Ender in exile

CHAPTER 13

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy

From: GovAct%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov

Re: You will get this when I'm dead

Dear Ender,

I put it bluntly in the subject line. No beating around the bush. I'm writing this as I feel the seeds of death in me. I will arrange for it to be sent after they have done with me.

I expect my successor to be Sel Menach. He doesn't want the job, but he is widely liked and universally trusted, which is vital. He will not try to cling to his office when you arrive. But if it is not him, you'll be on your own and I wish you luck.

You know how hard it will be for my little community. For thirty-six years, we've been living and giving in marriage. The new generation has already restored the gender balance; there are grandchildren nearly of marrying age. Then your ship will come and suddenly we will be five times the population, and only one in five will be of our original group. It will be hard. It will change everything. But I believe that I know you now, and if I'm right, then my people have nothing to fear. You will help the new colonists adapt to our ways, wherever our ways make sense for this place. You will help my people adapt to the new colonists, wherever they must because the ways of Earth make sense.

In a way, Ender, we are the same age, or at least in the same stage of life. We long since left our families behind. As far as the world is concerned, we stepped into an open grave and disappeared. This has been the afterlife for me, the career after my career ended, the life after my life ended. And it has been a good one. It has been heaven. Busy, frightening, triumphant, and finally peaceful. May it be the same for you, my friend. However long it is, may you be glad of each day of it.

I have never forgotten that I owe our victory, and therefore this second life, to you and the other children who led us in the war. I thank you again from this grave of mine.

With love and respect,

Vitaly Denisovitch Kolmogorov

"I don't like what you're doing to Alessandra," said Valentine.

Ender looked up from what he was reading. "And what would that be?"

"You know perfectly well that you've made her fall in love with you."

"Have I?"

"Don't pretend to be oblivious to it! She looks at you like a hungry puppy."

"I've never owned a dog. They didn't allow team mascots in Battle School, and there weren't any strays."

"And you deliberately made her do it."

"If I can make a woman fall in love with me at will, I should have bottled it and sold it and gotten rich on Earth."

"You didn't make a woman fall in love with you, you made an emotionally dependent, shy, sheltered girl fall in love with you, and that's pathetically easy. All it took was being extraordinarily nice to her."

"You're right. If I hadn't been so selfish, I would have slapped her."

"Ender, it's me you're talking to. Do you think I haven't been watching? You seek out opportunities to praise her. To ask her advice on the most meaningless things. To thank her all the time for nothing at all. And you smile at her. Has anyone ever mentioned that when you smile, it would melt steel?"

"Inconvenient, in a spaceship. I'll smile less."

"You switch it on like. like the stardrive! That smile — with your whole face, as if you were taking your soul out and putting it into her hands."

"Val," said Ender. "This is kind of an important letter. What is your point?"

"What are you planning to do with her, now that you own her?"

"I don't own anybody," said Ender. "I haven't laid a hand on her — literally. Not shaking hands, not a pat on the shoulder, nothing. No physical contact. I also haven't flirted with her. No sexual innuendoes. No inside jokes. And I haven't gone off alone with her, either. Month after month, as her mother conspires to leave us alone, I've simply not done it. Even if it took walking out of a room quite rudely. What part of that is making her fall in love with me, exactly?"

"Ender, I don't like it when you lie to me."

"Valentine, if you want an honest answer, write me an honest letter."

She sighed and sat down on her bed. "I can't wait for this voyage to end."

"A bit more than two months to go. Almost over. And you did finish your book."

"Yes, and it's very good," said Valentine. "Especially when you consider I barely met any of them and you were almost no help to me."

"I answered every question you asked."

"Except to evaluate the people, to evaluate the school, to —»

"My opinions aren't history. It wasn't supposed to be 'Ender Wiggin's School Days as told to his sister, Valentine.»

"I didn't come on this voyage to quarrel with you."

Ender looked at her with such overdone astonishment that she threw a pillow at him.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I've never been as mean to you as I was to Peter all the time."

"Then all's right with the world."

"But I'm angry at you, Ender. You shouldn't toy with a girl's feelings. Unless you really plan to marry her —»

"I do not," said Ender.

"Then you shouldn't lead her on."

"I have not," said Ender.

"And I say you have."

"No, Valentine," said Ender. "What I have done is exactly what is needed for her to have the thing she wants most."

"Which is you."

"Which is definitely not me." Ender sat beside her on her bed, leaned close to her. "You will help me most by scrutinizing someone else."

"I scrutinize everybody," said Val. "I judge everybody. But you're my brother. I get to boss you around."

"And you're my sister. I have to tickle you until you pee or cry. Or both." Which he proceeded to attempt, though he didn't really go quite that far. Or at least, she only peed a little. And then punched him hard in the arm and made him say, "Ow," in a really snotty, sarcastic way, so she knew he was pretending it didn't hurt, but it really did. Which he deserved. He really was being rotten to Alessandra, and he didn't even care, and worse yet, he thought he could deny it. Just pitiful.

