Hadn’t he read the letter?

  Morgan could only spare half his attention for the letter, he was so furious at Wiggin for heading straight into the crowd. What was he doing? Did he actually know these people’s names?

  But then the letter began to register with him and he read it with his full attention.

  Dear Rear Admiral Morgan,

  Former Polemarch Chamrajnagar, before his retirement, warned us that there was some risk that you would misunderstand the limited nature of your responsibilities upon reaching Shakespeare Colony. He takes full responsibility for any such misunderstanding, and if he was mistaken, we apologize for the actions we have taken. But you must understand that we were compelled to take preventive measures in case you had been misled into thinking that you were to exercise even momentary authority on the surface of the planet. We have been careful to make sure that if you behave with exact correctness, no one but you and Vice-Admiral Andrew Wiggin will ever know how we were prepared to deal with the situation if you acted inappropriately.

  Correct action is this: You will recognize that upon setting foot on Shakespeare, Vice-Admiral Wiggin becomes Governor Wiggin, with absolute authority over all matters concerning the colony and all transfers of persons and material to and from the colony. He retains his rank of Vice-Admiral, so that outside your actual ship, he is your superior officer and you are subject to his authority.

  You will return to your ship without setting foot on the planet. You will not meet with any persons from the colony. You will provide a full and orderly transfer of all cargos and persons from your ship to the colony, exactly as Governor Wiggin specifies. You will make all your actions transparent to IFCom and ColMin by reporting hourly by ansible on all actions taken in compliance with Governor Wiggin’s orders.

  We assume that this is what you intended to do all along. However, because of Polemarch Chamrajnagar’s warning, we anticipate the possibility that you had different plans, and that you might consider acting on them. The forty-year voyage between us and you made it necessary for us to take actions which we can and will reverse upon your successful completion of this mission and your return to lightspeed.

  Every twelve hours, Governor Wiggin will report to us by holographic ansible, assuring us of your compliance. If he fails to report, or seems to us to be under duress of any kind, we will activate a program now imbedded in your ship’s computer. The program will also be activated by any attempt to rewrite the program itself or restore an earlier state of the software.

  This program will consist of the vocal and holographic transmission to the ansibles aboard your ship and shuttles, through every speaker and computer display on your ship and shuttles, and to every ansible in Shakespeare colony, stating that you are charged with mutiny, ordering that no one obey you, and that you be arrested and placed in stasis for the return voyage to Eros, where you will be tried for mutiny.

  We regret that the existence of this message will certainly cause offense to you if you did not plan to behave any way other than correctly. But in that case, your correct actions will ensure that no one sees this message, and when you have returned to lightspeed flight after successfully carrying out your mission, the message will be eliminated from your ship’s computer and there will be no record whatsoever of this action. You will return with full honors and your career will continue without blemish.

  A copy of this letter has been sent to your executive officer, Commodore Vlad das Lagrimas, but he cannot open it as long as Governor Wiggin continues to certify to us that you are taking correct actions.

  Since yours is the first colony ship to arrive at its destination, your actions will establish the precedent for the entire I.F. We look forward to reporting on your excellent actions to the entire fleet.

  Sincerely,

  Polemarch Bakossi Wuri

  Minister of Colonization Hyrum Graff

  Morgan read the letter, filled with rage and dread at first, but gradually taking a very different attitude. How could they imagine that he planned anything other than to oversee Wiggin’s orderly assumption of power? How dare Chamrajnagar tell them anything that would lead them to think he intended anything else?

  He would have to send them a very stiff letter informing them of his disappointment that they would treat him in this high-handed and completely unnecessary way.

  No, if he sent a letter it would go into the record. He had to keep his record clean. And they were going to make a lot of hooplah about his being the first captain of a colony ship to complete his mission—that would be a huge plus for his career.

  He had to act as if this letter didn’t exist.

  The crowd was cheering. They had been cheering and clapping over and over again while Morgan read the letter. He looked out to see that they were now completely surrounding Wiggin, none of them even glancing at the shuttle, at the ramp, at Admiral Morgan. Now that he was looking at them, he could see that everyone was gazing intently at Ender Wiggin, devotedly, eagerly. Every word he said, they cheered at, or laughed, or wept.

  Incredibly, they loved him.

  Even without this letter, even without any intervention from IFCom or ColMin, Morgan lost this power struggle from the moment Ender Wiggin appeared in full uniform and called the veterans by name and invoked their memories of the dead. Wiggin knew how to win their hearts, and he did it without deception or coercion. All he did was care enough to learn their names and faces and remember them. All he did was lead them in victory forty-one years ago. When Morgan was in charge of a supply operation in the asteroid belt.

  For all I know, this letter is a complete bluff. Wiggin wrote it himself. Just to keep me distracted while he carried out his public relations coup. If I decided to be obstructive, if I decided to work behind his back to undermine their confidence in him, to destroy him as governor so that I would have to step in and . . .

  They people cheered again, as Wiggin invoked the name of the acting governor.

