ENDER'S GAME

Chapter 1 -- Third

• "I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."

• "That's what you said about the brother."

• "The brother tested out impossible. For other reasons. Nothing to do with his ability."

• "Same with the sister. And there are doubts about him. He's too malleable. Too willing to submerge himself in someone else's will."

• "Not if the other person is his enemy."

• "So what do we do? Surround him with enemies all the time?"

• "If we have to."

• "I thought you said you liked this kid."

• "If the buggers get him, they'll make me look like his favorite uncle."

• "All right. We're saving the world, after all. Take him."

• The monitor lady smiled very nicely and tousled his hair and said, "Andrew, I suppose by now you're just absolutely sick of having that horrid monitor. Well, I have good news for you. That monitor is going to come out today. We're going to just take it right out, and it won't hurt a bit."

• Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

• "So if you'll just come over here, Andrew, just sit right up here on the examining table. The doctor will be in to see you in a moment."

• The monitor gone. Ender tried to imagine the little device missing from the back of his neck. I'll roll over on my back in bed and it won't be pressing there. I won't feel it tingling and taking up the heat when I shower.

• And Peter won't hate me anymore. I'll come home and show him that the monitor's gone, and he'll see that I didn't make it, either. That I'll just be a normal kid now, like him. That won't be so bad then. He'll forgive me that I had my monitor a whole year longer than he had his. We'll be-- not friends, probably. No, Peter was too dangerous. Peter got so angry. Brothers, though. Not enemies, not friends, but brothers-- able to live in the same house. He won't hate me, he'll just leave me alone. And when he wants to play buggers and astronauts, maybe I won't have to play, maybe I can just go read a book.

• But Ender knew, even as he thought it, that Peter wouldn't leave him alone. There was something in Peter's eyes, when he was in his mad mood, and whenever Ender saw that look, that glint, he knew that the one thing Peter would not do was leave him alone. I'm practicing piano, Ender. Come turn the pages for me. Oh, is the monitor boy too busy to help his brother? Is he too smart? Got to go kill some buggers, astronaut? No, no, I don't want your help. I can do it on my own, you little bastard, you little Third.

• "This won't take long, Andrew," said the doctor.

• Ender nodded.

• "It's designed to be removed. Without infection, without damage. But there'll be some tickling, and some people say they have a feeling of something missing. You'll keep looking around for something. Something you were looking for, but you can't find it, and you can't remember what it was. So I'll tell you. It's the monitor you're looking for, and it isn't there. In a few days that feeling will pass."

• The doctor was twisting something at the back of Ender's head. Suddenly a pain stabbed through him like a needle from his neck to his groin. Ender felt his back spasm, and his body arched violently backward; hi head struck the bed. He could feel his legs thrashing, and his hands were clenching each other, wringing each other so tightly that they ached.

• "Deedee!" shouted the doctor. "I need you!" The nurse ran in, gasped. "Got to relax these muscles. Get it to me, now! What are you waiting for!"

• Something changed hands; Ender could not see. He lurched to one side and fell off the examining table. "Catch him!" cried the nurse.

• "Just hold him steady."

• "You hold him, doctor, he's too strong for me."

• "Not the whole thing! You'll stop his heart."

• Ender felt a needle enter his back just above the neck of his shirt. It burned, but wherever in him the fire spread, his muscles gradually unclenched. Now he could cry for the fear and pain of it.

• "Are you all right, Andrew?" the nurse asked.

• Andrew could not remember how to speak. They lifted him onto the table. They checked his pulse, did other things; he did not understand it all.

• The doctor was trembling; his voice shook as he spoke. "They leave these things in the kids for three years, what do they expect? We could have switched him off, do you realize that? We could have unplugged his brain for all time."

• "When does the drug wear off'?" asked the nurse.

• "Keep him here for at least an hour. Watch him. If he doesn't start talking in fifteen minutes, call me. Could have unplugged him forever. I don't have the brains of a bugger."

• He got back to Miss Pumphrey's class only fifteen minutes before the closing bell. He was still a little unsteady on his feet.

• "Are you all right, Andrew?" asked Miss Pumphrey.

• He nodded.

• "Were you ill?"

• He shook his head.

• "You don't look well."

• "I'm OK."

• "You'd better sit down, Andrew."

• He started toward his seat, but stopped. Now what was I looking for? I can't think what I was looking for.

• "Your seat is over there," said Miss Pumphrey.

• He sat down, but it was something else he needed, something he had lost. I'll find it later.

• "Your monitor," whispered the girl behind him.

• Andrew shrugged.

• "His monitor," she whispered to the others.

• Andrew reached up and felt his neck. There was a bandaid. It was gone. He was just like everybody else now.

• "Washed out, Andy?" asked a boy who sat across the aisle and behind him. Couldn't think of his name. Peter. No, that was someone else.

• "Quiet, Mr. Stilson," said Miss Pumphrey. Stilson smirked.

• Miss Pumphrey talked about multiplication. Ender doodled on his desk, drawing contour maps of mountainous islands and then telling his desk to display them in three dimensions from every angle. The teacher would know, of course, that he wasn't paying attention, but she wouldn't bother him. He always knew the answer, even when she thought he wasn't paying attention.

• In the corner of his desk a word appeared and began marching around the perimeter of the desk. It was upside down and backward at first, but Ender knew what it said long before it reached the bottom of the desk and turned right side up.

• THIRD

• Ender smiled. He was the one who had figured out how to send messages and make them march-- even as his secret enemy called him names, the method of delivery praised him. It was not his fault he was a Third. It was the government's idea, they were the ones who authorized it-- how else could a Third like Ender have got into school? And now the monitor was gone. The experiment entitled Andrew Wiggin hadn't worked out alter all. If they could, he was sure they would like to rescind the waivers that had allowed him to be born at all. Didn't work, so erase the experiment.

• The bell rang. Everyone signed off their desks or hurriedly typed in reminders to themselves. Some were dumping lessons or data into their computers at home. A few gathered at the printers while something they wanted to show was printed out. Ender spread his hands over the child-size keyboard near the edge of the desk and wondered what it would feel like to have hands as large as a grown-up's. They must feel so big and awkward, thick stubby fingers and beefy palms. Of course, they had bigger keyboards-- but how could their thick fingers draw a fine line, the way Ender could, a thin line so precise that he could make it spiral seventy-nine times from the center to the edge of the desk without the lines ever touching or overlapping. It gave him something to do while the teacher droned on about arithmetic. Arithmetic! Valentine had taught him arithmetic when he was three.

• "Are you all right. Andrew?"

• "Yes, ma'am."

• "You'll miss the bus."

• Ender nodded and got up. The other kids were gone. They would be waiting, though, the bad ones. His monitor wasn't perched on his neck, hearing what heard and seeing what he saw. They could say what they liked. They might even hit him now-- no one could see anymore, and so no one would come to Ender's rescue. There were advantages to the monitor, and he would miss them.

• It was Stilson, of course. He wasn't bigger than most other kids, but he was bigger than Ender. And he had some others with him. He always did.

• "Hey, Third."

• Don't answer. Nothing to say.

• "Hey, Third, we're talkin to you, Third, hey bugger-lover, we're talkin to you."

• Can't think of anything to answer. Anything I say will make it worse. So will saying nothing.

• "Hey, Third, hey, turd, you flunked out, huh? Thought you were better than us, but you lost your little birdie, Thirdie, got a bandaid on your neck."

• "Are you going to let me through?" Ender asked.

• "Are we going to let him through? Should we let him through?" They all laughed. "Sure we'll let you through. First we'll let your arm through, then your butt through, then maybe a piece of your knee."

• The others chimed in now. "Lost your birdie, Thirdie. Lost your birdie, Thirdie."

• Stilson began pushing him with one hand, someone behind him then pushed him toward Stilson.

