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!"
Sel watched warily as the larva made its way back into the cavern. Was it heading for him, or just returning the way he came? He might test it by moving, but then his very motion might draw its attention to him.
"Nice larva," whispered Sel. "How about some nice dried dog?"
When he reached for his pack, to extract the food, it wasn't there. Po had his pack.
But Sel had the little bag at his waist where he carried his own food for each day's hike. He opened it, took out the dried dog meat and the vegetables that he carried there, and tossed them toward the larva.
It stopped. It nudged the food lying on the ground. Just in case sending mental images had actually worked, Sel created a mental image of the food as being part of the belly of a dying gold bug. This is magical thinking, he told himself, to believe that what I form in my mind will affect the behavior of this beast. But at least it occupied his mind while he waited to see whether the larva liked its food in small batches, or large and on the hoof.
The larva rose up and plunged its gaping mouth down on the food like a remora attaching itself to a shark.
Sel could imagine a smaller version of the larva being exac
tly that--a remora, attaching itself to larger creatures to suck the blood out of them. Or to burrow into them?
He remembered the tiny parasites that had killed people when the colony was first formed. The ones Sel had invented blood additives to repel.