Ender's Game

Someone nearby snickered.

'Whatever gave you that idea, Wiggin?'

'You have a bunk in the front.'

'I bunk in the front because I'm the best sharpshooter in Salamander Army, and because Bonzo is afraid I'll start a revolution if the toon leaders don't keep an eye on me. As if I could start anything with boys like these.' She indicated the sullen-faced boys on the nearby bunks.

What was she trying to do, make it worse than it already was?

'Everybody's better than I am,' Ender said, trying to dissociate himself from her contempt for the boys who would, after all, be his near bunkmates.

'I'm a girl,' she said, 'and you're a pissant of a six-year-old. We have so much in common, why don't we be friends?'

'I won't do your deskwork for you,' he said.

In a moment she realized it was a joke. 'Ha,' she said. 'It's all so military, when you're in the game. School isn't like it is for Launchies. Histories and strategy and tactics and buggers and math and stars, things you'll need as a pilot or a commander. You'll see.'

'So you're my friend. Do I get a prize?' Ender asked. He was imitating her swaggering way of speaking, as if she cared about nothing.

'Bonzo isn't going to let you practice. He's going to make you take your desk to the battleroom and study. He's right, in a way—he doesn't want a totally untrained little kid start screwing up his precision maneuvers.' She lapsed into giria, the slangy talk that imitated the pidgin English of uneducated people. 'Bonzo, he pre- cise. He so careful, he piss on a plate and never splash.'

Ender grinned.

'The battleroom is open all the time. If you want, I'll take you in the off hours and show you some of the things I know, I'm not a great soldier, but I'm pretty good, and I sure know more than you.'

'If you want,' Ender said.

'Starting tomorrow morning after breakfast.'

'What if somebody's using the room? We always went right after breakfast, in my launch.'

'No problem. There are really nine battlerooms.'

'I never heard of any others.'

'They all have the same entrance. The whole center of the battle school, the hub of the wheel, is battlerooms. They don't rotate with the rest of the station. That's how they do the nullg, the no-gravity—it just holds still. No spin, no down. But they can set it up so that any one of the rooms is at the battleroom entrance corridor that we all use. Once you're inside, they move it along and another battleroom's in position.'

'Oh.'

'Like I said. Right after breakfast.'

'Right,' Ender said.

She started to walk away.

'Petra,' he said.

She turned back.

'Thanks.'

She said nothing, just turned around again and walked down the aisle.

Ender climbed back up on his bunk and finished taking off his uniform. He lay naked on the bed, doodling with his new desk, trying to decide if they had done anything to his access codes. Sure enough, they had wiped out his security system. He couldn't own anything here, not even his desk.

The lights dimmed a little. Getting toward bedtime. Ender didn't know which bathroom to use.

'Go left out of the door,' said the boy on the next bunk. 'We share it with Rat, Condor, and Squirrel.'

Ender thanked him and started to walk on past.

'Hey,' said the boy. 'You can't go like that. Uniforms at all times out of this room.'

'Even going to the toilet?'

'Especially. And you're forbidden to speak to anyone from any other army. At meals or in the toilet. You can get away with it sometimes in the game room, and of course whenever a teacher tells you to, but if Bonzo catch you, you dead, eh?'

'Thanks.'

'And, uh, Bonzo get mad if you skin by Petra.'

'She was naked when I came in, wasn't she?'

'She do what she like, but you keep you clothes on. Bonzo's orders.'

That was stupid. Petra still looked like a boy, it was a stupid rule. It set her apart, made her different, split the army. Stupid stupid. How did Bonzo get to be a commander, if he didn't know better than that? Alai would be a better commander than Bonzo. He knew how to bring a group together.

I know how to bring a group together, too, thought Ender. Maybe I'll be commander someday.

In the bathroom, he was washing his hands when somebody spoke to him. 'Hey, they putting babies in Salamander uniforms now?'

Ender didn't answer just dried off his hands.

'Hey, look! Salamander's getting babies now! Look at this! He could walk between my legs without touching my balls!'

'Cause you got none, Dink, that's why,' somebody answered.

As Ender left the room, he heard somebody else say, 'It's Wiggin. You know, the smartass from the game room.'

He walked down the corridor smiling. He may be short, but they knew his name. From the game room, of course, so it meant nothing. But they'd see. He'd be a good soldier, too. They'd all know his name soon enough. Not in Salamander Army, maybe, but soon enough.

***

Petra was waiting in the corridor that led to the battleroom. 'Wait a minute,' she said to Ender. 'Rabbit Army just went in, and it takes a few minutes to change to the next battleroom.'

Ender sat down beside her. 'There's more to the battleroom than just switching from one to the next,' he said. 'For instance, why is there gravity in the corridor outside the room, just before we go in?'

Petra closed her eyes. 'And if the battlerooms are really free-floating, what happens when one is connected? Why doesn't it start to move with the rotation of the school?'

Ender nodded.

'These are the mysteries,' Petra said in a deep whisper. 'Do not pry into them. Terrible things happened to the last soldier who tried. He was discovered hanging by his feet from the ceiling of the bathroom, with his head stuffed in the toilet.'

'So I'm not the first person to ask the question.'

'You remember this, little boy.' When she said little boy it sounded friendly, not contemptuous. 'They never tell you any more truth than they have to. But any kid with brains knows that there've been some changes in science since the days of old Mazer Rackham and the Victorious Fleet. Obviously we can now control gravity. Turn it on and off, change the direction, maybe reflect it—I've thought of lots of neat things you could do with gravity weapons and gravity drives on starships. And think how starships could move near planets. Maybe tear big chunks out of them by reflecting the planet's own gravity back on itself, only from another direction, and focused down to a smaller point. But they say nothing.'

Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officers was another; but the most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other armies. They do not tell us the truth.

'Come, little boy,' she said. 'The battleroom is ready. Petra's hands are steady. The enemy is deadly.' She giggled. 'Petra the poet, they call me.'

'They also say you're crazy as a loon.'

'Better believe it, baby butt.' She had ten target balls in a bag. Ender held onto her suit with one hand and the wall with the other, to steady her as she threw them, hard, in different directions. In the null gravity, they bounced every which way. 'Let go of me,' she said. She shoved off, spinning deliberately; with a few deft hand