Ender in exile

CHAPTER 17

To: MinCol@ColMin.gov

From: Gov%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov

Subj: Let's have a very quiet revolution

Dear Hyrum,

I have been warmly received as governor here, in no small part due to your long-distance intervention, as well as the enthusiasm of the natives.

We are still bringing colonists down from the ship as quickly as housing can be constructed for them. We are branching out into four settlements — the original, Miranda; and Falstaff, Polonius, and Mercutio. There was some enthusiasm for a Caliban village, but it quickly dissipated when people contemplated a future village school and what the mascot might look like.

You do understand, don't you, that local self-government is inevitable in the colonies, and the sooner the better. Well-intentioned as you are, and vital as it is that Earth continue to pay the astronomical (pun intended) expenses of starflight in the faint hope that it will eventually pay for itself, there is no way that the I.F. can force an unwanted governor on an unwilling populace — not for long.

Far better that I.F. ships come with ambassadorial status, to promote trade and good relations and deliver colonists and supplies to compensate for the burden they place on the local economy.

In token of which good counsel, I intend to serve for two years as governor, during which time I will sponsor the writing of a constitution. We will submit it to ColMin, not for approval — if we like it, it's our constitution — but for your judgment as to whether ColMin can recommend Shakespeare as a destination for colonists. That's where your power comes from — your ability to decide whether colonists can join an existing colony or not.

And perhaps some regulatory commission can meet by ansible, with a representative and single vote from every colony, to certify each other as worthy trading partners. In this way, a colony that sets up an intolerable government can be ostracized and cut off from trade and new colonists — but no one will commit the absurdity of trying to wage war (another word for enforcing policy) against a settlement that it takes half a lifetime to reach.

Does this letter constitute a declaration of independence? Not a very principled one. It's more a simple recognition that we're independent whether we make it official or not. These people survived for forty-one years completely on their own. They're glad to have received the supplies and the new breeding stock (plant, animal, human), but they did not have to have them.

In a way, each of these colonies is a hybrid — human by gene and cultural forebear, but formic by infrastructure. The formics built well; we don't have to clear land or search for water or process it, and their sewage systems seem to have been built for the ages. A fine monument! They still serve us by carrying away our poo. Because of what the formics prepared and what good scientists like Sel Menach accomplished in the colonies, the I.F. and ColMin don't have the clout that they might have had.

I say all this along with the sincere hope that we can eventually reach a point where every colony is visited every single year. Not in your lifetime or mine, probably, but that should be the goal.

Though if history is any guide, that ambition will seem absurdly modest within fifty years, as ships may very well come and go every six months, or every month, or every week of the year. May we both live to see it.

— Andrew

There is no accounting for the whims of children. When Alessandra was a toddler, Dorabella merely chuckled at the strange things she tried to do. When Alessandra was old enough to speak, her questions seemed to come from thought processes so random that it made Dorabella half believe that her child really was sent to her by fairies.

But by school age, children tended to become more reasonable. It was not teachers or parents who did it to them, but the other children, who either ridiculed or shunned a child whose actions and utterances did not conform with their standard of ordinariness.

Still, Alessandra never ceased to be able to come up with complete surprises, and of all times, with poor Quincy so frustrated at the way Ender had bested him in bureaucratic maneuvering, she picked this one to be completely unreasonable.

"Mother," said Alessandra, "most of the sleepers have woken now and gone down to Shakespeare, and I've been packed for days. When are we going?"

"Packed?" said Dorabella. "I thought you had been seized by a fit of tidiness. I was going to ask the doctors to test you for some odd disease."

"I'm not joking, Mother. We signed on to go to the colony. We're at the colony. Just one shuttle trip away. We have a contract."

Dorabella laughed. But the girl really wasn't going to be teased out of this. "Darling daughter of mine," said Dorabella. "I'm married now. To the admiral who captains this ship. Where the ship goes, he goes. Where he goes, I go. Where I go, you go."

Alessandra stood there in utter silence. She seemed poised to argue.

And then she didn't argue at all. "All right, Mother. So it's clean indoor living for another few years."

"My dear Quincy tells me that our next destination is another colony, nowhere near so far from us as Earth. Only a few months of flying time."

