ambition and they prod us to be competitive. So I don’t compete.
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I cooperate.
Dink was sitting in the game room, watching the other
players—he had beaten all the games in the room, so he had
nothing left to prove—when Wiggin found him. If Wiggin
remembered Dink’s first dumb joke about his height, Wiggin
didn’t show it. Instead, Dink let him know which of Rosen’s
rules and orders he had to obey, and which he didn’t. He also let
him know that Dink wouldn’t be playing power games with
him—he was going to get Ender into the battles from the start,
pushing him, giving him a chance to learn and grow.
Wiggin clearly understood what Dink was doing for him. He
left, satisfied.
There’s my contribution to the survival of the human race,
thought Dink. I’m not what great commanders are made of. But
I know a great commander when I see one, and I can help get
him ready. That’s good enough for me. I can take this stupid,
ineffective school and accomplish something that actually might
help us win this war. Something real.
Not this stupid make-believe. Battle School! It was
children’s games, but structured by adults in order to manipulate
the children. But what did it have to do with the real war? You
rise to the top of the standings, you beat everybody, and then
what? Did you kill a single Bugger? Save a single human life?
No. You just go on to the next school and start over as nothing
again. Was there any evidence that Battle School accomplished
anything?
Sure, the graduates ended up filling important positions
throughout the fleet. But then, Battle School only admits kids
that are brilliant in the first place, so they would have been
command material already. Was there any evidence that Battle
School made a difference?
I could have been home in Holland. Walking by the North
Sea. Watching it pound against the shore, trying to wash over
and sweep away the dikes, the islands, and cover the land with
ocean, as it used to be, before humans started their foolish
terraforming experiment.
Dink remembered reading—back on Earth, when he could
read what he wanted—the silly claim that the Great Wall of
China was the only human artifact that could be seen from space.
In fact the claim wasn’t even true—at least not from
geosynchronous orbit or higher. The wall didn’t even cast
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enough of a shadow to be seen.
No, the human artifact that could be seen from space, that
showed up in picture after picture without exciting any comment
at all, was Holland. It should have been nothing but barrier
islands with wide saltwater sounds behind them. Instead, because
the Dutch built their dikes and pumped out the salt water and
purified the soil, it was land. Lush, green land—visible from
space.
But nobody recognized it as a human artifact. It was just land.
It grew plants and fed dairy cattle and held houses and highways,
just like any other land. But we did it. We Dutch. And when the
sea levels rose, we raised our dikes higher and made them thicker
and stronger, and nobody thought, Wow, look at the Dutch, they
created the largest human artifact on Earth, and they’re still
making it, a thousand years later.
I could have been home in Holland until they were actually
ready to have me do something real. As real as the land behind
the dikes.
Free time was over. Dink went to practice. Then he ate with
the rest of Rat Army—complete with the ritual of pretending that
all their food was rat food. Dink noticed how Wiggin observed
and seemed to enjoy the game—but didn’t take part. He stayed
aloof, watching.
That’s something else we have in common.
Something else? Why had he thought of it that way? What
was the first thing they had in common, that made it so standing
aloof was something else?
Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot. We’re the smartest kids in
the room.
Dink silently laughed at himself with perfect scorn. Right,
I’m not competitive. I know I’m not the best—but without even
thinking about it, I assume that I’m therefore second best. What
an eemo.
Dink went to the library and studied a while. He hoped that
Petra would come by, but she didn’t. Instead of talking to her—
the only other kid he knew who shared his contempt for the
system—he actually finished his assignments. It was history, so
it mattered that he do well.
He got back to the barracks a little early. Maybe he’d sleep.
Maybe play some game on his desk. Maybe there’d be somebody
in a talkative mood and Dink would have a conversation. No
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plans. He refused to care.
Flip was there, too. Already getting undressed for bed. But
instead of putting his shoes in his locker with the rest of his
uniform and his flash suit and the few other possessions a kid
could have in Battle School, he had set his shoes down on the
floor near the foot of his bed, toes out.
There was something familiar about it.
Flip looked at him and smiled wanly and rolled his eyes.
Then he swung up onto his bed and started reading something on
his desk, scrolling through what must be homework, because
now and then he’d run his finger across some section of the text
to highlight it.
The shoes. This was December fifth. It was Sinterklaas Eve.