All that afternoon, Ender thought about what Valentine said. He knew what he was planning, and it really was for Alessandra's good, but he had miscalculated if the girl was actually falling in love with him. It was supposed to be friendship, trust, gratitude maybe. Brother-and-sister. Only Alessandra wasn't Valentine. She couldn't keep up. She didn't leap to conclusions as quickly as Val — or at least not to the same conclusions. She couldn't really hold up her end.

Where am I going to find anyone I can marry? Ender wondered. Nowhere and never, if I compare them all to Valentine.

All right, yes, I knew I was causing Alessandra to have feelings. I like it when she looks at me like that. Petra never looked at me that way. Nobody did. It feels good. The hormones wake up and get excited. It's fun. I'm fifteen. I haven't said anything to mislead her about my intentions, and I haven't done anything, not ever, to signal any kind of physical attraction. So shoot me for liking that she likes me and doing the things that make her feel that way. What's the rule here? Either totally ignore her and grind her face in her nothingness, or marry her on the spot? Are those the only choices?

But gnawing at the back of his mind was this question: Am I Peter? Am I using other people for whatever plan I have? Does it make a difference that my intention is to have a result that will give her a chance at happiness? I'm not asking her, I'm not giving her a choice, I'm manipulating her. Shaping her world so she makes certain choices and takes certain actions that make other people do what I want them to do and.

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say, "Tut-tut, what a botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll choose as we think they should?

If I tell her what I'm up to, she'll probably go along with me. Do it voluntarily.

But is she a good enough actor to keep her mother from knowing something's going on? Forcing it out of her? Alessandra was still so much her mother's creature that Ender didn't believe she could keep a secret from her mother, not for long. And if she does give away the game, then it will cost Alessandra nothing — she'll be right where she already is — while I will lose everything. Don't I have a right to count myself in the balance here, my own happiness, my own future? And on the off chance that I'd be a better governor than Admiral Morgan, don't I owe it to the colonists to make sure things work out to put me in as governor, rather than him?

It's still war, even if there are no weapons but smiles and words. I have to take the forces I have, the advantages of the terrain, and try to face a more powerful enemy under circumstances that neutralize his advantages. Alessandra is a person, yes — so is every soldier, every pawn in the great game. I was used to win a war. Now I'll use someone else. All for the "good of the whole."

But underneath all his moral reasoning, there was something else. He could feel it. An itch, a hunger, a yearning. It was his inner chimp, as he and Valentine called it. The animal that smelled womanhood on Alessandra. Did I choose this plan, these tools, because they were best? Or because they would put me near a girl who is pretty, who desires my affection?

So maybe Valentine was completely right.

But if she was. what then? I can't undo all the attention I've paid to Alessandra. Do I suddenly turn cold to her, for no reason at all? Is that any less manipulative?

Sometimes can't I switch off my brain and be the hairless chimp with an eye for an available female?

No.

"How long are you going to play this little game with Ender Wiggin?" asked Dorabella.

"Game?" asked Alessandra.

"He's obviously interested in you," said Dorabella. "He always homes in on you, I've seen how he smiles at you. He likes you."

"Like a sister," sighed Alessandra.

"He's shy," said Dorabella.

Alessandra sighed.

"Don't sigh at me," said Dorabella.

"Oh, when I'm around you, I'm not allowed to exhale?"

"Don't make me pinch your nose and stuff cookies in your mouth."

"Mother, I can't control what he does."

"But you can control what you do."

"Ender isn't Admiral Morgan."

"No, he isn't. He's a boy. With no experience at all. A boy who can be led and helped and shown."

"Shown what, Mother? Are you suggesting that I do something physical?"

"Darling sweet fairy daughter of mine," said Dorabella, "it's not for you and it's not for me. It's for Ender Wiggin's own good."

Alessandra rolled her eyes. She was such a teenager.

"Eye-rolling is not an answer, darling sweet fairy daughter."

"Mother, people who are doing the most awful things always say it's for the other person's own good."

"But in this case, I'm quite right. You see, Admiral Morgan and I have become very close. Very very close."

"Are you sleeping with him?"

Dorabella's hand flew up, prepared to strike, before she even knew what she was doing. But she caught herself in time. "Oh, look," she said. "My hand thinks it belongs to your grandmother."

Alessandra's voice shook a little. "When you said you were very very close I wondered if you were implying —»

"Quincy Morgan and I have an adult relationship," said Dorabella. "We understand each other. I bring a brightness to his life that he has never had before, and he brings a manly stability that your father, bless his heart, never had. There is also physical attraction, but we are mature adults, masters of our libido, and no, I haven't let him lay a hand on me."

"Then what are we talking about here?" asked Alessandra.

"What I did not know, as a girl your age," said Dorabella, "was that between cold chastity and doing that which produces babies, there is a wide range of steps and stages that can signal to a young man that his advances are welcome, to a point."

"I'm quite aware of that, Mother. I saw other girls at school dressing like whores and putting it all on display. I saw the fondling and grabbing and pinching. We're Italians, I was in an Italian school, and all the boys planned to grow up to be Italian men."

"Don't try to distract me by making me angry at your ethnic stereotypes," said Dorabella. "We have only a few weeks left before we arrive —»

"Two months is not 'a few weeks.»