  No, Morgan would never be able to undermine their confidence in Wiggin. They wanted him to be their governor. While to them, Morgan was nothing. A stranger. An interloper. They weren’t in the I.F. anymore. They didn’t care about authority or rank. They were citizens of this colony now, but they had the legend of how they were founded. The great Ender Wiggin, by his victory, slew all the formics on the surface of this world, opening the land to these humans so they could come and dwell here. And now Wiggin had come among them in person. It was like the second coming of Christ. Morgan had zero chance now.

  His aides were watching him intently. They had no idea what was in the letter, but he was afraid that his face might not have been as impassive as he’d meant, while he was reading it; in fact, his impassivity would be a strong message in itself. So now Morgan smiled at them. “Well, so much for our script. It seems Governor Wiggin had his own plans for how this day would go. It would have been nice of him to inform us, but . . . there’s no accounting for the pranks that boys will play.”

  His aides chuckled, because they knew he expected them to. Morgan knew perfectly well that they understood exactly what had happened here. Not the threats in the letter, but Wiggin’s complete triumph. Nevertheless, Morgan would act as if this was exactly how things were always meant to turn out, and they would join him in acting that way, and ship’s discipline would be maintained.

  Morgan turned to the microphone. In a lull in the cheering and shouting of the crowd, he spoke, taking a friendly, joking tone. “Men and women of Shakespeare Colony, please forgive the interruption. This was not how the program for today was supposed to go.”

  The crowd turned toward him, distractedly, even annoyed. They immediately turned back to Wiggin, who faced Morgan, not with the jaunty smile of victory, but with the same solemn face that he always presented on the ship. The little bastard. He’d been plotting this the whole time, and never showed a sign of it. Even when Morgan looked over the vids of him in his quarters, even when he watched Wiggin with Dorabella’s daughter, the boy never let his pretense lapse, not for a second.

  Thank the stars he’ll be staying on this world, and not returning to be my rival for preeminence in the I.F.

  “I won’t take but a moment more of your time,” said Morgan. “My men will immediately unload all the equipment we brought with us, and the marines will stay behind to assist Governor Wiggin however he might desire. I will return to the ship and will follow Governor Wiggin’s instructions as to the order and timing of the transfer of materials and persons from the ship to the ground. My work here is done. I commend you for your achievements here, and thank you for your attention.”

  There was scattered applause, but he knew that most of them had tuned him out and were merely waiting for him to be done in order to get back to lionizing Andrew Wiggin.

  Ah well. When he got back to the ship, Dorabella would be there. It was the best thing he had ever done, marrying that woman.

  Of course, he had no idea how she would take the news that she and her daughter would not be colonists after all—that they would be staying with him on his voyage back to Earth. But how could they complain? Life in this colony would be primitive and hard. Life as the wife of an admiral—the very admiral who was first to bring new settlers and supplies to a colony world—would be a pleasant one, and Dorabella would thrive in such social settings; the woman really was brilliant at it. And the daughter—well, she could go to university and have a normal life. No, not normal, exceptional—because Morgan’s position would be such that he could guarantee her the finest opportunities.

  Morgan had already turned to go back inside the shuttle, when he heard Wiggin’s voice calling to him. “Admiral Morgan! I don’t think the people here have understood what you have done for us all, and they need to hear it.”

  Since Morgan had the words of Graff’s and Wuri’s letter fresh in his mind, he could not help but hear irony and bad intent in Wiggin’s words. He almost decided to keep moving back into the shuttle, as if he hadn’t heard the boy.

  But the boy was the governor, and Morgan had his own command to think about. If he ignored the boy now, it would look to his own men like an acknowledgment of defeat—and a rather cowardly one at that. So, to preserve his own position of respect, he turned to hear what the boy had to say.

  “Thank you, sir, for bringing us all safely here. Not just me, but the colonists who will join with the original settlers and native-born of this world. You have retied the links between the home of the human race and these far-flung children of the species.”

  Then Wiggin turned back to the colonists. “Admiral Morgan and his crew and these marines you see here did not come to fight a war and save the human race, and none of them will die at the hands of our enemies. But they made one great sacrifice that is identical to one made by the original settlers here. They cut themselves loose from all that they knew and all that they loved and cast themselves out into space and time to find a new life among the stars. And every new colonist on that ship has given up everything they had, betting on their new life here among you.”

  The colonists spontaneously began applauding, a few at first, but soon all of them, and then cheering—for Admiral Morgan, for the marines, for the unmet colonists still on the ship.

  And the Wiggin boy, damn him, was saluting. Morgan had no choice but to return the salute and accept the gratitude and respect of the colonists as a gift from him.

  Then Wiggin strode toward the shuttle—but not to say anything more to Morgan. Instead, he walked toward the commander of the marine squad and called out to him by name. Had the boy learned the names of all of Morgan’s crew and marines as well?

  “I want you to meet your counterpart,” Wiggin said loudly. “The man who commanded the marines with the original expedition.” He led him to an old man, and they saluted each other, and in a few moments the whole place was chaotic with marines being swarmed by old men and women and young ones as well.

  Morgan knew now that little of what Wiggin had done was really about him. Yes, he had to make sure Morgan knew his place. He accomplished that in the first minute, when he distracted Morgan with the letter while he showed that he knew all the original settlers by name, and acted—with justification—as the commander of veterans meeting with them forty-one years after their great victory.

