Ender in exile

To: smenach%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov

From: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov/voy

Subj: As we approach

Dear Dr. Menach,

I have admired — and been grateful for — your work as I've studied it during the voyage. Vitaly Kolmogorov spoke of you with feelings beyond admiration — awe and deep friendship are also inadequate words — and while I have not known you as he did, I have seen your accomplishments. The fact that I and the thousands of new colonists with me will arrive to find Shakespeare Colony a going concern, instead of coming here as rescuers of a failing colony, is owed to all the colonists, of course, but without your solutions for the diseases and protein incompatibilities, it is quite likely we would have come to find no one here at all.

Vitaly told me that you were reluctant to consider accepting the governorship, but I see that you have done so, and governed effectively for nearly five years. Thank you for bending your principles and accepting a political job. I can assure you that I was nearly as reluctant to take the job myself; in my case, I had nowhere else to go.

I am young and inexperienced as a governor, though like you I have served my time as a soldier. I hope to find you in place when I arrive, so I can learn from you and work with you in helping assimilate four thousand "new colonists" and one thousand "old colonists" so that, within a reasonable period of time, they will simply be. citizens of Shakespeare.

My name is Andrew Wiggin, but I have usually been called by my childhood nickname, Ender. Since you served as a pilot during the battle within the system where now you are a colonist, it is quite possible that you heard my voice; certainly you heard the voice of at least one of my fellow commanders. I grieve for those pilots whom we lost during that action; we may not have known that our mistakes would cost real lives, but that does not remove our responsibility. I realize that for you, more than forty years have passed; for me, that battle was only three years ago, and has never been far from my thoughts. I am about to face the soldiers who actually fought that battle, and who remember those whose lives were lost because of my mistakes.

I look forward to meeting the children and grandchildren who have been born to your compatriots. They, of course, will have no memory of battles that to them are ancient history. They will have no idea who I am, or why they would be insulted by having a fifteen-year-old boy placed over them as governor.

Fortunately, I have with me the very experienced Admiral Quincy Morgan, who has kindly offered to extend his leadership over the colony as well as the ship, for as long as he remains here. Vitaly and I discussed the nature of leadership and command, and we came to think of Quincy Morgan as a man of peace and authority; you will know better than I what that can mean for the colony.

I am sorry for the burdens that our coming will impose on you, and grateful in advance.

Sincerely,

Andrew

To: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov/voy

From: smenach%ShakespeareCol@colmin.gov

Subj: Poor scheduling

Dear Ender,

Thank you for your thoughtful letter. I do understand exactly what you meant about Admiral Morgan being a man of peace and authority, and I wish I were equipped to give him the appropriate greeting. But the only soldiers among us are as old as me; our youngsters have had no reason to learn military discipline or skills of any kind. I fear you would find our attempts at maneuvers an embarrassment. Whatever ceremonies are to take place upon your arrival must be planned entirely from your end. Having seen YOUR work, observing it at least as closely as you have observed mine, I have every confidence that you will handle everything with perfect aplomb.

Not since Vitaly died have I had the opportunity to use «aplomb» in a sentence. Perhaps, since you are to be governor (to my great relief), I have simply transferred to you the style of discourse I always used with him.

It is unfortunate that your arrival coincides with an urgent and long-scheduled trip I must take. I am no longer lead xenobiologist, but my duties in that area have not simply disappeared. Now that you are coming, I can at least make that journey into the broad stretch of land to the south of us, which remains almost completely unexplored. We settled in a semitropical climate, so we wouldn't freeze to death if we could not find adequate fuel and shelter when we first arrived. Now you are bringing Earth vegetation which needs cooler climes to thrive, and I must see if there are appropriate environments for them. I also need to see if there are indigenous fruits, vegetables, and grasses that we might be able to make use of, now that you're bringing means of transportation that could make it practical for us to grow crops in one climate and consume them in another.

For reasons that should be obvious to you, I also believe that having an old man underfoot will not be as helpful to you as you imagine. When two men who have been called «governor» are together, people will turn to the one they have more experience with. And the new people, having been in stasis, will probably follow the practice of the old. My absence will be your greatest asset. Ix Tolo, the head xenobiologist, can acquaint you with ongoing projects.

I'm sure you will understand that my taking this journey does not reflect any wish on my part not to meet you or help you. If I thought my presence would be better for the colony than my absence, one of my greatest pleasures would be to shake the hand of the commander who led us to victory. Among the old coots of the colony, you'll find many who are still in awe of you. Please be patient with them if they're a bit tongue-tied.

