Enders In Exile

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