“And you couldn’t have asked somebody else?”
300
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
“Everybody else was busy,” said Zeck. Immediately he
repented of the remark, because of course he hadn’t even tried
anybody else, and he only said this in order to hurt Graff’s
feelings by implying he was useless and had no work to do. “That
was wrong of me to say that,” said Zeck, “and I ask your
forgiveness.”
“What’s your question,” said Graff impatiently, looking
away.
“When you informed me that nonviolence was not an option
here, you said it was because my motive is religious, and there is
no religion in Battle School.”
“No open observance of religion,” said Graff. “Or we’d have
classes constantly being interrupted by Muslims praying and
every seventh day—not the same seventh day, mind you—we’d
have Christians and Muslims and Jews celebrating one Sabbath
or another. Not to mention the Macumba ritual of sacrificing
chickens. Icons and statues of saints and little Buddhas and
ancestral shrines and all kinds of other things would clutter up
the place. So it’s all banned. Period. So please get to class before
I have to give you a demerit.”
“That was not my question,” said Zeck. “I would not have
come here to ask you a question whose answer you had already
told me.”
“Then why did you bring up—never mind, what’s your
question.”
“If religious observance is banned, then why does Battle
School tolerate the commemoration of the day of Saint
Nicholas?”
“We don’t,” said Graff.
“And yet you did,” said Zeck.
“No we didn’t.”
“It was commemorated.”
“Would you please get to the point? Are you lodging a
complaint? Did one of the teachers make some remark?”
“Filippus Rietveld put out his shoes for St. Nicholas. Dink
Meeker put a Sinterklaas poem in the shoe and then gave Flip a
pancake carved with the initial F. An edible initial is a traditional
treat on Sinterklaas Day. Which is today, December sixth.”
Graff sat down and leaned back in his chair. “A Sinterklaas
poem?”
Zeck recited it.
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
301
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Graff smiled and chuckled a little.
“So you think it’s funny when they have their religious
observance, but my religious observance is banned.”
“It was a poem in a shoe. I give you permission to write all
the poems you want and insert them into people’s wearing
apparel.”
“Poems in shoes are not my religious observance. Mine is to
contribute a small part to peace on Earth.”
“You’re not even on Earth.”
“I would be, if I hadn’t been kidnapped and enslaved to the
service of Mammon,” said Zeck mildly.
You’ve been here almost a year, thought Graff, and you’re
still singing the same tune. Doesn’t peer pressure have any effect
on you?
“If these Dutch Christians have their St. Nicholas Day, then
the Muslims should have Ramadan and the Jews should have the
Feast of Tabernacles and I should be able to live the gospel of
love and peace.”
“Why are you even bothering with this?” said Graff. “The
only thing I can do is punish them for a rather sweet gesture. It
will make people hate you more.”
“You mean you intend to tell them who reported them?”
“No, Zeck. I know how you operate. You’ll tell them
yourself, so they’ll be angry and people will persecute you and
that will make you feel more purified.”
For a man who didn’t recognized him when he came in, Graff
certainly knew a lot about him. His face wasn’t known, but his
ideas were. Zeck’s persistence in his faith was making an
impression.
“If Battle School bans my religion because it forbids all
religion, then all religion should be forbidden, sir.”
“I know that,” said Graff. “I also know you’re an insufferable
twit.”
“I believe that remark falls under the topic of ‘The
commander’s responsibility to build morale,’ is that correct, sir?”
asked Zeck.
“And that remark falls under the category of ‘You won’t get
out of Battle School by being a smartass,’” said Graff.
“Better a smartass than an insufferable twit, sir,” said Zeck.
“Get out of my office.”
302
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
*
An hour later, Flip and Dink had been called in and
reprimanded and the poem confiscated.
“Aren’t you going to take his shoes, sir?” asked Dink. “And
I’m sure we can recover his initial when he shits it out. I’ll
reshape it for you so there’s no mistaking it, sir.”
Graff said nothing, except to send them back to class. He
knew that word of this would circulate throughout Battle School.
But if he hadn’t done it, then Zeck would have made sure that
word of how this “religious observance” had been tolerated
would spread, and then there really would be a nightmare of kids
demanding their holidays.
It was inevitable. The two recusants, Zeck and Dink, both of
whom refused to cooperate with the program here, were bound
to become allies. Not that they knew they were allied. But in fact
they were—they were deliberately stressing the system in order
to try to make it collapse.