Sincerely,

Sel

Sel began quietly to prepare for an expedition southward. It would be on foot — there had been no beasts of burden in the original expedition, and he was not going to deprive the colony of any of its vehicles. And even though many of the new edible hybrids had spread widely, he meant to pass out of their optimum climate, which meant he would have to carry his food with him. Fortunately, he didn't eat much, and he would bring along six of the new dogs he had genetically altered to be able to metabolize the local proteins. The dogs would hunt, and then he would harvest two of them — and turn the other four loose, two breeding pairs that could live off the land.

New predators turned loose in the wild — Sel knew exactly how dangerous this could be to the local ecology. But they could not eat all the native species and would not interfere with the vegetation. It would be important during later exploration and colonization to find edible and tamable creatures loose in the wild.

We aren't here to preserve the local ecology like a museum. We're here to colonize, to suit the world for ourselves.

Which is precisely what the formics had started to do to Earth. Only their approach was much more drastic — burn all, and then plant vegetation from the formics' native planet.

Yet for some reason they had not done so here. He had found none of the species the formics had planted on Earth during the Scouring of China nearly a century ago. This was one of the formics' oldest colonies, and its flora and fauna seemed to be too distant, genetically, to have shared common ancestors with the formic varieties. It must have been settled before they developed the formification strategy they had begun to use on Earth.

In all the years till now, Sel had had to devote himself entirely to the genetic research required to keep the colony viable, and then, for the past five years, to governing the colony. Now he could go into unexplored lands and learn what he could.

He could not go any great distance — he supposed a few hundred kilometers would be his limit — for it would do no good to range so far that he could not return and report his findings.

Ix Tolo helped him pack, griping about this and that — his normal behavior. Not taking enough equipment, taking too much, not enough food, too much water, why this, why not that. it was his constant attention to detail that made him effective in his job and Sel bore it with good humor.

And, of course, Ix had a mind of his own.

"You can unpack that other bag," Sel told him, "because you're not going with me."

"Other bag?"

"I'm not an idiot. Half the equipment I decided not to take, you've put into another pack, along with more food and an extra bedroll."

"I never thought you were an idiot. But I'm not so stupid I'd endanger the colony by sending both our lead xenobiologists on the same journey."

"So who's the pack for?"

"My son Po."

"I've always been bothered that you named him for an insanely romantic Chinese poet. Why nobody from Mayan history?"

"All the characters in the Popol Vuh have numbers instead of names. He's a sensible kid. Strong. If he had to, he could carry you back home."

"I'm not that old and wizened."

"He could do it," said Ix. "But only if you're alive. Otherwise, he'll watch and record the process of decomposition, and then sample the microbes and worms that manage to feed on your old Earthborn corpse."

"Glad to see you still think like a scientist and not a sentimental fool."

"Po is good company."

"And he'll allow me to carry enough equipment for the trip to be useful. While you stay here and play with the new stuff from the colony ship."

"And train the xenobiologists they've sent along," said Ix. "No doubt you've told Wiggin that I'll help him. That will not happen. I'll have plenty of work to do in my own field without babysitting the new governor."

Sel ignored his kvetching. He knew Ix would help in whatever way Wiggin needed him to. "And Po's mother is happy about his going with me?"

"No," said Ix. "But she knows he'd never speak to her again if she barred him from it. So we have her blessing. More or less."

"Then first thing in the morning, we're off."

"Unless the new governor forbids you."

"His authority doesn't begin until he sets foot on this planet. He isn't even in orbit yet."

"Haven't you looked at their manifest? They have four skimmers."

"If we need one, we'll radio back for it. Otherwise, don't tell them where we went."

"Good thing the formics got rid of all the major predators on this planet."

"There's no self-respecting predator would eat an old wad of gristle like me."

"I was thinking of my son."

"He won't want to eat me either, even if we run out of food."

That night, Sel went to bed early and then, as usual, got up to pee after only a few hours of sleep. He noticed that the ansible was blinking. Message.

Not my problem.

Well, that wasn't true, was it? If Wiggin's authority didn't begin until he set foot on the planet, then Sel was still acting governor. So any messages from Earth, he had to receive.

He sat down and signaled that he was ready to receive.

There were two messages recorded. He played the first one. It consisted of the face of the Minister of Colonization, Graff, and his message was brief.

