Enders In Exile

They
really
were
tight, and what she was doing felt
good. If she had asked him, he would have refused—he didn't
want physical contact between them—and if she had come upon
him when he was awake and simply started doing it, he would have
recoiled because he hated it when anyone thought they had the right to
touch him without his consent.
    But waking up to it, it
felt too good to stop. "I'm not doing much," he said. "Busywork,
mostly. Let the adults do the hard stuff. I've put in my time." By now,
he lied to Alessandra by reflex.
    "You don't fool me,"
she said. "I'm not as dumb as you think."
    "I don't think you're
dumb," said Ender. And he didn't. She wasn't Battle School material,
but she wasn't stupid, either.
    "I know you don't like
it that Mother and Admiral Morgan are getting married."
    Why would I care about
that? "No, it's fine," said Ender. "I suppose you take love where you
find it, and your mother's still young. And beautiful."
    "She is, isn't she,"
said Alessandra. "I hope my body turns out like hers. The women in my
father's family were all scrawny. No curves."
    Ender knew at once what
she was there for. Talking about "curves" while she massaged him was
too obvious to miss. But he wanted to see where this was heading, and
why. More specifically, why
now.
    "Scrawny or curvy,
everybody's attractive under the right circumstances."
    "What are those
circumstances for you, Ender? When will anyone be attractive to you?"
    He knew what was
expected. "You're attractive, Alessandra. But you're too young."
    "I'm the same age as
you."
    "I'm too young, too,"
said Ender. They had had this discussion before—but in the
abstract. As they congratulated each other on being such good friends
without any kind of sexual interest in each other. Clearly, there had
been a change of program.
    "I don't know," said
Alessandra. "Back on Earth, people married later and later. And had sex
earlier and earlier. It was wrong to divide them, I know, but who can
say which direction was wrong? Maybe the biology of our bodies is wiser
than all the reasons for waiting to marry. Maybe our bodies want to
raise children when we're still young enough to keep up with them."
    Ender wondered how much
of this had been scripted by her mother. Probably not much. Alessandra
really did think about things like this—they'd had enough
conversations on socio-political topics that this didn't seem out of
line for her.
    The problem was that
even though Ender understood perfectly well what was going on, he was
enjoying it. He didn't want it to stop.
    But it had to stop.
Stop or change. The back-rubbing thing couldn't go on forever.
    And he couldn't stop it
abruptly. He had a role to play. Morgan had to believe that Ender was
devoted to Alessandra, so that by marrying Dora-bella, he would become
Ender's future father-in-law. One more set of levers to control him by.
Ender had planned to do it platonically. The time he spent with
Alessandra, the attention he devoted to her, that would do the job.
    Until now. Now they
were pushing him. Through Alessandra—for Ender did not
believe she had thought of this little encounter herself. "Thinking
about your mother and Admiral Morgan?" said Ender. "Getting jealous?"
    That got her to pull
her hands away. "No," she said. "Not at all. What does rubbing your
shoulders have to do with them getting married?"
    Now, with her no longer
touching him, Ender could swivel the chair around
to face her. She was dressed . . . differently. Nothing obvious, not
like the vids he'd seen of supposedly sexy fashions on Earth. She was
wearing clothing he'd seen before. But a button less was fastened. Was
that the only difference? Perhaps, because she had been touching him
until a moment before, he was seeing her through new eyes.
    "Alessandra," he said,
"let's not pretend we don't know what's happening here."
    "What do you think is
happening?" she said.
    "I was asleep, and you
did what you've never done before."
    "I never felt like that
before," she said. "I saw how heavy a weight you carry. Not just the
governorship and all that, I mean . . . all that came before. The
weight of being Ender Wiggin. I know you don't like to be touched, but
that doesn't mean other people can't want to touch you."
    Ender reached out and
touched her hand, hooked it lightly in his fingers. He knew even as he
did it that he shouldn't. Yet the desire to do it was almost
overwhelming, and a part of him said, There's no danger in this.
Touching hands? People do it