"Oh, when I'm around you, I'm not allowed to exhale?"
"Don't make me pinch your nose and stuff cookies in your mouth."
"Mother, I can't control what he does."
"But you can control what you do."
"Ender isn't Admiral Morgan."
"No, he isn't. He's a boy. With no experience at all. A boy who can be led and helped and shown."
"Shown what, Mother? Are you suggesting that I do something physical?"
"Darling sweet fairy daughter of mine," said Dorabella, "it's not for you and it's not for me. It's for Ender Wiggin's own good."
Alessandra rolled her eyes. She was such a teenager.
"Eye-rolling is not an answer, darling sweet fairy daughter."
"Mother, people who are doing the most awful things always say it's for the other person's own good."
"But in this case, I'm quite right. You see, Admiral Morgan and I have become very close. Very very close."
"Are you sleeping with him?"
Dorabella's hand flew up, prepared to strike, before she even knew what she was doing. But she caught herself in time. "Oh, look," she said. "My hand thinks it belongs to your grandmother."
Alessandra's voice shook a little. "When you said you were very very close I wondered if you were implying--"
"Quincy Morgan and I have an adult relationship," said Dorabella. "We understand each other. I bring a brightness to his life that he has never had before, and he brings a manly stability that your father, bless his heart, never had. There is also physical attraction, but we are mature adults, masters of our libido, and no, I haven't let him lay a hand on me."
"Then what are we talking about here?" asked Alessandra.
"What I did not know, as a girl your age," said Dorabella, "was that between cold chastity and doing that which produces babies, there is a wide range of steps and stages that can signal to a young man that his advances are welcome, to a point."
"I'm quite aware of that, Mother. I saw other girls at school dressing like whores and putting it all on display. I saw the fondling and grabbing and pinching. We're Italians, I was in an Italian school, and all the boys planned to grow up to be Italian men."
"Don't try to distract me by making me angry at your ethnic stereotypes," said Dorabella. "We have only a few weeks left before we arrive--"
"Two months is not 'a few weeks.'"
"Eight is a few. When we reach Shakespeare, one thing is certain. Admiral Morgan is not going to turn the colony over to a fifteen-year-old boy. That would be irresponsible. He likes Ender--everyone does--but in Battle School all they did was play games all day. It takes someone with experience in leadership to govern a colony. This has never been said outright, mind you. But I have gleaned this from things that were hinted at or almost said or...overheard."
"You've been eavesdropping."
"I've been present and human ears don't close. My point is that the very best way it could all turn out is if Ender Wiggin is governor, but taking the advice of Admiral Morgan."
"On everything."
"That's better than Ender being put in stasis and sent home."
"No! He wouldn't do that!"
"It has already been threatened, and there have been hints that it might be necessary. Now, look at this picture: Ender and a beautiful colonist girl fall in love. They pledge to marry. Now he's affianced. It happens that his mother-in-law-to-be--"
"Who happens to be a deranged woman who thinks she's a fairy and the mother of a fairy."
"In-law-to-be is married or about to be married to the admiral who is most definitely going to be the power behind the throne, so to speak. Unless Ender gives him trouble, in which case he'll take the throne, so to speak, quite openly. But Ender will not give him trouble, because he won't need to. His beautiful young wife will look out for his interests by talking things over with her mother, who will then talk things over with her husband, and everything will work smoothly for everyone."