“They know the name,” Ender assured her.

  “But do they like it?” asked Valentine.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Alessandra. “Not enough women ruoli, parti—how do you say it?” She turned to Valentine helplessly.

  “ ‘Role,’ ” said Valentine. “Or ‘part.’ ”

  “Oh.” Alessandra giggled. It was not an annoying giggle, it was a rather charming one. It didn’t make her sound stupid. “The same words! Of course.”

  “She’s right,” said Valentine. “The colonists are about half and half, and Shakespeare’s plays are what, five percent female parts?”

  “Oh well,” said Ender. “It was a thought.”

  “I wish we could put on a play,” said Alessandra. “But maybe we can read them together?”

  “In theater,” said Dorabella. “The place for holografi. We all read. Me, I listen, my English is not good enough.”

  “It’s a good idea,” said Ender. “Why don’t you organize it, Signora Toscano?”

  “Please call me of Dorabella.”

  “There’s no ‘of’ in that sentence,” said Alessandra. “There isn’t in Italian, either.”

  “English has so much ‘of,’ everywhere ‘of,’ except where I put it!” As Dorabella laughed, she touched Ender’s arm. Probably Dorabella didn’t see how he suppressed his instinct to flinch—Ender didn’t like being touched by strangers, he never had. But Valentine saw it. He was still Ender.

  “I’ve never seen a play,” said Ender. “I’ve read them, I’ve seen holos and vids of them, but I’ve never actually been in a room where people actually said the lines aloud. I could never put it together, but I’d love to be there and listen as it happens.”

  “Then you must!” said Dorabella. “You are governor, you make it happen!”

  “I can’t,” said Ender. “Truly. You do it, please.”

  “No, I cannot,” said Dorabella. “My English is too bad. Il teatro is for young persons. I will watch and listen. You and Alessandra do it. You are students, you are children. Romeo and Juliet!”

  Could she possibly be any more obvious? though Valentine.

  “Mother thinks that if you and I are together a lot,” said Alessandra, “we’ll fall in love and get married.”

  Valentine almost laughed aloud. So the daughter wasn’t a co-conspirator, she was a draftee.

  Dorabella feigned shock. “I have no plan like such!”

  “Oh, Mother, you’ve been planning it from the start. Even back in the town we came from—”

  “Monopoli,” said Ender.

  “She was calling you a ‘young man with prospects.’ A likely candidate for my husband. My personal opinion is that I’m very young, and so are you.”

  Ender was busy mollifying the mother. “Dorabella, please, I’m not offended and of course I know you weren’t planning anything. Alessandra is teasing me. Teasing us both.”

  “I’m not, but you can say whatever it takes to make Mother happy,” said Alessandra. “Our lives together are one long play. She makes me . . . not the star of my own autobiography. But Mother always sees the happy ending, right from the start.”

  Valentine wasn’t sure what to make of the relationship between these two. The words were biting, almost hostile. Yet as she said them, Alessandra gave her mother a hug and seemed to mean it. As if the words were part of a long ritual between them, but they no longer were meant to sting.

  Whatever was going on, between Ender and Alessandra, Dorabella seemed mollified. “I like the happy ending.”

  “We should put on a Greek play,” said Alessandra. “Medea. The one where the mother kills her own children.”

  Valentine was shocked at this—what a cruel thing to say in front of her mother. But no, from Dorabella’s reaction Alessandra wasn’t referring to her. For Dorabella laughed and nodded and said, “Yes, yes, Medea, spiteful mama!”

  “Only we’ll rename her,” said Alessandra. “Isabella!”

  “Isabella!” cried Dorabella at almost the same moment. They two of them laughed so hard they almost cried, and Ender joined with them.

  Then, to Valentine’s surprise, while the other two were still hiccuping through the end of their laughter, Ender turned to her and explained. “Isabella is Dorabella’s mother. They had a painful parting.”

