First Meetings In the Enderverse

by Orson Scott Card

  He whispered into the microphone. His six commanders each took a part of the fleet and launched themselves against the enemy. They pursued erratic courses, darting off in one direction and then another. The enemy immediately stopped his aimless maneuvering and began to group around Ender's six fleets.

  Ender took off his microphone, leaned back in his chair, and watched. The observers murmured out loud, now. Ender was doing nothing—he had thrown the game away.

  But a pattern began to emerge from the quick confrontations with the enemy. Ender's six groups lost ships constantly as they brushed with each enemy force—but they never stopped for a fight, even when for a moment they could have won a small tactical victory. Instead they continued on their erratic course that led, eventually, down. Toward the enemy planet.

  And because of their seemingly random course the enemy didn't realize it until the same time that the observers did. By then it was too late, just as it had been too late for William Bee to stop Ender's soldiers from activating the gate. More of Ender's ships could be hit and destroyed, so that of the six fleets only two were able to get to the planet, and those were decimated. But those tiny groups did get through, and they opened fire on the planet.

  Ender leaned forward now, anxious to see if his guess would pay off. He half expected a buzzer to sound and the game to be stopped, because he had broken the rule. But he was betting on the accuracy of the simulator. If it could simulate a planet, it could simulate what would happen to a planet under attack.

  It did.

  The weapons that blew up little ships didn't blow up the entire planet at first. But they did cause terrible explosions. And on the planet there was no space to dissipate the chain reaction. On the planet the chain reaction found more and more fuel to feed it.

  The planet's surface seemed to be moving back and forth, but soon the surface gave way to an immense explosion that sent light flashing in all directions. It swallowed up Ender's entire fleet. And then it reached the enemy ships.

  The first simply vanished in the explosion. Then, as the explosion spread and became less bright, it was clear what happened to each ship. As the light reached them they flashed brightly for a moment and disappeared. They were all fuel for the fire of the planet.

  It took more than three minutes for the explosion to reach the limits of the simulator, and by then it was much fainter. All the ships were gone, and if any had escaped before the explosion reached them, they were few and not worth worrying about. Where the planet had been there was nothing.

  The simulator was empty.

  Ender had destroyed the enemy by sacrificing his entire fleet and breaking the rule against destroying the enemy planet. He wasn't sure whether to feel triumphant at his victory or defiant at the rebuke he was certain would come. So instead he felt nothing. He was tired. He wanted to go to bed and sleep.

  He switched off the simulator, and finally heard the noise behind him.

  There were no longer two rows of dignified military observers. Instead there was chaos. Some of them were slapping each other on the back, some of them were bowed, head in hands, others were openly weeping. Captain Graff detached himself from the group and came to Ender. Tears streamed down his face, but he was smiling. He reached out his arms, and to Ender's surprise he embraced the boy, held him tightly, and whispered, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ender."

  Soon all the observers were gathered around the bewildered child, thanking him and cheering him and patting him on the shoulder and shaking his hand. Ender tried to make sense of what they were saying. Had he passed the test after all? Why did it matter so much to them?

  Then the crowd parted and Mazer Rackham walked through. He came straight up to Ender Wiggin and held out his hand.

  "You made the hard choice, boy. But heaven knows there was no other way you could have done it.

  Congratulations. You beat them, and it's all over."

  All over. Beat them. "I beat you, Mazer Rackham."

  Mazer laughed, a loud laugh that filled the room. "Ender Wiggin, you never played me. You never played a game since I was your teacher."

  Ender didn't get the joke. He had played a great many games, at a terrible cost to himself. He began to get angry.

  Mazer reached out and touched his shoulder. Ender shrugged him off. Mazer then grew serious and said, "Ender Wiggin for the last months you have been the commander of our fleets. There were no games. The battles were real. Your only enemy was the enemy. You won every battle. And finally today you fought them at their home world, and you destroyed their world, their fleet, you destroyed them completely, and they'll never come against us again. You did it. You."