  But Wiggin’s main purpose was to shape the attitude that this community would have toward Morgan, toward the marines, toward the starship’s crew, and, most important, toward the new colonists. He brought them together with a knowledge of their common sacrifice.

  And the kid claimed that he didn’t like making speeches. What a liar. He said exactly what needed saying. Next to him, Morgan was a novice. No, a fumbling incompetent.

  Morgan made his way back inside the shuttle, pausing only to tell the waiting officers that Governor Wiggin would be giving them their orders about unloading the cargo.

  Then he went to the bathroom, tore the letter into tiny pieces, chewed them into pulp, and spat the wad into the toilet. The taste of paper and ink nauseated him, and he retched a couple of times before he got control of himself.

  Then he went into his communications center and had lunch. He was still eating it when a lieutenant commander supervised a couple of the natives in bringing in a fine mess of fresh fruits and vegetables, just as Wiggin had predicted. It was delicious, and afterward, Morgan napped until one of his aides woke him to tell him the unloading was finished, they had taken aboard a vast supply of excellent foodstuffs and fresh water, and they were about to take off to return to the ship.

  “The Wiggin boy will make a fine governor, don’t you think?” Morgan said.

  “Yes, sir, I believe so, sir,” said the aide.

  “And to think I imagined that he might need help from me to get started.” Morgan laughed. “Well, I have a ship to run. Let’s get back to it!”

  Hamlet’s Father

  ORSON SCOTT CARD, author of Ender’s Game and its many sequels, as well as what I consider one of the finest horror stories of the past fifty years, “Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory,” is the winner of the prestigious genre awards, the Hugo and the Nebula, being the only author, as of 2007, to win science fantasy’s top prizes in consecutive years.

  I’ve had the serendipitous pleasure to discover quite a few theatre scholars who, like me, have sought careers in less direct manners than our hearts might have dictated: Ray Russell, certainly, and Tanith Lee, and lately I’ve learned that Scott (as he likes to be called by friends) is an active theatre person, adapting works of The Bard for modern school audiences. His ghost story, “Hamlet’s Father,” richly mines his awareness and (very personal) opinions of Shakespeare’s arguably most famous tragedy, Hamlet.

  Hamlet’s father sent him to the university at Heidelberg as soon as he turned fourteen. Even though he had to leave all his friends behind, Hamlet was glad to go.

  It wasn’t Denmark he wanted to leave. It was the castle at Elsinore; it was the throne that he would probably never occupy; it was Mother’s endless sadness and infinite distance from him.

  It was Father.

  To be son of a King—it must sound so wonderful to boys with ordinary, nonregal fathers. The reality was far different.

  Father was once as powerful as God, or so it seemed to Hamlet. Indeed, when the Bishop discussed God, Hamlet couldn’t see how there was any difference between God and Father. They were both all-knowing, all-powerful.

  But gradually it became clear to Hamlet that Father, with his infinite knowledge and wisdom, had judged his only son and found him permanently wanting. It began when Hamlet was six, playing with his Companions—the sons of nobles or wealthy commoners, brought to the castle to study Latin with him and to learn the arts of war. Hamlet could hear Father preparing for the hunt with a visiting lord from Jutland and his retinue. How Hamlet begged to be taken along on such expeditions! The hounds were barking, the horses stamping and whinnying, and servants were shouting orders to each other. All the boys stopped in their game to listen, to yearn.

  Then came Polonius, Father’s lord chamberlain and the father of Laertes, one of Hamlet’s favorites among the Companions. Hamlet felt a thrill of anticipation: Father had sent for his son to accompany him!

  Instead, Polonius called out to another of the Companions, Horatio, and beckoned to him.

  There was no explanation. Horatio left. Soon after, the horses and hounds went away, and there was silence from the courtyard. In the garden where Hamlet played with his remaining friends, there was nothing but somberness, and games ended without ending, petering out for lack of interest.

  Finally Hamlet ended up where he always went when he wanted to be alone—the graveyard behind the chapel. Hamlet had no fear of the dead—weren’t they all his family and their faithful servants, or Kings and Queens from ancient lines that had withered away?—but the other boys were leery of the place, and Hamlet had long since reassured them that their duty to stay with him “at all times” did not include his graveyard visits. They were still officially “with him” if they remained in the garden. “All I do is rest and think,” he said.

  But that was not entirely true. Sometimes he dreamed. Sometimes he prayed. Sometimes he cried.

  He was still in the graveyard when he heard the hunt return. He did not rush to join his Companions in greeting Father and the Earl of Jutland and his retinue. But he could not lie peacefully upon any of the graves now. He got up and began to pace. Then he climbed the apple tree nearest the ancient tomb of another family that once ruled in Elsinore but had been replaced by Grandfather, and tested himself to see if he was tall enough now to cling to a branch and swing himself onto the roof of the tomb. He quickly discovered that while he was definitely taller, he was also heavier, and bowed the branch lower, so he could only kick the wall of the tomb, not swing his legs up on top.