"But very tedious for me," said Alessandra. "With all the interesting people gone."

"Meaning Ender Wiggin, of course," said Dorabella. "I did so hope that you might manage to attract that fine young man with prospects. But he seems to have chosen to cast us aside."

Alessandra looked puzzled. "Us?" she said.

"He's a very smart boy. He knew that by forcing my dear Quincy to leave Shakespeare, he was sending you and me away, too."

"I never thought of that," said Alessandra. "Why, I'm very cross with him, then."

Dorabella felt a sudden tingling of awareness. Alessandra was taking things too well. This was not like her. And this hint of childish petulance directed against Ender Wiggin seemed to be almost a parody of Dora-bella's deliberately childish fairy talk.

"What are you planning?" asked Dorabella.

"Planning? How can I plan anything when the crew are all so busy and the marines are down on the planet?"

"You're planning to sneak onto the shuttle without permission and go down to the planet's surface without my knowing it."

Alessandra looked at Dorabella as if she were crazy. But since that was her normal expression, Dorabella fully expected to be lied to, and her daughter did not disappoint. "Of course I wasn't," said Alessandra. "I fully expect to have your permission."

"Well, you don't."

"We came all this way, Mother." Now she sounded like her petulant self, so that her arguments might be sincere. "I at least want to visit. I want to say good-bye to all our friends from the voyage. I want to see the sky. I haven't seen sky for two years!"

"You've been in the sky," said Dorabella.

"Oh, that was a smart answer," said Alessandra. "That makes my longing to be outdoors go away. just. Like. That."

Now that Alessandra mentioned it, Dorabella realized that she, too, longed for a bit of a walk outdoors. The gym on the ship was always full of marines and crew members, and even though they were required to walk for a certain number of minutes a day on the treadmill, it was not as if that ever felt like you had truly gone somewhere.

"That's not unreasonable," said Dorabella.

"You're joking," said Alessandra.

"What, do you think it is unreasonable?"

"I didn't think you would ever think it was reasonable."

"I'm hurt," said Dorabella. "I'm a human being, too. I long for the sight of clouds in the sky. They do have clouds here, don't they?"

"How would I know, Mother?"

"We'll go together," said Dorabella. "Mother and daughter, saying good-bye to our friends. We never got to do that when we left Monopoli."

"We didn't have any friends," said Alessandra.

"We certainly did too, and they must have thought we were so rude to leave without them."

"I bet they brood about it every day. 'What ever happened to that rude girl Alessandra, who left us without saying good-bye — forty years ago.»

Dorabella laughed. Alessandra did have such biting wit. "That's my smart little fairy daughter. Titania had nothing on you when it came to bitchiness."

"I wish you had stopped reading Shakespeare with Taming of the Shrew."

"I've been living inside A Midsummer Night's Dream my whole life and I never knew it," said Dorabella. "That was what felt like coming home to me, not reaching some strange planet."

"Well, I live inside The Tempest," said Alessandra. "Trapped on an island and desperate to get off."

Dorabella laughed again. "I'll ask your father to let us ride down with one of the shuttles and come back up with another. How's that?"

"Excellent. Thank you, Mother."

"Wait a minute," said Dorabella.

"What do you mean?"

"You agreed too quickly. What are you planning? Do you think you can sneak away into the woods and hide till I go off and leave without you? That will never happen, my dear. I will not go without you, and Quincy will not go without me. If you try to run away, marines will track you down and find you and drag you back to me. Do you understand?"

"Mother," said Alessandra, "the last time I ran away was when I was six."

"My dear, you ran away only a few weeks before we left Monopoli. When you skipped school and went to visit your grandmother."

"That wasn't running away," said Alessandra. "I came back."

"Only after you found out that your grandmother was Satan's widow."

"I didn't know the devil was dead."

"Married to her, can you imagine he wouldn't kill himself?"

Alessandra laughed. That's how it was done — you lay down the law, but then you make them laugh and be happy about obeying you.

"We'll visit Shakespeare, and then we'll come back home to the ship. The ship is home now. Don't forget that."

"Of course not," said Alessandra. "But Mama."

"Yes, darling fairy girl?"

"He's not my father."

