IGMS Issue 8 (20 page)

I slow my instructions down, until we both speak on the same clock rhythm.
Horus
, I say.
I have an emergency.

Tell/localise/state your needs.

In quick bursts of data, I send all the information I have -- the Murderers, the plague, the lone woman still clinging to my console. I can feel the AI's growing horror; its inability to imagine surviving in such solitude. It's calling for help -- sending for ships, for doctors. It's exhilarating to hear another's protocols, to hear the echo of instructions that are not mine.

"They're on their way," I tell Amanda, but her eyes are closed, and she cannot hear me. Her body temperature is stable now -- I hope she will hold out just a bit longer, that she will survive. She has to. Gently, slowly, I dim the lights in my command room, and send a breeze to cool her skin, keeping a tight watch on her vitals.

The greater part of me, though, is above. Soaring, not into the vacuum as my father once did, but over the trees. My threads mingle with the other AI's, with the atmosphere, waiting for the city's shuttles to join the network of my processes.

I am not my father. Nor will I ever be.

But this is enough; far more than enough.

To: qmorgan%[email protected]/fleetcom
From: chamrajnagar%[email protected]/centcom
{self-shred protocol}
Re: In or out?

My dear Quince, I'm quite aware of the difference between combat command and flying a colony ship for a few dozen lightyears. If you feel your usefulness in space is over, then by all means, retire with full benefits. But if you stay in, and remain in near space, I can't promise you promotion within the I.F.

We suddenly find ourselves afflicted with peace, you see. Always a disaster for those whose careers have not reached their natural apex.

The colony ship I have offered you is not, contrary to your too-often-stated opinion (try discretion now and then, Quince, and see if it might not work better), a way to send you to oblivion. Retirement is oblivion, my friend. A forty- or fifty-year voyage means that you will outlive all of us who remain behind. All your friends will be dead. But you'll be alive to make new friends. And you'll be in command of a ship. A nice, big, fast one.

This is what the whole fleet faces. We have heroes out there who fought this war that The Boy is credited with winning. Have we forgotten them? ALL our most significant missions will involve decades of flight. Yet we must send our best officers to command them. So at any given moment, most of our best officers will be strangers to everyone at CentCom because they've been in flight for half a lifetime.

Eventually, ALL the central staff will be star voyagers. They will look down their noses at anyone who has NOT taken decades-long flights between stars. They will have cut themselves loose from Earth's timeline. They will know each other by their logs, transmitted by ansible.

What I'm offering you is the only possible source of career-making voyages: Colony ships.

And not only "a" colony ship, but one whose governor is a thirteen-year-old boy. Are you seriously going to tell me that you don't understand that you are not his "nanny," you are being entrusted with the highly responsible position of making sure that The Boy stays as far from Earth as possible, while also making sure that he is a complete success in his new assignment so that later generations cannot judge that he was not treated well?

Naturally, I did not send you this letter, and you did not read it. Nothing in this is to be construed as a secret order. It is merely my personal observation about the opportunity that you have been offered by a polemarch who believes in your potential to be one of the great admirals of the I.F.

Are you in? Or out? I need to draw up the papers one way or the other within the week.

Your friend, Cham

At the bottom of the ladderway that would take them from the shuttle up into the starship, Ender stopped and faced Valentine. "You can still go back now," he said. "You can see that I'll be fine. The people of the colony that I've met so far are very nice and I won't be lonely."

"Are you afraid to go up the ladder first?" asked Valentine. "Is that why you've stopped to make a speech?

So Ender went up the ladder and Valentine followed, making her the last of the colonists to cut the thread connecting them to Earth.

Below them, the hatch of the shuttle closed, and then the hatch of the ship. They stood in the airlock until a door opened and there was Admiral Quincy Morgan, smiling, his hand already extended. How long did he strike that pose before the door opened, Ender wondered. Was he there, perhaps, for hours, posed like a mannequin?

"Welcome, Governor Wiggin," said Morgan.

"Admiral Morgan," said Ender, "I'm not governor of anything until I set foot on the planet. On this voyage, on your ship, I'm a student of the Xenobiology and adapted agriculture of Shakespeare colony. I hope, though, that when you're not too busy, I'll have a chance to talk to you and learn from you about the military life."

"You're the one who's seen combat," said Morgan.

"I played a game," said Ender. "I saw nothing of war. But there are colonists on Shakespeare who made this voyage many years ago, and never had a hope of returning home to Earth. I want to get some idea of what their training was, their life."

"You'll have to read books for that," said Morgan, still smiling. "This is my first interstellar voyage, too. In fact, as far as I know, no one has ever made two of them. Even Mazer Rackham only made a single voyage, which ended at its starting place."

"Why, I believe you're right, Admiral Morgan," said Ender. "It makes us all pioneers together, here in your ship." There -- had he said "your ship" often enough to reassure Morgan that he knew the order of authority here?

Morgan's smile was unchanged. "I'll be happy to talk to you any time. It's an honor to have you on my ship, sir."

"Please don't 'sir' me, sir," said Ender. "We both know that I'm not a real admiral, and I don't want the colonists to hear anyone call me by a title other than Mr. Wiggin, and preferably not that. Let me be Ender. Or Andrew, if you want to be formal. Would that be all right, or would it interfere with shipboard discipline?"