• "See-saw, marjorie daw," somebody said.

• "Tennis!"

• "Ping-pong!"

• This would not have a happy ending. So Ender decided that he'd rather not be the unhappiest at the end. The next time Stilson's arm came out to push him, Ender grabbed at it. He missed.

• "Oh, gonna fight me, huh? Gonna fight me, Thirdie?"

• The people behind Ender grabbed at him, to hold him.

• Ender did not feel like laughing, but he laughed. "You mean it takes this many of you to fight one Third?"

• "We're people, not Thirds, turd face. You're about as strong as a fart!"

• But they let go of him. And as soon as they did, Ender kicked out high and hard, catching Stilson square in the breastbone. He dropped. It took Ender by surprise he hadn't thought to put Stilson on the ground with one kick. It didn't occur to him that Stilson didn't take a fight like this seriously, that he wasn't prepared for a truly desperate blow.

• For a moment, the others backed away and Stilson lay motionless. They were all wondering if he was dead. Ender, however, was trying to figure out a way to forestall vengeance. To keep them from taking him in a pack tomorrow. I have to win this now, and for all time, or I'll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse. Ender knew the unspoken rules of manly warfare, even though he was only six. It was forbidden to strike the opponent who lay helpless on the ground; only an animal would do that.

• So Ender walked to Stilson's supine body and kicked him again, viciously, in the ribs. Stilson groaned and rolled away from him. Ender walked around him and kicked him again, in the crotch. Stilson could not make a sound; he only doubled up and tears streamed out of his eyes.

• Then Ender looked at the others coldly. "You might be having some idea of ganging up on me. You could probably beat me up pretty bad. But just remember what I do to people who try to hurt me. From then on you'd be wondering when I'd get you, and how bad it would be." He kicked Stilson in the face. Blood from his nose spattered the ground nearby. "It wouldn't be this bad," Ender said. "It would be worse."

• He turned and walked away. Nobody followed him, He turned a corner into the corridor leading to the bus stop. He could hear the boys behind him saying, "Geez. Look at him. He's wasted." Ender leaned his head against the wall of the corridor and cried until the bus came. I am just like Peter. Take my monitor away, and I am just like Peter.

Chapter 2 -- Peter

• "All right, it's off. How's he doing?"

• "You live inside somebody's body for a few years, you get used to it. I look at his face now, I can't tell what's going on. I'm not used to seeing his facial expressions. I'm used to feeling them."

• "Come on, we're not talking about psychoanalysis here. We're soldiers, not witch doctors. You just saw him beat the guts out of the leader of a gang."

• "He was thorough. He didn't just beat him, he beat him deep. Like Mazer Rackham at the--"

• "Spare me. So in the judgment of the committee, he passes.

• "Mostly. Let's see what he does with his brother, now that the monitor's off."

• "His brother. Aren't you afraid of what his brother will do to him?"

• "You were the one who told me that this wasn't a no-risk business."

• "I went back through some of the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think were going to screw him up."

• "Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive."

• "I'm sorry, Ender," Valentine whispered. She was looking at the bandaid on his neck.

• Ender touched the wall and the door closed behind him. "I don't care. I'm glad it's gone."

• "What's gone?" Peter walked into the parlor, chewing on a mouthful of bread and peanut butter.

• Ender did not see Peter as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, thick, tousled hair and a face that could have belonged to Alexander the Great. Ender looked at Peter only to detect anger or boredom, the dangerous moods that almost always led to pain. Now as Peter's eyes discovered the bandaid on his neck, the telltale flicker of anger appeared.

• Valentine saw it too. "Now he's like us," she said, trying to soothe him before he had time to strike.

• But Peter would not be soothed. "Like us? He keeps the little sucker till he's six years old. When did you lose yours? You were three. I lost mine before I was five. He almost made it, little bastard, little bugger."

• This is all right, Ender thought. Talk and talk, Peter. Talk is fine.

• "Well, now your guardian angels aren't watching over you," Peter said. "Now they aren't checking to see if you feel pain, listening to hear what I'm saying, seeing what I'm doing to you. How about that? How about it?"

• Ender shrugged.

• Suddenly Peter smiled and clapped his hands together in a mockery of good cheer. "Let's play buggers and astronauts," he said.

• "Where's Mom?" asked Valentine.

• "Out," said Peter. "I'm in charge."

• "I think I'll call Daddy."

• "Call away," said Peter. "You know he's never in."

• "I'll play," Ender said.

• "You be the bugger," said Peter.

• "Let him be the astronaut for once," Valentine said.

• "Keep your fat face out of it, fart mouth," said Peter. "Come on upstairs and choose your weapons."

• It would not be a good game, Ender knew it was not a question of winning. When kids played in the corridors, whole troops of them, the buggers never won, and sometimes the games got mean. But here in their flat, the game would start mean, and the bugger couldn't just go empty and quit the way buggers did in the real wars. The bugger was in it until the astronaut decided it was over.

• Peter opened his bottom drawer and took out the bugger mask. Mother had got upset at him when Peter bought it, but Dad pointed out that the war wouldn't go away just because you hid bugger masks and wouldn't let your kids play with make-believe laser guns. The better to play the war games, and have a better chance of surviving when the buggers came again.

• If I survive the games, thought Ender. He put on the mask. It closed him in like a hand pressed tight against his face. But this isn't how it feels to he a bugger, thought Ender. They don't wear this face like a mask, it is their face. On their home worlds, do the buggers put on human masks, and play? And what do they call its? Slimies, because we're so soft and oily compared to them?

• "Watch out, Slimy," Ender said.

• He could barely see Peter through the eyeholes. Peter smiled at him. "Slimy, huh? Well, bugger-wugger, let's see how you break that face of yours."

• Ender couldn't see it coming, except a slight shift of Peter's weight; the mask cut our his peripheral vision. Suddenly there was the pain and pressure of a blow to the side of his head; he lost balance, fell that way.

• "Don't see too well, do you, bugger?" said Peter.

• Ender began to take off the mask. Peter put his toe against Ender's groin. "Don't take off the mask," Peter said.

• Ender pulled the mask down into place, took his hands away.

• Peter pressed with his foot. Pain shot through Ender; he doubled up.

• "Lie flat, bugger. We're gonna vivisect you, bugger. At long last we've got one of you alive, and we're going to see how you work."

• "Peter, stop it," Ender said.

• "Peter, stop it. Very good. So you buggers can guess our names. You can make yourselves sound like pathetic, cute little children so we'll love you and be nice to you. But it doesn't work. I can see you for what you really are. They meant you to be human, little Third, but you're really a bugger, and now it shows."

• He lifted his toot, took a step, and then knelt on Ender, his knee pressing into Ender's belly just below the breastbone. He put more and more of his weight on Ender. It became hard to breathe.

• "I could kill you like this," Peter whispered. "Just press and press until you're dead. And I could say that I didn't know it would hurt you, that we were just playing, and they'd believe me, and everything would be fine. And you'd be dead. Everything would be fine."

• Ender could not speak; the breath was being forced from his lungs. Peter might mean it. Probably didn't mean it, but then he might.

• "I do mean it," Peter said. "Whatever you think. I mean it. They only authorized you because I was so promising. But I didn't pan out. You did better. They think you're better. But I don't want a better little brother, Ender. I don't want a Third."

• "I'll tell," Valentine said.

• "No one would believe you."

• "They'd believe me."

• "Then you're dead, too, sweet little sister."

• "Oh, yes," said Valentine. "They'll believe that. 'I didn't know it would kill Andrew. And when he was dead, I didn't know it would kill Valentine too.'"

• The pressure let up a little.

• "So. Not today. But someday you two won't be together. And there'll be an accident."

• "You're all talk," Valentine said. "You don't mean any of it."

• "I don't?"