  Alessandra stopped laughing and looked at Ender searchingly—but if Dorabella was surprised that Ender knew so much of their past, she didn’t show it. “We come on this colony to be free of my perfect mother. Santa Isabella, we will not pray to you!”

  Then Dorabella leapt to her feet and began to do some kind of dance, a waltz perhaps, holding an imaginary full skirt in one hand, and with the other hand tracing arcane patterns in the air as she danced. “Always I have a magic land where I can be happy, and I take my daughter there with me, always happy.” Then she stopped and faced Ender. “Shakespeare colony is our magic land now. You are king of the . . . folletti?” She looked to her daughter.

  “Elfs,” said Alessandra.

  “Elves,” said Valentine.

  “I elfi!” cried Dorabella in delight. “Again same word! Elfo, elve!”

  “Elf,” said Valentine and Alessandra together.

  “King of the elves,” said Ender. “I wonder what email address I’ll get for that one. ElfKing@Faerie.gov.” He turned to Valentine. “Or is that the title Peter aspires to?”

  Valentine smiled. “He’s still torn between Hegemon and God,” she said.

  Dorabella didn’t understand the reference to Peter. She returned to her dancing, and this time she sang a wordless but haunting tune with it. And Alessandra shook her head but still joined in the song, harmonizing with it. So she had heard it before and knew it and had sung with her mother. Their voices blended sweetly.

  Valentine watched Dorabella’s dance, fascinated. At first it had seemed like a childish, rather mad thing to do. Now, though, she could see that Dorabella knew she was being silly, but still meant it from the heart. It gave the movement, and her facial expression, a sort of irony that made it easy to forgive the silliness and affectation of it, while the sincerity turned it into something quite winning.

  The woman isn’t old, thought Valentine. She’s still young and quite good looking. Beautiful, even, especially now, especially in this strange fairyish dance.

  The song ended. Dorabella kept dancing in the silence.

  “Mother, you can stop flying now,” said Alessandra gently.

  “But I can’t,” said Dorabella, and now she was openly teasing. “In this starship we fly for fifty years!”

  “Forty years,” said Ender.

  “Two years,” said Alessandra.

  Apparently Ender liked the idea of doing a play, because he brought them all back to the topic. “Not Romeo and Juliet,” he said. “We need a comedy, not a tragedy.”

  “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” said Valentine. “Lots of women’s parts.”

  “The Taming of the Shrew!” cried Alessandra, and Dorabella almost collapsed with laughter. Another reference, apparently, to Isabella.

  And so it was that the plan was conceived for a play reading in the theater three days later—days by ship’s time, though the whole concept of time seemed rather absurd to Valentine, on this voyage where forty years would pass in less than two. What would her birthday be now? Would she count her age by ship’s time or the elapsed calendar when she arrived? And what did Earth’s calendar mean on Shakespeare?

  Naturally, Dorabella and Alessandra came to Ender often during the days of preparation, asking him endless questions. Even though he made it clear that all the decisions were up to them, that he was not in charge of the event, he was never impatient with them. He seemed to enjoy their company—though Valentine suspected that it was not for the reason Dorabella had hoped. Ender wasn’t falling in love with Alessandra—if he was infatuated with anyone, it was likely to be the mother. No, what Ender was falling in love with was the family-ness of them. They were close in a way that Ender and Valentine had once been close. And they were including Ender in that closeness.

  Why couldn’t I have done that for him? Valentine was quite jealous, but only because of her own failure, not because she wished to deprive him of the pleasure he was getting from the Toscanos.

  It was inevitable, of course, that they enlisted Ender himself to read the part of Lucentio, the handsome young suitor of Bianca—played, of course, by Alessandra. Dorabella herself read Kate the shrew, while Valentine was relegated to the part of the Widow. Valentine didn’t even pretend not to want to read the part—this was the most interesting thing going on in the ship, and why not be at the heart of it? She was Ender’s sister; let people hear her voice, especially in the ribald, exaggerated part of the widow.