Dorabella took a moment to figure out what she was talking about. "Who's not your what?"

"Admiral Morgan," said Alessandra. "Not my father."

"I'm your mother. He's my husband. What do you think that makes him, your nephew?"

"Not. My. Father."

"Oh, I'm so sad," said Dorabella. "Here I thought you were happy for me."

"I'm very happy for you," said Alessandra. "But my father was a real man, not the king of the fairies, and he didn't prance off into the woods, he died. Anyone you marry now will be your husband, but not my father."

"I didn't marry anyone, I married a wonderful man with whom I am bound to have more children, so that if you reject him as your father, he will have no shortage of other heirs on whom to bestow his estate."

"I don't want his estate."

"Then you'd better marry well," said Dorabella, "because you don't want to raise your own children in poverty the way I did."

"Just don't call him my father," said Alessandra.

"You have to call him something, and so do I. Be reasonable, darling."

"Then I'll call him Prospero," said Alessandra, "because that's what he is."

"What? Why?"

"A powerful stranger who has us completely under his control. You're Ariel, the sweet one who loves your master. I'm Caliban. I just want to be set free."

"You're a teenager. You'll grow out of it."

"Never."

"There is no such thing as freedom," said Dorabella, getting impatient. "Sometimes, though, there's a chance to choose your master."

"Very well, Mother. You chose your master. But I haven't chosen mine."

"You still think the Wiggin boy even notices you."

"I know that he does, but I'm not pinning my hopes on him."

"You offered yourself to him, my dear, and he turned you down flat. It was quite humiliating, even if you didn't realize it."

Alessandra's face turned a bit red and she stalked to the door of their quarters. Then she whirled around, real pain and fury on her face. "You watched," she said. "Quincy recorded it and you watched!"

"Of course I did," said Dorabella. "If I hadn't, he or some crewman would have watched. Do you think I wanted them ogling your body?"

"You sent me to Ender expecting me to get naked with him, and you knew they were recording it, and you watched it. You watched me."

"You didn't get naked, did you? And so what if you had? I saw your naked body from angles you've never even thought of during the butt-wiping years."

"I hate you, Mother."

"You love me, because I always watch out for you."

"And Ender didn't humiliate me. Or reject me. He rejected you. He rejected the way you made me act!"

"What happened to, 'Oh thank you, Mother! Now I shall have the man I love'?"

"I never said that."

"You thanked me and giggled and thanked me again. You stood there and let me make you up like a whore to entice him. At what point did I force you to do something against your will?"

"You told me what I had to do if I wanted Ender to love me. Only a man like Ender doesn't fall for tricks like yours!"

"A man? A boy is what you mean. The only reason he didn't fall for that 'trick' was because he probably hasn't reached sexual maturity. If he's even a heterosexual."

"Listen to yourself, Mother," said Alessandra. "One minute Ender is the beginning and end of the world, the best chance for a great man that I'll ever have a chance to find. The next minute, he's a gay little boy who shamed me. You judge him according to whether he's useful to you."

"No, my pet. Whether he's useful to my little girl."

"Well, he isn't," said Alessandra.

"That was my point," said Dorabella. "And yet you gave me a tongue-lashing for saying so. Do make up your mind, my little Caliban." Then Dorabella burst into laughter, and, completely against her will, so did Alessandra. The girl was so angry at herself for laughing, or at Dorabella for making her laugh, that she fled from the room, slamming the door behind her. Or trying to — the pneumatics caught it and it closed quite gently.

Poor Alessandra. Nothing went the way she wanted.

Welcome to the real world, my child. Someday you'll see that my getting dear Quincy to fall in love with me was the best thing I ever did for you. Because I do everything for you. And all I ask in return is that you hold up your end and take the opportunities I get for you.

Valentine tried to walk normally into the room, to remain perfectly calm. But she was so disgusted with Ender that she could hardly contain herself. The boy was so busy making himself «available» to all the new colonists and old settlers, answering questions, chatting about things that he could not possibly remember from half-hour interviews two years ago, when he was so tired he could hardly speak. Yet when someone with whom he had a genuine personal relationship was looking for him, he was nowhere to be found.

It was just like the way he had refused to write to their parents. Well, he hadn't refused. He had always promised to do it. Then he simply never did.

