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And there it was: The tacit recognition that Ender wasn't going ho 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 aith each one, because Ender wasout 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 hoet as severance pay froht choose as a career How their faed

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 hi else, all the things he'd concentrated on so hard for so long Military tactics? Strategy? Not even interesting to hi Bonzo or Stilson in the first place? He had strong feelings about that, but no rational ideas, so he didn't waste tio of it, just the way he let go of his deep knowledge of everyone in his jeesh, his little ar 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 siether They didn't, as a group, exist They were just a bunch of kids who had been on a long, difficult caether, that's how Ender saw theether to o home to their families They weren't connected now Except in memory

So Ender had let go of them all Even the ones ere still here He sa it hurt them--the ones who had wanted to be closer than e, didn't let thehts He couldn't explain to the them out, that there was simply no way they'd understand what it was that occupied hi else:

The hive queens

It made no sense, what the formics had done They weren't stupid Yet they hadall their queens--not "their" queens, they were the queens, the queens were the forathered on their home planet, where Ender's use of the MD Device could--and did--destroy them utterly, all at once

Mazer had explained that the hive queens athered on their home planet years before they could have known that the human fleet had the MD Device They knew--from the way Mazer had defeated their reatest weakness was that if you found the hive queen and killed her, you had killed the whole army So they withdrew froether on their ho they had

Yes, yes, Ender understood that

But Ender had used the MD 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 MD Device to be able to set up a self-sustaining reaction

So: Once they knew that the weapon existed, and that hule planet? TheyAs Ender won battle after battle, they must have known that the possibility of their defeat existed It would have been easy for theet onto starships and disperse froan, they could all have been out of range of the MD Device

Then ould have had to hunt them down, ship by ship, queen by queen Their planets would still be inhabited by the forht us in bloody confrontations on every world, ainst us

But they had stayed And died