Énouement

Chapter Fifty Seven

Ender wasn't sure how he felt now. To be commanding in this place, learning in this asteroid. And his teacher.

"Teacher, do you have a name?"
"Mazer Rackham," said the old man.

Then he was gone. From then on, Ender was either with Mazer Rackham or alone. The old man rarely spoke, but he was there; at meals, at tutorials, at the simulator, in his room at night. Sometimes Mazer would leave, but always, when Mazer wasn't there, the door was locked, and no one came until Mazer returned.

Ender went through a week in which he called him Jailor Rackham, Mazer answered to the name as readily as to his own, and showed no sign that it bothered him at all. Ender soon gave it up. There were compensations —Mazer took Ender through the videos of the old batties from the First Invasion and the disastrous defeats of the IF in the Second Invasion.

Since many videos were working in the major battles, they studied bugger tactics and strategies from many angles. For the first time in his life, a teacher was pointing out things that Ender had not already seen for himself. For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.

"Why aren't you dead?" Ender asked him.
"You fought your battle seventy years ago. I don't think you're even sixty years old."
"The miracles of relativity," said Mazer.

"They kept me here for twenty years after the battle, even though I begged them to let me command one of the starships they launched against the bugger home planet and the bugger colonies. Then they —came to understand some things about the way soldiers behave in the stress of battle."

"What things?"
"You've never been taught enough psyholgy to understand. Enough to say that they realized that even though I would never be able to command the fleet --I'd be dead before the fleet even arrived —I was still the only person able to understand the things I understood about the buggers. I was, they realized, the only person who had ever defeated the bugeers by intelligence rather than luck. They needed me here to teach the person who * could* command the fleet."

"So they sent you out in a starship, got you up to a relativistic speed--"
"And then I turned around and came home. A very dull voyage, Ender. Fifty years in space. Officially, only eight years passed for me, but it felt like five hundred. All so I could teach the next commander everything I knew."
"Am I to be the commander, then?"

"Let's say that you're our best bet at present." "There are others being prepared, too?"
"No."
"That makes me the only choice, then, doesn't it'?"

Mazer shrugged.
"Except you. You're still alive, aren't you? Why not you?" Mazer shook his head. "Why not? You won before."
"I cannot be the commander for good and sufficient reasons."

"Show me how you beat the buggers, Mazer."

Mayer's face went inscruta ble.
"You've shown me every other battle seven times at least. I think I've seen ways to beat what the buggers did before, but you've never shown me how you actually did beat them."

"The video is a very tightly kept secret, Ender."

"I know. I've pieced it together, partly. You, with your tiny reserve force, and their armada, those great big heavy-bellied starships launching their swarms of fighters. You dart in at one ship, fire at it, an explosion. That's where they always stop the clips. After that, it's just soldiers going into bugger ships and already finding them dead inside."

Mazer grinned. "So much for tightly kept secrets. Come on, let's watch the video."

They were alone in the video room, and Ender palmed the door locked.
"All right, let's watch."