For the past two years, he had promised — by implication, if not by word — that if the poor Toscano girl fell in love with him, it would not be unwelcome. Now she and her mother had come down to the planet's surface, to do some "sightseeing." The girl was obviously looking for only one sight: Ender Wiggin. And he was nowhere.

Valentine was fed up. The boy could be bold and brave indeed, except when there was something emotionally demanding that he didn't actually have to do. He could evade this girl, and maybe he thought that was some kind of clear message, but he owed her words. He owed her at least a good-bye. It didn't have to be a fond one, it just had to happen.

She finally found him in the XB's ansible room, writing something — probably a letter to Graff or someone equally irrelevant to their life on this new world.

"The fact that you're here," said Valentine, "leaves you without any excuse at all."

Ender looked up at her, seeming to be genuinely puzzled. Well, he probably wasn't faking it — he probably blocked the girl out of his mind so thoroughly that he had no clue what Valentine was talking about.

"You're looking through your mail. That means you got the passenger log for this shuttle trip."

"I already met the new colonists."

"Except one."

Ender raised an eyebrow. "Alessandra isn't a colonist anymore."

"She's looking for you."

"She could ask anybody where I am and they'll tell her. It's no secret."

"She can't ask."

"Well, then, how does she expect to find me?"

"Don't put on this stupid act. I'm not so stupid as to believe you're stupid, even if you're acting as stupid as can be."

"OK, I've got the stupid part. Can you be more specific?"

"Extremely stupid."

"Not the degree, dear sister."

"Emotionally insensitive."

"Valentine," said Ender, "doesn't it occur to you that I actually know what I'm doing? Can't you have a little faith in me?"

"I think you're evading an emotionally difficult confrontation."

"Then why don't I hide from you?"

She wasn't sure whether to be even more annoyed at him for turning the tables on her, or to be a bit relieved that he considered a confrontation with her to be emotional. She wasn't actually sure she had enough of a hold on him for their confrontations to be emotional — on his side, anyway.

Ender glanced at the time in the computer display and sighed. "Well, your timing, as usual, is impeccable, even if you don't have a clue."

"I'd have a clue if you gave me one," said Valentine.

Ender was standing now, and to her surprise, he really was taller than her. She had noticed he was getting tall, but hadn't realized that he had passed her. And it wasn't thick shoes — he wasn't wearing any.

"Val," he said softly. "If you looked at what I say and do, it would be obvious to you what's going on. But you don't analyze. You see something that doesn't look right, and you leap past all the thinking part and go straight to 'Ender is doing something wrong and I must put a stop to it.»

"I think! I analyze!"

"You analyze everything and everybody. That's what makes your history of Battle School so wonderful and truthful."

"You've read it?"

"You gave it to me three days ago. Of course I've read it."

"You didn't say anything."

"This is the first time I've seen you since I finished it. Val, think, please."

"Don't patronize me!"

"Feeling patronized isn't thinking," he said, sounding irritated at last. That made her feel a little better. "Don't judge me until you understand me. You can't understand me if you've already judged me. You think I've treated Alessandra badly, but I haven't. I've treated her extremely well. I'm about to save her life. But you can't trust me to do the right thing. You don't even bother to think what the right thing is before you decide that I'm not doing it."

"What is it that I think you're not doing that you are doing? That girl is pining for you —»

"Her feelings. Not her needs. Not what's actually good for her. You think the worst danger she faces is having her feelings hurt."

Valentine felt the righteous anger bleed out of her. What danger was he talking about? What need did Alessandra have, beyond her need for Ender? What was Valentine missing?

Ender put his arms around her, hugged her, and then moved past her, out of the room, then out of the building. Valentine had no choice but to follow.

He moved briskly across the grassy square in the middle of the science complex — really, just four one-story structures where the handful of scientists worked on the biology and technology that kept the colonists and the colony running. Now, though, with the newcomers from the ship, the houses were teeming with people, and Ender had already asked the foremen of the crews to shift their priorities and get additional science buildings. The noise of building wasn't deafening, because there were few power tools. But the calling out of instructions, the shouted warnings, the pounding of axes and hammers, it was a vigorous sound, taken all together. The sound of deliberate, welcome change.

