Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,84

Ender’s mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

Dink led him to his room, made him lie on the bed. “Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked.

Ender shook his head.

“You took him apart. I thought you were dead meat, the way he grabbed you. But you took him apart. If he’d stood up longer, you would’ve killed him.”

“He meant to kill me.”

“I know it. I know him. Nobody hates like Bonzo. But not anymore. If they don’t ice him for this and send him home, he’ll never look you in the eye again. You or anybody. He had twenty centimeters on you, and you made him look like a crippled cow standing there chewing her cud.”

All Ender could see, though, was the way Bonzo looked as Ender kicked upward into his groin. The empty, dead look in his eyes. He was already finished then. Already unconscious. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t thinking or moving anymore, just that dead, stupid look on his face, that terrible look, the way Stilson looked when I finished with him.

“They’ll ice him, though,” Dink said. “Everybody knows he started it. I saw them get up and leave the commanders’ mess. Took me a couple of seconds to realize you weren’t there, either, and then a minute more to find out where you had gone. I told you not to be alone.”

“Sorry.”

“They’re bound to ice him. Troublemaker. Him and his stinking honor.”

Then, to Dink’s surprise, Ender began to cry. Lying on his back, still soaking wet with sweat and water, he gasped his sobs, tears seeping out of his closed eyelids and disappearing in the water on his face.

“Are you all right?”

“I didn’t want to hurt him!” Ender cried. “Why didn’t he just leave me alone!”

He heard his door open softly, then close. He knew at once that it was his battle instructions. He opened his eyes, expecting to find the darkness of early morning, before 0600. Instead, the lights were on. He was naked, and when he moved the bed was soaking wet. His eyes were puffy and painful from crying. He looked at the clock on his desk. 1820, it said. It’s the same day. I already had a battle today, I had two battles today—the bastards know what I’ve been through, and they’re doing this to me.

WILLIAM BEE, GRIFFIN ARMY, TALO MOMOE,

TIGER ARMY, 1900

He sat on the edge of the bed. The note trembled in his hand. I can’t do this, he said silently. And then not silently. “I can’t do this.”

He got up, bleary, and looked for his flash suit. Then he remembered—he had put it in the cleaner while he showered. It was still there.

Holding the paper, he walked out of his room. Dinner was nearly over, and there were a few people in the corridor, but no one spoke to him, just watched him, perhaps in awe of what had happened at noon in the bathroom, perhaps because of the forbidding, terrible look on his face. Most of his boys were in the barracks.

Ho, Ender. There gonna be a practice tonight?

Ender handed the paper to Hot Soup. “Those sons of bitches,” he said. “Two at once?”

“Two armies!” shouted Crazy Tom.

“They’ll just trip over each other,” said Bean.

“I’ve got to clean up,” Ender said. “Get them ready, get everybody together, I’ll meet you there, at the gate.”

He walked out of the barracks, A tumult of conversation rose behind them. He heard Crazy Tom scream, “Two fart-eating armies! We’ll whip their butts!”

The bathroom was empty. All cleaned up. None of the blood that poured from Bonzo’s nose into the shower water. All gone. Nothing bad ever happened here.

Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we’ll be drinking Bonzo’s bloodwater in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen.

He dried himself, dressed in his flash suit, and walked to the