Ender's Game

'Alas.'

'It will take months. Years, to develop the new battlerooms and run the simulations.'

'That's why I'm asking you now. To begin. Be creative. Think of every stacked, impossible, unfair star arrangement you can. Think of other ways to bend the rules. Late notification. Unequal forces. Then run the simulations and see which ones are hardest, which easiest. We want an intelligent progression here. We want to bring him along.'

'When do you plan to make him a commander? When he's eight?'

'Of course not. I haven't even assembled his army yet.'

'Oh, so you're stacking it that way, too?'

'You're getting too close to the game, Anderson. You're forgetting that it is merely a training exercise.

'It's also status, identity, purpose, name; all that makes these children who they are comes out of this game. When it becomes known that the game can be manipulated, weighted, cheated, it will undo this whole school. I'm not exaggerating.'

'I know.'

'So I hope Ender Wiggin truly is the one, because you'll have defeated the effectiveness of our training method for a long time to come.'

'If Ender isn't the one, if his peak of military brilliance does not coincide with the arrival of our fleets at the bugger homeworlds, then it doesn't really matter what our training method is or isn't.'

'I hope you will forgive me, Colonel Graff, but I feel that I must report your orders and my opinion of their consequences to the Strategos and the Hegemon.'

'Why not our dear Polemarch?'

'Everybody knows you have him in your pocket.'

'Such hostility Major Anderson. And I thought we were friends.'

'We are. And I think you may be right about Ender. I just don't believe you, and you alone, should decide the fate of the world.'

'I don't even think it's right for me to decide the fate of Ender Wiggin.'

'So you won't mind if I notify them?'

'Of course I mind, you meddlesome ass. This is something to be decided by people who know what they're doing, not these frightened politicians who got their office because they happen to be politically potent in the country they came from.'

'But you understand why I'm doing it.'

'Because you're such a short-sighted little bureaucratic bastard that you think you need to cover yourself in case things go wrong. Well, if things go wrong we'll all be bugger meat. So trust me now, Anderson, and don't bring the whole damn Hegemony down on review. What I'm doing is hard enough without them.'

'Oh, is it unfair? Are things stacked against you? You can do it to Ender, but you can't take it, is that it?'

'Ender Wiggin is ten times smarter and stronger than I am. What I'm doing to him will bring out his genius. If I had to go through it myself, it would crush me. Major Anderson, I know I'm wrecking the game, and I know you love it better than any of the boys who play. Hate me if you like, but don't stop me.'

'I reserve the right to communicate with the Hegemony and the Strategoi at any time. But for now do what you want.'

'Thank you ever so kindly.'

*

'Ender Wiggin, the little farthead who leads the standings, what a pleasure to have you with us.' The commander of Rat Army lay sprawled on a lower bunk wearing only his desk. 'With you around, how can any army lose?' Several of the boys nearby laughed.

There could not here been two more opposite armies than Salamander and Rat. The room was rumpled, cluttered, noisy. After Bonzo Ender had thought that indiscipline would be a welcome relief. Instead, he found that he had come to expect quiet and order, and the disorder here made him uncomfortable.

'We doing OK, Ender Bender. I Rose de Nose, Jewboy extraordinaire, and you ain't nothin but a pinheaded pinprick of a goy. Don't you forget it.'

Since the I.F. was formed the Strategos of the military forces had always been a Jew. There was a myth that Jewish generals didn't lose wars. And so far it was still true. It made any Jew at the Battle School dream of being Strategos, and conferred prestige on him from the start. It also caused resentment. Rat Army was often called the Kike Force, half in parody of Mazer Rackham's Strike Force. There were many who liked to remember that during the Second Invasion, even though an American Jew, as President, was Hegemon of the alliance, an Israeli Jew was Strategos in overall command of I.F. defense, and a Russian Jew was Polemarch of the fleet, it was Mazer Rackham, a little-known, twice-court-martialled, half-Maori New Zealander whose Strike Force broke up and finally destroyed the bugger fleet in the action around Saturn.

If Mazer Rackham could save the world, then it didn't matter a bit whether you were a Jew or not, people said.

But it did matter, and Rose the Nose knew it. He mocked himself to forestall the mocking comments of anti- semites—almost everyone he defeated in battle became, at least for a time, a Jew-hater—but he also made sure everyone knew what he was. His army was in second place, bucking for first.

'I took you on, goy, because I didn't want people to think I only win because I got great soldiers. I want them to know that even with a little puke of a soldier like you I can still win. We only got three rules here. Do what I tell you and don't piss in the bed.'

Ender nodded. He knew that Rose wanted him to ask what the third rule was. So he did.

'That was three rules. We don't do too good in math here.'

The message was clear. Winning is more important than anything.

'Your practice sessions with half-assed little Launchies are over, Wiggin. Done. You're in a big boys' army now. I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God.'

'Then who are you?'

'The personnel officer who hired God.' Rose grinned. 'And you are forbidden to use your desk again until you've frozen two enemy soldiers in the same battle. This order is out of self-defense. I hear you're a genius programmer. I don't want you screwing around with my desk.

Everybody erupted in laughter. It took Ender a moment to understand why. Rose had programmed his desk to display—and animate—a bigger-than-life sized picture of male genitals, which waggled back and forth as Rose held the desk on his naked lap. This is just the sort of commander Bonzo would trade me to, thought Ender. How does a boy who spends his time like this win battles?

Ender found Dink Meeker in the game room, not playing, just sitting and watching. 'A guy pointed you out,' Ender said. 'I'm Ender Wiggin.'

'I know,' said Meeker.

'I'm in your toon.'

'I know,' he said again.

'I'm pretty inexperienced.'

Dink looked up at him. 'Look, Wiggin, I know all this. Why do you think I asked Rose to get you for me?'

He had not been dumped, he had been picked up, he had been asked for. Meeker wanted him. 'Why?' asked Ender.

'I've watched your practice sessions with the Launchies. I think you show some promise. Bonzo is stupid and I wanted you to get better training than Petra could give you. All she can do is shoot.'

'I needed to learn that.'

'You still move like you were afraid to wet your pants.'

'So teach me.'

'So learn.'

'I'm not going to quit my freetime practice sessions.'

'I don't want you to quit them.'

'Rose the Nose does.'

'Rose the Nose can't stop you. Likewise, he can't stop you from using your desk.'

'I thought commanders could order anything.'