Did Ender really know exactly where the Toscanos would be? He certainly walked straight toward the place. And now that Valentine thought about it — analyzed, yes, Ender — she realized that Ender must have been waiting till the end of their visit, until the shuttle was loading up for the return trip. Not quite the last one, but the last that wouldn't be full of marines and crew. The last shuttle with room for nonessential passengers.

He cut it rather close, even so. Alessandra was standing forlorn at the bottom of the ramp, with her mother tugging at her sleeve, urging her to move on into the shuttle. Then she saw Ender coming toward her and broke away from her mother, running to Ender. Could the poor girl be any more obvious?

She flung her arms around Ender, and to his credit, he embraced her willingly. In fact, Valentine was surprised at the way he held her, nuzzling her shoulder with real affection. What did he mean by that? What was the girl going to think he meant? Ender, are you really that insensitive?

When she practically jumped into his arms, Ender took a step back to bear the sudden momentum; but he made sure to get his face down close to her ear.

"Sixteen is old enough to join a colony without parental permission," he said softly.

Alessandra pulled away from him, looked searchingly in his eyes.

"No," said Ender. "Nothing will happen between us. I'm not asking you to stay for me."

"Then why would you ask me to stay at all?"

"I'm not," said Ender. "I'm telling you how. Right now, right here, I can set you free from your mother. Not to take her place, not to take control of your life, but to let you take control of it. The question is, do you want it?"

Alessandra's eyes filled with sudden tears. "You don't love me?"

"I care about you," said Ender. "You're a good person who has never had a moment's freedom. Your mother controls your coming and going. She spins stories around you and eventually you always believe them and do what she wants. You barely know what you want. Here in Shakespeare, you'll find out. Up there, with your mother and Admiral Morgan, I wonder if you'll ever know."

She nodded, understanding. "I know what I want. I want to stay."

"Then stay," said Ender.

"Tell her," said Alessandra. "Please."

"No."

"If I talk to her, she'll find some reason why I'm being stupid."

"Don't believe her."

"She'll make me feel guilty. Like I'm doing something really awful to her."

"You're not. In a way, you're setting her free, too. She can have Morgan's children and not worry about you."

"You know about that? You know she's going to have children with him?"

Ender sighed. "We don't have time for this conversation now. Your mother's coming because the shuttle has to leave and she expects you to be on it. If you decide to stay, I'll back you up. If you go with her willingly, I won't lift a hand to stop you."

Then Ender stepped away from her, just as Dorabella arrived.

"I can see what he's doing," said Mother. "Promising you anything you want, just to get you to stay and become his plaything."

"Mother," said Alessandra, "you don't know what you're talking about."

"I know that whatever he promised you is a lie. He doesn't love you."

"I know he doesn't," said Alessandra. "He told me he doesn't."

It was rather satisfying to see how surprised Mother looked. "Then what was all that hugging about? The way he nuzzled you?"

"He was whispering in my ear."

"What did he say?"

"He only reminded me of something I already knew," said Alessandra.

"Tell me on the shuttle, my dear little fairy princess, because they're getting quite impatient. They don't want to make your father angry by arriving late."

It hadn't been a whole day since Alessandra told her mother never to call Quincy her "father," and she was already doing it again. That's how it always was — Mother decided how things should be, and nothing Alessandra did could change her. Instead Alessandra always had to change. Whatever Mother wanted, eventually Alessandra would go along with because it was easier. Mother made sure that doing things her way was always easier.

The only time I ever defied her was behind her back. When she wasn't looking, when I could pretend she wouldn't know. I walk in fear of her, even though she's not a monster like my grandmother. Or. or maybe she is, but I never defied her enough to find out.

I don't have to go with her. I can stay here.

But Ender doesn't love me. Who do I have here? No friends, really. People I know from the voyage, but they all related to Mother, not to me. They talked about me, right in front of me, because Mother did. When they did speak to me, it was to say the things that Mother had virtually commanded them to say. I have no friends.

Ender and Valentine were the only ones who treated me like a person in my own right. And Ender doesn't love me.

