IGMS Issue 8 (23 page)

"Let me have a look at it," said Ender. "Though I can't promise to open it, since I have no idea what it is or who it's from."

"It's from
you,
" said Morgan acidly. "You arranged this before you left."

"I did not do so, Admiral Morgan," said Ender. "I assume you have a secure access point here in your office?"

"Come around here and open it now," said Morgan.

"I suggest you rotate the terminal, Admiral Morgan," said Ender.

"I said come sit here!"

"Respectfully, Admiral Morgan, there will be no vid of me sitting at your desk."

Morgan stared at him, his face growing redder again. Then he reached down and rotated the holodisplay on his desk so it faced Ender.

Ender leaned forward and poked a couple of menu choices in the holodisplay as Admiral Morgan came around behind him to watch. "Move slowly so I can see what you're doing."

"I'm doing nothing," said Ender.

"Then you're going into stasis, boy. You were never fit to be governor of anything. Just a child who's been praised way too much and completely spoiled. Nobody on that colony is going to pay any attention to you! The only way you could ever survive as governor would be if I backed you up -- and after this, you can be sure I'll do no such thing. You're finished in this game of let's pretend."

"As you wish, Admiral," said Ender. "But I'm doing nothing with this message because there's nothing I
can
do. It isn't addressed to me and I have no way of opening a secure comm that isn't mine."

"Do you think I'm a fool? Your name is all over it!"

"On the outside," said Ender, "it specifies Admiral Wiggin, which is me, because it was send from IFCom through a secure military channel and the intended recipient has no standing in the fleet. But as soon as you open it -- and this is a level of opening that your techs did immediately, I'm sure -- you'll see that the Wiggin to whom the secure portion of the message is addressed is not A. Wiggin or E. Wiggin, which would be me, but V. Wiggin, which is my sister, Valentine."

"Your
sister?
"

"Didn't your techs tell you that? And while the actual authority for the message is the Minister of Colonization himself, again, the real sender is P. Wiggin, and his title is given as Hegemon. I find that interesting. The only P. Wiggin I'm personally acquainted with is my older brother, Peter, and this would seem to imply that my brother is now Hegemon. Did you know that? I certainly didn't. He wasn't when I left."

A long silence came from Admiral Morgan behind him. Ender finally turned and looked at him -- again, doing his best to keep any hint of triumph from showing in his face. "I think my brother, the Hegemon, is writing a private communication to my sister, with whom he had a long collaborative relationship. Perhaps he seeks her counsel. But it has nothing to do with me. You know that I haven't seen my brother or communicated with him in any way since I first entered Battle School at the age of six. And I only entered into communication with my sister for a few weeks before our ship was launched. I'm sorry that it tied up your communications, but as I said, I don't know anything about it, and it has nothing to do with me."

Morgan walked back and sat down behind his desk. "I am astonished," said Morgan.

Ender waited.

"I am embarrassed," said Morgan. "It seemed to me that my ship's communications were under attack, and that the agent of this attack was Admiral Wiggin. In that light, your repeated meetings with a subset of the colonists, to which you have been inviting members of my crew, looked suspiciously like mutiny. So I treated it as mutiny. Now I find that my fundamental premise was incorrect."

"Mutiny is a serious business," said Ender. "Of course you were alarmed."

"It happens that your brother
is
Hegemon. Word came to me a week ago. Two weeks ago. A year ago Earth time, anyway."

"It's perfectly all right that you didn't tell me," said Ender. "I'm sure you thought I would have found out by other means."

"It did not cross my mind that this communication might be from him, and
not
to you."

"It's easy to overlook Valentine. She keeps to the background. It's just the way she is."

Morgan looked at Ender gratefully. "So you understand."

I understand you're a paranoid, power-hungry idiot, said Ender silently. "Of course I do," said Ender.

"Do you mind if I send for your sister?"

Suddenly it was "do you mind" -- but Ender had no interest in making Morgan squirm. "Please do. I'm as curious about this message as you are."