  It was entertaining for Valentine to see how the men and boys who were cast in the many other parts focused on Dorabella. The woman had an incredible laugh, rich and throaty and contagious. To earn a laugh from her in this comedy was a fine thing, and the men all vied to please her. It made Valentine wonder if getting Ender and Alessandra together was really Dorabella’s agenda? Perhaps it’s what she thought she was doing, but in fact Dorabella held the center of the stage herself, and seemed to love having all eyes on her. She flirted with them all, fell in love with them all, and yet always seemed to be in a world of her own, too.

  Has Kate the Shrew ever been played like this before?

  Does every woman have what this Dorabella has? Valentine searched in her heart to find that kind of ebullience. I know how to have fun, Valentine insisted to herself. I know how to be playful.

  But she knew there was always irony in her wit, a kind of snottiness in her banter. Alessandra’s timidity covered everything she did—she was bold in what she said, but it was as if her own words surprised and embarrassed her after the fact. Dorabella, however, was neither ironic nor frightened. Here was a woman who had faced all her dragons and slain them; now she was ready for the accolades of the admiring throng. She cried out Kate’s dialogue from the heart, her rage, her passion, her petulance, her frustration, and finally her love. The final monologue, in which she submits to her husband’s will, was so beautiful it made Valentine cry a little, and she thought: I wonder what it would be like to love and trust a man so much that I’d be willing to abase myself as Kate did. Is there something in women that makes us long to be humbled? Or is it something in human beings, that when we are overmastered, we rejoice in our subjection? That would explain a lot of history.

  Since everyone who was interested in the play was already in it, and attending the rehearsals, it’s not as if the actual performance was going to surprise anyone. Valentine almost asked the whole group, at the last rehearsal, “Why bother to put it on? We just did it, and it was wonderful.”

  But there was still a kind of excitement throughout the ship about the coming performance, and Valentine realized that rehearsal was not performance, no matter how well it went. And there would be others there after all, who had not been at the last rehearsal: Dorabella was going around inviting members of the crew, many of whom promised to come. And passengers who weren’t in the play seemed excited about coming, and some were openly rueful about having declined to take part. “Next time,” they said.

  When they got to the theater at the appointed time, they found Jarrko standing at the door, a stiff, formal expression on his face. No, the theater would not be opened; by order of the Admiral, the play reading had been canceled.

  “Ah, Governor Wiggin,” said Jarrko.

  A bad sign, if the title was back, thought Valentine.

  “Admiral Morgan would like to see you at once, if you please, sir.”

  Ender nodded and smiled. “Of course,” he said.

  So Ender had expected this? Or was he really that perfectly poised, so it seemed that nothing surprised him?

  Valentine started to go with him, but Jarrko touched her shoulder. “Please, Val,” he whispered. “Alone.”

  Ender grinned at her and took off with real bounce in his step, as if he was truly excited to be going to see the admiral.

  “What’s this about?” Valentine asked Jarrko quietly.

  “I can’t say,” he said. “Truly. Just have my orders. No play, theater closed for the night, would the Governor please come see the Admiral immediately.”

  So Valentine stayed with Jarrko, helping soothe the players and other colonists, whose reactions ranged from disappointment to outrage to revolutionary fervor. Some of them even started reciting lines there in the corridor, until Valentine asked them not to. “Poor Colonel Kitunen will be in trouble if you keep this up, and he’s too nice to stop you himself.”

  The result was that everyone was quite angry with Admiral Morgan for his arbitrary cancellation of a completely harmless event. And Valentine herself couldn’t help but wonder: What was the man thinking? Hadn’t he ever heard of morale? Maybe he’d heard of it, but was against it.

  Something was going on here, and Valentine began to wonder if somehow Ender was behind it. Could it be that in his own way, Ender was just as sneaky and snaky as Peter?

  No. Not possible. Especially because Valentine could always see through Peter. Ender wasn’t devious at all. He always said what he meant and meant what he said.

  What is the boy doing?

