Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) - Orson Scott Card Page 0,94
I don’t really mind.”
“You must be good company for yourself.”
“Not me. My memories.”
“Maybe that’s who you are, what you remember.”
“No. My memories of strangers. My memories of the buggers.”
Valentine shivered, as if a cold breeze had suddenly passed. “I refuse to watch the bugger vids anymore. They’re always the same.”
“I used to study them for hours. The way their ships move through space. And something funny, that only occurred to me lying out here on the lake. I realized that all the battles in which buggers and humans fought hand to hand, all those are from the First Invasion. All the scenes from the Second Invasion, when our soldiers are in I.F. uniforms, in those scenes the buggers are always already dead. Lying there, slumped over their controls. Not a sign of struggle or anything. And Mazer Rackham’s battle—they never show us any footage from that battle.”
“Maybe it’s a secret weapon.”
“No, no, I don’t care about how we killed them. It’s the buggers themselves. I don’t know anything about them, and yet someday I’m supposed to fight them. I’ve been through a lot of fights in my life, sometimes games, sometimes—not games. Every time, I’ve won because I could understand the way my enemy thought. From what they did. I could tell what they thought I was doing, how they wanted the battle to take shape. And I played off of that. I’m very good at that. Understanding how other people think.”
“The curse of the Wiggin children.” She joked, but it frightened her, that Ender might understand her as completely as he did his enemies. Peter always understood her, or at least thought he did, but he was such a moral sinkhole that she never had to feel embarrassed when he guessed even her worst thoughts. But Ender—she did not want him to understand her. It would make her naked before him. She would be ashamed. “You don’t think you can beat the buggers unless you know them.”
“It goes deeper than that. Being here alone with nothing to do, I’ve been thinking about myself, too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.”
“No, Ender.”
“Don’t tell me ‘No, Ender.’ It took me a long time to realize that I did, but believe me, I did. Do. And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them—”
“You beat them.” For a moment she was not afraid of his understanding.
“No, you don’t understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.”
“Of course you don’t.” And now the fear came again, worse than before. Peter has mellowed, but you, they’ve made you into a killer. Two sides of the same coin, but which side is which?
“I’ve really hurt some people, Val. I’m not making this up.”
“I know, Ender.” How will you hurt me?
“See what I’m becoming, Val?” he said softly. “Even you are afraid of me.” And he touched her cheek so gently that she wanted to cry. Like the touch of his soft baby hand when he was still an infant. She remembered that, the touch of his soft and innocent hand on her cheek.
“I’m not,” she said, and in that moment it was true.
“You should be.”
No. I shouldn’t. “You’re going to shrivel up if you stay in the water. Also, the sharks might get you.”
He smiled. “The sharks learned to leave me alone a long time ago.” But he pulled himself onto the raft, bringing a wash of water across it as it tipped. It was cold on Valentine’s back.
“Ender, Peter’s going to do it. He’s smart enough to take the time it takes, but he’s going to win his way into power—if not right now, then later. I’m not sure yet whether that’ll be a good thing or a bad thing. Peter can be cruel, but he knows the getting and keeping of power, and there are signs that once the bugger war is over, and maybe even before it ends, the world will collapse into chaos again. The Russian Empire was on its way to hegemony before the First Invasion. If they try for it afterward—”