Morgan sent an ensign to bring her, and then sat down and tried to make small talk while they waited. He told two ostensibly amusing stories from his own training days -- he was never Battle School material, he came up "the hard way, through the ranks." It was clear that he resented Battle School and the implied inferiority of anyone who wasn't invited to attend.

Is that all this is? Ender wondered. The traditional rivalry between graduates of a service academy and those who didn't have such a head start?

Valentine came in to find Ender laughing at Morgan's story. "Val," said Ender, still chuckling. "We need you to help us with something." In a few moments he explained about the message that had preempted hours of ansible time, shutting everything else out. "It caused a lot of consternation, and naturally, Admiral Morgan has been concerned. It'll put our minds at ease if you can open the message right here and give us some idea of what it's about."

"I'll need to watch you open it," said Morgan.

"No you won't," said Valentine.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

"What Valentine meant to say," said Ender, "is that she doesn't want you to see her actual security procedures -- on a message from the Hegemon, you can understand her caution. But I'm sure that she'll let us know the contents of the message in some readily verifiable way." Ender looked at Valentine and gave her a mockingly cute smile and shrug. "For me, Val?"

He knew she would recognize this as a mockery of their relationship, put on entirely for Morgan's benefit; of course she played along. "For you, Mr. Potato Head. Where's the access?"

In moments, Valentine was sitting at the end of the desk, poking her way through the holodisplay. "Oh, this is only semi-secure," she said. "Just a fingerprint. Anybody could have gotten into it just by cutting off my finger. I'll have to tell Peter to use full security -- retina, DNA, heartbeat -- so that they have to keep me alive in order to get in. He just doesn't value me highly enough."

She sat there reading for a little while, then sighed. "I can't believe what an idiot Peter is.
And
Graff, for that matter. There's nothing in here that couldn't have been sent unsecured, and there's no reason why it couldn't have been sent piecemeal instead of in a single uninterruptible top-priority flow. It's just a bunch of articles and summaries and so on about events on Earth for the past couple of years. It seems that there are wars and rumors of wars." She glanced at Ender.

He got the King James Version reference -- he had memorized long passages of it as part of his strategy for dealing with a minor crisis in Battle School several years back. "Well, transmitting it certainly took time, and times, and half a time," he said.

"I'll need to -- I'd like to see some evidence that this is what you say," said Morgan. "You have to understand that anything that seemed to threaten the security of my ship and my mission must be verified."

"Well, that's the awkward thing," said Valentine. "I'm perfectly happy to let you see the entire infodump -- in fact, I suggest that it be put into the library so everyone can have access to it. It's bound to be fascinating to people to have an idea of the things that have been happening on Earth. I can't wait to read it myself."

"But?" asked Ender.

"It's the cover letter itself." She looked genuinely embarrassed. "My brother makes slighting references to you. I hope you understand that neither Ender nor I discussed you with Peter in any way -- anything he says is his own assumption. I can assure you that Ender and I hold you in the highest respect."

With that, she rotated the holodisplay and Ender and Valentine sat silently to watch Morgan read.

At the end, he sighed, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, his forehead on his fingertips. "Well, I am embarrassed indeed."

"Not at all," said Ender. "A perfectly understandable mistake. I'd rather fly with a captain who takes every potential threat to his ship seriously than one who thinks that losing communications for three hours is no big deal."

Morgan took the olive branch. "I'm glad you see it that way, Admiral Wiggin."

"Ender," Ender corrected him.

Valentine stood up, smiling. "So if you don't mind, I'll leave the whole thing unencrypted here on your desk, as long as you assure me that every speck of it will be downloaded into the library -- except my brother's personal letter." She turned to Ender. "He says he loves me and misses me and he wants me to tell you to write to our parents. They aren't getting any younger, and they're very hurt not to have heard from you."

"Yes," said Ender. "I should have done that as soon as the ship left. But I didn't want to take up ansible time on personal matters." He smiled ruefully at Morgan. "And then we end up doing
this
, all because Peter and Graff have an inflated sense of their own importance."

"I'll tell my egocentric brother to send future messages a different way," said Valentine. "I assume you won't mind my sending such a message by ansible."