  Admiral Morgan kept Ender waiting outside his office for two full hours. It was exactly what Ender expected, however, so he closed his eyes and used the time to take a long, refreshing nap. He awoke to hear someone shouting from the other side of a door: “Well, wake him up and send him in, I’m ready!”

  Ender sat up immediately, instantly aware of his surroundings. Even though he had never knowingly been in combat, he had acquired the military habit of remaining alert even when asleep. By the time the ensign whose duty was to waken him arrived, Ender was already standing up and smiling. “I understand it’s time for my meeting with Admiral Morgan.”

  “Yes sir, if you please sir.” The poor kid (well, six or seven years older than Ender, but still young to have an admiral yelling at him all day) was all over himself with eagerness to please Ender. So Ender made it a point to be visibly pleased. “He’s in a temper,” the ensign whispered.

  “Let’s see if I can cheer him up a little,” said Ender.

  “Not bloody likely,” whispered the ensign. Then he had the door open. “Admiral Andrew Wiggin, sir.” Ender stepped in as he was announced; the ensign beat a hasty retreat and shut the door behind him.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” demanded Admiral Morgan, his face livid. Since Ender had been napping for two hours, that meant either that Morgan had maintained his lividity throughout the interim, or he was able to switch it on at will, for effect. Ender was betting on the latter.

  “I’m meeting with the captain of the ship, at his request.”

  “Sir,” said Admiral Morgan.

  “Oh, you don’t need to call me sir,” said Ender. “Andrew will do. I don’t like to insist on the privileges of rank.” Ender sat down in a comfortable chair beside Morgan’s desk, instead of the stiff chair directly in front of it.

  “On my ship you have no rank,” said Morgan.

  “I have no authority,” said Ender. “But my rank travels with me.”

  “You are fomenting rebellion on my ship, coopting vital resources, subverting a mission whose primary purpose is to deliver you to the colony that you purport to be ready to govern.”

  “Rebellion? We’re reading Taming of the Shrew, not Richard II.”

  “I’m still talking, boy! You may think you’re toguro personified because you and your little chums played a videogame that turned out to be real, but I won’t put up with this kind of subversion on my own ship! Whatever you did that made you famous and got you that ridiculous rank is over. You’re in the real world now, and you’re just a snot-nosed boy with delusions of grandeur.”

  Ender sat in silence, regarding him calmly.

  “Now you can answer.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Ender.

  Whereupon Morgan let fly with a string of obscenities and vulgarities that it sounded like he had collected the favorite sayings of the entire fleet. If he had been red-faced before, he was purple now. And through it all, Ender struggled to figure out what it was about a play reading that had the man so insanely angry.

  When Morgan paused for breath, leaning—no, slumping—on the desk, Ender rose to his feet. “I think you had better prepare the charges for my court martial, Admiral Morgan.”

  “Court martial! I’m not going to court martial you, boy! I don’t have to! I can have you put in stasis for the duration of the voyage on the authority of my signature alone!”

  “Not a person of admiralty rank, I’m afraid,” said Ender. “And it seems that formal charges in a court martial are the only way I’m going to get a coherent statement from you about what I have supposedly done to offend your dignity and cause such alarm.”

  “Oh, you want a formal statement? How about this: Hijacking all ansible communications for three hours so that we are effectively cut off from the rest of the known universe, how about that? Three hours means more than two days back in real time—for all I know there’s been a revolution, or my orders have changed, or any number of things might be happening and I can’t even send a message to inquire!”

  “That’s a problem, certainly,” said Ender. “But why would you think I have anything to do with it?”

  “Because it’s got your name all over it,” said Morgan. “The message is addressed to you. And it’s still coming in, coopting our entire ansible bandwidth.”

  “Doesn’t it occur to you,” said Ender gently, “that the message is to me, not from me?”

  “From Wiggin, to Wiggin, eyes only, so deeply encrypted that none of the shipboard computers can crack it.”

  “You tried to crack a secure communication addressed to a ranking officer, without first asking the permission of that officer?”

  “It’s a subversive communication, boy, that’s why I tried to crack it!”