Flip was Dutch, so of course he had set out his shoes.
Tonight, Sinterklaas—Sint Nikolaas, patron saint of
children—would come from his home in Spain, with Black Peter
carrying his bag of presents, and listen through the chimneys of
the houses throughout Holland, checking to see if children were
quarreling or disobedient. If the children were good, then they
would knock on the door and, when it was opened, fling candy
into the house. Children would rush out the door and find
presents left in baskets—or in their shoes, left by the front door.
And Flip had set his shoes out on Sinterklaas Eve.
For some reason, Dink found his eyes clouding with tears.
This was stupid. Yes, he missed home—missed his father’s
house near the strand. But Sinterklaas was for little children, not
for him. Not for a child in Battle School.
But Battle School is nothing, right? I should be home. And if
I were home, I’d be helping to make Sinterklaas Day for the
younger children. If there had been any younger children in our
house.
Without really deciding to do it, Dink took out his desk and
started to write.
His shoes will sit and gather moss
Without a gift from Sinterklaas
For when a soldier cannot cross
Th
e battle room without a loss
Then why should Sinterklaas equip
A kid who cannot fly with zip
But crawls instead just like a drip
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Of rain on glass, not like a ship
That flies through space: I speak of Flip.
It wasn’t a great poem, of course, but the whole idea of
Sinterklaas poems was that they made fun of the recipient of the
gift without giving offense. The lamer the poem, the more it
made fun of the giver of the gift rather than the target of the
rhyme. Flip still got teased about the fact that when he first was
assigned to Rat Army, a couple of times he had bad launches
from the wall of Battle Room and ended up floating like a feather
across the room, a perfect target for the enemy.
Dink would have written the verse in Dutch, but it was a
dying language, and Dink didn’t know if he spoke it well enough
to actually use it for poem-writing. Nor was he sure Flip could
read a Dutch poem, not if there were any unusual words in it.
Netherlands was just too close to Britain. The BBC had made the
Dutch bilingual; the European Community had made them
mostly anglophone.
The poem was done, but there was no way to extrude printed
paper from a desk. Ah well, the night was young. Dink put it in
the print queue and got up from bed to wander the corridors, desk
tucked under his arm. He’d pick up the poem before the printer
room closed, and he’d also search for something that might serve
as a gift.
In the end he found no gift, but he did add two lines to the
poem:
If Piet gives you a gift today,
You’ll find it on your breakfast tray.
It’s not as if there were a lot of things available to the kids in
Battle School. Their only games were in their desks or in the
game room; their only sport was in the Battle Room. Desks and
uniforms; what else did they need to own?
This bit of paper, thought Dink. That’s what he’ll have in the
morning.
It was dark in the barracks, and most kids were asleep, though
a few still worked on their desks, or played some stupid game.
Didn’t they know the teachers did psychological analysis on
them based on the games they played? Maybe they just didn’t
care. Dink sometimes didn’t care either, and played. But not
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tonight. Tonight he was seriously pissed off. And he didn’t even
know why.
Yes he did. Flip was getting something from Sinterklaas—
and Dink wasn’t. He should have. Dad would have made sure he
got something from Black Piet’s bag. Dink would have hunted
all over the house for it on Sinterklaas morning until he finally
found it in some perverse hiding place.
I’m homesick. That’s all. Isn’t that what the stupid counselor
told him? You’re homesick—get over it. The other kids do, said
the counselor.
But they don’t, thought Dink. They just hide it. From each
other, from themselves.
The remarkable thing about Flip was that tonight he didn’t
hide it.
Flip was already asleep. Dink folded the paper and slipped it
into one of the shoes.
Stupid greedy kid. Leaving out both shoes.
But of course that wasn’t it at all. If he had left only one shoe,
that would have been proof positive of what he was doing.
Someone might have guessed and then Flip would have been
mocked mercilessly for being so homesick and childish. So …
both shoes. Deniability. Not Sinterklaas Day at all—I just left my
shoes by the side of my bed.
Dink crawled into his own bed and lay there for a little while,
filled with a deep and unaccountable sadness. It wasn’t
homesickness, not really. It was the fact that Dink was no longer
the child; now he was the one who helped Sinterklaas do his job.
Of course the old saint couldn’t get from Spain to Battle School,
not in the ship he used. Somebody had to help him out.
