IGMS Issue 6

by IGMS

  Crispin's throat closed up until he could hardly breathe. "What happened?"

  Lucas's eyes looked deep into his. "Can't you guess? Father Alfonso is dead."

  "What?"

  "In the middle of his denunciation." Lucas gave that triangular smile with a gleam of teeth that made it nearer to a snarl. "Suddenly he clutched at his chest and crashed over. He was dead before he hit the floor. Dead as surely as if someone had thrust a spear through his heart."

  Crispin stared at him. A spear though his heart - or the claws of a demon . . . "I can't believe it," he whispered.

  Lucas shrugged. "It's true enough."

  The clamour of the bell seemed to echo the howling of the demon, and Crispin knew beyond any doubt that he had killed Father Alfonso as surely as if his hand had driven home a spear. "No . . ." he breathed.

  With sudden fury Lucas grabbed his shoulder and shook him roughly. "What's the matter with you? I thought you wanted Stanford freed?"

  "He's free?"

  "When Father Alfonso died, the Dean -- with more presence of mind than I would have given him credit for -- called out, 'The judgement of God!' And as no one but the Grand Inquisitor wanted to see Stanford burn, the charges were dismissed."

  Crispin gripped his hands together to stop them from shaking. No one would ever discover what he had done. If he confessed, they would think he was mad. And to bring Dr. Stanford safe out of the hands of the Inquisition -- would he have done the same, if he had known?

  A neat, brisk figure was making his way from the hall to where Crispin and Lucas stood in the chapel porch. "Master Peveril!" Dr. Stanford exclaimed. "Has Lucas told you the news?"

  Crispin nodded, unable for a moment to speak.

  "But you look as if you've seen a ghost -- or one of Father Alfonso's demons. There's no need to be so upset. All's well now. Come to my rooms and drink a cup of wine before you go home. Lucas, attend us."

  Dr. Stanford laid a hand on Crispin's shoulder and propelled him along the path. Lucas fell in behind them. Glancing back, Crispin saw the lamplight from the chapel flicker like flames in his eyes; his small, triangular smile held an unspoken promise.

  Terror flooded through Crispin. When all this began, two scholars had been burnt for conjuring a demon. Who was to say they had failed? Lucas had howled with the voice of a demon, and the Inquisition had seized his master on a charge of sorcery.

  He works your ruin. But how could Crispin say that to Dr. Stanford? No one would believe him.

  Helplessly Crispin heard the padding of Lucas's feet behind him as all three of them walked into the dark.

  Ender's Stocking

  by Orson Scott Card

  Artwork by Jin Han

  * * *

  Peter Wiggin was supposed to spend the day at the Greensboro Public Library, working on a term paper, but he had lost interest in the project. It was two days before Christmas, a holiday that always depressed him.

  Last year he tried to get off the Christmas juggernaut. "Don't get me any gifts," he had said to his parents. "Put the money into mutual funds and give it to me when I graduate."

  "Christmas drives the American economy," Father said. "We have to do our part."

  "It's not up to you what other people do and don't give you," said Mother. "Invest your own money and don't give us gifts."

  "Like that's possible," said Peter.

  "We don't like your gifts anyway," said Valentine, "so you might as well."

  This stung Peter. "There's nothing wrong with my gifts! You sound like I give you used Band-aids or something."

  "Your gifts always look like you bought the cheapest things on sale and then decided after you got them home who you'd give them to."

  Which exactly nailed the process Peter went through. "Gee, Valentine," said Peter. "And everyone calls you the nice one."

  "Can't you two ever stop bickering?" said Mother wistfully.

  "Peace on Earth, good will toward brats," said Peter.

  That was last year. He gave them the gifts he'd already bought, and he didn't notice anybody turning them down.

  But he also took Mother's advice. During the past year, Peter's investments -- anonymous investments, of course, since he was still underage -- had done very well, and in November he sold off enough shares to pay for some nice gifts for the family. Nobody was going to say there was anything wrong with this year's crop. Though he couldn't spend too much, or Dad would start to get way too curious about where Peter's money was coming from.

