Enders In Exile

dare
Chamrajnagar tell them anything that would lead them to think he
intended anything else?
    He would have to send
them a very stiff letter informing them of his disappointment that they
would treat him in this high-handed and completely unnecessary way.
    No, if he sent a letter
it would go into the record. He had to keep his record clean. And they
were going to make a lot of hoopla about his being the first captain of
a colony ship to complete his mission—that would be a huge
plus for his career.
    He had to act as if
this letter didn't exist.
    The crowd was cheering.
They had been cheering and clapping over and over again while Morgan
read the letter. He looked out to see that they were now completely
surrounding Wiggin, none of them even glancing at
the shuttle, at the ramp, at Admiral Morgan. Now that he was looking at
them, he could see that everyone was gazing intently at Ender Wiggin,
devotedly, eagerly. Every word he said, they cheered at, or laughed, or
wept.
    Incredibly, they loved
him.
    Even without this
letter, even without any intervention from IFCom or ColMin, Morgan lost
this power struggle from the moment Ender Wiggin appeared in full
uniform and called the veterans by name and invoked their memories of
the dead. Wiggin knew how to win their hearts, and he did it without
deception or coercion. All he did was care enough to learn their names
and faces and remember them. All he did was lead them in victory
forty-one years ago. When Morgan was in charge of a supply operation in
the asteroid belt.
    For all I know, this
letter is a complete bluff. Wiggin wrote it himself. Just to keep me
distracted while he carried out his public relations coup. If I decided
to be obstructive, if I decided to work behind his back to undermine
their confidence in him, to destroy him as governor so that I would
have
to step in and . . .
    The people cheered
again, as Wiggin invoked the name of the acting governor.
    No, Morgan would never
be able to undermine their confidence in Wiggin. They wanted him to be
their governor. While to them, Morgan was nothing. A stranger. An
interloper. They weren't in the I.F. anymore. They didn't care about
authority or rank. They were citizens of this colony now, but they had
the legend of how they were founded. The great Ender Wiggin, by his
victory, slew all the formics on the surface of this world, opening the
land to these humans so they could come and dwell here. And now Wiggin
had come among them in person. It was like the second coming of Christ.
Morgan had zero chance now.
    His aides were watching
him intently. They had no idea what was in the letter, but he was
afraid that his face might not have been as impassive as he'd meant,
while he was reading it; in fact, his impassivity would be a strong
message in itself. So now Morgan smiled at them. "Well, so much for our
script. It seems Governor Wiggin had his own plans for how this day
would go. It would have been nice of him to inform us, but . . .
there's no accounting for the pranks that boys will play."
    His aides chuckled,
because they knew he expected them to. Morgan knew perfectly well that
they understood exactly what had happened here. Not the threats in the
letter, but Wiggin's complete triumph. Nevertheless, Morgan would act
as if this was exactly how things were always meant to turn out, and
they would join him in acting that way, and ship's discipline would be
maintained.
    Morgan turned to the
microphone. In a lull in the cheering and shouting of the crowd, he
spoke, taking a friendly, joking tone. "Men and women of Shakespeare
Colony, please forgive the interruption. This was not how the program
for today was supposed to go."
    The crowd turned toward
him, distractedly, even annoyed. They immediately turned back to
Wiggin, who faced Morgan, not with the jaunty smile of victory, but
with the same solemn face that he always presented on the ship. The
little bastard. He'd been plotting this the whole time, and never
showed a sign of it. Even when Morgan looked over the vids of him in
his quarters, even when he watched Wiggin with Dorabella's daughter,
the boy never let his pretense lapse, not for a second.
    Thank the stars he'll
be staying on this world, and not returning to be my rival for
preeminence in the I.F.
    "I won't take but a
moment more of your time," said Morgan. "My men will immediately unload
all the equipment we brought with us, and the marines will stay behind
to assist Governor Wiggin however he might