Well, I won’t let you, dear genius children. Because nobody
gives a rat’s ass about Sinterklaas Day, or about Christian
nonviolence. When you go to war—which is where you’ve gone,
believe it or not, Dink and Zeck—then childish things are put
away. In the face of a threat to the survival of the species, all
these planetside trivialities are put aside until the crisis passes.
And it has not passed, whatever you little twits might think
about it.
*
Dink left Graff’s office seething. “If they can’t seen the
difference between praying eight times a day and putting a poem
in a shoe once a year …”
“It was a great poem,” said Flip.
“It was dumb,” said Dink.
“Wasn’t that the point? It was a great dumb poem. I just feel
bad I didn’t write one for you.”
“I didn’t put out my shoes.”
Flip sighed. “I’m sorry I did that. I was just feeling homesick.
I didn’t think anybody would do anything about it.”
“Sorry.”
“We’re both so very, very sorry,” said Flip. “Except that
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
303
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
we’re not sorry at all.”
“No, we’re not,” said Dink.
“In fact, it’s kind of fun to get in trouble for keeping
Sinterklaas Day. Imagine what would happen if we celebrated
Christm
as.”
“Well,” said Dink, “we’ve still got nineteen days.”
“Right,” said Flip.
By the time they got back to Rat Army barracks, it was
obvious that the story was already known. Everybody fell silent
when Dink and Flip stood in the doorway.
“Stupid,” said Rosen.
“Thanks,” said Dink. “That means so much, coming from
you.”
“Since when did you get religion?” Rosen demanded. “Why
make some kind of holy war out of it?”
“It wasn’t religious,” said Dink. “It was Dutch. ”
“Well, eemo, you be Rat Army now, not Dutch.”
“In three months I won’t be in Rat Army,” said Dink. “But
I’ll be Dutch until I die.”
“Nations don’t matter up here,” said one of the other boys.
“Religions neither,” said another.
“Well it’s obvious religion does matter,” said Flip, “or we
wouldn’t have been called in and reprimanded for cutting a
pancake into an F and writing a funny poem and sticking it in a
shoe.”
Dink looked down the long corridor, which curved upward
toward the end. Zeck, who slept at the very back of the barracks,
couldn’t even be seen from the door.
“He’s not here,” said Rosen.
“Who?”
“Zeck,” said Rosen. “He came in and told us what he’d done,
and then he left.”
“Anybody know where he goes when he takes off by
himself?” asked Dink.
“Why?” said Rosen. “You planning to slap him around a
little? I can’t allow that.”
“I want to talk to him,” said Dink.
“Oh, talk,” said Rosen.
“When I say talk, I mean talk,” said Dink.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” said Flip. “Stupid prig.”
“He just wants to get out of Battle School,” said Dink.
304
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
“If we put it to a vote,” said one of the other boys, “he’d be
gone in a second. What a waste of space.”
“A vote,” said Flip. “What a military idea.”
“Go stick your finger in a dike,” the boy answered.
“So now we’re anti-Dutch,” said Dink.
“They can’t help it if they still believe in Santa Claus,” said
an American kid.
“Sinterklaas,” said Dink. “Lives in Spain, not the North Pole.
Has a friend who carries his bag—Black Piet.”
“Friend?” said a kid from South Africa. “Black Piet sounds
like a slave to me.”
Rosen sighed. “It’s a relief when Christians are fighting each
other instead of slaughtering Jews.”
That was when Ender Wiggin joined the discussion for the
first time. “Isn’t this exactly what the rules are supposed to
prevent? People sniping at each other because of religion or
nationality?”
“And yet we’re doing it anyway,” said the American kid.
“Aren’t we up here to save the human race?” said Dink.
“Humans have religions and nationalities. And customs. Why
can’t we be humans too?”
Wiggin didn’t answer.
“Makes no sense for us to live like Buggers,” said Dink.
“They don’t celebrate Sinterklaas Day, either.”
“Part of being human,” said Wiggin, “is to massacre each
other from time to time. So maybe till we beat the Formics we
should try not to be so very very human.”
“And maybe,” said Dink, “soldiers fight for what they care
about, and what they care about is their families and their
traditions and their faith and their nation—the very stuff they
don’t allow us to have here.”
“Maybe we fight so we can get back home and find all that
stuff still there, waiting for us,” said Wiggin.
“Maybe none of us are fighting at all,” said Flip. “It’s not like
anything we do here is real.”
“I’ll tell you what’s real,” said Dink. “I was Sinterklaas’s
helper last night.” Then he grinned.
“So you’re finally admitting you’re an elf,” said the
American kid, grinning back.