"I know you're planning to skip town before Wiggin gets there. Talk to Wiggin before you go. He won't try to stop you, so relax."

That was it.

The other message was from Wiggin. He looked his age, but his adult height was coming on him. In the colony, teenagers his size were expected to do a man's work, and got a man's vote in the meetings. So maybe his position wouldn't be as awkward as Sel expected.

"Please contact me by ansible as soon as you get this," said Ender. "We're in radio distance, but I don't want anyone else to be able to intercept the signal."

Sel toyed with the idea of turning the message over to Ix to answer, but decided against it. The point wasn't to hide from Wiggin, was it? Only to leave the field clear for him.

So he signaled his intention to make a connection. It took only a few minutes for Wiggin to appear. Now that the colony ship wasn't traveling at a relativistic speed, there was no time differential, and therefore the ansible transmitted instantly. Not even the time lag of radio.

"Governor Menach," said Ender Wiggin. He smiled.

"Sir," Sel replied. He tried to smile back, but. this was Ender Wiggin he was talking to.

"When we got word that you were leaving, my first thought was to beg you to stay."

Sel ignored him. "I was glad to see on the manifest a full range of beasts of burden as well as milk, wool, egg, and meat beasts. Are they Earth-natural, or have they been genetically altered to digest the local vegetation?"

"Your methods were very promising at the time we left, but did not prove out until we were well under way. So all the animals and plants we brought with us are Earth-natural. They're all in stasis, and can be maintained in that condition on the surface for some time, even after the ship leaves. So there'll be time to make the alterations on the next generation."

"Ix Tolo has ongoing projects of his own, but I believe he'll be able to train your new xenos in the techniques."

"Ix Tolo will remain the head xenobiologist, in your absence," said Wiggin. "I've seen his work in recent weeks — years, to you. You've trained him to an exacting standard, and the xenos on this ship intend to learn from him. Though they're hoping you'll return soon. They want to meet you. You're something of a hero to them. This is the only world that has non-formiform flora and fauna. The other colonies have been working with the same genetic groups — this is the only world that posed unique challenges, so you had to do, alone, what all the other colonies were able to do cooperatively."

"Me and Darwin."

"Darwin had more help than you," said Wiggin. "I hope you'll keep your radio dormant instead of off. Because I want to be able to ask for your counsel, if I need it."

"You won't. I'm going back to bed now. I have a lot of walking to do tomorrow."

"I can send a skimmer after you. So you don't have to carry your supplies. It would increase your range."

"But then the old settlers will expect me to come back soon. They'll be waiting for me instead of relying on you."

"I can't pretend that we're not able to track you and find you."

"But you can tell them that you're showing me the respect of not trying. At my request."

"Yes," said Ender. "I'll do that."

There was little more to say. They signed off and Sel went back to bed. He slept easily. And, as usual, woke just when he wanted to — an hour before dawn.

Po was waiting for him.

"I already said good-bye to Mom and Dad," he said.

"Good," said Sel.

"Thanks for letting me come."

"Could I have stopped you?"

"Yes," said Po. "I won't disobey you, Uncle Sel." All the grandchildren generation called him that.

Sel nodded. "Good. Have you eaten?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go. I won't need to eat till noon."

You take a step, then another. That's the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it's a remaking of your own mind. You see things that you never saw before. Things never seen by the eyes of human beings. And you see with your particular eyes, which were trained to see not just a plant, but this plant, filling this ecological niche, but with this and that difference.

And when your eyes have been trained for forty years to be familiar with the patterns of a new world, then you are Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who first saw the world of animalcules through a microscope; you are Carl Linnaeus, first sorting creatures into families, genera, species; you are Darwin, sorting lines of evolutionary passage from one species to another.

So it was not a rapid journey. Sel had to force himself to move with any kind of haste.

"Don't let me linger so long over every new thing I see," he told Po. "It would be too humiliating for my great expedition to take me only ten kilometers south of the colony. I must cross the first range of mountains, at least."

"And how will I keep you from lingering, when you have me photographing and sampling and storing and recording notes?"

"Refuse to do it. Tell me to get my bony knees up off the ground and start walking."

"All my life I'm taught to obey my elders and watch and learn. I'm your assistant. Your apprentice."

"You're just hoping we don't travel very far so when I die you don't have so long to carry the corpse."

"I thought my father told you — if you actually die, I'm supposed to call for help and observe your decomposition process."

"That's right. You only carry me if I'm breathing."

