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This is what Mother meant for me to do with Ender Wiggin, my supposed "young man with prospects." But I could no more come to own a man that way than I could fly. I will always be the supplicant, never the seducer; always grateful, never gracious.
Ender came up to her. "Your mother was brilliant tonight," he said.
Of course that's what he said. That's whateveryone was saying.
"But I know something they don't know," he said.
"What's that?" asked Alessandra.
"I know that the only reason my performance was good at all was because of you. All of us who played the suitors of Bianca, all that comedy, everything rested on the audience believing that we would yearn for you. And you were so lovely, no one doubted it for a moment."
He smiled at her and then walked away to rejoin his sister.
Leaving Alessandra gasping.
CHAPTER 11
To: vwiggin%[email protected]/voy ==PosIDreq
From: GovDes%[email protected]/voy
Subj: How clean is your desk?
My desk is completely tamper-proof--though the ship's computer tries to install snoops many times a day. Also, I'm assuming every room, corridor, toilet, and cupboard on this ship is wired at least for sound. On a voyage like this, with no outsider force to buttress the captain's authority, the danger of mutiny is ever present, and it is not paranoia for Morgan to monitor all conversations of people he thinks pose a danger to the ship's internal security.
It is unfortunate but predictable that he would regard me as such a danger. I have authority that does not depend in any way on him or his good wishes. His threat to have me put in stasis and returned to Eros--eighty years from now--is one that he can, in fact, carry out, and even though he might be censured it would not be regarded as a criminal act. There is a strong presumption that the captain of a ship is always to be believed when he makes a charge of mutiny or conspiracy. It is dangerous for me even to encrypt this message. However, there is no other safe way for us to talk. (You'll notice that unlike Peter, I required proof that you be alive, not just your finger inserted into holospace.)
I am doing things that are certainly driving Quincy crazy. I get almost daily (monthly) messages from Acting Governor Kolmogorov, keeping me abreast of events in Shakespeare Colony as they transpire. Morgan has no idea what we say to each other; he simply has to pass along the encrypted notes when they come through the ansible.
I also get all the scientific papers and reports filed by the chem and bio teams. XB Sel Menach is the Linnaeus and Darwin of this planet. He is facing the ONLY non-formic-homeworld biota yet discovered (besides Earth's, of course), and he has done a brilliant job of making the genetic adaptations that create human-edible varieties of native plants and animals, and varieties of Earth species that can thrive on this world. Without him, we would probably be coming to a ragged and destitute colony; instead, they generate surpluses of food and will be able to resupply this ship for immediate departure (inshallah).
All of this scientific information is available to Admiral Morgan, if he's interested. He seems not to be. I am the only person who is accessing the Shakespeare Colony XB papers on this ship, since our XBs are in stasis and won't wake up until we drop from relativistic speeds.
You can see why I chose not to go into stasis--I had visions of Admiral Morgan not bothering to rouse me until he was firmly in control of the colony, say six months after arrival. It wouldn't have been within his rights, but it would certainly have been in his power. And who is to contradict him, with his forty marines whose sole duty is to make sure his will is uncontested, and a crew whose survival and freedom are tied to his pleasure?
Now, though, anything I do is a potential provocation--that's what he made very clear with his actions and threats. I don't think that was his purpose--I think he really believed he was facing some kind of attack. But he was too hasty to leap to the conclusion that I was responsible for it, and he was paranoid enough to try to resolve it as if it were an attack on his authority, rather than on the ship itself. We are on notice, and not a word can pass between us that mocks him, denigrates him, or questions his decisions.
Nor can we trust anyone else. While Governor Kolmogorov is completely in my confidence (and vice versa), no one else on the planet can be trusted to agree that having a fifteen-year-old boy as their governor is a good idea. Therefore I can take no preemptive actions using my future authority as governor. So my only alternative is to appear as if I really look up to Quincy in a fatherly way, and intend to be guided by him in every way. When you see me sucking up shamelessly, it is the moral equivalent of war. I am passing an army under his nose, masquerading as a bunch of simple farmers. That you and I are the entire army is not a problem for me--as long as you're willing to pretend to be all innocence. You and Peter were doing that for years, weren't you?
This letter is not going to be followed by many others--only in a real emergency. I don't want him wondering what we're saying to each other. He has the right to seize our desks and force us to disclose all contents. Therefore, you will eradicate this message, as will I. Of course, I AM taking the precaution of copying it, fully secure, to Graff. In case there is someday a court martial determining whether Morgan was right to put me in stasis and take me back to Eros, I want this to be available as evidence of my state of mind after our little incident over Peter's message.
There is always the chance, however, that Morgan's plan is even more dire--that he plans to send the ship back rather than taking it, while he remains on Shakespeare as governor-for-life. By the time anyone from Eros can be sent to put down his rebellion, he will have finished out his lifespan or be so old as to be not worth prosecuting.
However, I do not believe that is in his character. He is a creature of bureaucracy--he wants supremacy, not autonomy. Also, my judgment of him so far is that he can only do perfidious acts that he can morally justify in his own mind. Thus he must work himself into a frenzy over my supposed sabotage of ansible communications in order to justify what would have amounted to a coup d'etat against me as governor.
This only refers to what he consciously plans, not what he unconsciously desires. That is, he will think that he is responding to events as they unfold, but in fact he will be interpreting events to justify actions that he wants to take--even though he does not know he wants to take them. Thus when we arrive on Shakespeare, there is always the chance that he will find there's an "emergency" that requires him to stay longer than the ship can stay, "forcing" him to send it back and remain behind.
The need to understand Quincy is why I am remaining so close to the Toscanos. The mother is clearly betting on Quincy rather than me as the future power, though in her mind she is no doubt merely hedging her bets, to make sure that no matter who governs, either she or her daughter will be married to the powerful figure.
But the mother has no intention of letting her daughter out from under her thumb, as she would be if we married and I actually become governor in fact as well as name. So, deliberately or not, the mother will be my enemy in this; however, at present she is my best guide to Quincy's state of mind, since she is with him as often as possible. I must get to know this man. Our future depends on knowing what he is going to do before he does it.
Meanwhile, you have no idea what a relief it is to me that there is someone who shares this with me. In all my years in Battle School, the closest I came to having a confidant was Bean. Yet I could only burden him up to a certain point; this letter is my first exercise in genuine candor since I talked to you on the lake in North Carolina so long ago.
Oh, wait. It was only three years. Less? Time is so confusing. Thank you for being with me, Valentine. I only hope that I can keep it from being a meaningless exercise that takes us back to Eros in stasis, with eighty years of human history gone and absolutely nothing accomplished except my being defeated by a bureaucrat.
Ender
What Virlomi hadn't counted on was the way it would affect her, returning to Battle School after all that she had been through, all that she had done.
