Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,66

was Graff.

It was the teachers who had done it. And it wasn’t an accident. Ender realized that now. It was a strategy. Graff had deliberately set him up to be separate from the other boys, made it impossible for him to be close to them. And he began now to suspect the reasons behind it. It wasn’t to unify the rest of the group—in fact, it was divisive. Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else. That was the only way he could win respect and friendship. It made him a better soldier than he would ever have been otherwise. It also made him lonely, afraid, angry, untrusting. And maybe those traits, too, made him a better soldier.

That’s what I’m doing to you, Bean. I’m hurting you to make you a better soldier in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what’s going to happen next, so you always have to be ready for anything, ready to improvise, determined to win no matter what. I’m also making you miserable. That’s why they brought you to me, Bean. So you could be just like me. So you could grow up to be just like the old man.

And me—am I supposed to grow up like Graff? Fat and sour and unfeeling, manipulating the lives of little boys so they turn out factory perfect, generals and admirals ready to lead the fleet in defense of the homeland? You get all the pleasures of the puppeteer. Until you get a soldier who can do more than anyone else. You can’t have that. It spoils the symmetry. You must get him in line, break him down, isolate him, beat him until he gets in line with everyone else.

Well, what I’ve done to you this day, Bean, I’ve done. But I’ll be watching you, more compassionately than you know, and when the time is right you’ll find that I’m your friend, and you are the soldier you want to be.

Ender did not go to classes that afternoon. He lay on his bunk and wrote down his impressions of each of the boys in his army, the things he noticed right about them, the things that needed more work. In practice tonight, he would talk with Alai and they’d figure out ways to teach small groups the things they needed to know. At least he wouldn’t be in this thing alone.

But when Ender got to the battleroom that night, while most others were still eating, he found Major Anderson waiting for him. “There has been a rule change, Ender. From now on, only members of the same army may work together in a battleroom during freetime. And, therefore, battlerooms are available only on a scheduled basis. After tonight, your next turn is in four days.”

“Nobody else is holding extra practices.”

“They are now, Ender. Now that you command another army, they don’t want their boys practicing with you. Surely you can understand that. So they’ll conduct their own practices.”

“I’ve always been in another army from them. They still sent their soldiers to me for training.”

“You weren’t commander then.”

“You gave me a completely green army, Major Anderson, sir—”

“You have quite a few veterans.”

“They aren’t any good.”

“Nobody gets here without being brilliant, Ender. Make them good.”

“I needed Alai and Shen to—”

“It’s about time you grew up and did some things on your own, Ender. You don’t need these other boys to hold your hand. You’re a commander now. So kindly act like it, Ender.”

Ender walked past Anderson toward the battleroom. Then he stopped, turned, asked a question. “Since these evening practices are now regularly scheduled, does it mean I can use the hook?”

Did Anderson almost smile? No. Not a chance of that. “We’ll see,” he said.

Ender turned his back and went on into the battleroom. Soon his army arrived, and no one else; either Anderson waited around to intercept anyone coming to Ender’s practice group, or word had already passed through the whole school that Ender’s informal evenings were through.

It was a good practice, they accomplished a lot, but at the end of it Ender was tired and lonely. There was a half hour before bedtime. He couldn’t go into his army’s barracks—he had long since learned that the best commanders stay away unless they have some reason to visit. The boys have to have a chance to be at peace, at