• "And do you know why you don't mean it?" Valentine asked. "Because you want to be in government someday. You want to be elected. And they won't elect you if your opponents can dig up the fact that your brother and sister both died in suspicious accidents when they were little. Especially because of the letter I've put in my secret file, which will be opened in the event of my death."

• "Don't give me that kind of crap," Peter said.

• "It says, I didn't die a natural death. Peter killed me, and if he hasn't already killed Andrew, he will soon. Not enough to convict you, but enough to keep you from ever getting elected."

• "You're his monitor now," said Peter. "You better watch him, day and night. You better be there."

• "Ender and I aren't stupid. We scored as well as you did on everything. Better on some things. We're all such wonderfully bright children. You're not the smartest, Peter, just the biggest."

• "Oh, I know. But there'll come a day when you aren't there with him, when you forget. And suddenly you'll remember, and you'll rush to him, and there he'll be perfectly all right. And the next time you won't worry so much, and you won't come so fast. And every time, he'll be all right. And you'll think that I forgot. Even though you'll remember that I said this, you'll think that I forgot. And years will pass. And then there'll be a terrible accident, and I'll find his body, and I'll cry and cry over him, and you'll remember this conversation, Vally, but you'll be ashamed of yourself for remembering, because you'll know that I changed, that it really was an accident, that it's cruel of you even to remember what I said in a childhood quarrel. Except that it'll be true. I'm gonna save this up, and he's gonna die, and you won't do a thing, not a thing. But you go on believing that I'm just the biggest."

• "The biggest asshole," Valentine said.

• Peter leaped to his feet and started for her. She shied away. Ender pried off his mask. Peter flopped back on his bed and started to laugh. Loud, but with real mirth, tears coming to his eyes. "Oh, you guys are just super, just the biggest suckers on the planet earth."

• "Now he's going to tell us it was all a joke," Valentine said.

• "Not a joke, a game. I can make you guys believe anything. I can make you dance around like puppets." In a phony monster yoice he said, "I'm going to kill you and chop you into little pieces and put you into the garbage hole." He laughed again. "Biggest suckers in the solar system."

• Ender stood there watching him laugh and thought of Stilson, thought of how it felt to crunch into his body. This is who needed it. This is who should have got it.

• As if she could read his mind, Valentine whispered, "No, Ender."

• Peter suddenly rolled to the side, flipped off the bed, and got in position for a fight. "Oh, yes, Ender," he said. "Any time, Ender."

• Ender lifted his right leg and took off the shoe. He held it up. "See there, on the toe? That's blood, Peter."

• "Ooh. Ooh, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. Ender killed a capper-tiller and now he's gonna kill me."

• There was no getting to him. Peter was a murderer at heart, and nobody knew it but Valentine and Ender.

• Mother came home and commiserated with Ender about the monitor. Father came home and kept saying it was such a wonderful surprise, they had such fantastic children that the government told them to have three and now the government didn't want to take any of them after all, so here they were with three, they still had a Third... until Ender wanted to scream at him, I know I'm a Third, I know it, if you want I'll go away so you don't have to be embarrassed in front of everybody, I'm sorry I lost the monitor and now you have three kids and no obvious explanation, so inconvenient for you, I'm sorry sorry sorry.

• He lay in bed staring upward into the darkness... On the bunk above him, he could hear Peter turning and tossing restlessly. Then Peter slid off the bunk and walked out of the room. Ender heard the hushing sound of the toilet clearing; then Peter stood silhouetted in the doorway.

• He thinks I'm asleep. He's going to kill me.

• Peter walked to the bed, and sure enough, he did not lift himself up to his bed. Instead he came and stood by Ender's head.

• But he did not reach for a pillow to smother Ender. He did not have a weapon.

• He whispered, "Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels. I'm sorry, I'm your brother. I love you."

• A long time later, Peter's even breathing said that he was asleep. Ender peeled the bandaid from his neck. And for the second time that day he cried.

Chapter 3 -- Graff

• "The sister is our weak link. He really loves her."

• "I know. She can undo it all, from the start. He won't wont to leave her."

• "So, what are you going to do?"

• "Persuade him that he wants to come with us more than he wants to stay with her."

• "How will you do that?"

• "I'll lie to him."

• "And if that doesn't work?"

• "Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies. We can't plan for everything, you know."

• Ender wasn't very hungry during breakfast. He kept wondering what it would be like at school. Facing Stilson after yesterday's fight. What Stilson's friends would do. Probably nothing, but he couldn't be sure. He didn't want to go.

• "You're not eating, Andrew," his mother said.

• Peter came into the room. "Morning. Ender. Thanks for leaving your slimy washcloth in the middle of the shower."

• "Just for you," Ender murmured.

• "Andrew, you have to eat."

• Ender held out his wrists, a gesture that said, So feed it to me through a needle.

• "Very funny." Mother said. "I try to be concerned, but it makes no difference to my genius children."

• "It was all your genes that made us, Mom." said Peter. "We sure didn't get any from Dad."

• "I heard that," Father said, not looking up from the news that was being displayed on the table while he ate.

• "It would've been wasted if you hadn't."

• The table beeped. Someone was at the door.

• "Who is it?" Mother asked.

• Father thumbed a key and a man appeared on hts video. He was wearing the only military uniform that meant anything anymore, the IF, the International Fleet.

• "I thought it was over," said Father.

• Peter said nothing, just poured milk over his cereal.

• And Ender thought, Maybe I won't have to go to school today after all.

• Father coded the door open and got up from the table. "I'll see to it," he said. "Stay and eat."

• They stayed, but they didn't eat. A few moments later, Father came back into the room and beckoned to Mother.

• "You're in deep poo," said Peter. "They found out what you did to Stilson, and now they're gonna make you do time out in the Belt."

• "I'm only six, moron. I'm a juvenile."

• "You're a Third, turd. You've got no rights."

• Valentine came in, her hair in a sleepy halo around her face. "Where's Mom and Dad? I'm too sick to go to school."

• "Another oral exam, huh?" Peter said.

• "Shut up, Peter," said Valentine.

• "You should relax and enjoy it," said Peter. "It could be worse."

• "I don't know how."

• "It could be an anal exam."

• "Hyuk hyuk," Valentine said. "Where are Mother and Father?"

• "Talking to a guy from IF."

• Instinctively she looked at Ender. After all, for years they had expected someone to come and tell them that Ender had passed, that Ender was needed.

• "That's right, look at him," Peter said. "But it might he me, you know. They might have realized I was the best of the lot after all." Peter's feelings were hurt, and so he was being a snot, as usual. The door opened. "Ender," said Father, "you better come in here."

• "Sorry, Peter," Valentine taunted.

• Father glowered. "Children, this is no laughing matter."

• Ender followed Father into the parlor. The IF officer rose to his feet when they entered, but he did not extend a hand to Ender.

• Mother was twisting her wedding band on her finger. "Andrew," she said. "I never thought you were the kind to get in a fight."

• "The Stilson boy is in the hospital," Father said. "You really did a number on him. With your shoe, Ender, that wasn't exactly fair."

• Ender shook his head. He had expected someone from the school to come about Stilson, not an officer of the fleet. This was more serious than he had thought. And yet he couldn't think what else he could have done.

• "Do you have any explanation for your behavior, young man?" asked the officer.

• Ender shook his head again. He didn't know what to say, and he was afraid to reveal himself to be any more monstrous than his actions had made him out to be. I'll take it, whatever the punishment is, he thought. Let's get it over with.

• "We're willing to consider extenuating circumstances," the officer said. "But I must tell you it doesn't look good. Kicking him in the groin, kicking him repeatedly in the face and body when he was down-- sounds like you really enjoyed it."

• "I didn't," Ender whispered.

• "Then why did you do it?"

• "He had his gang there," Ender said.

• "So? This excuses anything?"

• "No."