They were heading for the door, Morgan shepherding them, full of smiles and "I'm glad you're so understanding," when Ender stopped.

"Oh, Admiral Morgan," said Ender.

"Please call me Quincy."

"Oh, I could never do that," said Ender. "Our respective ranks allow it, but if anybody heard me address you that way, there'd be no way to erase the visual image of a teenager speaking to the captain of the ship in a way that could only seem disrespectful. I'm sure we agree on that. Nothing can undermine the authority of the captain."

"Very wisely said," Morgan replied. "You're taking better care of my position than I am myself. But you wanted to say something?"

"Yes. The play reading. It really is just that -- we're reading Taming of the Shrew. I'm playing Lucentio. Val has a small part, too. Everyone was looking forward to it. And now it's been canceled without a word of explanation."

Morgan looked puzzled. "If it's just a play reading, then go ahead and do it."

"Of course we will," said Ender, "now that we have your permission. But you see, some of the participants invited crew members to attend. And the cancellation might leave some bad feelings. Hard on morale, don't you think? I wanted to suggest a sort of gesture from you, to show that it really
was
a misunderstanding. To patch up any bad feelings."

"What sort of gesture?" asked Morgan.

"Just -- when we reschedule it, why don't you come and watch? Let them see you laughing at the comedy."

"He could play a part," said Valentine. "I'm sure the man playing Christopher Sly --"

"My sister is joking," said Ender. "This is a comedy, and
every
part in it is beneath the dignity of the captain of the ship. I'm only suggesting that you attend. Perhaps just for the first half. You can always plead urgent business at the break halfway through. Everyone will understand. Meanwhile, though, they'll all see that you really do care about them and what they do during this voyage. It will go a long way toward making them feel good about your leadership, during the voyage and after we arrive."

"After we arrive?" asked Valentine.

Ender looked at her in wide-eyed innocence. "As Admiral Morgan pointed out to me during our conversation, none of the colonists will be likely to follow the leadership of a teenage boy. They'll need to be assured that Admiral Morgan's authority is behind whatever I do, officially, as governor. So I think that makes it all the more important that they see the Admiral and get to know him, so they'll trust him to provide strong leadership."

Ender was afraid Valentine was going to lose control right there and either laugh or scream at him. But she did neither. "I see," she said.

"That's actually a good idea," said Admiral Morgan. "Shall we go start it up?"

"Oh, no," said Valentine. "Everybody's too upset. Nobody will be at their best. Why not let us go smooth things over, explain that it was all a mistake and completely
my
fault. And then we can announce that you're going to attend, that you're glad the reading can go on after all, and we get a chance to perform for you. Everyone will be excited and happy. And if you can let off-duty crew come too, so much the better."

"I don't want anything that lessens ship's discipline," said Morgan.

Valentine's answer was immediate. "If you're right there with them, laughing at the play and enjoying it, then I can't see that it will cause any weakening of the crew. It might even help morale. We actually do a pretty good job with the play."

"It would mean a lot to all of us," said Ender.

"Of course," said Morgan. "You do that, and I'll be there tomorrow at 1900. That was the starting time today, wasn't it?"

Ender and Valentine made their good-byes. The officers they passed looked amazed and relieved to see them smiling and chatting comfortably as they left.

Not till they were back in the stateroom did they let down the façade, and then only long enough for Valentine to say, "He's planning for you to be a figurehead while he rules behind the throne?"

"There's no throne," said Ender. "It solves a lot of problems for me, don't you think? It was going to be tough for a fifteen-year-old kid to lead a bunch of colonists who've already been living and farming on Shakespeare for forty years by the time I get there. But a man like Admiral Morgan is used to giving orders and being obeyed. They'll fall right in line under his authority."

Valentine stared at him like he was insane. Then Ender gave that little twitch of his lower lip that had always been the giveaway that he was being ironic. He hoped she would leap to the correct conclusion -- that Admiral Morgan certainly had the means of listening in on all their conversations and was bound to be using it right now, so nothing they said could be regarded as private.