"Or do you want me to start now? Hoist you onto my shoulders so you can't discover another whole family of plants every fifty meters?"

"For a respectful, obedient young man, you can be very sarcastic."

"I was only slightly sarcastic. I can do better if you want."

"This is good. I've been so busy arguing with you, we've gone this far without my noticing anything."

"Except the dogs have found something."

It turned out to be a small family of the horned reptile that seemed to fill the bunny rabbit niche — a big-toothed leaf-eater that hopped, and would only fight if cornered. The horns did not seem to Sel to be weapons — too blunt — and when he imagined a mating ritual in which these creatures leapt into the air to butt their heads together, he could not see how it could help but scramble their brains, since their skulls were so light.

"Probably for a display of health," said Sel.

"The antlers?"

"Horns," said Sel.

"I think they're shed and then regrown," said Po. "Don't these animals look like skin-shedders?"

"No."

"I'll look for a shed skin somewhere."

"You'll have a long look," said Sel.

"Why, because they eat the skins?"

"Because they don't shed."

"How can you be sure?"

"I'm not sure," said Sel. "But this is not a formic import, it's a native species, and we haven't seen any skin shedding from natives."

So went the conversation as they traveled — but they did cover the ground. They took pictures, yes. And now and then, when it was something really new, they stopped and took samples. But always they walked. Sel might be old and need to lean on his walking stick now and then, but he could still keep up a steady pace. Po was likely to move ahead of him more often than not, but it was Po who groaned when Sel said it was time to move on after a brief rest.

"I don't know why you have that stick," said Po.

"To lean on when I rest."

"But you have to carry it the whole time you're walking."

"It's not that heavy." "It looks heavy."

"It's from the balsa tree — well, the one I call 'balsa, since the wood is so light."

Po tried it. Only about a pound, though it was thick and gnarled and widened out at the top like a pitcher. "I'd still get tired of carrying it."

"Only because you put more weight in your backpack than I did."

Po didn't bother arguing the point.

"The first human voyagers to Earth's moon and the other planets had an easy time of it," said Po, as they crested a high ridge. "Nothing but empty space between them and their destination. No temptation to stop and explore."

"Like the first sea voyagers. Going from land to land, ignoring the sea because they had no tools that would let them explore to any depth."

"We're the conquistadores," said Po. "Only we killed them all before we ever set foot on land."

"Is that a difference or a similarity?" asked Sel. "Smallpox and other diseases raced ahead of the conquistadores."

"If only we could have talked to them," said Po. "I read about the conquistadores — we Mayans have good reason to try to understand them. Columbus wrote that the natives he found 'had no language, merely because they didn't understand any of the languages his interpreters knew."

"But the formics had no language at all."

"Or so we think."

"No communication devices in their ships. Nothing to transmit voice or images. Because there was no need of them. Exchange of memory. Direct transfer of the senses. Whatever their mechanism was, it was better than language, but worse, because they had no way to talk to us."

"So who were the mutes?" asked Po. "Us, or them?"

"Both of us mutes," said Sel, "and all of us deaf."

"What I wouldn't give to have just one of them alive."

"But there couldn't be just one," said Sel. "They hived. They needed hundreds, perhaps thousands to reach the critical mass to achieve intelligence."

"Or not," said Po. "It could also be that only the queen was sentient. Why else would they all have died when the queens died?"

"Unless the queen was the nexus, the center of a neural network, so they all collapsed when she did. But until then, all of them individuals."

"As I said, I wish we had one alive," said Po, "so we could know something instead of guessing from a few desiccated corpses."

Sel silently rejoiced that yet another generation of this colony had produced at least one who thought like a scientist. "We have more of them preserved than any of the other colonies. Here, there are so few scavengers that can eat them, the corpses lasted long enough for us to get to the planet's surface and freeze some of them. We actually got to study structure."

"But no queens."

"The sorrow of my life," said Sel.

"Really? That's your greatest regret?"

Sel fell silent.

"Sorry," said Po.

"It's all right. I was just considering your question. My greatest regret. What a question. How can I regret leaving everything behind on Earth, when I left it in order to help save it? And coming here allowed me to do things that other scientists could only dream of. I have been able to name more than five thousand species already and come up with a rudimentary classification system for an entire native biota. More than on any of the other formic worlds."

"Why?"

"Because the formics stripped those worlds and then established only a limited subset of their own flora and fauna. This is the only world where most of the species evolved here. The only place that's messy. The formics brought fewer than a thousand species to their colonies. And their home world, which might have had vastly more diversity, is gone."