  Real. Not a game. Ender's mind was too tired to cope with it all. He walked away from Mazer, walked silently through the crowd that still whispered thanks and congratulations to the boy, walked out of the simulator room and finally arrived in his bedroom and closed the door.

  He was asleep when Graff and Mazer Rackham found him. They came in quietly and roused him. He awoke slowly, and when he recognized them he turned away to go back to sleep.

  "Ender," Graff said. "We need to talk to you."

  Ender rolled back to face them. He said nothing.

  Graff smiled. "It was a shock to you yesterday, I know. But it must make you feel good to know you won the war."

  Ender nodded slowly.

  "Mazer Rackham here, he never played against you. He only analyzed your battles to find out your weak spots, to help you improve. It worked, didn't it?"

  Ender closed his eyes tightly. They waited. He said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

  Mazer smiled. "A hundred years ago, Ender, we found out some things. That when a commander's life is in danger he becomes afraid, and fear slows down his thinking. When a commander knows that he's killing people, he becomes cautious or insane, and neither of those help him do well. And when he's mature, when he has responsibilities and an understanding of the world, he becomes cautious and sluggish and can't do his job. So we trained children, who didn't know anything but the game, and never knew when it would become real. That was the theory, and you proved that the theory worked."

  Graff reached out and touched Ender's shoulder. "We launched the ships so that they would all arrive at their destination during these few months. We knew that we'd probably have only one good commander, if we were lucky. In history it's been very rare to have more than one genius in a war.

  So we planned on having a genius. We were gambling. And you came along and we won."

  Ender opened his eyes again and they realized that he was angry. "Yes, you won."

  Graff and Mazer Rackham looked at each other. "He doesn't understand," Graff whispered.

  "I understand," Ender said. "You needed a weapon, and you got it, and it was me."

  "That's right," Mazer answered.

  "So tell me," Ender went on, "how many people lived on that planet that I destroyed."

  They didn't answer him. They waited awhile in silence, and then Graff spoke. "Weapons don't need to understand what they're pointed at, Ender. We did the pointing, and so we're responsible. You just did your job."

  Mazer smiled. "Of course, Ender, you'll be taken care of. The government will never forget you. You served us all very well."

  Ender rolled over and faced the wall, and even though they tried to talk to him, he didn't answer them. Finally they left.

  Ender lay in his bed for a long time before anyone disturbed him again. The door opened softly.

  Ender didn't turn to see who it was. Then a hand touched him softly.

  "Ender, it's me, Bean."

  Ender turned over and looked at the little boy who was standing by his bed.

  "Sit down," Ender said.

  Bean sat. "That last battle, Ender. I didn't know how you'd get us out of it."

  Ender smiled. "I didn't. I cheated. I thought they'd kick me out."

  "Can you believe it! We won the war. The whole war's over, and we thought we'd have to wait till we grew
up to fight in it, and it was us fighting it all the time. I mean, Ender, we're little kids. I'm a little kid, anyway." Bean laughed and Ender smiled. Then they were silent for a little while, Bean sitting on the edge of the bed, Ender watching him out of half-closed eyes.

  Finally Bean thought of something else to say.

  "What will we do now that the war's over?" he said.

  Ender closed his eyes and said, "I need some sleep, Bean."

  Bean got up and left and Ender slept.

  Graff and Anderson walked through the gates into the park. There was a breeze, but the sun was hot on their shoulders.

  "Abba Technics? In the capital?" Graff asked.

  "No, in Biggock County. Training division," Anderson replied. "They think my work with children is good preparation. And you?"

  Graff smiled and shook his head. "No plans. I'll be here for a few more months. Reports, winding down. I've had offers. Personnel development for DCIA, executive vice-president for U and P, but I said no. Publisher wants me to do memoirs of the war. I don't know."

