the one who was born to be commander of the fleet that defends Earth from the Third Invasion. Because that's what we need - someone who'll strike the most brutal blow possible, with perfect aim and with no regard for consequences. Total war.
Me, I'm no Ender Wiggin. I'm just a street kid whose only skill was staying alive. Somehow. The only time I was in real danger, I ran like a squirrel and took refuge with Sister Carlotta. Ender went alone into battle. I go alone into my hidey-hole. I'm the guy who makes big brave speeches standing on tables in the mess hall. Ender's the guy who meets the enemy naked and overpowers him against all odds.
Whatever genes they altered to make me, they weren't the ones that mattered.
Ender almost died because of me. Because I goaded Bonzo. Because I failed to keep watch at the crucial time. Because I didn't stop and think like Bonzo and figure out that he'd wait for Ender to be alone in the shower.
If Ender had died today, it would have been my fault all over again.
He wanted to kill somebody.
Couldn't be Bonzo. Bonzo was already dead.
Achilles. That's the one he needed to kill. And if Achilles had been there at that moment, Bean would have tried. Might have succeeded, too, if violent rage and desperate shame were enough to beat down any advantage of size and experience Achilles might have had. And if Achilles killed Bean anyway, it was no worse than Bean deserved, for having failed Ender Wiggin so completely.
He felt his bed bounce. Nikolai had jumped the gap between the upper bunks.
"You can always foresee things that already happened. These are children, after all. We did not anticipate this level of violence."
"I don't believe you. I believe that this is precisely the level of violence you anticipated. This is what you set up. You think that the experiment succeeded."
"I can't control your opinions. I can merely disagree with them.
"Ender Wiggin is ready to move on to Command School. That is my report."
"I have a separate report from Dap, the teacher assigned to watch him most closely. And that report - for which there are to be no sanctions against Captain Dap - tells me that Andrew Wiggin is 'psychologically unfit for duty.'"
" If he is, which I doubt, it is only temporary."
"How much time do you think we have? No, Colonel Graff, for the time being we have to regard your course of action regarding Wiggin as a failure, and the boy as ruined not only for our purposes but quite possibly for any other as well. So, if it can be done without further killings, I want the other one pushed forward. I want him here in Command School as close to immediately as possible."
"Very well, sir. Though I must tell you that I regard Bean as unreliable."
"Why, because you haven't turned him into a killer yet?"
"Because he is not human, sir."
"The genetic difference is well within the range of ordinary variation."
"He was manufactured, and the manufacturer was a criminal, not to mention a certified loon."
"I could see some danger if his father were a criminal. Or his mother. But his doctor? The boy is exactly what we need, as quickly as we can get him."
"He is unpredictable."
"And the Wiggin boy is not?"
"Less unpredictable, sir."
"Very carefully answered, considering that you just insisted that the murder today was 'not foreseeable.'"
" Not murder, sir!"
"Killing, then."
"The mettle of the Wiggin boy is proved, sir, while Bean's is not."
"I have Dimak's report - for which, again, he is not to be - "
"Punished, I know, sir."
"Bean's behavior throughout this set of events has been exemplary."
"Then Captain Dimak's report was incomplete. Didn't he inform you that it was Bean who may have pushed Bonzo over the edge to violence by breaking security and informing him that Ender's army was composed of exceptional students?"
"That was an act with unforeseeable consequences."
"Bean was acting to save his own life, and in so doing he shunted the danger onto Ender Wiggin's shoulders. That he later tried to ameliorate the danger does not change the fact that when Bean is under pressure, he turns