• "Tell me why you kept on kicking him. You had already won."

• "Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too, right then, so they'd leave me alone." Ender couldn't help it, he was too afraid, too ashamed of his own acts: though he tried not to, he cried again. Ender did not like to cry and rarely did; now, in less than a day, he had done it three times. And each time was worse. To cry in front of his mother and father and this military man, that was shameful. "You took away the monitor," Ender said. "I had to take care of myself, didn't I?"

• "Ender, you should have asked a grown-up for help," Father began.

• But the officer stood up and stepped across the room to Ender. He held out his hand. "My name is Graff. Ender. Colonel Hyrum Graff. I'm director of primary training at Battle School in the Belt. I've come to invite you to enter the school."

• After all. "But the monitor--"

• "The final step in your testing was to see what would happen if the monitor comes off. We don't always do it that way, but in your case--"

• "And I passed?"

• Mother was incredulous. "Putting the Stilson boy in the hospital? What would you have done if Andrew had killed him, given him a medal?"

• "It isn't what he did, Mrs. Wiggin. It's why." Colonel Graff handed her a folder full of papers. "Here are the requisitions. Your son has been cleared by the IF Selective Service. Of course we already have your consent, granted in writing at the time conception was confirmed, or he could not have been born. He has been ours from then, if he qualified."

• Father's voice was trembling as he spoke. "It's not very kind of you, to let us think you didn't want him, and then to take him after all."

• "And this charade about the Stilson boy," Mother said.

• "It wasn't a charade, Mrs. Wiggin. Until we knew what Ender's motivation was, we couldn't be sure he wasn't another-- we had to know what the action meant. Or at least what Ender believed that it meant."

• "Must you call him that stupid nickname?" Mother began to cry.

• "I'm sorry, Mrs. Wiggin. But that's the name he calls himself."

• "What are you going to do, Colonel Graff?" Father asked. "Walk out the door with him now?"

• "That depends," said Graff.

• "On what?"

• "On whether Ender wants to come."

• Mother's weeping turned to bitter laughter. "Oh, so it's voluntary after all, how sweet!"

• "For the two of you, the choice was made when Ender was conceived. But for Ender, the choice has not been made at all. Conscripts make good cannon fodder, but for officers we need volunteers."

• "Officers?" Ender asked. At the sound of his voice, the others fell silent.

• "Yes," said Graff. "Battle School is for training future starship captains and commodores of flotillas and admirals of the fleet."

• "Let's not have any deception herc!" Father said angrily. "How many of the boy's at the Battle School actually end up in command of ships!"

• "Unfortunately, Mr. Wiggin, that is classified information. But I can say that none of our boys who makes it through the first year has ever failed to receive a commission as an officer. And none has served in a position of lower rank than chief executive officer of an interplanetary vessel. Even in the domestic defense forces within our own solar system, there's honor to be had."

• "How many make it through the first year?" asked Ender.

• "All who want to," said Graff.

• Ender almost said, I want to. But he held his tongue. This would keep him out of school, but that was stupid, that was just a problem for a few days. It would keep him away from Peter-- that was more important, that might be a matter of life itself. But to leave Mother and Father, and above all, to leave Valentine. And become a soldier. Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

• "I think," Graff said, "that Ender and I should have a private conversation."

• "No," Father said.

• "I won't take him without letting you speak to him again," Graff said. "And you really can't stop me."

• Father glared at Graff a moment longer, then got up and left the room. Mother paused to squeeze Ender's hand. She closed the door behind her when she left.

• "Ender," Graff said, "if you come with me, you won't be back here for a long time. There aren't any vacations from Battle School. No visitors, either. A full course of training lasts until you're sixteen years old-- you get your first leave, under certain circumstances, when you're twelve. Believe me, Ender, people change in six years, in ten years. Your sister Valentine will be a woman when you see her again, if you come with me. You'll be strangers. You'll still love her, Ender, but you won't know her. You see I'm not pretending it's easy."

• "Mom and Daddy?"

• "I know you, Ender. I've been watching the monitor disks for some time. You won't miss your mother and father, not much, not for long. And they won't miss you long, either."

• Tears came to Ender's eyes, in spite of himself. He turned his face away, but would not reach up to wipe them.

• "They do love you, Ender. But you have to understand what your life has cost them. They were born religious, you know. Your father was baptized with the name John Paul Wieczorek. Catholic. The seventh of nine children."

• Nine children. That was unthinkable. Criminal.

• "Yes, well, people do strange things for religion. You know the sanctions, Ender-- they were not as harsh then, but still not easy. Only the first two children had a free education. Taxes steadily rose with each new child. Your father turned sixteen and invoked the Noncomplying Families Act to separate himself from his family. He changed his name, renounced his religion, and vowed never to have more than the allotted two children. He meant it. All the shame and persecution he went through as a child-- he vowed no child of his would go through it. Do you understand?"

• "He didn't want me."

• "Well, no one wants a Third anymore. You can't expect them to be glad. But your father and mother are a special case. They both renounced their religions-- your mother was a Mormon-- but in fact their feelings are still ambiguous. Do you know what ambiguous means?"

• "They feel both ways."

• "They're ashamed of having come from noncompliant families. They conceal it. To the degree that your mother refuses to admit to anyone that she was born in Utah, lest they suspect. Your father denies his Polish ancestry, since Poland is still a noncompliant nation, and under international sanction because of it. So, you see, having a Third, even under the government's direct instructions, undoes everything they've been trying to do."

• "I know that."

• "But it's more complicated than that. Your father still named you with legitimate saints' names. In fact, he baptized all three of you himself as soon as he got you home after you were born. And your mother objected. They quarreled over it each time, not because she didn't want you baptized, but because she didn't want you baptized Catholic. They haven't really given up their religion. They look at you and see you as a badge of pride, because they were able to circumvent the law and have a Third. But you're also a badge of cowardice, because they dare not go further and practice the noncompliance they still feel is right. And you're a badge of public shame, because at every step you interfere with their efforts at assimilation into normal complying society."

• "How can you know all this?"

• "We monitored your brother and sister, Ender. You'd be amazed at how sensitive the instruments are. We were connected directly to your brain. We heard all that you heard, whether you were listening carefully or not. Whether you understood or not. We understand."

• "So my parents love me and don't love me?"

• "They love you. The question is whether they want you here. Your presence in this house is a constant disruption. A source of tension. Do you understand?"

• "I'm not the one who causes tension."

• "Not anything you do, Ender. Your life itself. Your brother hates you because you are living proof that he wasn't good enough. Your parents resent you because of all the past they are trying to evade."

• "Valentine loves me."

• "With all her heart. Completely, unstintingly, she's devoted to you, and you adore her. I told you it wouldn't be easy."

• "What is it like, there?"

• "Hard work. Studies, just like school here, except we put you into mathematics and computers much more heavily. Military history. Strategy and tactics. And above all, the Battle Room."

• "What's that?"

• "War games. All the boys are organized into armies. Day after day, in zero gravity, there are mock battles. Nobody gets hurt, but winning and losing matter. Everybody starts as a common soldier, taking orders. Older boys are your officers, and it's their duty to train you and command you in battle. More than that I can't tell you. It's like playing buggers and astronauts-- except that you have weapons that work, and fellow soldiers fighting beside you, and your whole future and the future of the human race depends on how well you learn, how well you fight. It's a hard life, and you won't have a normal childhood. Of course, with your mind, and as a Third to boot, you wouldn't have a particularly normal childhood anyway."

• "All boys?"

• "A few girls. They don't often pass the tests to get in. Too many centuries of evolution are working against them. None of them will be like Valentine, anyway. But there'll be brothers there, Ender."

• "Like Peter?"

• "Peter wasn't accepted, Ender, for the very reasons that you hate him."

