Ender's Game

wasn't punishment at all, it was little Ender, who had disappeared so long ago, who was no part of Peter's plots now. You were the lucky one, Ender. You got away before Peter could trap you into his conspiracy.

'How do you feel about your brother, Valentine?'

'Ender?'

'Of course.'

'How can I feel about him? I haven't seen him or heard from him since I was eight.'

'Dr. Lineberry, will you excuse us?'

Lineberry was annoyed.

'On second thought, Dr. Lineberry, I think Valentine and I will have a much more productive conversation if we walk outside. Away from the recording devices that your assistant principal has placed in this room.'

It was the first time Valentine had seen Dr. Lineberry speechless. Colonel Graff lifted a picture out from the wall and peeled a sound-sensitive membrane from the wall, along with its small broadcast unit. 'Cheap,' said Graff, 'but effective. I thought you knew.'

Lineberry took the device and sat down heavily at her desk. Graff led Valentine outside.

They walked out into the football field. The soldiers followed at a discreet distance: they split up and formed a large circle, to guard them from the widest possible perimeter.

'Valentine, we need your help for Ender.'

'What kind of help?'

'We aren't even sure of that. We need you to help us figure out how you can help us.'

'Well, what's wrong?'

'That's part of the problem. We don't know.'

Valentine couldn't help but laugh. 'I haven't seen him in three years! You've got him up there with you all the time!'

'Valentine, it costs more money than your father will make in his lifetime for me to fly to Earth and back to the Battle School again. I don't commute casually.'

'The king had a dream,' said Valentine, 'but he forgot what it was, so he told his wise men to interpret the dream or they'd die. Only Daniel could interpret it, because he was a prophet.'

'You read the Bible?'

'We're doing classics this year in advanced English. I'm not a prophet.'

'I wish I could tell you everything about Ender's situation. But it would take hours, maybe days, and afterward I'd have to put you in protective confinement because so much of it is strictly confidential. So let's see what we can do with limited information. There's a game that our students play with the computer.' And he told her about the End of the World and the closed room and the picture of Peter in the mirror.

'It's the computer that puts the picture there, not Ender. Why not ask the computer?'

'The computer doesn't know.'

'I'm supposed to know?'

'This is the second time since Ender's been with us that he's taken this game to a dead end. To a game that seems to have no solution.'.

'Did he solve the first one?'

'Eventually.'

'Then give him time, he'll probably solve this one.'

'I'm not sure. Valentine, your brother is a very unhappy little boy.'

'Why?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know much, do you?'

Valentine thought for a moment that the man might get angry. Instead, though, he decided to laugh. 'No, not much. Valentine, why would Ender keep seeing your brother Peter in the mirror?'

'He shouldn't. It's stupid.'

'Why is it stupid?'

'Because if there's ever anybody who was the opposite of Ender, it's Peter.'

'How?'

Valentine could not think of a way to answer that wasn't dangerous. Too much questioning about Peter could lead to real trouble. Valentine knew enough about the world to know that no one would take Peter's plans for world domination seriously, as a danger to existing governments. But they might well decide he was insane and needed treatment for his megalomania.

'You're preparing to lie to me,' Graff said.

'I'm preparing not to talk to you anymore,' Valentine answered.

'And you're afraid. Why are you afraid?'

'I don't like questions about my family. Just leave my family out of this.'

'Valentine, I'm trying to leave your family out of this. I'm coming to you so I don't have to start a battery of tests on Peter and question your parents. I'm trying to solve this problem now, with the person Ender loves and trusts most in the world, perhaps the only person he loves and trusts at all. If we can't solve it this way, then we'll sequester your family and do as we like from then on. This is not a trivial matter, and I won't just go away.'

The only person Ender loves and trusts at all. She felt a deep stab of pain, of regret, of shame that now it was Peter she was close to. Peter who was the center of her life. For you, Ender, I light fires on your birthday. For Peter I help fulfill all his dreams. 'I never thought you were a nice man. Not when you came to take Ender away, and not now.'

'Don't pretend to be an ignorant little girl. I saw your tests when you were little, and at the present moment there aren't very many college professors who could keep up with you.'

'Ender and Peter hate each other.'

'I knew that. You said they were opposites. Why?'

'Peter—can be hateful sometimes.'

'Hateful in what way?'

'Mean. Just mean, that's all.'

'Valentine, for Ender's sake, tell me what he does when he's being mean.'

'He threatens to kill people a lot. He doesn't mean it. But when we were little, Ender and I were both afraid of him. He told us he'd kill us. Actually, he told us he'd kill Ender.'

'We monitored some of that.'

'It was because of the monitor.'

'Is that all? Tell me more about Peter.'

So she told him about the children in every school that Peter attended. He never hit them, but he tortured them just the same. Found what they were most ashamed of and told it to the person whose respect they most wanted. Found what they most feared and made sure they faced it often.

'Did he do this with Ender?'

Valentine shook her head.

'Are you sure? Didn't Ender have a weak place? A thing he feared most, or that he was ashamed of?'

'Ender never did anything to be ashamed of.' And suddenly, deep in her own shame for having forgotten and betrayed Ender, she started to cry.

'Why are you crying?'

She shook her head. She couldn't explain what it was like to think of her little brother, who was so good, whom she had protected for so long, and then remember that now she was Peter's ally, Peter's helper, Peter's slave in a scheme that was completely out of her control. Ender never surrendered to Peter, but I have turned, I've become part of him, as Ender never was. 'Ender never gave in,' she said.

'To what?'

'To Peter. To being like Peter.'

They walked in silence along the goal line.

'How would Ender ever be like Peter?'

Valentine shuddered, 'I already told you.'