Ender in Exile (Ender's Saga 1.20)

Vitaly Denisovitch Kolmogorov

"I don't like what you're doing to Alessandra," said Valentine.

Ender looked up from what he was reading. "And what would that be?"

"You know perfectly well that you've made her fall in love with you."

"Have I?"

"Don't pretend to be oblivious to it! She looks at you like a hungry puppy."

"I've never owned a dog. They didn't allow team mascots in Battle School, and there weren't any strays."

"And you deliberately made her do it."

"If I can make a woman fall in love with me at will, I should have bottled it and sold it and gotten rich on Earth."

"You didn't make a woman fall in love with you, you made an emotionally dependent, shy, sheltered girl fall in love with you, and that's pathetically easy. All it took was being extraordinarily nice to her."

"You're right. If I hadn't been so selfish, I would have slapped her."

"Ender, it's me you're talking to. Do you think I haven't been watching? You seek out opportunities to praise her. To ask her advice on the most meaningless things. To thank her all the time for nothing at all. And you smile at her. Has anyone ever mentioned that when you smile, it would melt steel?"

"Inconvenient, in a spaceship. I'll smile less."

"You switch it on like...like the stardrive! That smile--with your whole face, as if you were taking your soul out and putting it into her hands."

"Val," said Ender. "This is kind of an important letter. What is your point?"

"What are you planning to do with her, now that you own her?"

"I don't own anybody," said Ender. "I haven't laid a hand on her--literally. Not shaking hands, not a pat on the shoulder, nothing. No physical contact. I also haven't flirted with her. No sexual innuendoes. No inside jokes. And I haven't gone off alone with her, either. Month after month, as her mother conspires to leave us alone, I've simply not done it. Even if it took walking out of a room quite rudely. What part of that is making her fall in love with me, exactly?"

"Ender, I don't like it when you lie to me."

"Valentine, if you want an honest answer, write me an honest letter."

She sighed and sat down on her bed. "I can't wait for this voyage to end."

"A bit more than two months to go. Almost over. And you did finish your book."

"Yes, and it's very good," said Valentine. "Especially when you consider I barely met any of them and you were almost no help to me."

"I answered every question you asked."

"Except to evaluate the people, to evaluate the school, to--"

"My opinions aren't history. It wasn't supposed to be 'Ender Wiggin's School Days as told to his sister, Valentine.'"

"I didn't come on this voyage to quarrel with you."

Ender looked at her with such overdone astonishment that she threw a pillow at him.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I've never been as mean to you as I was to Peter all the time."

"Then all's right with the world."

"But I'm angry at you, Ender. You shouldn't toy with a girl's feelings. Unless you really plan to marry her--"