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"Do you mind if I send for your sister?"
Suddenly it was "do you mind"--but Ender had no interest in making Morgan squirm. "Please do. I'm as curious about this message as you are."
Morgan sent an ensign to bring her, and then sat down and tried to make small talk while they waited. He told two ostensibly amusing stories from his own training days--he was never Battle School material, he came up "the hard way, through the ranks." It was clear that he resented Battle School and the implied inferiority of anyone who wasn't invited to attend.
Is that all this is? Ender wondered. The traditional rivalry between graduates of a service academy and those who didn't have such a head start?
Valentine came in to find Ender laughing at Morgan's story. "Val," said Ender, still chuckling. "We need you to help us with something." In a few moments he explained about the message that had preempted hours of ansible time, shutting everything else out. "It caused a lot of consternation, and naturally, Admiral Morgan has been concerned. It'll put our minds at ease if you can open the message right here and give us some idea of what it's about."
"I'll need to watch you open it," said Morgan.
"No you won't," said Valentine.
They looked at each other for a long moment.
"What Valentine meant to say," said Ender, "is that she doesn't want you to see her actual security procedures--on a message from the Hegemon, you can understand her caution. But I'm sure that she'll let us know the contents of the message in some readily verifiable way." Ender looked at Valentine and gave her a mockingly cute smile and shrug. "For me, Val?"
He knew she would recognize this as a mockery of their relationship, put on entirely for Morgan's benefit; of course she played along. "For you, Mr. Potato Head. Where's the access?"
In moments, Valentine was sitting at the end of the desk, poking her way through the holodisplay. "Oh, this is only semi-secure," she said. "Just a fingerprint. Anybody could have gotten into it just by cutting off my finger. I'll have to tell Peter to use full security--retina, DNA, heartbeat--so that they have to keep me alive in order to get in. He just doesn't value me highly enough."
She sat there reading for a little while, then sighed. "I can't believe what an idiot Peter is. And Graff, for that matter. There's nothing in here that couldn't have been sent unsecured, and there's no reason why it couldn't have been sent piecemeal instead of in a single uninterruptible top-priority flow. It's just a bunch of articles and summaries and so on about events on Earth for the past couple of years. It seems that there are wars and rumors of wars." She glanced at Ender.
He got the King James Version reference--he had memorized long passages of it as part of his strategy for dealing with a minor crisis in Battle School several years back. "Well, transmitting it certainly took time, and times, and half a time," he said.
"I'll need to--I'd like to see some evidence that this is what you say," said Morgan. "You have to understand that anything that seemed to threaten the security of my ship and my mission must be verified."
"Well, that's the awkward thing," said Valentine. "I'm perfectly happy to let you see the entire infodump--in fact, I suggest that it be put into the library so everyone can have access to it. It's bound to be fascinating to people to have an idea of the things that have been happening on Earth. I can't wait to read it myself."
"But?" asked Ender.
"It's the cover letter itself." She looked genuinely embarrassed. "My brother makes slighting references to you. I hope you understand that neither Ender nor I discussed you with Peter in any way--anything he says is his own assumption. I can assure you that Ender and I hold you in the highest respect."
With that, she rotated the holodisplay and Ender and Valentine sat silently to watch Morgan read.
At the end, he sighed, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, his forehead on his fingertips. "Well, I am embarrassed indeed."
"Not at all," said Ender. "A perfectly understandable mistake. I'd rather fly with a captain who takes every potential threat to his ship seriously than one who thinks that losing communications for three hours is no big deal."
Morgan took the olive branch. "I'm glad you see it that way, Admiral Wiggin."
"Ender," Ender corrected him.
Valentine stood up, smiling. "So if you don't mind, I'll leave the whole thing unencrypted here on your desk, as long as you assure me that every speck of it will be downloaded into the library--except my brother's personal letter." She turned to Ender. "He says he loves me and misses me and he wants me to tell you to write to our parents. They aren't getting any younger, and they're very hurt not to have heard from you."
"Yes," said Ender. "I should have done that as soon as the ship left. But I didn't want to take up ansible time on personal matters." He smiled ruefully at Morgan. "And then we end up doing this, all because Peter and Graff have an inflated sense of their own importance."
"I'll tell my egocentric brother to send future messages a different way," said Valentine. "I assume you won't mind my sending such a message by ansible."
They were heading for the door, Morgan shepherding them, full of smiles and "I'm glad you're so understanding," when Ender stopped.
"Oh, Admiral Morgan," said Ender.
"Please call me Quincy."
"Oh, I could never do that," said Ender. "Our respective ranks allow it, but if anybody heard me address you that way, there'd be no way to erase the visual image of a teenager speaking to the captain of the ship in a way that could only seem disrespectful. I'm sure we agree on that. Nothing can undermine the authority of the captain."
"Very wisely said," Morgan replied. "You're taking better care of my position than I am myself. But you wanted to say something?"
