Enders In Exile

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.

CHAPTER
11

    To: vwiggin%[email protected]/voy ==PosIDreq
From: GovDes%[email protected]/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