Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,119

didn’t understand. “I beat you.”

Mazer laughed, a loud laugh that filled the room. “Ender, you never played me. You never played a game since I became your enemy.”

Ender didn’t get the joke. He had played a great many games, at a terrible cost to himself. He began to get angry.

Mazer reached out and touched his shoulder. Ender shrugged him off. Mazer then grew serious and said, “Ender, for the past few months you have been the battle commander of our fleets. This was the Third Invasion. There were no games, the battles were real, and the only enemy you fought was the buggers. You won every battle, and today you finally fought them at their home world, where the queen was, all the queens from all their colonies, they all were there and you destroyed them completely. They’ll never attack us again. You did it. You.”

Real. Not a game. Ender’s mind was too tired to cope with it all. They weren’t just points of light in the air, they were real ships that he had fought with and real ships he had destroyed. And a real world that he had blasted into oblivion. He walked through the crowd, dodging their congratulations, ignoring their hands, their words, their rejoicing. When he got to his own room he stripped off his clothes, climbed into bed, and slept.

Ender awoke when they shook him. It took a moment to recognize them. Graff and Rackham. He turned his back on them. Let me sleep.

“Ender, we need to talk to you,” said Graff.

Ender rolled back to face them.

“They’ve been playing out the videos on Earth all day, all night since the battle yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” He had slept through until the next day.

“You’re a hero, Ender. They’ve seen what you did, you and the others. I don’t think there’s a government on Earth that hasn’t voted you their highest medal.”

“I killed them all, didn’t I?” Ender asked.

“All who?” asked Graff. “The buggers? That was the idea.”

Mazer leaned in close. “That’s what the war was for.”

“All their queens. So I killed all their children, all of everything.”

“They decided that when they attacked us. It wasn’t your fault. It’s what had to happen.”

Ender grabbed Mazer’s uniform and hung onto it, pulling him down so they were face to face. “I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer! You didn’t want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!” He was crying. He was out of control.

“Of course we tricked you into it. That’s the whole point,” said Graff. “It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it. It’s the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn’t do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood the buggers well enough.”

“And it had to be a child, Ender,” said Mazer. “You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn’t know. We made sure you didn’t know. You were reckless and brilliant and young. It’s what you were born for.”

“We had pilots with our ships, didn’t we.”

“Yes.”

“I was ordering pilots to go in and die and I didn’t even know it.”

“ They knew it, Ender, and they went anyway. They knew what it was for.”

“You never asked me! You never told me the truth about anything!”

“You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We’re responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it.”

“Tell me later,” Ender said. His eyes closed.

Mazer Rackham shook him. “Don’t go to sleep, Ender,” he said. “It’s very important.”

“You’re finished with me,” Ender said. “Now leave me alone.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Mazer said. “We’re trying to tell you. They’re not through with you, not at all. It’s crazy