• "I don't hate him. I'm just--"

• "Afraid of him. Well, Peter isn't all bad, you know. He was the best we'd seen in a long time. We asked your parents to choose a daughter next they would have anyway hoping that Valentine would be Peter, but milder. She was too mild. And so we requisitioned you."

• "To be half Peter and half Valentine."

• "If things worked out right."

• "Am I?"

• "As far as we can tell. Our tests are very good, Ender. But they don't tell us everything. In fact, when it comes down to it, they hardly tell us anything. But they're better than nothing." Graff leaned over and took Ender's hands in his. "Ender Wiggin, if it were just a matter of choosing the best and happiest future for you, I'd tell you to stay home. Stay here, grow up, be happy. There are worse things than being a Third, worse things than a big brother who can't make up his mind whether to be a human being or a jackal. Battle School is one of those worse things. But we need you. The buggers may seem like a game to you now, Ender, but they damn near wiped us out last time. But it wasn't enough. They had us cold, outnumbered and outweaponed. The only thing that saved us was that we had the most brilliant military commander we've ever found. Call it fate, call it God, call it damnfool luck, we had Mazer Rackham."

• "But we don't have him now, Ender. We've scraped together everything mankind could produce, a fleet that makes the one they sent against us last time seem like a bunch of kids playing in a swimming pool. We have some new weapons, too. But it might not be enough, even so. Because in the eighty years since the last war, they've had as much time to prepare as we have. We need the best we can get, and we need them fast. Maybe you're not going to work out for us, and maybe you are. Maybe you'll break down under the pressure, maybe it'll ruin your life, maybe you'll hate me for coming here to your house today. But if there's a chance that because you're with the fleet, mankind might survive and the buggers might leave us alone forever then I'm going to ask you to do it. To come with me."

• Ender had trouble focusing on Colonel Graff. The man looked far away and very small, as if Ender could pick him up with tweezers and drop him in a pocket. To leave everything here, arid go to a place that was very hard, with no Valentine, no Mom and Dad.

• And then he thought of the films of the buggers that everyone had to see at least once a year. The Scathing of China. The Battle of the Belt. Death and suffering and terror. And Mazer Rackham and his brilliant maneuvers, destroying an enemy fleet twice his size and twice his firepower, using the little human ships that seemed so frail and weak. Like children fighting with grown-ups. And we won.

• "I'm afraid," said Ender quietly. "But I'll go with you."

• "Tell me again," said Graff.

• "It's what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?"

• "Not good enough," said Graff.

• "I don't want to go," said Ender, "but I will."

• Graff nodded. "You can change your mind. Up until the time you get in my car with me, you can change your mind. After that, you stay at the pleasure of the International Fleet. Do you understand that?"

• Ender nodded.

• "All right. Let's tell them."

• Mother cried. Father held Ender tight. Peter shook his hand and said, "You lucky little pinheaded fart-eater." Valentine kissed him and left her tears on his cheek.

• There was nothing to pack. No belongings to take. "The school provides everything you need, from uniforms to school supplies. And as for toys-- there's only one game."

• "Good-bye," Ender said to his family. He reached up and took Colonel Graff's hand and walked out the door with him.

• "Kill some buggers for me!" Peter shouted.

• "I love you, Andrew!" Mother called.

• "We'll write to you!" Father said.

• And as he got into the car that waited silently in the corridor, he heard Valentine's anguished cry. "Come back to me! I love you forever!"

Chapter 4 -- Launch

• "With Ender, we have to strike a delicate balance. Isolate him enough that he remains creative-- otherwise he'll adopt the system here and we'll lose him. At the same time, we need to make sure he keeps a strong ability to lead."

• "If he earns rank, he'll lead."

• "lt isn't that simple. Mazer Rackham could handle his little fleet and win. By the time this war happens, there'll be too much, even for a genius. Too many little coats. He has to work smoothly with his subordinates."

• "Oh. good. He has to be a genius and nice. too."

• "Not nice. Nice will let the buggers have us all,"

• "So you're going to isolate him."

• "I'll have him completely separated from the rest of the boys by the time we get to the School."

• "I have no doubt of it. I'll be waiting for you to get here. I watched the vids of what he did to the Stilson boy. This is not a sweet little kid you're bringing up here."

• "That's where you're mistaken. He's even sweeter. But don't worry. We'll purge that in a hurry."

• "Sometimes I think you enjoy breaking these little geniuses."

• "There is an art to it, and I'm very, very good at it. But enjoy? Well, maybe. When they put back the pieces afterward, and it makes them better."

• "You're a monster."

• "Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?"

• "Just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustible."

• They say that weightlessness can cause disorientation, especially in children, whose sense of direction isn't yet secure. But Ender was disoriented before he left Earth's gravity. Before the shuttle launch even began.

• There were nineteen other boys in his launch. They filed out of the bus and into the elevator. They talked and joked and bragged and laughed. Ender kept his silence. He noticed how Graff and the other officers were watching them. Analyzing. Everything we do means something, Ender realized. Them laughing. Me not laughing.

• He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn't think of any jokes, and none of theirs seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn't find such a place in himself. He was afraid, and fear made him serious.

• They had dressed him in a uniform, all in a single piece; it felt funny not to have a belt cinched around his waist. He felt baggy and naked, dressed like that. There were TV cameras going, perched like animals on the shoulders of crouching, prowling men. The men moved slowly, catlike, so the camera motion would be smooth. Ender caught himself moving smoothly, too.

• He imagined himself being on TV, in an interview. The announcer asking him, How do you feel, Mr. Wiggin? Actually quite well, except hungry. Hungry? Oh, yes, they don't let you eat for twenty hours before the launch. How interesting, I never knew that. All of us are quite hungry, actually. And all the while, during the interview, Ender and the TV guy would slink along smoothly in front of the cameraman, taking long, lithe strides. For the first time, Ender felt like laughing. He smiled. The other boys near him were laughing at the moment, too, for another reason. They think I'm smiling at their joke, thought Ender. But I'm smiling at something much funnier.

• "Go up the ladder one at a time," said an officer. "When you come to an aisle with empty seats, take one. There aren't any window seats."

• It was a joke. The other boys laughed.

• Ender was near the last, but not the very last. The TV cameras did not give up, though. Will Valentine see me disappear into the shuttle? He thought of waving at her, of running to the cameraman and saying, "Can I tell Valentine good-bye?" He didn't know that it would be censored out of the tape if he did, for the boys soaring out to Battle School were all supposed to be heroes. They weren't supposed to miss anybody. Ender didn't know about the censorship, but he did know that running to the cameras would be wrong.

• He walked the short bridge to the door in the shuttle. He noticed that the wall to his right was carpeted like a floor. That was where the disorientation began. The moment he thought of the wall as a floor, he began to feel like he was walking on a wall. He got to the ladder, and noticed that the vertical surface behind it was also carpeted. I am climbing up the floor. Hand over hand, step by step.

• And then, for fun, he pretended that he was climbing down the wall. He did it almost instantly in his mind, convinced himself against the best evidence of gravity. He found himself gripping the seat tightly, even though gravity pulled him firmly against it.

• The other boys were bouncing on their seats a little, poking and pushing, shouting. Ender carefully found the straps, figured out how they fit together to hold him at crotch, waist, and shoulders. He imagined the ship dangling upside down on the undersurface of the Earth, the giant fingers of gravity holding them firmly in place. But we will slip away, he thought. We are going to fall off this planet.

• He did not know its significance at the time. Later, though, he would remember that it was even before he left Earth that he first thought of it as a planet, like any other, not particularly his own.

• "Oh, already figured it out," said Graff. He was standing on the ladder.

• "Coming with us?" Ender asked.

• "I don't usually come down for recruiting," Graff said. "I'm kind of in charge there. Administrator of the School. Like a principal. They told me I had to come back or I'd lose my job." He smiled.