"So you don't regret coming here?"

"Of course I do," said Sel. "And I'm also glad to be here. I regret being an old wreck of a man. I'm glad I'm not dead. It seems to me that all my regrets are balanced by something I'm glad of. On average, then, I have no regrets at all. But I'm also not a bit happy. Perfect balance. On average, I don't feel anything at all. I think I don't exist."

"Father says that if you get absurd results, you're not a scientist, you're a philosopher."

"But my results are not absurd."

"You do exist. I can see you and hear you."

"Genetically speaking, Po, I do not exist. I am off the web of life."

"So you choose to measure by the only standard that allows your life to be meaningless?"

Sel laughed. "You are your mother's son."

"Not father's?"

"Both, of course. But it's your mother who won't put up with any bullshit."

"Speaking of which, I can hardly wait to see a bull."

Now that the ship was rapidly decelerating as they approached Shakespeare, the crew were far busier than usual. The first order of business would be docking with the transport ship that had brought the war fleet here to this world forty years before. Without supplies for a return journey, the ship was left as a huge satellite in geosynchronous orbit directly over the colony site. Solar power was enough to keep its computers and communications running for these past decades.

The original crew, colonists now, had used their fighters as landing vehicles; their supplies and equipment for the first years of the colony had been designed to fit in or on the fighters. And all of them were equipped with ansibles. But the fighters were land-once vehicles, and had no ability to leave the surface of the planet.

Admiral Morgan's crew would service and refit the transport. They had brought new communications and weather satellites with them, which they would place in geosync at intervals all the way around the planet. Then the old transport would be given a captain and crew, and would voyage, not back to Eros, but on to another colony.

Despite all this business, Ender had no illusion that Admiral Morgan himself was at all distracted from watching over Ender's activities. The man was a planner, a plotter, and while a "man of peace" like him might seem to plod along, never doing much, he was always poised to strike.

So as they approached the key moment — the arrival on Shakespeare — Ender had to give Morgan no reason at all for suspecting that Ender was plotting anything. Morgan expected Ender to be a bright, eager boy of fifteen, and those expectations had to be fulfilled; yet Morgan was also wary of Ender's unassailable claim to the governorship. He had to be confident that Ender was content to let him be the power behind the throne.

That's why Ender went to Morgan for permission to use the ansible to communicate with the Shakespeare xenobiologists. "You know I've been studying the formics' biological systems, and now I can communicate with them in real time. I have a lot of questions."

"I don't want you bothering them," said Morgan. "There's too much to do already, working out the landing."

Ender knew that there was nothing whatsoever for the landside colony to do except stand out of the way. Morgan would land and then decide what supplies to requisition for the return trip. Whether Morgan was on it or not, the ship would return to Earth.

"Sir, the XBs need to know what grazing species we have so they can prepare to adapt them to use the alien proteins. It's a massive project, and until we have a new generation of adapted animals, there'll be no meat. You have no idea how eager they are. And I'm fully up to speed, since I worked on the manifest when we left Eros."

"I've already sent them the manifest."

Actually, Ender had sent the manifest before the ship departed. But why quibble? "The list says things like 'cows' and 'pigs. They need way more information than that. I have it; I can send it; and nobody's using the ansible, sir. This is really important." Ender almost said "really really really" but decided that would be too over-the-top boyish and Morgan might suspect something.

Morgan sighed. "This is why children should not be given adult assignments. You don't respect priorities the way adults do. But. as long as you drop whatever you're doing whenever the crew needs to use the ansible, go ahead. Now, if you don't mind, I have real work to do."

Ender knew that Morgan's «real» work had more to do with preparing to have a shipboard wedding than anything to do with the landing. Dora-bella Toscano had him so frantic with lust — no, it was affection, the deep bonds of permanent companionship — that he had agreed that she would arrive on Shakespeare as the admiral's wife, not just as an ordinary colonist.

And that was fine with Ender. He would not interfere with that in any way.

Ender went to the ansible room to send his messages directly. If he had linked from his desk, the message would certainly have been intercepted and stored, to be puzzled over at leisure. Ender toyed with the idea of switching off the observation system so that nothing he said to Sel Menach could be overheard, but decided against it. Though the security was I.F. standard, which meant that a significant number of kids in Battle School had been able to tweak it or hack it or, like Ender, get inside it and spoof it completely, he still couldn't risk having Morgan ask to see the vid of Ender in the ansible room and have the report come back that there was no vid for that timeframe.

