Enders In Exile

has.
    Stay smart. They can't
take that away from you.
    Your former puppet,
Demosthenes

    Alessandra was happy
when word came that the play reading was back on again. Mother had been
devastated, though she showed it only to Alessandra in the privacy of
their stateroom. She made a great show of not weeping, which was good,
but she stalked around the tiny space, opening and closing things and
slamming things and stomping her feet at every opportunity, and now and
then emitting some fierce but gnomic statement like:
    "Why are we always in
the backwash of somebody else's boat?"
    Then, in the midst of a
game of backgammon: "In the wars of men, women always lose!"
    And through the
bathroom door: "There is no pleasure so simple that somebody won't take
it away just to hurt you!"
    In vain did Alessandra
try to mollify her. "Mother, this wasn't aimed at you, it was clearly
aimed at Ender."
    Such responses always
triggered a long emotional diatribe in which no amount of logic could
cause Mother to change her mind—though moments later, she
might have completely adopted Alessandra's point of view after all,
acting as if that's how she had felt all along.
    Yet if Alessandra
didn't answer her mother's epigrammatic observations, the storming
about got worse and worse—Mother
needed
a response the way other people needed air. To ignore her was to
smother her. So Alessandra answered, took part in the meaningless but
intense conversation, and then ignored her mother's inability to admit
that she had changed her mind even though she had.
    It never seemed to
occur to her mother that Alessandra herself was disappointed, that
playing Bianca to Ender's Lucentio had made her feel . . . what? Not
love—she was definitely not in love. Ender was nice enough,
but he was exactly as nice to Alessandra as to everyone else, so it
was plain she was nothing special to him, and she was not interested in
bestowing her affection on someone who had not first bestowed his on
her. No, what Alessandra felt was glory. It was reflected, of course,
from her mother's quite stunning performance of Kate and from Ender's
fame as savior of the human race—and his notoriety as a
child-killing monster, which Alessandra did not
believe
but which certainly added to the fascination.
    All disappointment was
forgotten the moment the message came through to everyone's desk: The
reading was back on for the following night, and the admiral himself
would attend.
    Alessandra immediately
thought:
The
admiral? There are two admirals on
this voyage, and one of them was part of the program from the start.
Was this a calculated slight, that the message sounded as if only one
officer held that lofty rank? The very fact that Ender had been
summoned so peremptorily to see Admiral Morgan was another
sign—did Ender really warrant so little respect? It made her
a little angry on his behalf.
    Then she told herself:
I have no bond with Ender Wiggin that should make me protective of his
privileges. I've been infected with Mother's disease, of acting as if
her plans and dreams were already real. Ender is not in love with me,
any more than I am with him. There will be girls on Shakespeare when we
get there; by the time he's old enough to marry, what will I be to him?
    What have I done,
coming on this voyage to a place where there won't be enough people my
age to fill a city bus?
    Not for the first time,
Alessandra envied her mother's ability to make herself cheerful by
sheer force of will.
    They dressed in their
finest for the reading—not that there had been room for much
in the way of clothes during the voyage. But they had spent some of
their signing bonus buying clothing, before the rest got turned over to
Grandmother. Most of the clothing had to meet the description on the
list from the Ministry of Colonization—warm clothes for a
chilly but not-too-cold winter, light-but-tough clothing for summer
work, and at least one long-lasting frock for special occasions.
Tonight's reading was such an occasion—and here was where
Mother had made sure that a bit of money was spent on gewgaws and
accessories. They were over the top, really, and obviously costume
jewelry. Then there were Mother's bedazzling
scarves, which looked almost ironically extravagant on her, but would
look pathetic and needy on Alessandra. Mother was dressed to kill;
Alessandra could only strive not to disappear completely in Mother's
penumbra.
    They arrived just at
the moment when the event was supposed to begin.