Dink was being, not the child, but the dad. He would never
be the child again.
*
Zeck saw the shoes. He saw Dink put something into the shoe
in the darkness, when most kids were asleep. But it meant
nothing to him, except that these two Dutch boys were doing
something weird.
Zeck wasn’t in Dink’s toon. He wasn’t really in any Toon.
Because nobody wanted him, and it wouldn’t matter if they had.
Zeck didn’t play.
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Which made it all the more remarkable that Rat Army was in
second place—they won their battles with one less active soldier
than anybody else.
At first Rosen had threatened him and tried to take away
privileges—even meals—but Zeck simply ignored him. Ignored
other kids who shoved him and jostled him in the corridors. What
did he care? Their physical brutality to him, mild as it might be,
showed what kind of people they were, the impurity of their
souls, because they rejoiced in violence.
Genesis, chapter six, verse thirteen: And God said unto Noah,
The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with
violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the
earth.
Didn’t they understand that it was the violence of the human
race that had caused God to send the Buggers to attack the Earth?
This became obvious to Zeck as he was forced to watch the vids
of the Scouring of China. What could the Buggers represent,
except the destroying angel? A flood the first time, and now fire,
just as was prophesied.
So the proper response was to forswear violence and become
peaceful, rejecting war. Instead, they sacrificed their children to
the idolatrous god of war, taking them from their families and
thrusting them up here into the hot metal arms of Moloch, where
they would be trained to give themselves over entirely to
violence.
Jostle me all you want. It will purify me and make you
filthier.
Now, though, nobody bothered with Zeck. He was ignored.
Not pointedly—if he asked a question, people answered.
Scornfully, perhaps, but what was that to Zeck? Scorn was
merely pity mingled with hate, and hate was pride mixed with
fear. They feared him because he was different, and so they hated
him, and so their pity—the touch of godliness that remained in
them—was turned to scorn. A virtue made filthy by pride.
In the morning he had forgotten all about Flip’s shoes and the
paper that Dink had put into one of them the night before.
But then he saw Dink step out of the food line with a full tray,
and walk back to hand the tray to Flip.
Flip smiled, then laughed and rolled his eyes.
Zeck remembered the shoes then. He walked over and looked
at the tray.
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It was pancakes this morning, and on the top pancake,
everything had been cut away except a big letter F. Apparently,
this had some significance to the two Dutch boys that completely
escaped Zeck. But then, a lot of things escaped him. His father
had kept him sheltered from the world, and so he did not know
many of the things most of the other children knew. He was
proud of his ignorance. It was a mark of his purity.
This time, though, there was something about this that
seemed wrong to him. As if the letter F in the pancake was some
kind of conspiracy. What did it stand for? A bad word in
Common? That was too easy, and besides, they weren’t laughing
like that—it wasn’t wicked laughter. It was … sad laughter.
Sad laughter. It was hard to make sense of it, but Zeck knew
that he was right. The F was funny, but it also made them sad.
He asked one of the other boys. “What’s with the F Dink
carved into Flip’s pancake?”
The other kid shrugged. “They’re Dutch,” he said, as if that
accounted for any weirdness about them.
Zeck took that solitary clue—which he had already know, of
course—and took it to his desk immediately after breakfast. He
searched first for “Netherlands F.” Nothing that made sense.
Then a few more combinations, but it was “Dutch shoes” that
brought him to Sinterklaas Day, December sixth, and all the
customs associated with it.
He didn’t go to class. He went to Flip’s tidily made bed and
unmade it till he found, under the sheet and next to the mattress,
Dink’s poem.
Zeck memorized it, put it back, and remade the bed—for it
would be wrong to put Flip at risk of getting a demerit that he
did not deserve. Then he went to Colonel Graff’s office.
“I don’t remember sending for you,” said Colonel Graff.
“You didn’t,” said Zeck.
“If you have a problem, take it to your counselor? Who’s
assigned to you?” But Zeck knew at once that it wasn’t that Graff
couldn’t remember the counselor’s name—he simply had no idea
who Zeck was.
“I’m Zeck Morgan,” he said. “I’m a spectator in Rat Army.”
“Oh,” said Graff, nodding. “You. Have you reconsidered
your vow of nonviolence?”
“No sir,” said Zeck. “I’m here to ask you a question.”
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