Orson Card - Ender in exile

And Morgan was riveted. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes never wavered from full attention on Mother. And when she knelt and said "my hand is ready, may it do him ease," there were tears in Morgan's eyes. Tears!

Petruchio roared his line: "Why there's a wench! Come on and kiss me, Kate!"

Mother rose gracefully to her feet, not attempting to pantomime a kiss, but rather showing the face that a woman shows to her lover when she is about to kiss him — and her eyes, yet again, were directly on Morgan's.

Now Alessandra understood Mother's game. She was making Morgan fall in love with her!

And it worked. When the last lines were spoken and the audience stood and cheered for them all as the readers bowed and curtseyed, Morgan literally stepped onto the first row of seats so that as the applause continued, he walked onto the stage and shook Mother's hand. Shook it? No, seized it and simply would not let it go, while talking to her about how wonderful she was.

Mother's aloofness, her snub of him at the beginning, was all part of the plan. She was the shrew, punishing him for his presumption in canceling their reading; but by the end, she was tamed; she belonged to him completely.

All that evening, as Morgan invited everyone to the officers' mess — where previously he had absolutely forbidden the colonists to go — he hovered around Mother. It was so obvious he was smitten that several of the officers mentioned it, obliquely, to Alessandra. "Your mother seems to have melted the great stone heart," said one. And she overheard two officers speaking to each other, when one of them said, "Am I mistaken, or are his pants already coming off?"

If they thought that would happen, they didn't know Mother. Alessandra had lived through years of Mother's advice about men. Don't let them this, don't let them that — tease, hint, promise, but they get nothing at all until they have made their vows. Mother had done it the other way in her youth, and paid for it the past fifteen years. Now she would surely follow her own sadder-but-wiser advice and seduce this man with words and smiles only. She wanted him besotted, not satisfied.

Oh, Mother, what a game you're playing.

Do you really. is it possible. are you really attracted to him? He's a good-looking man, in military trim. And around you he is not cold at all, not aloof; or if he is, he includes you in his lofty place.

One telling moment: As he was talking to someone else — one of the few officers who had brought a wife along — Morgan's hand came to rest on Mother's shoulder, a light embrace. But Mother instantly reached up, removed the hand, but then turned at the same moment to speak to Morgan with a warm smile, making a little joke of some kind, because everyone laughed. The message was mixed, yet clear: Touch me not, thou mortal, but yes, I will bestow this smile on you.

You are mine, but I am not yet yours.

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 what everyone 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.

To: vwiggin%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/voy ==PosIDreq

From: GovDes%ShakespeareCol@ColMin.gov/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?