  They sat on a bench and watched leaves shivering in the breeze. Children on the monkey bars were laughing and yelling, but the wind and the distance swallowed their words. "Look," Graff said, pointing. A little boy jumped from the bars and ran near the bench where the two men sat. Another boy followed him, and holding his hands like a gun he made an explosive sound. The child he was shooting at didn't stop. He fired again.

  "I got you! Come back here!"

  The other little boy ran on out of sight.

  "Don't you know when you're dead?" The boy shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked a rock back to the monkey bars. Anderson smiled and shook his head. "Kids," he said. Then he and Graff stood up and walked on out of the park.

  INVESTMENT COUNSELOR

  Andrew Wiggin turned twenty the day he reached the planet Sorelledolce. Or rather, after complicated calculations of how many seconds he had been in flight, and at what percentage of lightspeed, and therefore what amount of subjective time had elapsed for him, he reached the conclusion that he had passed his twentieth birthday just before the end of the voyage.

  This was much more relevant to him than the other pertinent fact—that four hundred and some-odd years had passed since the day he was born, back on Earth, back when the human race had not spread beyond the solar system of its birth.

  When Valentine emerged from the debarkation chamber—alphabetically she was always after him—

  Andrew greeted her with the news. "I just figured it out," he said. "I'm twenty."

  "Good," she said. "Now you can start paying taxes like the rest of us."

  Ever since the end of the War of Xenocide, Andrew had lived on a trust fund set up by a grateful world to reward the commander of the fleets that saved humanity. Well, strictly speaking, that action was taken at the end of the Third Bugger War, when people still thought of the Buggers as monsters and the children who commanded the fleet as heroes. By the time the name was changed to the War of Xenocide, humanity was no longer grateful, and the last thing any government would have dared to do was authorize a pension trust fund for Ender Wiggin, the perpetrator of the most awful crime in human history.

  In fact, if it had become known that such a trust fund existed, it would have become a public scandal.

  But the interstellar fleet was slow to convert to the idea that destroying the Buggers had been a bad idea. And so they carefully shielded the trust fund from public view, dispersing it among many mutual funds and as stock in many different companies, with no single authority controlling any significant portion of the money. Effectively, they had made the money disappear, and only Andrew himself and his sister Valentine knew where the money was, or how much of it there was.

  One thing, though, was certain: By law, when Andrew reached the subjective age of twenty, the taxexempt status of his holdings would be revoked. The income would start being reported to the appropriate authorities. Andrew would have to file a tax report either every year or every time he concluded an interstellar voyage of greater than one year in objective time, the taxes to be annualized and interest on the unpaid portion duly handed over.

  Andrew was not looking forward to it.

  "How does it work with your book royalties?" he asked Valentine.

  "The same as anyone," she answered, "except that not many copies sell, so there isn't much in the way of taxes to pay."

  Only a few minutes later she had to eat her words, for when they sat down at the rental computers in the starport of Sorelledolce, Valentine discovered that her most recent book, a history of the failed Jung and Calvin colonies on the planet Helvetica, had achieved something of a cult status.

  "I think I'm rich," she murmured to Andrew.

  "I have no idea whether I'm rich or not," said Andrew. "I can't get the computer to stop listing my holdings."

  The names of companies kept scrolling up and back, the list going on and on.

  "I thought they'd just give you a check for whatever was in the bank when you turned twenty," said Valentine.

  "I should be so lucky," said Andrew. "I can't sit here and wait for this."

  "You have to," said Valentine. "You can't get through customs without proving that you've paid your taxes and that you have enough left over to support yourself without becoming a drain on public resources."

  "What if I didn't have enough money? They send me back?"

  "No, they assign you to a work crew and compel you to earn your way free at an extremely unfair rate of pay."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I don't. I've just read a lot of history and I know how governments work. If it isn't that, it'll be the equivalent. Or they'll send you back."

