Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 1 - Ender's Game

by Orson Scott Card

  "They aren't studies, they're games. All games, from beginning to end, only they change the rules whenever they feel like it." He held up a limp hand. "See the strings?"

  "But you can use them, too."

  "Only if they want to be used. Only if they think they're using you. No, it's too hard, I don't want to play any more. Just when I start to be happy, just when I think I can handle things, they stick in another knife. I keep having nightmares, now that I'm here. I dream I'm in the battle room, only instead of being weightless, they're playing games with gravity. They keep changing its direction. So I never end up on the wall I launched for. I never end up where I meant to go. And I keep pleading with them just to let me get to the door, and they won't let me out, they keep sucking me back in."

  She heard the anger in his voice and assumed it was directed at her. "I suppose that's what I'm here for. To suck you back in."

  "I didn't want to see you."

  "They told me."

  "I was afraid that I'd still love you."

  "I hoped that you would."

  "My fear, your wish -- both granted."

  "Ender, it really is true. We may be young, but we're not powerless. We play by their rules long enough, and it becomes our game." She giggled. "I'm on a presidential commission. Peter is so angry."

  "They don't let me use the nets. There isn't a computer in the place, except the household machines that run the security system and the lighting. Ancient things. Installed back a century ago, when they made computers that didn't hook up with anything. They took away my army, they took away my desk, and you know something? I don't really mind."

  "You must be good company for yourself."

  "Not me. My memories."

  "Maybe that's who you are, what you remember."

  "No. My memories of strangers. My memories of the buggers."

  Valentine shivered, as if a cold breeze had suddenly passed. "I refuse to watch the bugger vids any more. They're always the same.

  "I used to study them for hours. The way their ships move through space. And something funny, that only occurred to me lying out here on the lake. I realised that all the battles in which buggers and humans fought hand to hand, all those are from the First Invasion. All the scenes from the Second Invasion, when our soldiers are in IF uniforms, in those scenes the buggers are always already dead. Lying there, slumped over their controls. Not a sign of struggle or anything. And Mazer Rackham's battle -- they never show us any footage from that battle."

  "Maybe it's a secret weapon."

  "No, no, I don't care about how we killed them. It's the buggers themselves. I don't know anything about them, and yet someday I'm supposed to fight them. I've been through a lot of fights in my life, sometimes games, sometimes -- not games. Every time, I've won because I could understand the way my enemy thought. From what they did. I could tell what they thought I was doing, how they wanted the battle to take shape. And I played off of that. I'm very good at that. Understanding how other people think."

  "The curse of the Wiggin children." She joked, but it frightened her, that Ender might understand her as completely as he did his enemies. Peter always understood her, or at least thought he did, but he was such a moral sink-hole that she never had to feel embarrassed when he guessed even her worst thoughts. But Ender -- she did not want him to understand her. It would make her naked before him. She would be ashamed. "You don't think you can beat the buggers unless you know them."

  "It goes deeper than that. Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself, too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly."

  "No, Ender."

  "Don't tell me 'No, Ender.' It took me a long time to realise that I did, but believe me, I did. Do. And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them--"

  "You beat them." For a moment she was not afraid of his understanding.

  "No, you don't understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don't exist."

  "Of course you don't." And now the fear came again, worse than before. Peter has mellowed, but you, they've made you into a killer. Two sides of the same coin, but which side is which?

  "I've really hurt some people, Val. I'm not making this up."

  "I know, Ender." How will you hurt me?

  "See what I'm becoming, Val?" he said softly. "Even you are afraid of me." And he touched her cheek so gently that she wanted to cry. Like the touch of his soft baby hand when he was still an infant. She remembered that, the touch of his soft and innocent hand on her cheek.

  "I'm not," she said, and in that moment it was true.

  "You should be."

  No. I shouldn't. "You're going to shrivel up if you stay in the water. Also, the sharks might get you.

  He smiled. "The sharks learned to leave me alone a long time ago." But he pulled himself onto the raft, bringing a wash of water across it as it tipped. It was cold on Valentine's back.

  "Ender, Peter's going to do it. He's smart enough to take the time it takes, but he's going to win his way into power -- if not right now, then later. I'm not sure yet whether that'll be a good thing or a bad thing. Peter can be cruel, but he knows the getting and keeping of power, and there are signs that once the bugger war is over, and maybe even before it ends, the world will collapse into chaos again. The Warsaw Pact was on its way to hegemony before the First Invasion. If they try for it afterward--"

  "So even Peter might be a better alternative."

  "You've been discovering some of the destroyer in yourself, Ender. Well, so have I. Peter didn't have a monopoly on that, whatever the testers thought. And Peter has some of the builder in him. He isn't kind, but he doesn't break every good thing he sees any more. Once you realise that power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it, I think that there are worse people who could have it than Peter."

