Enders In Exile

complicit in
driving away two of the four people I could trust. Clumsy of me,
n'est-ce pas?
    I love you, Valentine.
I wish I had treated you better from childhood on up. Ender too. Now,
happy reading. The world is such a mess, you're glad you aren't here.
But I promise you this: I will do all I can to put things back in order
and bring peace. Without, I hope, waging too much war along the way.
     
    With all my heart,
your bratty brother,
Peter

     
    Admiral Morgan kept
Ender waiting outside his office for two full hours. It was exactly
what Ender expected, however, so he closed his eyes and used the time
to take a long, refreshing nap. He awoke to hear someone shouting from
the other side of a door: "Well, wake him up and send him in, I'm
ready!"
    Ender sat up
immediately, instantly aware of his surroundings. Even though he had
never knowingly been in combat, he had acquired the military habit of
remaining alert even when asleep. By the time the ensign whose duty was
to waken him arrived, Ender was already standing up and smiling. "I
understand it's time for my meeting with Admiral Morgan."
    "Yes sir, if you please
sir." The poor kid (well, six or seven years older than Ender, but
still young to have an admiral yelling at him all day) was all over
himself with eagerness to please Ender. So Ender made it a point to be
visibly pleased. "He's in a temper," the ensign whispered.
    "Let's see if I can
cheer him up a little," said Ender.
    "Not bloody likely,"
whispered the ensign. Then he had the door open. "Admiral Andrew
Wiggin, sir." Ender stepped in as he was announced; the ensign beat a
hasty retreat and shut the door behind him.
    "What the hell do you
think you're doing?" demanded Admiral Morgan, his face livid. Since
Ender had been napping for two hours, that meant either that Morgan had
maintained his lividity throughout the interim, or he was able to
switch it on at will, for effect. Ender was betting on the latter.
    "I'm meeting with the
captain of the ship, at his request."
    "
Sir,
"
said Admiral Morgan.
    "Oh, you don't need to
call me
sir,
" said Ender. "Andrew will do. I
don't like to insist on the privileges of rank." Ender sat down in a
comfortable chair beside Morgan's desk, instead of the stiff chair
directly in front of it.
    "On my ship you have no
rank," said Morgan.
    "I have no authority,"
said Ender. "But my rank travels with me."
    "You are fomenting
rebellion on my ship, coopting vital resources, subverting a mission
whose primary purpose is to deliver
you
to the
colony that you purport to be ready to govern."
    "Rebellion? We're
reading
Taming of the Shrew,
not
Richard
II.
"
    "I'm still talking,
boy! You may think you're heroism personified because you and your
little chums played a videogame that turned out to be real, but I won't
put up with this kind of subversion on my own ship! Whatever you did
that made you famous and got you that ridiculous rank is
over.
You're in the real world now, and you're just a snot-nosed boy with
delusions of grandeur."
    Ender sat in silence,
regarding him calmly.
    "
Now
you can answer."
    "I have no idea what
you're talking about," said Ender.
    Whereupon Morgan let
fly with such a string of obscenities and vulgarities that it sounded
like he had collected the favorite sayings of the entire fleet. If he
had been red-faced before, he was purple now. And through it all, Ender
struggled to figure out what it was about a play reading that had the
man so insanely angry.
    When Morgan paused for
breath, leaning—no, slumping—on the desk, Ender
rose to his feet. "I think you had better prepare the charges for my
court martial, Admiral Morgan."
    "Court martial! I'm not
going to court-martial you, boy! I don't have to! I can have you put in
stasis for the duration of the voyage on the authority of my signature
alone!"
    "Not a person of
admiralty rank, I'm afraid," said Ender. "And it seems that formal
charges in a court martial are the only way I'm going to get a coherent
statement from you about what I have supposedly done to offend your
dignity and cause such alarm."
    "Oh, you want a formal
statement? How about this: Hijacking all ansible communications for
three hours so that we are effectively cut off from the rest of the
known universe, how about that? Three hours means more than two days
back in real time—for all I know there's been a revolution,
or my orders have changed, or any number of things might be happening
and I can't even send a message to inquire!"
    "That's a