He did what he always did when he had a chance to be completely alone. He rested his head on his arms and closed his eyes, hoping for a few moments of sleep to refresh his mind.
He awoke because somebody was gently rubbing his shoulders. "You poor thing," said Alessandra. "Fell asleep in the middle of your work."
Ender sat up, as she kept kneading the muscles of his shoulders and back and neck. They really were tight, and what she was doing felt good. If she had asked him, he would have refused—he didn't want physical contact between them—and if she had come upon him when he was awake and simply started doing it, he would have recoiled because he hated it when anyone thought they had the right to touch him without his consent.
But waking up to it, it felt too good to stop. "I'm not doing much," he said. "Busywork, mostly. Let the adults do the hard stuff. I've put in my time." By now, he lied to Alessandra by reflex.
"You don't fool me," she said. "I'm not as dumb as you think."
"I don't think you're dumb," said Ender. And he didn't. She wasn't Battle School material, but she wasn't stupid, either.
"I know you don't like it that Mother and Admiral Morgan are getting married."
Why would I care about that? "No, it's fine," said Ender. "I suppose you take love where you find it, and your mother's still young. And beautiful."
"She is, isn't she," said Alessandra. "I hope my body turns out like hers. The women in my father's family were all scrawny. No curves."
Ender knew at once what she was there for. Talking about "curves" while she massaged him was too obvious to miss. But he wanted to see where this was heading, and why. More specifically, why now.
"Scrawny or curvy, everybody's attractive under the right circumstances."
"What are those circumstances for you, Ender? When will anyone be attractive to you?"
He knew what was expected. "You're attractive, Alessandra. But you're too young."
"I'm the same age as you."
"I'm too young, too," said Ender. They had had this discussion before—but in the abstract. As they congratulated each other on being such good friends without any kind of sexual interest in each other. Clearly, there had been a change of program.
"I don't know," said Alessandra. "Back on Earth, people married later and later. And had sex earlier and earlier. It was wrong to divide them, I know, but who can say which direction was wrong? Maybe the biology of our bodies is wiser than all the reasons for waiting to marry. Maybe our bodies want to raise children when we're still young enough to keep up with them."
Ender wondered how much of this had been scripted by her mother. Probably not much. Alessandra really did think about things like this—they'd had enough conversations on socio-political topics that this didn't seem out of line for her.
The problem was that even though Ender understood perfectly well what was going on, he was enjoying it. He didn't want it to stop.
But it had to stop. Stop or change. The back-rubbing thing couldn't go on forever.
And he couldn't stop it abruptly. He had a role to play. Morgan had to believe that Ender was devoted to Alessandra, so that by marrying Dora-bella, he would become Ender's future father-in-law. One more set of levers to control him by. Ender had planned to do it platonically. The time he spent with Alessandra, the attention he devoted to her, that would do the job.
Until now. Now they were pushing him. Through Alessandra—for Ender did not believe she had thought of this little encounter herself. "Thinking about your mother and Admiral Morgan?" said Ender. "Getting jealous?"
That got her to pull her hands away. "No," she said. "Not at all. What does rubbing your shoulders have to do with them getting married?"
Now, with her no longer touching him, Ender could swivel the chair around to face her. She was dressed . . . differently. Nothing obvious, not like the vids he'd seen of supposedly sexy fashions on Earth. She was wearing clothing he'd seen before. But a button less was fastened. Was that the only difference? Perhaps, because she had been touching him until a moment before, he was seeing her through new eyes.
"Alessandra," he said, "let's not pretend we don't know what's happening here."
"What do you think is happening?" she said.
"I was asleep, and you did what you've never done before."
"I never felt like that before," she said. "I saw how heavy a weight you carry. Not just the governorship and all that, I mean . . . all that came before. The weight of being Ender Wiggin. I know you don't like to be touched, but that doesn't mean other people can't want to touch you."
Ender reached out and touched her hand, hooked it lightly in his fingers. He knew even as he did it that he shouldn't. Yet the desire to do it was almost overwhelming, and a part of him said, There's no danger in this. Touching hands? People do it all the time.
Yes, and they do other things all the time, another part of his mind said.
Shut up, said the part that liked touching Alessandra.