"Eight is a few. When we reach Shakespeare, one thing is certain. Admiral Morgan is not going to turn the colony over to a fifteen-year-old boy. That would be irresponsible. He likes Ender — everyone does — but in Battle School all they did was play games all day. It takes someone with experience in leadership to govern a colony. This has never been said outright, mind you. But I have gleaned this from things that were hinted at or almost said or. overheard."

"You've been eavesdropping."

"I've been present and human ears don't close. My point is that the very best way it could all turn out is if Ender Wiggin is governor, but taking the advice of Admiral Morgan."

"On everything."

"That's better than Ender being put in stasis and sent home."

"No! He wouldn't do that!"

"It has already been threatened, and there have been hints that it might be necessary. Now, look at this picture: Ender and a beautiful colonist girl fall in love. They pledge to marry. Now he's affianced. It happens that his mother-in-law-to-be —»

"Who happens to be a deranged woman who thinks she's a fairy and the mother of a fairy."

"In-law-to-be is married or about to be married to the admiral who is most definitely going to be the power behind the throne, so to speak. Unless Ender gives him trouble, in which case he'll take the throne, so to speak, quite openly. But Ender will not give him trouble, because he won't need to. His beautiful young wife will look out for his interests by talking things over with her mother, who will then talk things over with her husband, and everything will work smoothly for everyone."

"In other words, I would marry him in order to be a spy."

"There would be a pair of loving and beloved go-betweens who would make sure there was never any conflict between the admirals on this ship."

"By suppressing Ender and making him dance to Quincy's tune."

"Until he becomes old enough and experienced enough himself," said Dorabella.

"Which would happen exactly never, at least not in Quincy's eyes," said Alessandra. "Mother, I'm not stupid and neither is anyone else involved in this. You're betting that Admiral Morgan will seize power, and so by marrying him, you'll be the wife of the governor of the colony. But because you can't be sure that Ender Wiggin won't prevail, you want me to marry him. That way, no matter who wins this little power struggle, we'll be able to cash in. Am I correct?"

Alessandra had spoken the phrase "cash in" in English. Dorabella seized on that. "Shakespeare Colony has no cash yet, darling," said Dorabella. "It's all barter and allotment so far. You haven't been studying the lessons on our colony-to-be."

"Mother," said Alessandra. "That is your plan, isn't it?"

"Hardly," said Dorabella. "I'm a woman in love. So are you. Don't deny it!"

"I think about him all the time," said Alessandra. "I dream of him every night. If that's being in love, they need a pill to cure it."

"You only feel that way because the boy you love is not aware enough of his own feelings to make things clear to you or even to himself. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along."

"No, Mother," said Alessandra. "You've been trying to do everything but tell me. What you want me to do, but refuse to say out loud, is seduce him."

"I do not."

"Mother!"

"I've already said this. There's a lot of road between pining for him and seducing him. There's little touches."

"He doesn't like being touched."

"He thinks he doesn't like being touched because he doesn't yet understand that he's in love with you."

"Wow," said Alessandra. "And all of this without a degree in psychology."

"A fairy woman doesn't need to study psychology, she's born with it."

"Mother!"

"You keep saying that. As if you weren't sure I know my title. Yes, dear, I am indeed your mother."

"For once in your life, can't you just say what you mean?"

Dorabella closed her eyes. Saying things plainly had never worked out well for her. Yet Alessandra was right. The girl was so naive she really didn't know what Dorabella was talking about. She didn't understand the need, the urgency — and she didn't understand what she had to do about it.

Candor was probably unavoidable. Might as well get it over with.

"Sit down, darling," said Dorabella.

"So it's going to be a more complicated self-deception," said Alessandra. "One that requires rest."

"I'm cutting you out of my will if you keep that up."

"That threat won't work until you have something to leave me that I want to have."

"Sit down, bratty bad girl," said Dorabella, using her playfully stern voice.

Alessandra lay down on her bed. "I'm listening."

"You can never just do what I ask, can you."

"I'm listening, and you didn't ask, you commanded."

Dorabella took a deep breath and laid it on the line. "If you don't have Ender Wiggin locked down and tied up in a relationship with you within these next four weeks, he almost certainly will be left behind on this ship, under guard or in stasis, when Admiral Morgan goes down to see how the colony is getting along. But if Ender Wiggin is Admiral Morgan's son-in-law-to-be, then he will most definitely be presented to the Shakespearians as their new governor. So either you will be affianced to the titular governor and hero of the human race, or you'll be permanently separated from him and will have to pick one of the local clowns when it comes time for you to marry."

Alessandra closed her eyes for long enough that Dorabella was thinking about throwing a cup of water on her to wake her back up.

"Thank you," said Alessandra.

"For what?"

"For telling me what you actually meant," said Alessandra. "What the plan is. I can see that whatever I do will be for Ender's own good. But I'm fifteen, Mother, and the only thing I know is the way the worst girls in school behaved. I don't think that will have any good results with Ender Wiggin. So even though I would like to do what you say, I have no idea how to do it."

Dorabella went to Alessandra's bed and knelt beside it and kissed her daughter's cheek. "My darling girl, all you had to do was ask."