  Since Peter was not really working on his paper, he happened to notice when one of the girls from school sat down at a different table and spread out her books. Since they had the same high school class, she was no doubt working on the same assignment -- a paper on something about Rome, as if the subject hadn't already been done to death by real scholars over the centuries. What were high school students going to add to the sum of human knowledge about the old empire? Peter couldn't think of a single topic that didn't bore him.

  But maybe she had something interesting. What was her name? Mirabella, that was it -- Italian for "Look! Pretty!" The name fit well enough, but Mirabella, being sensible, had opted for the nickname Bell.

  Peter got up, walked over, and sat down across the table from her. "What's your topic?" he asked.

  She looked at him with an odd expression, but he was used to that. Being younger than the other students meant permanent pariah status. At school, he ate alone; but he preferred it that way. None of the other kids interested him. She didn't interest him. But right now talking to somebody seemed better than staring off into space trying to think of a topic.

  Eventually she decided to talk to him. "I like Cicero," she said. "But in a weird way I also like Cato. 'Carthage must be destroyed!'"

  Peter nodded and smiled. "Both proof that neither cleverness nor grim determination are enough to make a great statesman."

  "Yeah, well, they're famous Romans, which means they're dead but at least something is written about them, and I can write a paper with three sources and be done with it."

  He suppressed a sigh. Here he was worried about finding a topic that hadn't already been written about, and all she cared about was getting her three sources. But he didn't show his scorn. He remembered what Valentine always said about him -- how he wasn't a nice person. He could be nice.

  "Would you like some help?" he asked.

  She sat up straight. "You are really a piece of work," she said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "What is there about me that suggests I need your help?" she said. "I'm still laying out my books to take notes. How could I possibly be doing anything wrong yet?"

  Peter was stunned by her response. "I just offered. It didn't imply anything."

  "Oh, wait," she said. "I get it. This was a come-on. Haven't you noticed that you're, like, twelve? Try again when you reach puberty."

  So much for trying to be nice. He wasn't twelve, he was fourteen, so even though he was younger than the other seniors, he was still the right age for high school. And puberty was well under way. He shaved every day and it wasn't just wishful thinking. But what was the point of explaining anything? He tried to be nice to somebody and look what happened. Valentine was full of crap. They were all full of crap. Being nice just got you dumped on.

  "Merry Christmas," Peter said.

  "Yeah, whatever," said Bell.

  Peter walked away from Bell's table. He knew now that he wasn't going to write the paper, not today. Though he had a vague idea of writing about Hannibal, a great general who was never able to win his war even though he won every battle, and finally his own people betrayed him.

  I'm one up on Hannibal. Nobody ever gave me an army, and people already betray me all the time instead of waiting till I've actually done anything important.

  I'll never do anything important. That was decided when I was still a toddler and they requisitioned Val and Ender to try to do a better job of it.

  He left the library and got on his bik
e. His Christmas shopping was done. It's not as if he had any friends to call up and hang out with. There was nothing to do in the miserable town of Greensboro where his parents had forced him to live. In a real city there were fast tubes to take you anywhere. Here, it was the bus or the bike, and neither one took you anywhere interesting because there was nothing here but the same stores as the rest of America, plus trees.

  He parked his bike in the garage, next to Mom's -- Val and Dad were both out, apparently, since their bikes were gone -- and went into the house. He was still in a foul temper from his confrontation with Bell, but he was determined to be nice and not pick a fight with anybody.

  He came into the living room to find Mother crying over -- of all things -- a Christmas stocking.

  He tried joking. "Don't worry, Mother," he said. "You've been good. It won't be coal this year."

  She gave him a thin little courtesy laugh and quickly stuffed the stocking back into the box it was stored in. Only then did he realize whose it was.

