Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,58
now. But he did it. If Ender knew that, if Ender saw him, I think that he’d—”
“He’d what? Rescue the squirrels? Try to heal them?”
“No, in those days you didn’t—undo what Peter did. You didn’t cross him. But Ender would be kind to squirrels. Do you understand? He’d feed them.”
“But if he fed them, they’d become tame, and that much easier for Peter to catch.”
Valentine began to cry again. “No matter what you do, it always helps Peter. Everything helps Peter, everything, you just can’t get away, no matter what.”
“Are you helping Peter?” asked Graff.
She didn’t answer.
“Is Peter such a very bad person, Valentine?”
She nodded.
“Is Peter the worst person in the world?”
“How can he be? I don’t know. He’s the worst person I know.”
“And yet you and Ender are his brother and sister. You have the same genes, the same parents, how can he be so bad if—”
Valentine turned and screamed at him, screamed as if he were killing her. “Ender is not like Peter! He is not like Peter in any way! Except that he’s smart, that’s all—in every other way a person could possibly be like Peter he is nothing nothing nothing like Peter! Nothing!”
“I see,” said Graff.
“I know what you’re thinking, you bastard, you’re thinking that I’m wrong, that Ender’s like Peter. Well maybe I’m like Peter, but Ender isn’t, he isn’t at all, I used to tell him that when he cried, I told him that lots of times, you’re not like Peter, you never like to hurt people, you’re kind and good and not like Peter at all!”
“And it’s true.”
His acquiescence calmed her. “Damn right it’s true. It’s true.”
“Valentine, will you help Ender?”
“I can’t do anything for him now.”
“It’s really the same thing you always did for him before. Just comfort him and tell him that he never likes to hurt people, that he’s good and kind and not like Peter at all. That’s the most important thing. That he’s not like Peter at all.”
“I can see him?”
“No. I want you to write a letter.”
“What good does that do? Ender never answered a single letter I sent.”
Graff sighed. “He answered every letter he got.”
It took only a second for her to understand. “You really stink.”
“Isolation is—the optimum environment for creativity. It was his ideas we wanted, not the—never mind, I don’t have to defend myself to you.”
Then why are you doing it, she did not ask.
“But he’s slacking off. He’s coasting. We want to push him forward, and he won’t go.”
“Maybe I’d be doing Ender a favor if I told you to go stuff yourself.”
“You’ve already helped me. You can help me more. Write to him.”
“Promise you won’t cut out anything I write.”
“I won’t promise any such thing.”
“Then forget it.”
“No problem. I’ll write your letter myself. We can use your other letters to reconcile the writing styles. Simple matter.”
“I want to see him.”
“He gets his first leave when he’s eighteen.”
“You told him it would be when he was twelve.”
“We changed the rules.”
“Why should I help you!”
“Don’t help me. Help Ender. What does it matter if that helps us, too?”
“What kind of terrible things are you doing to him up there?”
Graff chuckled. “Valentine, my dear little girl, the terrible things are only about to begin.”
Ender was four lines into the letter before he realized that it wasn’t from one of the other soldiers in the Battle School. It had come in the regular way—a MAIL WAITING message when he signed into his desk. He read four lines into it, then skipped to the end and read the signature. Then he went back to the beginning, and curled up on his bed to read the words over and over again.
ENDER,
THE BASTARDS WOULDN’T PUT ANY OF
MY LETTERS THROUGH TILL NOW. I
MUST HAVE WRITTEN A HUNDRED TIMES
BUT YOU MUST HAVE THOUGHT I NEVER
DID. WELL I DID. I HAVEN’T
FORGOTTEN YOU. I REMEMBER YOUR
BIRTHDAY. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING.
SOME PEOPLE MIGHT THINK THAT
BECAUSE YOU’RE BEING A SOLDIER
YOU ARE NOW A CRUEL AND HARD
PERSON WHO LIKES TO HURT PEOPLE,
LIKE THE MARINES IN THE VIDEOS,
BUT I KNOW THAT ISN’T TRUE. YOU
ARE NOTHING LIKE YOU-KNOW-WHO.
HE’S NICER-SEEMING BUT HE’S
STILL A SLUMBITCH INSIDE.
MAYBE YOU SEEM MEAN, BUT IT
WON’T FOOL ME. STILL PADDLING
THE OLD KNEW,
ALL MY LOVE TURKEY LIPS,
VAL
DON’T WRITE BACK THEY’LL PROBLY
SIKOWANALIZE YOUR LETTER.
Obviously it was written with the full approval of the teachers. But there was no doubt it was written by Val. The spelling of psychoanalyze, the epithet slumbitch for Peter, the joke about pronouncing knew like canoe were all things that no one could know