Enders In Exile

pill to cure it."
    "You only feel that way
because the boy you love is not aware enough of his own feelings to
make things clear to you or even to himself. That's what I've been
trying to tell you all along."
    "No, Mother," said
Alessandra. "You've been trying to do everything
but
tell me. What you want me to do, but refuse to say out loud, is seduce
him."
    "I do
not.
"
    "Mother!"
    "I've already
said
this. There's a lot of road between pining for him and seducing him.
There's little touches."
    "He doesn't like being
touched."
    "He
thinks
he doesn't like being touched because he doesn't yet understand that
he's in love with you."
    "Wow," said Alessandra.
"And all of this without a degree in psychology."
    "A fairy woman doesn't
need to
study
psychology, she's born with it."
    "Mother!"
    "You keep saying that.
As if you weren't sure I know my title. Yes, dear, I am indeed your
mother."
    "For once in your life,
can't you just say what you mean?"
    Dorabella closed her
eyes. Saying things plainly had never worked out well for her. Yet
Alessandra was right. The girl was so naive she really didn't know what
Dorabella was talking about. She didn't understand the need, the
urgency—and she didn't understand what she had to do about it.
    Candor was probably
unavoidable. Might as well get it over with.
    "Sit down, darling,"
said Dorabella.
    "So it's going to be a
more complicated self-deception," said Alessandra. "One that requires
rest."
    "I'm cutting you out of
my will if you keep that up."
    "That threat won't work
until you have something to leave me that I want to have."
    "Sit down, bratty bad
girl," said Dorabella, using her playfully stern voice.
    Alessandra lay down on
her bed. "I'm listening."
    "You can never just do
what I ask, can you."
    "I'm listening, and you
didn't ask, you commanded."
    Dorabella took a deep
breath and laid it on the line. "If you don't have Ender Wiggin locked
down and tied up in a relationship with you within these next four
weeks, he almost certainly will be left behind on this ship, under
guard or in stasis, when Admiral Morgan goes down to see how the colony
is getting along. But if Ender Wiggin is Admiral Morgan's
son-in-law-to-be, then he will most definitely be presented to the
Shakespearians as their new governor. So either you will be affianced
to the titular governor and hero of the human race, or you'll be
permanently separated from him and will have to pick one of the local
clowns when it comes time for you to marry."
    Alessandra closed her
eyes for long enough that Dorabella was thinking about throwing a cup
of water on her to wake her back up.
    "Thank you," said
Alessandra.
    "For what?"
    "For telling me what
you actually meant," said Alessandra. "What the plan is. I can see that
whatever I do will be for Ender's own good. But I'm fifteen, Mother,
and the only thing I know is the way the worst girls in school behaved.
I don't think that will have any good results with Ender Wiggin. So
even though I would like to do what you say, I have no idea how to do
it."
    Dorabella went to
Alessandra's bed and knelt beside it and kissed her daughter's cheek.
"My darling girl, all you had to do was ask."

CHAPTER
14

    To: smenach%[email protected]
From: GovDes%[email protected]/voy
Subj: As we approach
    Dear Dr. Menach,
    I have
admired—and been grateful for—your work as I've
studied it during the voyage. Vitaly Kolmogorov spoke of you with
feelings beyond admiration—awe and deep friendship are also
inadequate words—and while I have not known you as he did, I
have seen your accomplishments. The fact that I and the thousands of
new colonists with me will arrive to find Shakespeare Colony a going
concern, instead of coming here as rescuers of a failing colony, is
owed to all the colonists, of course, but without your solutions for
the diseases and protein incompatibilities, it is quite likely we would
have come to find no one here at all.
    Vitaly told me that you
were reluctant to consider accepting the governorship, but I see that
you have done so, and governed effectively for nearly five years. Thank
you for bending your principles and accepting a political job. I can
assure you that I was nearly as reluctant to take the job myself; in my
case, I had nowhere else to go.
    I am young and
inexperienced as a governor, though like you I have served my time as a
soldier. I hope to find you in place when I arrive, so I can learn from
you and work with you in helping assimilate four