems that as Minister of Colonization, he could not miss the opportunity for publicity that the departure of the first colony ship would offer.
"Publicity is good for the Dispersal Project," said Graff when Mazer laughed at him.
"And you don't love the camera?"
"Look at me," said Graff. "I've lost twenty-five kilos. I'm a mere shadow of myself."
"All through the war, you gain weight, bit by bit. You balloon during the court martial. And now you lose weight. Was it Earth gravity?"
"I didn't go to Earth," said Graff. "I was busy turning Battle School into the assembly point for the colonists. No one understood why I insisted that all the beds be adult-sized. Now they talk about my foresight."
"Why are you lying to me? You weren't in charge when Battle School was built."
Graff shook his head. "Mazer, I wasn't in charge of anything when I talked you into coming home, was I?"
"You were in charge of the get-Rackham-home-to-help-train-Ender-Wiggin project."
"But no one knew there was such a project."
"Except you."
"So I was also in charge of the make-sure-Battle-School-is-fitted-out for-the-Human-Genome-Dispersal-Project project."
"And that's why you're losing weight," said Mazer. "Because you finally got the funding and authority to carry out the real project that you've had in mind all along."
"Winning the war was the most important thing. I had my mind on my job of training children! Who knew we'd win it in circumstances that gave us all these uninhabited already-terraformed completely habitable planets? I expected Ender to win, or Bean if Ender failed, but I thought we'd then be battling the buggers world to world, and racing to found new colonies in the opposite direction, so we wouldn't be vulnerable to their counterattack."
"So you're here to have your picture taken with the colonists."
"I'm here to have my smiling picture taken with you and Ender and the colonists."
"Ah," said Mazer. "The court martial crowd."
"The cruelest thing about that court martial was the way they savaged Ender's reputation. Fortunately, most people remember the victory, not the evidence from the court martial. Now we place another image in their minds."
"So you actually care about Ender."
Graff looked hurt. "I have always loved that boy. It would take a moral idiot not to. I know deep goodness when I see it. I hate having his name tied to the murder of children."
"He did kill them."
"He didn't know that he did."
"Those weren't like winning the war while thinking it was a game, Hyrum," said Mazer. "He knew he was in a real fight for his life, and he knew that he had to win decisively. He had to know that the death of his opponent was always a possibility."