Apart from that, he had only one short message to send to Graff, asking for a bit of help with his present situation, and then he could have a few moments of blissful privacy before doing the work he had told Morgan he was coming here to do.

He did what he always did when he had a chance to be completely alone. He rested his head on his arms and closed his eyes, hoping for a few moments of sleep to refresh his mind.

He awoke because somebody was gently rubbing his shoulders. "You poor thing," said Alessandra. "Fell asleep in the middle of your work."

Ender sat up, as she kept kneading the muscles of his shoulders and back and neck. They really were tight, and what she was doing felt good. If she had asked him, he would have refused — he didn't want physical contact between them — and if she had come upon him when he was awake and simply started doing it, he would have recoiled because he hated it when anyone thought they had the right to touch him without his consent.

But waking up to it, it felt too good to stop. "I'm not doing much," he said. "Busywork, mostly. Let the adults do the hard stuff. I've put in my time." By now, he lied to Alessandra by reflex.

"You don't fool me," she said. "I'm not as dumb as you think."

"I don't think you're dumb," said Ender. And he didn't. She wasn't Battle School material, but she wasn't stupid, either.

"I know you don't like it that Mother and Admiral Morgan are getting married."

Why would I care about that? "No, it's fine," said Ender. "I suppose you take love where you find it, and your mother's still young. And beautiful."

"She is, isn't she," said Alessandra. "I hope my body turns out like hers. The women in my father's family were all scrawny. No curves."

Ender knew at once what she was there for. Talking about «curves» while she massaged him was too obvious to miss. But he wanted to see where this was heading, and why. More specifically, why now.

"Scrawny or curvy, everybody's attractive under the right circumstances."

"What are those circumstances for you, Ender? When will anyone be attractive to you?"

He knew what was expected. "You're attractive, Alessandra. But you're too young."

"I'm the same age as you."

"I'm too young, too," said Ender. They had had this discussion before — but in the abstract. As they congratulated each other on being such good friends without any kind of sexual interest in each other. Clearly, there had been a change of program.

"I don't know," said Alessandra. "Back on Earth, people married later and later. And had sex earlier and earlier. It was wrong to divide them, I know, but who can say which direction was wrong? Maybe the biology of our bodies is wiser than all the reasons for waiting to marry. Maybe our bodies want to raise children when we're still young enough to keep up with them."

Ender wondered how much of this had been scripted by her mother. Probably not much. Alessandra really did think about things like this — they'd had enough conversations on socio-political topics that this didn't seem out of line for her.

The problem was that even though Ender understood perfectly well what was going on, he was enjoying it. He didn't want it to stop.

But it had to stop. Stop or change. The back-rubbing thing couldn't go on forever.

And he couldn't stop it abruptly. He had a role to play. Morgan had to believe that Ender was devoted to Alessandra, so that by marrying Dora-bella, he would become Ender's future father-in-law. One more set of levers to control him by. Ender had planned to do it platonically. The time he spent with Alessandra, the attention he devoted to her, that would do the job.

Until now. Now they were pushing him. Through Alessandra — for Ender did not believe she had thought of this little encounter herself. "Thinking about your mother and Admiral Morgan?" said Ender. "Getting jealous?"

That got her to pull her hands away. "No," she said. "Not at all. What does rubbing your shoulders have to do with them getting married?"

Now, with her no longer touching him, Ender could swivel the chair around to face her. She was dressed. differently. Nothing obvious, not like the vids he'd seen of supposedly sexy fashions on Earth. She was wearing clothing he'd seen before. But a button less was fastened. Was that the only difference? Perhaps, because she had been touching him until a moment before, he was seeing her through new eyes.

"Alessandra," he said, "let's not pretend we don't know what's happening here."

"What do you think is happening?" she said.

"I was asleep, and you did what you've never done before."

"I never felt like that before," she said. "I saw how heavy a weight you carry. Not just the governorship and all that, I mean. all that came before. The weight of being Ender Wiggin. I know you don't like to be touched, but that doesn't mean other people can't want to touch you."

Ender reached out and touched her hand, hooked it lightly in his fingers. He knew even as he did it that he shouldn't. Yet the desire to do it was almost overwhelming, and a part of him said, There's no danger in this. Touching hands? People do it all the time.

Yes, and they do other things all the time, another part of his mind said.

Shut up, said the part that liked touching Alessandra.

