Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,110

of situations we might expect in encounters with the enemy. We are using the movement patterns we saw in the Second Invasion. But instead of mindlessly following these same patterns, I will be controlling the enemy simulation. At first you will see easy situations that you are expected to win handily. Learn from them, because I will always be there, one step ahead of you, programming more difficult and advanced patterns into the computer so that your next battle is more difficult, so that you are pushed to the limit of your abilities.”

“And beyond?”

“The time is short. You must learn as quickly as you can. When I gave myself to starship travel, just so I would still be alive when you appeared, my wife and children all died, and my grandchildren were my own age when I came back. I had nothing to say to them. I was cut off from all the people that I loved, everything I knew, living in this alien catacomb and forced to do nothing of importance but teach student after student, each one so hopeful, each one, ultimately, a weakling, a failure. I teach, I teach, but no one learns. You, too, have great promise, like so many students before you, but the seeds of failure may be in you, too. It’s my job to find them, to destroy you if I can, and believe me, Ender, if you can be destroyed I can do it.”

“So I’m not the first.”

“No, of course you’re not. But you’re the last. If you don’t learn, there’ll be no time to find anyone else. So I have hope for you, if only because you are the only one left to hope for.”

“What about the others? My squadron leaders?”

“Which of them is fit to take your place?”

“Alai.”

“Be honest.”

Ender had no answer, then.

“I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it. So, Ender, I hope you do not bore me during your training with complaints that you are not having fun. Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing. When you can give me back my dead wife, Ender, then you can complain to me about what this education costs you.”

“I wasn’t trying to get out of anything.”

“But you will, Ender. Because I am going to grind you down to dust, if I can. I’m going to hit you with everything I can imagine, and I will have no mercy, because when you face the buggers they will think of things I can’t imagine, and compassion for human beings is impossible for them.”

“You can’t grind me down, Mazer.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

“Because I’m stronger than you.”

Mazer smiled. “We’ll see about that, Ender.”

Mazer wakened him before morning; the clock said 0340, and Ender felt groggy as he padded along the corridor behind Mazer. “Early to bed and early to rise,” Mazer intoned, “makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.”

He had been dreaming that buggers were vivisecting him. Only instead of cutting open his body, they were cutting up his memories and displaying them like holographs and trying to make sense of them. It was a very odd dream, and Ender couldn’t easily shake loose of it, even as he walked through the tunnels to the simulator room. The buggers tormented him in his sleep, and Mazer wouldn’t leave him alone when he was awake. Between the two of them he had no rest. Ender forced himself awake. Apparently Mazer meant it when he said he meant to break Ender down—and forcing him to play when tired and sleepy was just the sort of cheap and easy trick Ender should have expected. Well, today, it wouldn’t work.

He got to the simulator and found his squadron leaders already on the wire, waiting for him. There was no enemy yet, so he divided them into two armies and began a mock battle, commanding both sides so he could control the test that each of his leaders was going through. They began slowly, but soon were vigorous and alert.

Then the simulator field went blank, the ships disappeared, and everything changed at once. At the near edge of the simulator field they could see the shapes, drawn in holographic light, of three starships from the human fleet. Each would have twelve