Ender's Game

just the floor level door, so they could practice launching under battle conditions. Word got around. From now on no one could take five or ten or fifteen seconds in the corridor to size things up. The game had changed.

More battles. This time Ender played a proper role within a toon. He made mistakes. Skirmishes were lost. He dropped from first to second in the standings, then to fourth. Then he made fewer mistakes, and began to feel comfortable within the framework of the toon, and he went back up to third, then second, then first.

***

After practice one afternoon, Ender stayed in the battleroom. He had noticed that Dink Meeker usually came late to dinner, and he assumed it was for extra practice. Ender wasn't very hungry, and he wanted to see what it was Dink practiced when no one else could see.

But Dink didn't practice. He stood near the door, watching Ender.

Ender stood across the room, watching Dink.

Neither spoke. It was plain Dink expected Ender to leave. It was just as plain that Ender was saying no.

Dink turned his back on Ender, methodically took off his flash suit, and gently pushed off from the floor. He drifted slowly toward the center of the room, very slowly, his body relaxing almost completely, so that his hands and arms seemed to be caught by almost nonexistent air currents in the room.

After the speed and tension of practice, the exhaustion, the alertness, it was restful just to watch him drift. He did it for ten minutes or so before he reached another wall. Then he pushed off rather sharply, returned to his flash suit, and pulled it on.

'Come on,' he said to Ender.

They went to the barracks. The room was empty, since all the boys were at dinner. Each went to his own bunk and changed into regular uniforms. Ender walked to Dink's bunk and waited for a moment till Dink was ready to go.

'Why did you wait?' asked Dink.

'Wasn't hungry.'

'Well, now you know why I'm not a commander.'

Ender had wondered.

'Actually, they promoted me twice, and I refused.'

'Refused?'

'They took away my old locker and bunk and desk, assigned me to a commander cabin and gave me an army. But I just stayed in the cabin until they gave in and put me back into somebody else's army.'

'Why?'

'Because I won't let them do it to me. I can't believe you haven't seen through all this crap yet, Ender. But I guess you're young. These other armies, they aren't the enemy. It's the teachers, they're the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other. The game is everything. Win win win, it amounts to nothing. We kill ourselves, go crazy trying to beat each other, and all the time the old bastards are watching us, studying us, discovering our weak points, deciding whether we're good enough or not. Well, good enough for what? I was six years old when they brought me here. What the hell did I know? They decided I was right for the program, but nobody ever asked me if the program was right for me.'

'So why don't you go home?'

Dink smiled crookedly. 'Because I can't give up the game.' He tugged at the fabric of his flash suit, which lay on the bunk beside him. 'Because I love this.'

'So why not be a commander?'

Dink shook his head. 'Never. Look what it does to Rosen. The boy's crazy. Rose de Nose. Sleeps in here with us instead of in his cabin. Why? Because he's scared to be alone, Ender. Scared of the dark.'

'Rose?'

'But they made him a commander and so he has to act like one. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's winning, but that scares him worst of all, because he doesn't know why he's winning, except that I have something to do with it. Any minute somebody could find out that Rosen isn't some magic Israeli general who can win no matter what. He doesn't know why anybody wins or loses. Nobody does.'

'It doesn't mean he's crazy, Dink.'

'I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. We're not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't commanders, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get a little crazy.'

Ender tried to remember what other children were like, in his class at school, back in the city. But all he could think of was Stilson.

'I had a brother. Just a normal guy. All he cared about was girls. And flying. He wanted to fly. He used to play ball with the guys. A pickup game, shooting balls at a hoop, dribbling down the corridors until the peace officers confiscated your ball. We had a great time. He was teaching me how to dribble when I was taken.'

Ender remembered his own brother, and the memory was not fond.

Dink misunderstood the expression on Ender's face. 'Hey, I know, nobody's supposed to talk about home. But we came from somewhere. The Battle School didn't create us, you know. The Battle School doesn't create anything. It just destroys. And we all remember things from home. Maybe not good things, but we remember and then we lie and pretend that—look, Ender, why is that nobody talks about home, ever? Doesn't that tell you how important it is? That nobody even admits that—oh hell.'

'No, it's all right,' Ender said. 'I was just thinking about Valentine. My sister.'

'I wasn't trying to make you upset.'

'It's OK. I don't think of her very much, because I always get like this.'

'That's right, we never cry. Christ, I never thought of that. Nobody ever cries. We really are trying to be adult. Just like our fathers. I bet your father was like you. I bet he was quiet and took it, and then busted out and —'

'I'm not like my father.'

'So maybe I'm wrong. But look at Bonzo, your old commander. He's got an advanced case of Spanish honor. He can't allow himself to have weaknesses. To be better than him, that's an insult. To be stronger, that's like cutting off his balls. That's why he hates you, because you didn't suffer when he tried to punish you. He hates you for that, he honestly wants to kill you. He's crazy. They're all crazy.'

'And you aren't?'

'I be crazy too, little buddy, but at least when I be craziest, I be floating all alone in space and the crazy, she float out of me, she soak into the walls, and she don't come out till there be battles and little boy's bump into the walls and squish out de crazy.'

Ender smiled.

'And you be crazy too,' said Dink. 'Come on, let's go eat.'

'Maybe you can be a commander and not be crazy. Maybe knowing about the craziness means you don't have to fall for it.'

'I'm not going to let the bastards run me, Ender. They've got you pegged, too, and they don't plan to treat you kindly, look what they've done to you so far.'

'They haven't done anything except promote me.'

'And she make you life so easy, neh?'

Ender laughed and shook his head. 'So maybe you're right.'

'They think they got you on ice. Don't let them.'

'But that's what I came for,' Ender said. 'For them to make me into a tool. To save the world.'

'I can't believe you still believe it.'

'Believe what?'

'The bugger menace. Save the world. Listen. Ender, if the buggers were coming back to get us, they'd be here. They aren't invading again. We beat them and they're gone.'

'But the videos—'