What if this did go according to Alessandra's script — or her mother's. Were there worse fates? He was coming to a colony world. Colonies were all about reproduction. He liked this girl. There wasn't going to be a huge pool of girls to choose from in the colony; there were few his age among the passengers in stasis, so it would be mostly the girls born on Shakespeare that he would have to choose from, and they would be — not from Earth.

While he argued with himself, she held his hand more tightly and moved closer to him. Beside him. Now he could feel her warmth — or imagined he could. Now her body touched his upper arm; now her other hand, the one he was not holding, stroked his hair. Now she brought his hand up to her chest. Pressed the back of his hand, not to her breast — that would be too obvious — but to her chest, where her heart was beating. Or was that his own pulse he felt pounding in his hand?

"On this voyage I've come to know you," she whispered. "Not the famous boy who saved the world, but this teenager, this young man of about my own age, so careful, so thoughtful of other people, so patient with them. With me, with my mother. You think I haven't seen that? Never wanting to hurt anyone, never wanting to offend, but never letting anyone come close, either, except your sister. Is that your future, Ender? You and your sister, in a circle that lets no one else inside?"

Yes, thought Ender. That's what I decided. When Valentine showed up, I thought: Yes, I can let her in. I can trust this one person.

I can't trust you, Alessandra, thought Ender. You're here in service of someone else's plans. Maybe you mean what you're saying, maybe you're sincere. But you're also being used. You are a weapon aimed at my heart. Someone dressed you today. Someone told you what to do, and how to do it. Or if you really know all this yourself, then you're too much for me. I'm too caught up in this. I want too much for it to go forward as you seem to be offering.

I will not let this go on, thought Ender.

But even with that decision, he couldn't just leap to his feet and say, Get thee hence, temptress, like Joseph did with Potiphar's wife. He would have to make her want to stop, so that it would never seem to Admiral Morgan that he refused her. Morgan would certainly watch the playback of this. On the eve of his own marriage, Morgan could not see Ender absolutely refuse Alessandra.

"Alessandra," said Ender, speaking just as softly as she was. "Do you really want to live your mother's life?"

For the first time, Alessandra hesitated, uncertain.

Ender took his hand back, leaned on the chair's armrests, rose to his feet. He reached for her, gathered her into an embrace, and decided that for this to work, he would need to kiss her.

So he did. He was not good at it. To his relief, neither was she. It was awkward, they missed each other a little and had to re-center, and neither of them knew what they were actually supposed to do. Oddly enough, this kiss broke the mood and when they were done with it, they both laughed. "There," said Ender. "We've done it. Our first kiss. My first kiss, of anyone, ever."

"Mine too," she said. "The first one I've even wanted."

"We could go farther," said Ender. "We're both equipped for it — we make a complete matching set, I'm sure."

She laughed again. That's right, thought Ender. Laughing is the right mood, not the other.

"I meant what I said, about your mother," said Ender. "She did this, right at your age. Conceived you when she was fourteen, you were born when she was fifteen. The age you are now. And she married the boy, yes?"

"And it was wonderful," said Alessandra. "Mother told me, so many times, how happy she was with him. How good it was. How much they both loved me."

Of course your mother said that, thought Ender. She's a good person, she wouldn't want to tell you what a nightmare it was, being fifteen and having so much responsibility.

But maybe it was good, said another part of his mind. The part that was keenly aware that their bodies were still pressed together, that his fingers were pressing gently against the back of her shirt, moving slightly, caressing the skin and body under the cloth.

"Your mother was under the domination of someone stronger than her," said Ender. "Your grandmother. She wanted to get free."

That did it. Alessandra pulled away from him. "What are you saying? What do you know about my grandmother?"

"Only what your mother told me herself," said Ender. "In front of you."

He could see on her face that she remembered, and the flash of anger subsided. But she did not come back into his embrace. Nor did he invite her to. He thought more clearly when she was standing a half-meter away. A meter would be even better.

"My mother isn't anything like my grandmother," said Alessandra.

"Of course not," said Ender. "But the two of you have lived together your whole life. Very close all the time."

"I'm not trying to get away from her," said Alessandra. "I wouldn't use you like that." But her face showed something else. A recognition, perhaps, that she had been using him — that her whole visit to him was prompted by her mother.

"I was just thinking," said Ender, "that even the cheerful fairyland she likes to pretend she lives in —»

"When did you — " she began, and then stopped herself, because of course Dorabella had done her queen-of-the-fairies bit several times, to the delight of the other colonists.