• Ender smiled back. He felt comfortable with Graff. Graff was good. And he was principal of the Battle School. Ender relaxed a little. He would have a friend there.

• The other boys were belted in place, those who hadn't done as Ender did. Then they waited for an hour while a TV at the front of the shuttle introduced them to shuttle flight, the history of space flight, and their possible future with the great starships of the IF. Very boring stuff. Ender had seen such films before.

• Except that he had not been belted into a seat inside the shuttle. Hanging upside down from the belly of Earth.

• The launch wasn't bad. A little scary. Some jolting, a few moments of panic that this might be the first failed launch in the history of the shuttle. The movies hadn't made it plain how much violence you could experience, lying on your back in a soft chair.

• Then it was over, and he really was hanging by the straps, no gravity anywhere.

• But because he had already reoriented himself, he was not surprised when Graff came up the ladder backward, as if he were climbing down to the front of the shuttle. Nor did it bother him when Graff hooked his feet under a rung and pushed off with his hands, so that suddenly he swung upright, as if this were an ordinary airplane.

• The reorientations were too much for some. One boy gagged; Ender understood then why they had been forbidden to eat anything for twenty hours before the launch. Vomit in null gravity wouldn't be fun.

• But for Ender, Graff's gravity game was fun, And he carried it further, imagining that Graff was actually hanging upside down from the center aisle, and then picturing him sticking straight out from a side wall. Gravity could go any which way. However I want it to go. I can make Graff stand on his head and he doesn't even know it.

• "What do you think is so funny, Wiggin?"

• Graff's voice was sharp and angry. What did I do wrong, thought Ender. Did I laugh out loud?

• "I asked you a question, soldier!" barked Graff.

• Oh yes. This is the beginning of the training routine. Ender had seen some military shows on TV, and they always shouted a lot at the beginning of training before the soldier and the officer became good friends.

• "Yes sir," Ender said.

• "Well answer it, then!"

• "I thought of you hanging upside down by your feet. I thought it was funny."

• It sounded stupid, now, with Graff looking at him coldly. "To you I suppose it is funny. Is it funny to anybody else here?"

• Murmurs of no.

• "Well why isn't it?" Graff looked at them all with contempt. "Scumbrains, that's what we've got in this launch. Pinheaded little morons. Only one of you had the brains to realize that in null gravity directions are whatever you conceive them to be. Do you understand that, Shafts?"

• The boy nodded.

• "No you didn't. Of course you didn't. Not only stupid, but a liar too. There's only one boy on this launch with any brains at all, and that's Ender Wiggin. Take a good look at him, little boys. He's going to he a commander when you're still in diapers up there. Because he knows how to think in null gravity, and you just want to throw up."

• This wasn't the way the show was supposed to go. Graff was supposed to pick on him, not set him up as the best. They were supposed to be against each other at first, so they could become friends later.

• "Most of you are going to ice out. Get used to that, little boys. Most of you are going to end up in Combat School, because you don't have the brains to handle deep-space piloting. Most of you aren't worth the price of bringing you up here to Battle School because you don't have what it takes. Some of you might make it. Some of you might be wotth something to humanity. But don't bet on it. I'm betting on only one."

• Suddenly Graff did a backflip and caught the ladder with his hands, then swung his feet away from the ladder. Doing a handstand, if the floor was down. Dangling by his hands, if the floor was up. Hand over hand he swung himself back along the aisle to his seat. "Looks like you've got it made here," whispered the boy next to him. Ender shook his head. "Oh, won't even talk to me?" the boy said. "I didn't ask him to say that stuff," Ender whispered. He felt a sharp pain on the top of his head. Then again. Some giggles from behind him. The boy in the next seat back must have unfastened his straps. Again a blow to the head. Go away, Ender thought. I didn't do anything to you. Again a blow to the head. Laughter from the boys. Didn't Graff see this? Wasn't he going to stop it? Another blow. Harder. It really hurt. Where was Graff? Then it became clear. Graff had deliberately caused it. It was worse than the abuse in the shows. When the sergeant picked on you, the others liked you better. But when the officer prefers you, the others hate you. "Hey, fart-eater," came the whisper from behind him. He was hit in the head again. "Do you like this? Hey, super-brain, this is fun?" Another blow, this one so hard that Ender cried out softly with the pain.

• If Graff was setting him up, there'd be no help unless he helped himself. He waited until he thought another blow was about to come. Now, he thought. And yes, the blow was there. It hurt, but Ender was already trying to sense the coming of the next blow. Now. And yes, right on time. I've got you, Ender thought.

• Just as the next blow was coming, Ender reached up with both hands, snatched the boy by the wrist, and then pulled down on the arm, hard.

• In gravity, the boy would have been jammed against Ender's seat back, hurting his chest. In null gravity, however, he flipped over the seat completely, up toward the ceiling. Ender wasn't expecting it. He hadn't realized how null gravity magnified even a child's strength. The boy sailed through the air, bouncing against the ceiling, then down against another boy in his seat, then out into the aisle, his arms flailing until he screamed as his body slammed into the bulkhead at the front of the compartment, his left arm twisted under him.

• It took only seconds. Graff was already there, snatching the boy out of the air. Deftly he propelled him down the aisle toward the other man. "Left arm. Broken. I think," he said. In moments the boy had been given a drug and lay quietly in the air as the officer ballooned a splint around his arm.

• Ender felt sick. He had only meant to catch the boy's arm. No. No, he had meant to hurt him, and had pulled with all his strength. He hadn't meant it to be so public, but the boy was feeling exactly the pain Ender had meant him to feel. Null gravity had betrayed him, that was all. I am Peter. I'm just like him. And Ender hated himself.

• Graff stayed at the front of the cabin. "What are you, slow learners? In your feeble little minds, hayen't you picked up one little fact? You were brought here to be soldiers. In your old schools, in your old families, maybe you were the big shot, maybe you were tough, maybe you were smart. But we chose the best of the best, and that's the only kind of kid you're going to meet now. And when I tell you Ender Wiggin is the best in this launch, take the hint, pinheads. Don't mess with him. Little boys have died in Battle School before. Do I make myself clear?"

• There was silence the rest of the launch. The boy sitting next to Ender was scrupulously careful not to touch him.

• I am not a killer, Ender said to himself over and over. I am not Peter. No matter what he says, I wouldn't. I'm not. I was defending myself. I bore it a long time. I was patient. I'm not what he said.

• A voice over the speaker told them they were approaching the school; it took twenty minutes to decelerate and dock. Ender lagged behind the others.

• They were not unwilling to let him be the last to leave the shuttle, climbing upward in the direction that had been down when they embarked. Graff was waiting at the end of the narrow tube that led from the shuttle into the heart of the Battle School.

• "Was it a good flight, Ender?" Graff asked cheerfully.

• "I thought you were my friend." Despite himself, Ender's voice trembled.

• Graff looked puzzled. "Whatever gave you that idea, Ender?"

• "Because you--" Because you spoke nicely to me, and honestly. "You didn't lie."

• "I won't lie now, either," said Graff. "My job isn't to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world. In the whole history of the world. We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself dictator, and died for it. My job is to produce such a creature, and all the men and women he'll need to help him. Nowhere in that does it say I have to make friends with children."

• "You made them hate me."

• "So? What will you do about it? Crawl into a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be."

• "What if I can't?"

• "Then too bad. Look, Ender. I'm sorry if you're lonely and afraid. But the buggers are out there. Ten billion, a hundred billion, a million billion of them, for all we know. With as many ships, for all we know. With weapons we can't understand. And a willingness to use those weapons to wipe us out. It isn't the world at stake, Ender. Just us. Just humankind. As far as the rest of the earth is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire. Do you understand any of this?"

• Ender thought he did, but wasn't sure, and so said nothing.

• "No. Of course not. So I'll put it bluntly. Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. I think humanity needs me-- to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools."

