Again, nothing. Oh, they were attentive, and not at all hostile, but they only nodded, and only a few of them. As if they were waiting. Waiting for what?
Waiting for Wiggin. The thought came to him like bile into his throat. They know that Wiggin is supposed to be their governor, and they're waiting for him.
Well, they'll find out soon enough just what Wiggin is--and isn't.
Then Morgan heard the sound of running footfalls from inside the shuttle and coming out onto the ramp. Wiggin couldn't have timed it better. This really would go more smoothly with him for the crowd to look at.
The crowd's attention shifted toward Wiggin, and Morgan smiled. "I give you..."
But they didn't hear his answer. They knew who it was. The applause and shouting overpowered Morgan's voice, even with the amplification, and he did not need to say Wiggin's name, because the crowd was shouting it.
Morgan turned to give a welcoming gesture to the boy, and was shocked to see that Wiggin was in full dress uniform. His decorations were almost obscenely vast--dwarfing anything on Morgan's chest. It was so ridiculous--Wiggin had been playing videogames, for all he knew, and here he was wearing decorations for every battle in the war, along with all the other medals he was given after his victory.
And the little bastard had deliberately deceived him. Wearing civilian clothes, and then changing in the bathroom, just so he could upstage him. Was the nausea all faked, too, so that he could make this grand entrance? Well, Morgan would wear a phony smile and then he'd make the kid pay for this later. Maybe he wouldn't keep Wiggin as a figurehead after all.
But Wiggin didn't go to the place that Morgan was gesturing him to take at his side, behind the lectern. Instead, Wiggin handed a folded piece of paper to Morgan and then jogged on down the ramp to the ground--where he was immediately surrounded by the crowd, their shouts of "Ender Wiggin!" now giving way to chatter and laughter.
Morgan looked at the paper. On the outside, in pencil, Wiggin had written: "Your supremacy ended when this shuttle touched ground. Your authority ends at the bottom of this ramp." And he signed it, "Admiral Wiggin"--reminding him that in port, Wiggin was senior to him.
The gall of the boy. Did he think such claims would hold up here, forty years away from any higher authority? And when it was Morgan who commanded a contingent of highly trained marines?
Morgan unfolded the paper. It was a letter. From Polemarch Bakossi Wuri and Minister of Colonization Hyrum Graff.
Ender recogni
zed Ix Tolo immediately, from Vitaly's description of him, and ran right up to him. "Ix Tolo," he shouted as he came. "I'm glad to meet you!"
But even before he reached Tolo and shook his hand, Ender was looking for old men and women. Most of them were surrounded by younger people, but Ender sought them out and tried to recognize the younger faces he had studied and memorized before this voyage even launched.
Fortunately, he guessed right about the first one, and the second one, calling them by rank and name. He made it solemn, that first meeting with the pilots who had actually fought in the war. "I'm proud to meet you at last," he said. "It's been a long wait."
At once the crowd caught on to what he was doing, and backed away, thrusting the old people forward so Ender could find them all. Many of them wept as they shook Ender's hands; some of the old women insisted on hugging him. They tried to speak to him, to tell him things, but he smiled and held up a hand, signaling, Wait a minute, there are more to greet.
He shook every soldier's hand, and when he occasionally guessed at the wrong name, they laughingly corrected him.
Behind him, there was still silence from the loudspeakers. Ender had no idea what Morgan would do about the letter, but he had to keep things moving forward here on the ground, so there was never a gap in which Morgan could insert himself.
The moment he had shaken the last old man's hand, Ender raised that hand up and then turned around, signaling for the people to gather around him. They did--in fact, they already had, so he was now completely surrounded by the crowd. "There are names I didn't get to call," he said. "Men and women I didn't get to meet." Then, from memory, he spoke the names of all those who had died in the battle. "Too many lost. If only I had known what price was being paid for my mistakes, maybe I could have made fewer of them."
Oh, they wept at that, even as some of them called out, "What mistakes!"
And then Ender reeled off another list of names--the colonists who had died in those first weeks of the settlement. "By their deaths, by your heroic efforts, this colony was established. Governor Kolmogorov told me about how you lived, what you accomplished. I was still a twelve-year-old boy on Eros when you were fighting the war against the diseases of this land, and you triumphed without any help from me."
Ender raised his hands to face level and clapped them, loudly and solemnly. "I honor those who died in space, and those who died here."
They cheered.
"I honor Vitaly Kolmogorov, who led you for thirty-six years of war and peace!" Another cheer. "And Sel Menach, a man so modest he could not bear to face the attention he knew would be paid to him today!" Cheers and laughter. "Sel Menach, who will teach me everything I need to know in order to serve you. Because I'm here, he will now have time to get back to his real work." A roar of laughter, and a cheer.
And now, from the back of the crowd, from the loudspeakers, came the sound of Morgan's voice. "Men and women of Shakespeare Colony, please forgive the interruption. This was not how the program for today was supposed to go."
The people around Ender glanced in puzzlement toward the top of the ramp. Morgan was speaking in a pleasant, perhaps jocular tone. But he was irrelevant to what had just been happening. He was an intruder in this ceremony. Didn't he see that Ender Wiggin was a victorious commander meeting with his veterans? What did Quincy Morgan have to do with that?
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.