  "Mom," he said. He couldn't help the tone of frustration and reproof in his voice. It's not like Ender was dead. He was just in Battle School.

  Mom got up from the chair where she was sitting and headed for the kitchen.

  "Mom, he's fine."

  She turned to him, gazed at him steadily with eyes like fire, though her voice was mild. "Oh -- you've had a letter from him? A phone call? A secret report from the school administrators that they didn't provide to Ender's parents?"

  "No," said Peter, still unable to keep the impatience from his voice.

  Mother smiled acidly. "Then you don't know what you're talking about, do you?"

  Peter resented the contempt in her tone. He hadn't done anything and she was snapping at him just like Bell had. Well, he could say what was on his mind, too. "Stroking his stocking and crying over it, that's supposed to make anything better?"

  "You really are a piece of work, Peter," she said, pushing past him.

  The same thing Bell had said. What did that even mean? "A piece of work?" Why was it a bad thing? Idiomatic expressions used by idiots.

  He followed her into the kitchen. "I bet they hang up stockings for them up in Battle School and fill them with little toy spaceships that make cool shooting noises."

  "I'm sure the Muslim and Hindu students will appreciate getting Christmas stockings," said Mother.

  "Whatever they do for Christmas, Mother, Ender isn't going to be missing us."

  "Just because you wouldn't miss us doesn't mean he doesn't."

  He rolled his eyes. "Of course I'd miss you."

  Mother said nothing.

  "I'm a perfectly normal kid. So's Ender. He'll be busy. He's getting along fine. He's adapting. People adapt. To anything."

  She turned slowly, reached across and touched his chest, then hooked a finger through the neckline of his shirt and drew him close. "You never adapt," she whispered, "to losing a child."

  "It's not like he's dead," said Peter.

  "It's exactly like he's dead," said Mother. "I will never again see the boy who left here. I'll never see him at age seven or nine or eleven. I'll have no memories of him at those ages, only what I can imagine. That's what the parents of dead children have. So until you actually know what you're talking about, Peter, why don't you put a lid on your advice to grieving mothers?"

  "Merry Christmas to you too," said Peter. He left the room.

  His own bedroom, when he entered it, felt strange to him. Alien. Bare. There was nothing there that expressed a personality. That had been a conscious decision on his part -- anything individual that he put on display would give Valentine an advantage in their endless dueling. But at this moment, with Mother's accusation of his inhumanity still ringing in his ears, his bedroom looked so sterile that he hated the person who would choose to live in it.

  Why do I even try to adapt to this world? I'm never going to fit in, not with my family, not at school. And when I graduate and get my college degrees -- from a university where I won't fit in -- who will hire me? Who will supervise me? That's a laugh. I'm not of the same species, and they know it. Like an immune system, they sense my presence and seek to reject me. The human race is allergic to me. I give humanity a rash. Wherever I go, people scratch at me.

  He wandered back into the living room. Mother wasn't there -- still in the kitchen, probably. He reached into the box of Christmas stockings and pulled out the whole stack.

  Mother had cross-stitched their names and an iconic picture on each stocking. How domestic of her. His own stocking had a spaceship. Ender's stocking had a steam locomotive. How ironic. Ender was the one in space, the little twit, while Peter was stuck on land with the locomotives.

  Stuck riding between rails, to destinations someone else had already chosen. While Ender had an infinitely variable future. It was as if Ender had crushed Peter under his shoe.

  Peter thrust his hand down into Ender's stocking and started making it talk like a hand puppet. "I'm Mommy's bestest boy and I've been very very good."

  There was something in the toe of the stocking. Peter reached deeper into the sock, found it, and pulled it out. It was just a five-dollar piece -- a nickel, as people had taken to calling them, though it was supposedly a hundred times the value of that ancient coin.

  "So you've taken to stealing things out of other people's stockings?" said Mother from the doorway.

  Peter felt as embarrassed as if he had been caught in an actual crime. "The toe was heavy," he said. "I was seeing what it was."