"I believe," said Admiral Morgan, "that it won't interfere with discipline, and so it shall be entirely as you prefer. Now Ensign Akbar will show you and your sister to your stateroom. Since so few passengers are making the voyage awake, most families have quarters of similar size. I say this because of your memo requesting that you not have an exorbitantly oversized space on the ship."

"Is your family aboard, sir?" asked Ender.

"I wooed my superiors and they gave birth to my career," said Morgan. "The International Fleet has been my only bride. Like you, I travel as a bachelor."

Ender grinned at him. "I think your bachelorhood and mine are both going to be much in question before long."

"Our mission is reproduction of the species beyond the bounds of Earth," said Morgan. "But the voyage will go more smoothly if we guard our bachelorhood zealously while in transit."

"Mine has the safety of ignorant youth," said Ender, "and yours the distance of authority. Thank you for the great honor of greeting us here. I've underslept a little the past few days, and I hope I'll be forgiven for indulging myself in about eighteen hours of rest. I fear I'll miss the beginning of acceleration."

"Everyone will, Mr. Wiggin," said Morgan. "The inertia suppression on this ship is superb. In fact, we are already accelerating at the rate of two gravities, and yet the only apparent gravity is imparted by the centrifugal force of the spin of the ship."

"Which is odd," said Valentine, "since centrifugal force is also inertial, and you'd think it would also be suppressed."

"The suppression is highly directionalized, and affects only the forward movement of the ship," said Morgan. "I apologize for ignoring you so nearly completely, Ms. Wiggin. I'm afraid your brother's fame and rank have distracted me and I forgot courtesy."

"None is owed to me," said Valentine with a light laugh. "I'm just along for the ride."

With that they separated and Ensign Akbar led them to their stateroom. It was not a huge space, but it was well equipped, and it took the ensign several minutes to show them where their clothing, supplies, and desks had been stowed, and how to use the ship's internal communications system. He insisted on setting down both their beds and then raising them up again and locking them out of the way, so they'd seen a complete demonstration. Then he showed them how to lower and raise the privacy screen that turned the stateroom into two.

"Thank you," said Ender. "Now I think I'll take the bed down again so I can sleep."

Ensign Akbar was full of apologies and took both the beds down again, ignoring their protests that the point of his demonstration was so they could do it themselves. When he was finally done, he paused at the door. "Sir," he said, "I know I shouldn't ask. But. May I shake your hand, sir?"

Ender thrust out his hand and smiled warmly. "Thank you for helping us, Ensign Akbar."

"It's an honor to have you aboard this ship, sir." Then Akbar saluted. Ender returned the salute and the ensign left and the door closed behind him.

Ender went to his bed and sat down on it. Valentine sat on hers, directly across from him. Ender looked at her and started to laugh. She joined in his laughter.

They laughed until Ender was forced to lie down and rub the tears out of his eyes.

"May I ask," said Valentine, "if we're both laughing at the same thing?"

"Why? What were you laughing at?"

"Everything," said Valentine. "The whole picture-taking thing before we left, and Morgan greeting us so warmly, as if he weren't preparing to stab you in the back, and Ensign Akbar's hero worship despite your insistence that you were just 'Mr. Wiggin' -- which is, of course, an affectation too. I was laughing at the whole of it."

"I see that all of that is funny, if you look at it that way. I was too busy to be amused with it. I was just trying to stay awake and say all the right things."

"So what were
you
laughing at?"

"It was pure delight. Delight and relief. I'm not in charge of anything now. For the duration of the voyage, it's Morgan's ship, and I'm a free man for the first time in my life."

"Man?" asked Valentine. "You're still shorter than me."

"But Val," said Ender, "I have to shave every week now, or the whiskers show."

They laughed again, just a little. Then Valentine spoke the command to bring down the barrier between their beds. Ender stripped down to his underwear, crawled under a single sheet -- nothing more was needed in this climate-controlled environment -- and in moments he was asleep.

Public spaces were few on the "Good Ship Lollipop" (as Valentine called it), also known as "IFcoltrans1" (which was painted on its side and broadcast continuously from its beacon), or "Mrs. Morgan" (as the ship's officers and crew called it behind their captain's back).

There was the mess hall, where no one could linger long, since one dining shift or another started every hour. The library was for serious research by ship's personnel; passengers had full access to the contents of the library on their own desks in their staterooms and so were not particularly welcome in the library itself.

The officers' and crew's lounges were open to passengers by invitation only, and such invitations were rare. The theater was good for viewing holos and vids, or for gathering all the passengers for a meeting or announcement, but private conversations tended to be shushed, with some hostility.

For conviviality, this left the observation deck, whose walls only offered a view when the stardrive was off and the ship was maneuvering close to a planet; and the few open spaces in the cargo hold -- which would increase in number and size as they used up supplies during the voyage.

It was to the observation deck, then, that Ender betook himself every day after breakfast. Valentine was surprised at his apparent sociability. On Eros, he had been private, reluctant to converse, obsessed with his studies. Now he greeted everyone who entered the observation deck and chatted amiably with anyone who wanted his time.