Main Narrative

Graff sits with Anderson by the lake Ender once visited. Graff has been on trial for the way he treated his students in preparation for the war. He was acquitted, and now he has no plans for the rest of his life.

Ender remains on Eros, marooned there by politicians who feel his political influence would be dangerous on Earth. He helps with efforts to prepare massive groups of human colonists to embark for the now-empty bugger worlds. One by one, Ender’s friends leave, and he is alone again.

One day Ender is surprised to find Valentine waiting for him. She has decided to immigrate to the bugger worlds, and she wants Ender to come along. Peter, she says, is now a statesman and a major figure of power on Earth. Valentine is most responsible for preventing Ender from going back; she wanted to protect Ender from Peter’s manipulation. Before leaving Earth, Valentine used her personality as Demosthenes to win Ender a position of power. If Ender chooses, he can be governor of the first new colony.

At first, Ender rejects the idea of becoming governor, but his natural capacity for leadership emerges. The colonists love and trust him, and he leads them in their new life. In spite of his responsibilities, he is most interested in learning the history of the buggers. He looks everywhere for clues about who the buggers were and how they lived.

After many years have passed, Ender gets word that another group of people wants to settle on his new world. He takes an eleven-year-old friend to scout out suitable locations. The two of them find a monument the buggers built to Ender. It is a replica of scenes Ender remembers from the mind game back at Battle School: the rotting corpse of the Giant, the playground in Fairyland, and the tower at the End of the World. In the tower, behind the mirror, Ender finds a pupa waiting to grow into a new queen bugger.

The pupa communicates with Ender’s mind, showing him the history of the buggers. The buggers had hoped the humans would forgive their original invasions of Earth. When the human ships came to destroy them, they knew they would die. They tried to reach out to humanity with their thoughts, and they sensed Ender’s mind. They learned about his life. They realized he did not know he was killing them. They forgave him.

The pupa wants Ender to let her breed, to bring a new race of buggers into being. Ender says it is impossible. However, he takes the pupa home and writes a book, Speaker for the Dead, in which he describes the buggers, their history, and their intentions. Later, through the ansible, Peter asks that Ender write a book about him, too. Ender does so, and the two books become the foundation of a new religion that focuses on telling the truth about people after they pass away.

When Ender and Valentine begin to get old, they board ships and travel at light speed, prolonging their lives indefinitely. Ender acts as a traveling Speaker for the Dead, and Valentine writes histories of every place they visit. Ender carries the bugger pupa with him everywhere he goes, looking for a place where a new queen could live in peace. When the story ends, he is still looking.