Sometimes can't I switch off my brain and be the hairless chimp with an eye for an available female?

No.

"How long are you going to play this little game with Ender Wiggin?" asked Dorabella.

"Game?" asked Alessandra.

"He's obviously interested in you," said Dorabella. "He always homes in on you, I've seen how he smiles at you. He likes you."

"Like a sister," sighed Alessandra.

"He's shy," said Dorabella.

Alessandra sighed.

"Don't sigh at me," said Dorabella.

"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."

"In other words, I would marry him in order to be a spy."

"There would be a pair of loving and beloved go-betweens who would make sure there was never any conflict between the admirals on this ship."

"By suppressing Ender and making him dance to Quincy's tune."

"Until he becomes old enough and experienced enough himself," said Dorabella.

"Which would happen exactly never, at least not in Quincy's eyes," said Alessandra. "Mother, I'm not stupid and neither is anyone else involved in this. You're betting that Admiral Morgan will seize power, and so by marrying him, you'll be the wife of the governor of the colony. But because you can't be sure that Ender Wiggin won't prevail, you want me to marry him. That way, no matter who wins this little power struggle, we'll be able to cash in. Am I correct?"

Alessandra had spoken the phrase "cash in" in English. Dorabella seized on that. "Shakespeare Colony has no cash yet, darling," said Dorabella. "It's all barter and allotment so far. You haven't been studying the lessons on our colony-to-be."

"Mother," said Alessandra. "That is your plan, isn't it?"

"Hardly," said Dorabella. "I'm a woman in love. So are you. Don't deny it!"

"I think about him all the time," said Alessandra. "I dream of him every night. If that's being in love, they need a pill to cure it."

"You only feel that way because the boy you love is not aware enough of his own feelings to make things clear to you or even to himself. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along."

"No, Mother," said Alessandra. "You've been trying to do everything but tell me. What you want me to do, but refuse to say out loud, is seduce him."

"I do not."

"Mother!"

"I've already said this. There's a lot of road between pining for him and seducing him. There's little touches."

"He doesn't like being touched."

"He thinks he doesn't like being touched because he doesn't yet understand that he's in love with you."

"Wow," said Alessandra. "And all of this without a degree in psychology."

"A fairy woman doesn't need to study psychology, she's born with it."

"Mother!"

"You keep saying that. As if you weren't sure I know my title. Yes, dear, I am indeed your mother."

"For once in your life, can't you just say what you mean?"

Dorabella closed her eyes. Saying things plainly had never worked out well for her. Yet Alessandra was right. The girl was so naive she really didn't know what Dorabella was talking about. She didn't understand the need, the urgency — and she didn't understand what she had to do about it.

Candor was probably unavoidable. Might as well get it over with.

"Sit down, darling," said Dorabella.

"So it's going to be a more complicated self-deception," said Alessandra. "One that requires rest."

"I'm cutting you out of my will if you keep that up."

"That threat won't work until you have something to leave me that I want to have."

"Sit down, bratty bad girl," said Dorabella, using her playfully stern voice.

Alessandra lay down on her bed. "I'm listening."

"You can never just do what I ask, can you."

"I'm listening, and you didn't ask, you commanded."

Dorabella took a deep breath and laid it on the line. "If you don't have Ender Wiggin locked down and tied up in a relationship with you within these next four weeks, he almost certainly will be left behind on this ship, under guard or in stasis, when Admiral Morgan goes down to see how the colony is getting along. But if Ender Wiggin is Admiral Morgan's son-in-law-to-be, then he will most definitely be presented to the Shakespearians as their new governor. So either you will be affianced to the titular governor and hero of the human race, or you'll be permanently separated from him and will have to pick one of the local clowns when it comes time for you to marry."