Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,114

Much of what had made her a good commander was lost. Ender couldn’t use her anymore, except in routine, closely supervised assignments. She was no fool. She knew what had happened. But she also knew that Ender had no other choice, and told him so.

The fact remained that she had broken, and she was far from being the weakest of his squad leaders. It was a warning—he could not press his commanders more than they could bear. Now, instead of using his leaders whenever he needed their skills, he had to keep in mind how often they had fought. He had to spell them off, which meant that sometimes he went into battle with commanders he trusted a little less. As he eased the pressure on them, he increased the pressure on himself.

Late one night he woke up in pain. There was blood on his pillow, the taste of blood in his mouth. His fingers were throbbing. He saw that in his sleep he had been gnawing on his own fist. The blood was still flowing smoothly. “Mazer!” he called. Rackham woke up and called at once for a doctor.

As the doctor treated the wound, Mazer said, “I don’t care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won’t get you out of this school.”

“I was asleep,” Ender said. “I don’t want to get out of Command School.”

“Good.”

“The others. The ones who didn’t make it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before me. Your other students, who didn’t make it through the training. What happened to them?”

“They didn’t make it. That’s all. We don’t punish the ones who fail. They just—don’t go on.”

“Like Bonzo.”

“Bonzo?”

“He went home.”

“Not like Bonzo.”

“What, then? What happened to them? When they failed?”

“Why does it matter, Ender?”

Ender didn’t answer.

“None of them failed at this point in their course, Ender. You made a mistake with Petra. She’ll recover. But Petra is Petra, and you are you.”

“Part of what I am is her. Is what she made me.”

“You won’t fail, Ender. Not this early in the course. You’ve had some tight ones, but you’ve always won. You don’t know what your limits are yet, but if you’ve reached them already you’re a good deal feebler than I thought.”

“Do they die?”

“Who?”

“The ones who fail.”

“No, they don’t die. Good heavens, boy, you’re playing games.”

“I think that Bonzo died. I dreamed about it last night. I remembered the way he looked after I jammed his face with my head. I think I must have pushed his nose back into his brain. The blood was coming out of his eyes. I think he was dead right then.”

“It was just a dream.”

“Mazer, I don’t want to keep dreaming these things. I’m afraid to sleep. I keep thinking of things that I don’t want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if I were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life.”

“We can’t drug you if that’s what you’re hoping for. I’m sorry if you have bad dreams. Should we leave the light on at night?”

“Don’t make fun of me!” Ender said. “I’m afraid I’m going crazy.”

The doctor was finished with the bandage. Mazer told him he could go. He went.

“Are you really afraid of that?” Mazer asked.

Ender thought about it and wasn’t sure.

“In my dreams,” said Ender, “I’m never sure whether I’m really me.”

“Strange dreams are a safety valve, Ender. I’m putting you under a little pressure for the first time in your life. Your body is finding ways to compensate, that’s all. You’re a big boy now. It’s time to stop being afraid of the night.”

“All right,” Ender said. He decided then that he would never tell Mazer about his dreams again.

The days wore on, with battles every day, until at last Ender settled into the routine of the destruction of himself. He began to have pains in his stomach. They put him on a bland diet, but soon he didn’t have an appetite for anything at all. “Eat,” Mazer said, and Ender would mechanically put food in his mouth. But if nobody told him to eat, he didn’t eat.

Two more of his squadron leaders collapsed the way that Petra had; the pressure on the rest became all the greater. The enemy outnumbered them by three or four to one in every battle now; the enemy also retreated more readily when things went badly, regrouping to keep the battle going longer and longer. Sometimes battles lasted for hours before they finally destroyed the last enemy ship. Ender began rotating