“How many Dutch kids are there in Battle School?” said
Dink. “Sinterklaas is definitely a minority cultural icon, right?
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
305
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Nothing like Santa Claus, right?”
Rosen kicked Dink lightly on the shin. “What do you think
you’re doing, Dink?”
“Santa Claus isn’t a religious figure, either. Nobody prays to
Santa Claus. It’s an American thing.”
“Canadian too,” said another kid.
“Anglophone Canadian,” said another. “Papa Noel for some
of us.”
“Father Christmas,” said a Brit.
“See? Not Christian, national,” said Dink. “It’s one thing to
stifle religious expression. But to try to erase nationality—the
whole fleet is thick with national loyalties. They don’t make
Dutch admirals pretend not to be Dutch. They wouldn’t stand for
it.” “There aren’t any Dutch admirals,” said the Brit.
It wasn’t that Dink let idiotic comments like this make him
angry. He didn’t want to hit anybody. He didn’t want to raise his
voice. But still, there was this deep defiance that could not be
ignored. He had to do something that other people wouldn’t like.
Even though he knew it would cause trouble and accomplish
nothing at all, he was going to do it, and it was going to start right
now.
“They were able to stifle our Dutch holiday because there are
so few of us,” said Dink. “But it’s time for us to insist on
expressing our national cultures like any other soldiers in the
International Fleet. Christmas is a holy day for Christians, but
Santa Claus is a secular figure. Nobody prays to Saint Nicholas.”
“Little kids do,” said the American, but he was laughing.
“Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Papa Noel, Sinterklaas, they
may have begun with a Christian feast day, but they’re national
now, and people with no religion at all still celebrate the holiday.
It’s the day of gift-giving, right? December 25th, whether you’re
a believing Christian or not. They can keep us from being
religious, but they can’t stop us from giving gifts on Santa Claus
day.”
Some of them were laughing. Some were thinking.
“You’re going to get in such deep doodoo,” said one.
“É,” said Dink. “But then, that’s where I live all the time
anyway.”
“Don’t even try it.”
Dink looked up to see who had spoken so angrily.
306
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
Zeck.
“I think we already know where you stand,” said Dink.
“In the name of Christ I forbid you to bring Satan into this
place.”
All the smiles disappeared. Everyone fell silent.
“You know, don’t you, Zeck,” said Dink, “that you just
guaranteed that I’ll have support for my little Santa Claus
movem
ent.”
Zeck seemed genuinely frightened. But not of Dink. “Don’t
bring this curse down on your own heads.”
“I don’t believe in curses, I only believe in blessings,” said
Dink. “And I sure as hell don’t believe I’ll be cursed because I
give presents to people in the name of Santa Claus.”
Zeck glanced around and seemed to be trying to calm
himself. “Religious observances are forbidden for everybody.”
“And yet you observe your religion all the time,” said Dink.
“Every time you don’t fire your weapon in the Battle Room,
you’re doing it. So if you oppose our little Santa Claus
revolution, eemo, then we want to see you firing that gun and
taking people out. Otherwise you’re a flaming hypocrite. A
fraud. A pious fake. A liar.” Dink was in his face now. Close
enough to make some of the other kids uncomfortable.
“Back off, Dink,” one of them muttered. Who? Wiggin, of
course. Great, a peacemaker. Again, Dink felt defiance swell up
inside him.
“What are you going to do?” said Zeck softly. “Hit me? I’m
three years younger than you.”
“No,” said Dink. “I’m going to bless you.”
He set his hand in the air just over Zeck’s head. As Dink
expected, Zeck stood there without flinching. That was what
Zeck was best at: taking it whatever anybody dished out without
even trying to get away.
“I bless you with the spirit of Santa Claus,” said Dink. “I
bless you with compassion and generosity. With the irresistible
impulse to make other people happy. And you know what else?
I bless you with the humility to realize that you aren’t any better
than the rest of us in the eyes of God.”
“You know nothing about God,” said Zeck.
“I know more than you do,” said Dink. “Because I’m not
filled with hate.”
“Neither am I,” said Zeck.
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
307
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
“No,” murmured another boy. “You’re filled with kuso.”
“Toguro,” said another, laughing.
“I bless you,” said Dink, “with love. Believe me, Zeck, it’ll
be such a shock to you, when you finally feel it, that it might just
kill you. Then you can go talk to God yourself and find out where
you screwed up.”
Dink turned around and faced the bulk of Rat Army. “I don’t
know about you, but I’m playing Santa Claus this year. We don’t
Decision Point (ARC) Page 42