"I was thinking," said Ender, "that after such a long while, you might not want to spend the rest of your life in her fairyland. Maybe your world is better for you than her imaginary places. That's all I was thinking. She's made a lovely cocoon for you, but maybe you still want to break out of it and fly."

Alessandra stood there, her hand to her mouth. Then tears came to her eyes. "Per tutte sante," she said. "I was. doing what she wanted. I thought it was my own idea, but it was hers, it was. I wanted you to like me, I really did, that wasn't made up, but the idea of coming here. I wasn't getting away from her, I was obeying her."

"You were?" Ender said, trying to act as if he hadn't already guessed.

"She told me just what to do, how far to. " Alessandra started unbuttoning her blouse, tears flowing. She was wearing nothing under it. "What you were going to see, what you could touch, but no more.»

Ender stepped to her, embraced her again, to stop her from unbuttoning any more. Because even in this emotional moment, there was a part of him that only cared about the blouse and what would be revealed, not about the girl who was doing it.

"You do care about me," she said.

"Of course I do," said Ender.

"More than she does," she said. Her tears were dampening his shirt.

"Probably not," said Ender.

"I wonder if she cares for me at all," said Alessandra into his chest. "I wonder if I've ever been anything more than her puppet, just the way she was Grandmother's. Maybe if Mother had stayed home and hadn't married and hadn't had me, Grandmother would have been full of fairyland and beauty — because she was getting her way."

Perfect, thought Ender. Despite my own impulses, my biological distractibility, this has gone exactly right. Admiral Morgan would see that even though the sex angle didn't play according to script, Ender and Alessandra were still close, still bonding — whatever he wanted to read into it. The game was still on. Even if the romance was definitely on hold.

"The door to this room can't lock," said Ender.

"I know," she said.

"Someone might come in at any time." He thought it was best not to point out that surveillance cameras were in every room, including most particularly this one, and someone could be watching them right now.

She took the hint, pulled away from him, rebuttoned her blouse. This time all the way up to where she usually buttoned it. "You saw through me," she said.

"No," said Ender. "I saw you. Maybe your mother doesn't."

"I know she doesn't," said Alessandra. "I know it. I'm just — it's just — Admiral Morgan, that's what it is, she said she was bringing me here to find a young man with prospects, but she found an old man with even better prospects, that's what it is, and I just fit into her plans, that's all, I —»

"Don't do this," said Ender. "Your mother loves you, this wasn't cynical, she thought she was helping you get what you wanted."

"Maybe," said Alessandra. Then she laughed bitterly. "Or is this just your version of fairyland? Everybody wants me to be happy, so they construct a fake reality around me. Yes, I want to be happy, but not with a lie!"

"I'm not lying to you," said Ender.

She looked at him fiercely. "Did you desire me? At all?"

Ender closed his eyes and nodded.

"Look at me and say it."

"I wanted you," said Ender.

"And now?"

"There are lots of things I want that aren't right for me to have."

"You sound as if your mother taught you to say that."

"If I'd been raised by my mother, maybe she would have," said Ender. "But as it is, I learned that when I decided to go to Battle School, when I decided to live by the rules of that place. There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it's best to know the rules and only break them if you're playing a different game and following those rules."

"Do you think that made sense of some kind?"

"To me it did," said Ender. "I want you. You wanted me. That's a nice thing to know. I had my first kiss."

"It wasn't bad, was it? I wasn't awful?"

"Let's put it this way," said Ender. "I haven't ruled out doing it again. Sometime in the future."

She giggled. The crying had stopped.

"I really do have work to do," said Ender. "And believe me, you woke me right up. Not sleepy at all. Very helpful."

She laughed. "I get it. Time for me to go."

"I think so," he said. "But I'll see you later. As we always do."

"Yes," said Alessandra. "I'll try not to act too giggly and strange."

"Act like yourself," said Ender. "You can't be happy if you're pretending all the time."

"Mother is."

"Which? Pretending? Or happy?"

"Pretending to be happy."

"So maybe you can grow up to be happy without having to pretend."

"Maybe," she said. And then she was gone.

Ender closed the door and sat down. He wanted to scream in frustration at thwarted desire, in rage at a mother who would send her daughter on such an errand, at Admiral Morgan for making all this necessary, at himself for being such a liar. "You can't be happy if you're pretending all the time." Well, his life certainly didn't contradict that statement. He was pretending all the time, and he certainly was not happy.