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.

  “Why do you let them interrupt you?” asked Valentine one night, after they returned to their stateroom.

  “They don’t interrupt me,” said Ender. “My purpose is to converse with them; I do my other work when no one wants me.”

  “So you’re being their governor.”

  “I am not,” said Ender. “I’m not governor of anything at the moment. This is Admiral Morgan’s ship, and I have no authority here.”

  It was Ender’s standard answer when anyone wanted him to solve a problem—to judge a dispute, to question a rule, to ask for a change or a privilege. “I’m afraid that my authority doesn’t begin until I set foot on the surface of the planet Shakespeare,” he’d say. “But I’m sure that you’ll get satisfaction from whatever officer Admiral Morgan has delegated to deal with us passengers.”

  “But you’re an admiral, too,” several people mentioned. A few even knew that Ender had a higher rank, among admirals, than Morgan. “You outrank him.”

  “He’s captain of the ship,” said Ender, always smiling. “There is no higher authority than that.”

  Valentine wasn’t going to settle for such answers, not when they were alone. “Mierda, mi hermano,” said Valentine. “If you don’t have any official duties and you’re not being governor, then why are you spending so much time being—affable.”

  “Presumably,” said Ender, “we will arrive at our destination someday. When that happens, I need to know every person who will stay with the colony. I need to know them well. I need to know how they fit together in their families, among the friendships they form on the ship. I need to know who speaks Common well and who has trouble communicating outside their native language. I must know who is belligerent, who is needy of attention, who is creative and resourceful, what education they have, how they think about unfamiliar ideas. For the passengers who are in cold storage, I had only a half hour meeting with each group. For those who are making the voyage awake, like us, I have much more time. Time enough, maybe, to find out why they chose not to sleep through the trip. Afraid of stasis? Hoping for some advantage when we get there? As you can see, Valentine, I’m working constantly out there. It makes me tired.”

  “I’ve been thinking of teaching English,” said Valentine. “Offering a class.”

  “Not English,” said Ender. “Common. It’s spelled better—no ughs and ighs—and there’s some special vocabulary and there’s no subjunctive, no ‘whom,’ and the word ‘of’ is spelled as the single letter ‘v’. To name just a few of the differences.”

  “So I’ll teach them Common,” said Valentine. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’ll be harder than you think, but it would really help the people who took the class—if the ones who need it take it.”

  “So I’ll see what language-teaching software there is in the library.”

  “First, though, I hope you’ll check with Admiral Morgan.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s his ship. Offering a course can be done only with his permission.”

  “Why would he care?”

  “I don’t know that he does care. I just know that on his ship, we have to find out if he cares before we start something as formal and regular as a class.”

  As it turned out, the passenger liaison officer, a colonel named Jarrko Kitunen, was already planning to organize Common classes and he accepted Valentine as an instructor the moment she volunteered. He also flirted with her shamelessly in his Finnish accent, and she found that she rather enjoyed his company. With Ender always busy talking with somebody or reading whatever he’d just received by ansible or downloaded from the library, it was good to have a pleasant way to pass the time. She could only stand to work on her history of Battle School for a few hours at a time, so it was a relief to have human company.

  She had come on this voyage for Ender, but until he was willing to take her fully into his confidence, she had no obligation to mope around wishing for more of Ender’s soul than he was willing to share. And if it turned out that Ender never wished to take her into his life, to restore their old bond, then she would need to make a life for herself, wouldn’t she?

  Not that Jarrko would be that life. For one thing, he was at least ten years older than she was. For another, he was crew, which meant that when the ship was loaded up with whatever artifacts and trade goods and supplies Shakespeare was able to supply them with, it would be turning around and heading back to Earth, or at least to Eros. She would not be on it. So any relationship with Jarrko was going to end. He might be fine with that, but Valentine was not.

  As Father always said, “Monogamy is what works best for any society in the long run. That’s why half of us are born male and half female—so we come out even.”

  So Valentine wasn’t always with Ender; she was busy, she had things to do, she had a life of her own. Which was more than Peter had ever given her, so she rather enjoyed it.

  It happened, though, that Valentine was with Ender in the Observation Deck, working on the book, when an Italian woman and her teenage daughter walked up to Ender and stood there, saying nothing, waiting to be noticed. Valentine knew them because they were both in her Common class.

  Ender noticed them at once and smiled at them. “Dorabella and Alessandra Toscano,” he said. “What a pleasure to meet you at last.”

  “We were not ready,” said Dorabella in her halting Italian accent. “On till your sister could taught us English good enough.” Then she giggled. “I mean ‘Common.’ ”

  “I wish I spoke Italian,” said Ender. “It’s a beautiful language.”

  “The language of love,” said Dorabella. “Not is French, nasty language of kissy lips and spitting.”

  “French is beautiful, too,” said Ender, laughing at the way she had imitated the French accent and attitude.

  “To French and deaf peoples,” said Dorabella.

  “Mother,” said Alessandra. She had very little Italian accent, but rather spoke like an educated Brit. “There are French speakers among the colonists, and he can’t offend any of them.”

  “Why will they be any offended? They make the kissy mouth to talk, we pretend we not to notice it?”

  Valentine laughed aloud. Dorabella really was quite funny, full of attitude. Sassy, that was the word. Even though she was old enough to be Ender’s mother—considering her daughter was Ender’s age—she could be seen as flirting with Ender. Maybe she was one of those women who flirted with everybody because they knew of no other way to relate to them.

  “Now we are ready,” said Dorabella. “Your sister teaching us good, so we ready for our half hour with you.”

  Ender blinked. “Oh, did you think—I took a half-hour with all the colonists who were going to travel in stasis because that’s all the time I had before they became unavailable. But the colonists on the ship—we have a year or two, plenty of time. No need to schedule a half hour. I’m here all the time.”

  “But you are very important man, saving of the whole world.”

  Ender shook his head. “That was my old job. Now I’m a kid with a job that’s too big for me. So sit down, let’s talk. You’re learning English very well—Valentine has mentioned you, actually, and how hard you work—and your daughter has no accent at all, she’s fluent.”

  “Very intelligent girl my Alessandra,” said Dorabella. “And pretty, too, yes? You think so? Nice figure for fourteen.”

  “Mother!” Alessandra shrank down into a chair. “Am I a used car? Am I a street vendor’s sandwich?”

  “Street vendors,” sighed Dorabella. “I miss them yet.”

  “Already,” Valentine corrected her.

  “I am already miss them,” said Dorabella, proudly correcting herself. “So small Shakespeare planet will be. No city! What you said, Alessandra? Tell him.”

  Alessandra looked flustered, but her mother pressed her. “I just said that there are more characters in Shakespeare’s plays than there will be colonists on the planet named after him.”

  Ender laughed. “What a thought! You’re right, we probably couldn’t put on all of his plays without having to use several colonists for more than one part. Not that I have any particular plan to put on a Shakespearean play. Though maybe we should. What do you think? Would anyone want to be ready to put on a play for the colonists who are already there?”

  “We don’t know whether they like the new name,” said Valentine. She also thought: does Ender have any idea how much work it is to put on a play?