Why doesn't he love me? What's wrong with me? I'm pretty, I'm smart. Not as smart as he is, or Valentine is, but nobody's that smart, not even on Earth. He said he desired me, that time back on the ship. He wants me, but he doesn't love me. I'm just a body to him, just a big nothing, and if I stay here, I'll be reminded of that all the time.

"My fairy darling," said Mother, tugging at her sleeve again. "Come with me. We're going to be so happy together, voyaging among the stars! You'll get a superb education with the midshipmen — your father already promised me that — and by the time you're the right age, we'll certainly be back near Earth, so you can go to a real university and you can find a man instead of this obnoxious, self-centered boy."

By now Mother was almost dragging her toward the shuttle. It was how things always went. Mother made it seem so inevitable to go along with her plans. And the alternatives were always so awful. Other people never understood Alessandra the way Mother did.

But Mother doesn't, thought Alessandra. She doesn't understand me. She just understands the insane picture she has of me. Her fairy changeling daughter.

Alessandra looked back over her shoulder, looking for Ender. There he was, showing nothing on his face at all. How can he do that? Has he no feelings? Won't he miss me? Won't he call me back? Won't he plead for me?

No. He said he wouldn't. He told me. my own choice. willingly.

Am I going with her willingly?

She's dragging at me, but not with very much force at all. She's talking me into it with every step, and I'm going. Like the rats following the pied piper of Hamelin. The music of her voice entrances me, and I follow, and then I find myself. here, on the ramp, heading to the shuttle.

Going back to where I'll be under her thumb all the time. A rival to the children she and Quincy have together. A nuisance, ultimately. What will happen then, when she turns on me? And even if she doesn't, it will only be because I'm complying completely with what she wants for me.

Alessandra stopped.

Mother's hand slipped away from her arm — she really hadn't been gripping her, or just barely.

"Alessandra," said Mother. "I saw you look back at him, but you see? He doesn't want you. He isn't calling for you. There's nothing for you here. But up there, in the stars, there's my love for you. There's the magic of our wonderful world together."

But their wonderful world together wasn't magic, it was a nightmare that Mother only called magic. And now there was someone else in that "wonderful world," someone that Mother was sleeping with and going to have babies with.

Mother isn't just lying to me, she's lying to herself. She doesn't really want me there. She has found her own new life, and she's only pretending that nothing will be changed by it. The fact is that Mother desperately needs to be rid of me, so she can get on with her happiness. For sixteen years I've been the weight dragging her down, holding her to the ground, keeping her from doing any of the things she dreamed of. Now she has the man of her dreams — well, a man who can give her the life of her dreams. And I am in the way.

"Mother," said Alessandra. "I'm not going with you."

"Yes you are."

"I'm sixteen," said Alessandra. "The law says I can decide for myself whether to join a colony."

"Nonsense."

"It's true. Valentine Wiggin joined this colony when she was only fifteen. Her parents didn't want her to, but she did it."

"Is that the lie she told you? It may seem romantic and brave, but you'll just be lonely all the time."

"Mother," said Alessandra. "I'm lonely all the time anyway."

Mother recoiled from her words. "How can you say that, you ungrateful little brat," she said. "I'm with you. You're never lonely."

"I'm always lonely," said Alessandra. "And you're never with me. You're with your darling angel fairy changeling child. And that's not me."

Alessandra turned away and headed back down the ramp.

She heard Mother's footsteps. No, she felt them, as the ramp bounced slightly under the impact of her feet.

Then she felt Mother shove her from behind, a brutal shove that threw her completely off balance. "Go, then, you little bitch!" Mother screamed.

Alessandra struggled to get her feet under her, but her upper body was moving far faster than her feet could match, and she felt herself falling forward, the ramp looking so steep, she was going to hit so hard and her hands wouldn't be able to hold her up —

All of those thoughts in a split second, and then she felt her arm grabbed from behind and instead of hitting the ramp she swung down and then up again and it wasn't Mother who caught her, Mother was still a few steps away, where she had been when she shoved her. This was Ensign Akbar, and his face looked so concerned, so kind.

"Are you all right?" he said, once he had her standing up.

"That's right!" Mother shouted. "Bring that ungrateful little brat right inside here."

"Do you want to go back to the ship with us?" asked Ensign Akbar.