  "It wasn't yours, whatever it was," said Mother cheerily.

  "I wasn't going to keep it," said Peter. Though of course he would have done exactly that, on the assumption that it had been forgotten and would never be missed.

  But that was the stocking she had been holding and weeping over. She knew perfectly well the nickel was there.

  "You still put stuff in his stocking every year," he said, incredulous.

  "Santa fills the stockings," said Mother. "It has nothing to do with me."

  What was scary was that there was no irony in her voice. For all he knew, she believed it. Peter shook his head. "Oh, Mother."

  "It has nothing to do with you," said Mother. "Mind your business."

  "This is morbid," said Peter. "Grieving for your hero-boy as if he were dead. He's fine. He's not going to die, he's in the most sterile, oversupervised school in the universe, and after he wins the war he's going to come home amid cheers and confetti and give you a big hug."

  "Put back the five dollars," said Mother.

  "I will."

  "While I'm watching."

  Unbelievable. "Don't you trust me, Mother?" asked Peter. He spoke in a sarcastically aggrieved voice, to hide the fact that he really was hurt.

  "Not where Ender is concerned," said Mother. "Or me, for that matter. The coin is Ender's. It shouldn't have anybody's fingerprints on it but his."

  "And Santa's," said Peter.

  "And Santa's."

  He dropped the coin down into the sock.

  "Now put it away."

  "You realize you're making it more and more tempting to set this thing on fire," said Peter.

  "And you wonder why I don't trust you."

  "And you wonder why I'm hostile and untrustworthy."

  "Doesn't it make you just the tiniest bit uncomfortable that I have to wait until I'm sure you're not going to be home before I can allow myself to miss my little boy?"

  "You can do what you want, Mother, whenever you want. You're an adult. Adults have all the money and all the freedom."

  "You really are the stupidest smart kid in the world," said Mother.

  "Again, just for reference, please take note of all the reasons I have to feel loved and respected in my own family."

  "I meant that in the nicest, most affectionate way."

  "I'm sure you did, Mommy," said Peter. He put the stocking into the box.

  Mother came over as he was starting to rise out of the chair. She pushed him
back down, then reached into the box and took out Ender's stocking. She reached inside.

  Peter took the coin out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. "Worth a shot, don't you think?" He had long since learned the skill of palming coins, but of course Mother knew that, and even though she probably hadn't caught the movement, she knew it was something he was capable of.

  "You're still so envious of your younger brother that you have to covet everything that's his?"

  "It's a nickel," said Peter, "and he isn't going to spend it. I was going to invest it and let it earn him some interest before he gets home in, oh, another six or eight years or whatever."

  Mother bent over and kissed his forehead. "Heaven knows why I still love you." Then she dropped the coin into the stocking, put the stocking into the box, reached out and slapped Peter's hand, and then took the box out of the room.

  The back of Peter's hand stung from the slap, but it was where her lips had touched his brow that his skin tingled the most.

  Peter took the tube to school. All the buildings were locked, of course, because of the holidays, but he walked between buildings, looking into windows at the desks lined up in rows.

  The desks were all so well-behaved. They stayed in place, made no noise, remained alert at all times. No wonder the teachers all seemed to be talking to the desks -- the desks were the only things acting properly.

  The students, on the other hand, were unruly, unpredictable. They absorbed only what interested them enough to imprint in memory. Some of them actually cared about what the teachers thought of them, and learned in order to please the authority figures. Some of them did not care and learned only what was repeated often enough to penetrate their memories without any effort at comprehension.

  But what about Peter? He should have been the ideal student. He came in knowing more than any of the other students, even in this school for gifted children. He always grasped everything immediately. He wanted to follow up, to penetrate, to learn more. He raised his hand. And the teachers' eyes did this little flickering thing, and their pulse quickened, they breathed more rapidly, and they looked for anyone else to speak to, anything else to talk about, just so they didn't have to deal with Peter Wiggin.