• "Is that all? Just tools?"

• "Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive."

• "That's a lie."

• "No. It's just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war."

• "It'll be over before I grow up," Ender said.

• "I hope you're wrong," said Grail. "By the way, you aren't helping yourself at all, talking to me. The other boys are no doubt telling each other that old Ender Wiggin is back there licking up to Graff. If word once gets around that you're a teachers' boy, you're iced for sure."

• In other words, go away and leave me alone. "Goodbye," Ender said. He pulled himself hand over hand along the tube where the other boys had gone.

• Graff watched him go.

• One of the teachers near him said, "Is that the one?"

• "God knows," said Graff. "If it isn't Ender, then he'd better show up soon."

• "Maybe it's nobody," said the teacher.

• "Maybe. But if that's the case, Anderson, then in my opinion God is a bugger. You can quote me on that."

• "I will."

• They stood in silence a while longer.

• "Anderson."

• "Mmm."

• "The kid's wrong. I am his friend."

• "I know."

• "He's clean. Right to the heart, he's good."

• "I've read the reports."

• "Anderson, think what we're going to do to him."

• Anderson was defiant. "We're going to make him the best military commander in history."

• "And then put the fate of the world on his shoulders. For his sake, I hope it isn't him. I do."

• "Cheer up. The buggers may kill us all before he graduates."

• Graff smiled. "You're right. I feel better already."

Chapter 5 -- Games

• "You have my admiration. Breaking an arm-- that was a master stroke."

• "That was an accident."

• "Really? And I've already commended you in your official report."

• "It's too strong. It makes that other little bastard into a hero. It could screw up training for a lot of kids. I thought he might call for help."

• "Call for help? I thought that was what you valued most in him that he settles his own problems. When he's out there surrounded by an enemy fleet, there ain't gonna be nobody to help him if he calls."

• "Who would have guessed the little sucker'd be out of hs seat? And that he'd land just wrong against the bulkhead?"

• "Just one more example of the stupidity of the military. If you had any brains, you'd be in a real career, like selling life insurance."

• "You, too, mastermind."

• "We've just got to face the fact that we're second rate. With the fate of humanity in our hands. Gives you a delicious feeling of power, doesn't it? Especially because this time if we lose there won't be any criticism of us at all."

• "I never thought of it that way. But let's not lose."

• "See how Ender handles it. If we've already lost him, if he can't handle this, who next? Who else?"

• "I'll make up a list."

• "In the meantime, figure out how to unlose Ender."

• "I told you. His isolation can't be broken. He can never come to believe that anybody will ever help him out. ever. If he once thinks there's an easy way out, he's wrecked."

• "You're right. That would be terrible, if he believed he had a friend."

• "He can have friends. It's parents he can't have."

• The other boys had already chosen their bunks when Ender arrived. Ender stopped in the doorway of the dormitory, looking for the sole remaining bed. The ceiling was low Ender could reach up and touch it. A child-size room, with the bottom bunk resting on the floor. The other boys were watching him, cornerwise. Sure enough, the bottom bunk right by the door was the only empty bed. For a moment it occurred to Ender that by letting the others put him in the worst place, he was inviting later bullying. Yet he couldn't very well oust someone else.

• So he smiled broadly. "Hey, thanks," he said. Not sarcastically at all. He said it as sincerely as if they had reserved for him the best position. "I thought I was going to have to ask for low bunk by the door."

• He sat down and looked in the locker that stood open at the foot of the bunk. There was a paper taped to the inside of the door.

• Place your hand on the scanner at the head of your bunk and speak your name twice.

• Ender found the scanner, a sheet of opaque plastic. He put his left hand on it and said, "Ender Wiggin. Ender Wiggin."

• The scanner glowed green for a moment. Ender closed his locker and tried to reopen it. He couldn't. Then he put his hand on the scanner and said, "Ender Wiggin." The locker popped open. So did three other compartments.

• One of them contained four jumpsuits like the one he was wearing, and one white one. Another compartment contained a small desk, just like the ones at school. So they weren't through with studies yet.

• It was the largest compartment that contained the prize. It looked like a spacesuit at first glance, complete with helmet and gloves. But it wasn't. There was no airtight seal. Still, it would effectively cover the whole body. It was thickly padded. It was also a little stiff.

• And there was a pistol with it. A lasergun, it looked like, since the end was solid, clear glass. But surely they wouldn't let children have lethal weapons--

• "Not laser," said a man. Ender looked up. It was one he hadn't seen before. A young and kind-looking man. "But it has a tight enough beam. Well-focused. You can aim it and make a three-inch circle of light on a wall a hundred meters off."

• "What's it for?" Ender asked.

• "One of the games we play during recreation. Does anyone else have his locker open?" The man looked around. "I mean, have you followed directions and coded in your voices and hands? You can't get into the lockers until you do. This room is your home for the first year or so here at the Battle School, so get the bunk you want and stay with it. Ordinarily we let you elect your chief officer and install him in the lower bunk by the door, but apparently that position has been taken. Can't recode the lockers now. So think about whom you want to choose. Dinner in seven minutes. Follow the lighted dots on the floor. Your color code is red yellow yellow-- whenever you're assigned a path to follow, it will be red yellow yellow, three dots side by side-- go where those lights indicate. What's your color code, boys?"

• "Red, yellow, yellow."

• "Very good. My name is Dap. I'm your mom for the next few months."

• The boys laughed.

• "Laugh all you like, but keep it in mind. If you get lost in the school, which is quite possible, don't go opening doors. Some of them lead outside." More laughter. "Instead just tell someone that your mom is Dap, and they'll call me. Or tell them your color, and they'll light up a path for you to get home. If you have a problem, come talk to me. Remember, I'm the only person here who's paid to be nice to you, but not too nice. Give me any lip and I'll break your face, OK?"

• They laughed again. Dap had a room full of friends, Frightened children are so easy to win.

• "Which way is down, anybody tell me?"

• They told him.

• "OK, that's true. But that direction is toward the outside. The ship is spinning, and that's what makes it feel like that is down. The floor actually curves around in that direction. Keep going long enough that way, and you come back to where you started. Except don't try it. Because up that way is teachers' quarters, and up that way is the bigger kids. And the bigger kids don't like Launchies butting in. You might get pushed around. In fact, you will get pushed around. And when you do, don't come crying to me. Got it? This is Battle School, not nursery school."

• "What are we supposed to do, then?" asked a boy, a really small black kid who had a top hunk near Ender's.

• "If you don't like getting pushed around, figure out for yourself what to do about it, but I warn you-- murder is strictly against the rules. So is any deliberate injury. I understand there was one attempted murder on the was up here. A broken arm. That kind of thing happens again, somebody ices out. You got it?"

• "What's icing out?" asked the boy with his arm puffed up in a splint.

• "Ice. Put out in the cold. Sent Earthside. Finished at Battle School."

• Nobody looked at Ender.

• "So, boys, if any of you are thinking of being troublemakers, at least be clever about it. OK?"

• Dap left. They still didn't look at Ender.

• Ender felt the fear growing in his belly. The kid whose arm he broke-- Ender didn't feel sorry for him. He was a Stilson. And like Stilson, he was already gathering a gang. A little knot of kids, several of the bigger ones, they were laughing at the far end of the room, and every now and then one of them would turn to look at Ender.

• With all his heart, Ender wanted to go home. What did any of this have to do with saving the world? There was no monitor now. It was Ender against the gang again, only they were right in his room. Peter again, but without Valentine.

• The fear stayed, all through dinner as no one sat by him in the mess hall. The other boys were talking about things-- the big scoreboard on one wall, the food, the bigger kids. Ender could only watch in isolation.

• The scoreboards were team standings. Won-loss records, with the most recent scores. Some of the bigger boy's apparently had bets on the most recent games. Two teams, Manticore and Asp, had no recent score-- that box was flashing. Ender decided they must be playing right now.