  "With that strong a recommendation, I could vote for him myself."

  "Sometimes it seems absolutely silly. A fourteen-year-old boy and his kid sister plotting to take over the world." She tried to laugh. It wasn't funny. "We aren't just ordinary children, are we. None of us."

  "Don't you sometimes wish we were?"

  She tried to imagine herself being like the other girls at school. Tried to imagine life if she didn't feel responsible for the future of the world. "It would be so dull."

  "I don't think so." And he stretched out on the raft, as if he could lie on the water forever.

  It was true. Whatever they did to Ender in the Battle School, they had spent his ambition. He really did not want to leave the sun-warmed waters of this bowl.

  No, she realised. No, he believes that he doesn't want to leave here, but there is still too much of Peter in him. Or too much of me. None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing. Or perhaps it's just that none of us could be happy living with no other company than ourself.

  So she began to prod again. "What is the one name that everyone in the world knows?"

  "Mazer Rackham."

  "And what if you win the next war, the way Mazer did?"

  "Mazer Rackham was a fluke. A reserve. Nobody believed in him. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time."

  "But suppose you do it. Suppose you beat the buggers and your name is known the way Mazer Rackham's name is known."

  "Let somebody else be famous. Peter wants to be famous. Let him save the world."

  "I'm not talking about fame, Ender. I'm not talking about power, either. I'm talking about accidents, just like the accident that Mazer Rackham happened to be the one who was there when somebody had to stop the buggers."

  "If I'm here," said Ender, "then I won't be there. Somebody else will. Let them
have the accident."

  His tone of weary unconcern infuriated her. "I'm talking about my life, you self-centred little bastard." If her words bothered him, he didn't show it. Just lay there, eyes closed. "When you were little and Peter tortured you, it's a good thing I didn't lie back and wait for Mum and Dad to save you. They never understood how dangerous Peter was. I knew you had the monitor, but I didn't wait for them, either. Do you know what Peter used to do to me because I stopped him from hurting you?"

  "Shut up," Ender whispered.

  Because she saw that his chest was trembling, because she knew that she had indeed hurt him, because she knew that just like Peter, she had found his weakest place and stabbed him there, she fell silent.

  "I can't beat them," Ender said softly, "I'll be out there like Mazer Rackham one day, and everybody will be depending on me, and I won't be able to do it."

  "If you can't, Ender, then nobody could. If you can't beat them, then they deserve to win because they're stronger and better than us. It won't be your fault."

  "Tell it to the dead."

  "If not you, then who?"

  "Anybody."

  "Nobody, Ender. I'll tell you something. If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault. You killed us all."

  "I'm a killer no matter what."

  "What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth."

  "I could never beat Peter. No matter what I said or did. I never could."

  So it came back to Peter. "He was years older than you. And stronger."

  "So are the buggers."

  She could see his reasoning. Or rather, his unreasoning. He could win all he wanted, but he knew in his heart that there was always someone who could destroy him, He always knew that he had not really won, because there was Peter, undefeated champion.

  "You want to beat Peter?" she asked.

  "No," he answered.

  "Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggin any more. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender. That's how you win."

  "You don't understand," he said.

  "Yes I do."

  "No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter."

  "Then what do you want?"

  "I want him to love me."

  She had no answer. As far as she knew, Peter didn't love anybody.

  Ender said nothing more. Just lay there. And lay there.

  Finally Valentine, the sweat dripping off her, the mosquitoes beginning to hover as the dusk came on, took one final dip in the water and then began to push the raft in to shore. Ender showed no sign that he knew what she was doing, but his irregular breathing told her that he was not asleep. When they got to shore, she climbed onto the dock and said, "I love you, Ender. More than ever. No matter what you decide."

  He didn't answer. She doubted that he believed her. She walked back up the hill, savagely angry at them for making her come to Ender like this. For she had, after all, done just what they wanted. She had talked Ender into going back into his training, and he wouldn't soon forgive her for that.

  ***

  Ender came in the door, still wet from his last dip in the lake. It was dark outside, and dark in the room where Graff waited for him.

  "Are we going now?" asked Ender.

  "If you want to," Graff said.

  "When?"

  "When you're ready."

  Ender showered and dressed. He was finally used to the way civilian clothes fit together, but he still didn't feel right without a uniform or a flash suit. I'll never wear a flash suit again, he thought. That was the Battle School game, and I'm through with that. He heard the crickets chirping madly in the woods; in the near distance he heard the crackling sound of a car driving slowly on gravel.

  What else should he take with him? He had read several of the books in the library. but they belonged to the house and he couldn't take them. The only thing he owned was the raft he had made with his own hands. That would stay here, too.

  The lights were on now in the room where Graff waited. He, too, had changed clothing. He was back to uniform.

