"I guess that's what you're doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is."
"I'm more arrogant than that. I'm betting your life, too, and everybody else's, and I'm not so much as asking anyone else's opinion."
"Funny," said Olhado. "If I asked somebody whether they'd trust Ender with a decision that might affect the future of the human race, they'd say, of course not. But if I asked them whether they'd trust the Speaker for the Dead, they'd say yes, most of them. And they wouldn't even guess that they were the same person."
"Yeah," said Ender. "Funny."
Neither of them laughed. Then, after a long time, Olhado spoke again. His thoughts had wandered to a subject that mattered more. "I don't want Miro to go away for thirty years."
"You will be forty-two."
"And he'll come back the age he is now. Twenty. Half my age. If there's ever a girl who wants to marry a guy with reflecting eyes, I might even be married and have kids then. He won't even know me. I won't be his little brother anymore." Olhado swallowed. "It'd be like him dying."
"No," said Ender. "It'd be like him passing from his second life to his third."
"That's like dying, too," said Olhado.
"It's also like being born," said Ender. "As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes."
Valentine called the next day. Ender's fingers trembled as he keyed instructions into the terminal. It wasn't just a message, either. It was a call, a full ansible voice communication. Incredibly expensive, but that wasn't a problem. It was the fact that ansible communications with the Hundred Worlds were supposedly cut off; for Jane to allow this call to come through meant that it was urgent. It occurred to Ender right away that Valentine might be in danger. That Starways Congress might have decided Ender was involved in the rebellion and traced his connection with her.
She was older. The hologram of her face showed weather lines from many windy days on the islands, floes, and boats of Trondheim. But her smile was the same, and her eyes danced with the same light. Ender was silenced at first by the changes the years had wrought in his sister; she, too, was silenced, by the fact that Ender seemed unchanged, a vision coming back to her out of her past.
"Ah, Ender," she sighed. "Was I ever so young?"
"And will I age so beautifully?"
She laughed. Then she cried. He did not; how could he? He had missed her for a couple of months. She had missed him for twenty-two years.
"I suppose you've heard," he said, "about our trouble getting along with Congress."
"I imagine that you were at the thick of it."
"Stumbled into the situation, really," said Ender. "But I'm glad I was here. I'm going to stay."
She nodded, drying her eyes. "Yes. I thought so. But I had to call and make sure. I didn't want to spend a couple of decades flying to meet you, and have you gone when I arrive."
"Meet me?" he said.
"I got much too excited about your revolution there, Ender. After twenty years of raising a family, teaching my students, loving my husband, living at peace with myself, I thought I'd never resurrect Demosthenes again. But then the story came about illegal contact with the piggies, and right away the news that Lusitania was in revolt, and suddenly people were saying the most ridiculous things, and I saw it was the beginning of the same old hate. Remember the videos about the buggers? How terrifying and awful they were? Suddenly we were seeing videos of the bodies they found, of the xenologers, I can't remember their names, but grisly pictures everywhere you looked, heating us up to war fever. And then stories about the Descolada, how if anyone ever went from Lusitania to another world it would destroy everything--the most hideous plague imaginable--"
"It's true," said Ender, "but we're working on it. Trying to find ways to keep the Descolada from spreading when we go to other worlds."
"True or not, Ender, it's all leading to war. I remember war--nobody else does. So I revived Demosthenes. I stumbled across some memos and reports. Their fleet is carrying the Little Doctor, Ender. If they decide to, they can blow Lusitania to bits. Just like--"
"Just like I did before. Poetic justice, do you think, for me to end the same way? He who lives by the sword--"
"Don't joke with me, Ender! I'm a middle-aged matron now, and I've lost my patience with silliness. At least for now. I wrote some very ugly truths about what Starways Congress is doing, and published them as Demosthenes. They're looking for me. Treason is what they're calling it."
"So you're coming here?"
"Not just me. Dear Jakt is turning the fleet over to his brothers and sisters. We've already bought a starship. There's apparently some kind of resistance movement that's helping us--someone named Jane has jimmied the computers to cover our tracks."
"I know Jane," said E
nder.
"So you do have an organization here! I was shocked when I got a message that I could call you. Your ansible was supposedly blown up."