  "I can't be the only person who ever landed and discovered that it would take him a week to find out what his financial situation was," said Andrew. "I'm going to find somebody."

  "I'll be here, paying my taxes like a grown-up," said Valentine. "Like an honest woman."

  "You make me ashamed of myself," called Andrew blithely as he strode away.

  Benedetto took one look at the cocky young man who sat down across the desk from him and sighed.

  He knew at once that this one would be trouble. A young man of privilege, arriving at a new planet, thinking he could get special favors for himself from the tax man. "What can I do for you?" asked Benedetto—in Italian, even though he was fluent in Starcommon and the law said that all travelers had to be addressed in that language unless another was mutually agreed upon.

  Unfazed by the Italian, the young man produced his identification.

  "Andrew Wiggin?" asked Benedetto, incredulous.

  "Is there a problem?"

  "Do you expect me to believe that this identification is real?" He was speaking Starcommon now; the point had been made.

  "Shouldn't I?"

  "Andrew Wiggin? Do you think this is such a backwater that we are not educated enough to recognize the name of Ender the Xenocide?"

  "Is having the same name a criminal offense?" asked Andrew.

  "Having false identification is."

  "If I were using false identification, would it be smart or stupid to use a name like Andrew Wiggin?" he asked.

  "Stupid," Benedetto grudgingly admitted.

  "So let's start from the assumption that I'm smart, but also tormented by having grown up with the name of Ender the Xenocide. Are you going to find me psychologically unfit because of the imbalance these traumas caused me?"

  "I'm not customs," said Benedetto. "I'm taxes."

  "I know. But you seemed preternaturally absorbed with the question of identity, so I thought you were either a spy from customs or a philosopher, and who am I to deny the curiosity of either?"

  Benedetto hated the smart-mouthed ones. "What do you want?"

  "I find my tax situation is complicated. This is the first time I've had to pay taxes—I just came into a trust fund—and I don't even know what my holdings are. I'd like to have a delay in paying my ta
xes until I can sort it all out."

  "Denied," said Benedetto.

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that," said Benedetto.

  Andrew sat there for a moment.

  "Can I help you with something else?" asked Benedetto.

  "Is there any appeal?"

  "Yes," said Benedetto. "But you have to pay your taxes before you can appeal."

  "I intend to pay my taxes," said Andrew. "It's just going to take me time to do it, and I thought I'd do a better job of it on my own computer in my own apartment rather than on the public computers here in the starport."

  "Afraid someone will look over your shoulder?" asked Benedetto. "See how much of an allowance Grandmother left you?"

  "It would be nice to have more privacy, yes," said Andrew.

  "Permission to leave without payment is denied."

  "All right, then, release my liquid funds to me so I can pay to stay here and work on my taxes."

  "You had your whole flight to do that."

  "My money had always been in a trust fund. I never knew how complicated the holdings were."

  "You realize, of course, that if you keep telling me these things, you'll break my heart and I'll run from the room crying," said Benedetto calmly.

  The young man sighed. "I'm not sure what you want me to do."

  "Pay your taxes like every other citizen."

  "I have no way to get to my money until I pay my taxes," said Andrew. "And I have no way to support myself while I figure out my taxes unless you release some funds to me."

  "Makes you wish you had thought of this earlier, doesn't it?" said Benedetto.

  Andrew looked around the office. "It says on that sign that you'll help me fill out my tax form."

  "Yes."

  "Help."

  "Show me the form."

  Andrew looked at him oddly. "How can I show it to you?"

  "Bring it up on the computer here." Benedetto turned his computer around on his desk, offering the keyboard side of it to Andrew.

  Andrew looked at the blanks in the form displayed above the computer, and typed in his name and his tax I.D. number, then his private I.D. code. Benedetto pointedly looked away while he typed in the code, even though his software was recording each keystroke the young man entered. Once he was gone, Benedetto would have full access to all his records and all his funds. The better to assist him with his taxes, of course.