Alessandra stood there in utter silence. She seemed poised to argue.
And then she didn't argue at all. "All right, Mother. So it's clean indoor living for another few years."
"My dear Quincy tells me that our next destination is another colony, nowhere near so far from us as Earth. Only a few months of flying time."
"But very tedious for me," said Alessandra. "With all the interesting people gone."
"Meaning Ender Wiggin, of course," said Dorabella. "I did so hope that you might manage to attract that fine young man with prospects. But he seems to have chosen to cast us aside."
Alessandra looked puzzled. "Us?" she said.
"He's a very smart boy. He knew that by forcing my dear Quincy to leave Shakespeare, he was sending you and me away, too."
"I never thought of that," said Alessandra. "Why, I'm very cross with him, then."
Dorabella felt a sudden tingling of awareness. Alessandra was taking things too well. This was not like her. And this hint of childish petulance directed against Ender Wiggin seemed to be almost a parody of Dorabella's deliberately childish fairy talk.
"What are you planning?" asked Dorabella.
"Planning? How can I plan anything when the crew are all so busy and the marines are down on the planet?"
"You're planning to sneak onto the shuttle without permission and go down to the planet's surface without my knowing it."
Alessandra looked at Dorabella as if she were crazy. But since that was her normal expression, Dorabella fully expected to be lied to, and her daughter did not disappoint. "Of course I wasn't," said Alessandra. "I fully expect to have your permission."
"Well, you don't."
"We came all this way, Mother." Now she sounded like her petulant self, so that her arguments might be sincere. "I at least want to visit. I want to say good-bye to all our friends from the voyage. I want to see the sky. I haven't seen sky for two years!"
"You've been in the sky," said Dorabella.
"Oh, that was a smart answer," said Alessandra. "That makes my longing to be outdoors go away...just. Like. That."
Now that Alessandra mentioned it, Dorabella realized that she, too, longed for a bit of a walk outdoors. The gym on the ship was always full of marines and crew members, and even though they were required to walk for a certain number of minutes a day on the treadmill, it was not as if that ever felt like you had truly gone somewhere.
"That's not unreasonable," said Dorabella.
"You're joking," said Alessandra.
"What, do you think it is unreasonable?"
"I didn't think you would ever think it was reasonable."
"I'm hurt," said Dorabella. "I'm a human being, too. I long for the sight of clouds in the sky. They do have clouds here, don't they?"
"How would I know, Mother?"
"We'll go together," said Dorabella. "Mother and daughter, saying good-bye to our friends. We never got to do that when we left Monopoli."
"We didn't have any friends," said Alessandra.
"We certainly did too, and they must have thought we were so rude to leave without them."
"I bet they brood about it every day. 'What ever happened to that rude girl Alessandra, who left us without saying good-bye--forty years ago.'"
Dorabella laughed. Alessandra did have such biting wit. "That's my smart little fairy daughter. Titania had nothing on you when it came to bitchiness."
"I wish you had stopped reading Shakespeare with Taming of the Shrew."