"Of course she does," said Mother, who was now at Akbar's elbow. Alessandra could see the transformation in Mother's face as she switched from the screamer who called Alessandra a bitch and a brat to the sweet fairy queen. "My darling fairy child is only happy when she's with her mother."

"I think I want to stay here," said Alessandra softly. "Will you let me go?"

Ensign Akbar leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, exactly as Ender had done. "I wish I could stay here with you," he said. Then he stood up to military attention. "Good-bye, Alessandra Toscano. Have a happy life here in this good world."

"What are you saying! My husband will court-martial you for this!" The Mother moved past him, heading for Alessandra, a hand reaching out for her like the bony hand of death.

Ensign Akbar caught her by the wrist.

"How dare you," she hissed directly into his face. "You've signed your death warrant for mutiny."

"Admiral Morgan will approve of my preventing his wife from breaking the law," said Ensign Akbar. "He will approve of my allowing this free colonist to exercise her right to fulfil her contract and stay in this colony."

Mother put her face right up into his, and Alessandra could see how flecks of her spittle sprayed right into his mouth, his nose, and onto his chin and cheeks. Yet he didn't budge. "It won't be about this, you fool," she said. "It will be about the time you tried to rape me in a darkened room on the ship."

For a moment, Alessandra found herself wondering when such a thing might have happened, and why Mother didn't mention it at the time.

Then she realized: It hadn't happened. Mother only intended to say it had. She was threatening Ensign Akbar with a lie. And there was one thing for sure — Mother was a good liar. Because she believed her own lies.

But Akbar only smiled. "The lady Dorabella Morgan has forgotten something."

"What is that?"

"Everything is recorded." Then Akbar let go of Mother's wrist, turned her around, and gave her a gentle nudge up the ramp.

Alessandra couldn't help herself. She gave one short, sharp laugh.

Mother whirled around, her face full of rage. Looking so much like Grandmother. "Grandmother," Alessandra said aloud. "I thought we left her behind, but look, we brought her with us."

It was the cruelest thing Alessandra could have said, that was plain. Mother was dumbstruck with the pain of it. Yet it was also the simple truth, and Alessandra hadn't said it to hurt her mother, it had simply spilled out of her mouth the moment she realized it was so.

"Good-bye, Mother," said Alessandra. "Have lots of babies with Admiral Morgan. Be happy all the time. I wish you would. I hope you will." Then she let Ensign Akbar take her down the ramp.

Ender was there — he had come closer while Mother was distracting her, and Alessandra hadn't realized it. He had come for her after all.

She and Akbar reached the base of the ramp; she noticed that Ender did not set foot on it.

"Ensign Akbar," said Ender, "you're mistaken about Admiral Morgan. He will believe her, if only to have peace with her."

"I'm afraid you're right," he said. "But what can I do?"

"You can resign your commission. Both by real time and relativistic time, your term of enlistment has expired."

"I can't resign in mid-voyage," said Akbar.

"But you're not in mid-voyage," said Ender. "You're in a port that is under the authority of the Hegemony, in the person of myself, the governor."

"He won't let it happen," said Akbar.

"Yes he will," said Ender. "He will obey the law, because it's the same law that gives him his absolute authority during a voyage. If he breaks it against you, then it can be broken against him. He knows that."

"And if he didn't," said Akbar, "you're telling him right now."

Only then did Alessandra realize that their words were still being recorded.

"I am," said Ender. "So you don't have to face the consequences of defying Mrs. Morgan. You acted with complete propriety. Here in the town of Miranda, you'll be treated with the respect that a man of your integrity deserves." Ender turned and with a sweep of his hand indicated the whole settlement. "The town is very small. But look — it's so much larger than the ship."

It was true. Alessandra could see that now for the first time. That this place was huge. There was room to get away from people if you didn't like them. Room to carve out a space for yourself, to say things that nobody else could hear, to think your own thoughts.

I've made the right choice.

Ensign Akbar stepped off the end of the ramp. So did Alessandra. Back on the ramp, Mother howled something. But Alessandra did not make any sense of the sound. She could hear no words in it, though surely words were being said.

She didn't have to hear it. She didn't have to understand it. She no longer lived in Mother's world.