  They sat in the back seat of the car together, driving along country roads to come at the airport from the back. "Back when the population was growing," said Graff, "they kept this area in woods and farms. Watershed land. The rainfall here starts a lot of rivers flowing, a lot of underground water moving around. The Earth is deep, and right to the heart it's alive, Ender. We people only live on the top, like the bugs that live on the scum of the still water near the shore."

  Ender said nothing.

  "We train our commanders the way we do because that's what it takes -- they have to think in certain ways. They can't be distracted by a lot of things, so we isolate them. You. Keep you separate. And it works. But it's so easy, when you never meet people, when you never know the Earth itself, when you live with metal walls keeping out the cold of space, it's easy to forget why Earth is worth saving. Why the world of people might be worth the price you pay."

  So that's why you brought me here, thought Ender. With all your hurry, that's why you took three months, to make me love Earth. Well, it worked. All your tricks worked. Valentine, too; she was another one of your tricks, to make me remember that I'm not going to school for myself. Well, I remember.

  "I may have used Valentine," said Graff, "and you may hate me for it, Ender, but keep this in mind -- it only works because what's between you, that's real, that's what matters. Billions of those connections between human beings. That's what you're fighting to keep alive."

  Ender turned his face to the window and watched the helicopters and dirigibles rise and fall.

  They took a helicopter to the IF spaceport at Stumpy Point. It was officially named for a dead Hegemon, but everybody called it Stumpy Point, after the pitiful little town that had been paved over when they made the approaches to the vast islands of steel and concrete that dotted Pamlico Sound. There were still water birds taking their fastidious little steps in the salt water, where mossy trees dipped down as if to drink. It began to rain lightly, and the concrete was black and slick; it was hard to tell where it left off and the Sound began.

  Graff led him through a maze of clearances. Authority was a little plastic ball that Graff carried. He dropped it into chutes, and doors opened and people stood up and saluted and the chutes spat out the ball and Graff went on. Ender noticed that at first everyone watched Graff, but as they penetrated deeper into the spaceport, people began watching Ender. At first it was the man of real authority they noticed, but later, where everyone had authority, it was his cargo they cared to see.

  Only when Graff strapped himself into the shuttle seat beside him hid Ender realise Graff was going to launch with him.

  "How far?" asked Ender. "How far are you going with me?"

  Graff smiled thinly. "All the way, Ender."

  "Are they making you administrator of Command School?"

  "No."

  So they had removed Graff from his post at Battle School solely to accompany Ender to his next assignment. How important am I, he wondered. And like a whisper of Peter's-voice inside his mind, he heard the question, How can I use this?

  He shuddered and tried to think of something else. Peter could have fantasies about ruling the world, but Ender didn't have them. Still, thinking back on his life in Battle School, it occurred to him that although he bad never sought power, he had always had it. But he decided that it was a power born of excellence, not manipulation. He had no reason to be ashamed of it. He had never, except perhaps with Bean, used his power to hurt someone. And with Bean, things had worked well after all. Bean had become a friend, finally, to take the place of the lost Alai, who in turn took the place of Valentine. Valentine, who was helping Peter in his plotting. Valentine, who still loved Ender
no matter what happened. And following that train of thought led him back to Earth, back to the quiet hours in the centre of the clear water ringed by a bowl of tree-covered hills. That is Earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometres around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of the hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upward from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets and winds and birds. And the voice of one girl, who spoke to him out of his far-off childhood. The same voice that had once protected him from terror. The same voice that he would do anything to keep alive, even return to school, even leave Earth behind again for another four or forty or four thousand years. Even if she loved Peter more.

  His eyes were closed, and he had not made any sound but breathing; still, Graff reached out and touched his hand across the aisle. Ender stiffened in surprise, and Graff soon withdrew, but for a moment Ender was struck with the startling thought that perhaps Graff felt some affection for him. But no, it was just another calculated gesture. Graff was creating a commander out of a little boy. No doubt Unit 17 in the course of studies included an affectionate gesture from the teacher.

  The shuttle reached the IPL satellite in only a few hours. Inter-Planetary Launch was a city of three thousand inhabitants, breathing oxygen from the plants that also fed them, drinking water that had already passed through their bodies ten thousand times, living only to service the tugs that did all the ox work in the solar system and the shuttles that took their cargoes and passengers back to the Earth or the Moon. It was a world where, briefly, Ender felt at home, since its floors sloped upward as they did in the Battle School.

  Their tug was fairly new; the IF was constantly casting off its old vehicles and purchasing the latest models. It had just brought a vast load of drawn steel processed by a factory ship that was taking apart minor planets in the asteroid belt. The steel would be dropped to the Moon, and now the tug was linked to fourteen barges. Graff dropped his ball into the reader again, however, and the barges were uncoupled from the tug. It would be making a fast run this time, to a destination of Graff's specification, not to be stated until the tug had cut loose from IPL.