that Bean didn't have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake.
"He's even smaller than Ender was."
Again, again. Bean was so tired of hearing that.
"Don't talk about that hijo de puta to me, bicho."
Bean perked up. Ender had an enemy. Bean was wondering when he'd spot one, for someone who was first in the standings had to have provoked something besides admiration. Who said it? Bean drifted nearer to the group the conversation had come from. The same voice came up again. Again. And then he knew: That one was the boy who had called Ender an hijo de puta.
He had the silhouette of some kind of lizard on his uniform. And a single triangle on his sleeve. None of the boys around him had the triangle. All were focused on him. Captain of the team?
Bean needed more information. He tugged on the sleeve of a boy standing near him.
"What," said the boy, annoyed.
"Who's that boy there?" asked Bean. "The team captain with the lizard."
"It's a salamander, pinhead. Salamander army. And he's the commander."
Teams are called armies. Commander is the triangle rank. "What's his name?"
"Bonzo Madrid. And he's an even bigger asshole than you." The boy shrugged himself away from Bean.
So Bonzo Madrid was bold enough to declare his hatred for Ender Wiggin, but a kid who was not in Bonzo's army had contempt for him in turn and wasn't afraid to say so to a stranger. Good to know. The only enemy Ender had, so far, was contemptible.
But ... contemptible as Bonzo might be, he was a commander. Which meant it was possible to become a commander without being the kind of boy that everybody respected. So what was their standard of judgment, in assigning command in this war game that shaped the life of Battle School?
More to the point, how do I get a command?
That was the first moment that Bean realized that he even had such a goal. Here in Battle School, he had arrived with the highest scores in his launch group - but he was the smallest and youngest and had been isolated even further by the deliberate actions of his teacher, making him a target of resentment. Somehow, in the midst of all this, Bean had made the decision that this would not be like Rotterdam. He was not going to live on the fringes, inserting himself only when it was absolutely essential for his own survival. As rapidly as possible, he was going to put himself in place to command an army.
Achilles had ruled because he was brutal, because he was willing to kill. That would always trump intelligence, when the intelligent one was physically smaller and had no strong allies. But here, the bullies only shoved and spoke rudely. The adults controlled things tightly and so brutality would not prevail, not in the assignment of command. Intelligence, then, had a chance to win out. Eventually, Bean might not have to live under the control of stupid people.
If this was what Bean wanted - and why not try for it, as long as some more important goal didn't come along first? - then he had to learn how the teachers made their decisions about command. Was it solely based on performance in classes? Bean doubted it. The International Fleet had to have smarter people than that running this school. The fact that they had that fantasy game on every desk suggested that they were looking at personality as well. Character. In the end, Bean suspected, character mattered more than intelligence. In Bean's litany of survival - know, think, choose, do - intelligence only mattered in the first three, and was the decisive factor only in the second one. The teachers knew that.
Maybe I should play the game, thought Bean.
Then: Not yet. Let's see what happens when I don't play.
At the same time he came to another conclusion he did not even know he had been concerned about. He would talk to Bonzo Madrid.
Bonzo was in the middle of a computer game, and he was obviously the kind of person who thought of anything unexpected as an affront to his dignity. That meant that for Bean to accomplish what he wanted, he could not approach Bonzo in a cringing way, like the suckups who surrounded him as he played, commending him even for his stupid mistakes in game-play.