• He noticed that the older boys were divided into groups, according to the uniforms they wore. Some with different uniforms were talking together, but generally the groups each had thcir own area. Launchies-- their own group, and the two or three next older groups all had plain blue uniforms. But the big kids, the ones that were on teams, they were wearing much more flamboyant clothing. Ender tried to guess which ones went with which name. Scorpion and Spider were easy. So were Flame and Tide.

• A bigger boy came to sit by him. Not just a little bigger- he looked to be twelve or thirteen. Getting his man's growth started.

• "Hi," he said.

• "Hi," Ender said.

• "I'm Mick."

• "Ender."

• "That's a name?"

• "Since I was little. It's what my sister called me."

• "Not a bad name here. Ender. Finisher. Hey."

• "Hope so."

• "Ender, you the bugger in your launch?"

• Ender shrugged.

• "I noticed you eating all alone. Every launch has one like that. Kid that nobody takes to right away. Sometimes I think the teachers do it on purpose. The teachers aren't very nice. You'll notice that."

• "Yeah."

• "So you the bugger?"

• "I guess so."

• "Hey. Nothing to cry about, you know?" He gave Ender his roll, and took Ender's pudding. "Eat nutritious stuff. It'll keep you strong." Mick dug into the pudding.

• "What about you?" asked Ender.

• "Me? I'm nothing. I'm a fart in the air conditioning. I'm always there, but most of the time nobody knows it."

• Ender smiled tentatively.

• "Yeah, funny, but no joke. I got nowhere here. I'm getting big now. They're going to send me to my next school pretty soon. No way it'll be Tactical School for me. I've never been a leader, you see. Only the guys who get to be leaders have a shot at it."

• "How do you get to be a leader?"

• "Hey, if I knew, you think I'd be like this? How many guys my size you see in here?"

• Not many. Ender didn't say it.

• "A few. I'm not the only half-iced bugger-fodder. A few of us. The other guys-- they're all commanders. All the guys from my launch have their own teams now. Not me."

• Ender nodded.

• "Listen, little guy. I'm doing you a favor. Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you've got to, but if the other guys despise you-- you know what I mean?"

• Ender nodded again.

• "Naw, you don't know anything. You Launchies are all alike. You don't know nothing. Minds like space. Nothing there. And if anything hits you, you fall apart. Look, when you end up like me, don't forget that somebody warned you. It's the last nice thing anybody's going to do for you."

• "So why did you tell me?" asked Ender.

• "What are you, a smart mouth? Shut up and eat."

• Ender shut up and ate. He didn't like Mick. And he knew there was no chance he would end up like that. Maybe that was what the teachers were planning, but Ender didn't intend to fit in with their plans.

• I will not be the bugger of my group, Ender thought. I didn't leave Valentine and Mother and Father to come here just to be iced.

• As he lifted the fork to his mouth, he could feel his family around him, as they always had been. He knew just which way to turn his head to look up and see Mother, trying to get Valentine not to slurp. He knew just where Father would be, scanning the news on the table while pretending to be part of the dinner conversation. Peter, pretending to take a crushed pea out of his nose-- even Peter could he funny.

• It was a mistake to think of them. He felt a sob rise in his throat and swallowed it down; he could not see his plate.

• He could not cry. There was no chance that he would be treated with compassion. Dap was not Mother. Any sign of weakness would tell the Stilsons and Peters that this boy could be broken. Ender did what he always did when Peter tormented him. He began to count doubles. One, two, four, eight. sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. And on, as high as he could hold the numbers in his head: 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144. At 67108864 he began to be unsure-- had he slipped out a digit? Should he be in the ten millions or the hundred millions or just the millions? He tried doubling again and lost it. 1342 something. 16? Or 17738? It was gone. Start over again. All the doubling he could hold. The pain was gone. The tears were gone. He would not cry.

• Until that night, when the lights went dim, and in the distance he could hear several boys whimpering for their mothers or fathers or dogs. He could not help himself. His lips formed Valentine's name. He could hear her voice laughing in the distance, just down the hall. He could see Mother passing his door, looking in to he sure he was all right. He could hear Father laughing at the video. It was all so clear, and it would never he that way again. I'll be old when I ever see them again, twelve at the earliest. Why did I say yes? What was I such a fool for? Going to school would have been nothing. Facing Stilson every day. And Peter. He was a pissant. Ender wasn't afraid of him.

• I want to go home, he whispered.

• But his whisper was the whisper he used when he cried out in pain when Peter tormented him. The sound didn't travel farther than his own ears, and sometimes not that far.

• And his tears could fall unwanted on his sheet, but his sobs were so gentle that they did not shake the bed; so quiet they could not be heard. But the ache was there, thick in his throat and the front of his face, hot in his chest and in his eyes. I want to go home.

• Dap came to the door that night and moved quietly among the beds, touching a hand here. Where he went there was more crying, not less. The touch of kindness in this frightening place was enough to push some over the edge into tears. Not Ender, though. When Dap came, his crying was over, and his face was dry. It was the lying face he presented to Mother and Father, when Peter had been cruel to him and he dared not let it show. Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now.

• There was school. Every day, hours of classes. Reading. Numbers. History. Videos of the bloody battles in space, the Marines spraying their guts all over the walls of the bugger ships. Holos of clean wars of the fleet, ships turning into puffs of light as the spacecraft killed each other deftly in the deep night. Many things to learn. Ender worked as hard as anyone; all of them struggled for the first time in their lives, as for the first time in their lives they competed with classmates who were at least as bright as they,

• But the games-- that was what they lived for. That was what filled the hours between waking and sleeping.

• Dap introduced them to the game room on their second day. It was up, way above the decks where the boys lived and worked. They climbed ladders to where the gravity weakened, and there in the cavern they saw the dazzling lights of the games.

• Some of the games they knew; some they had even played at home. Simple ones and hard ones. Ender walked past the two-dimensional games on video and began to study the games the bigger boys played, the holographic games with objects hovering in the air. He was the only Launchy in that part of the room, and every now and then one of the bigger boys would shove him out of the way. What're you doing here? Get lost. Fly off. And of course he would fly, in the lower gravity here, leave his feet and soar until he ran into something or someone.

• Every time, though, he extricated himself and went back, perhaps to a different spot, to get a different angle on the game. He was too small to see the controls, how the game was actually done. That didn't matter. He got the movement of it in the air. The way the player dug tunnels in the darkness, tunnels of light, which the enemy ships would search for and then follow mercilessly until they caught the player's ship. The player could make traps: mines, drifting bombs, loops in the air that forced the enemy ships to repeat endlessly. Some of the players were clever. Others lost quickly.

• Ender liked it better, though, when two boys played against each other. Then they had to use each other's tunnels, and it quickly became clear which of them were worth anything at the strategy of it.

• Within an hour or so, it began to pall. Ender understood the regularities by then. Understood the rules the computer was following, so that he knew he could always, once he mastered the controls, outmaneuver the enemy. Spirals when the enemy was like this; loops when the enemy was like that. Lie in wait at one trap. Lay seven traps and then lure them like this. There was no challenge to it, then, just a matter of playing until the computer got so fast that no human reflexes could overcome it. That wasn't fun. It was the other boys he wanted to play. The boys who had been so trained by the computer that even when they played against each other they each tried to emulate the computer. Think like a machine instead of a boy.

• I could beat them this way. I could beat them that way.

• "I'd like a turn against you," he said to the boy who had just won.

• "Lawsy me, what is this?" asked the boy. "Is it a bug or a bugger?"

• "A new flock of dwarfs just came aboard," said another boy.

• "But it talks. Did you know they could talk?"

• "I see," said Ender. "You're afraid to play me two out of three."

• "Beating you," said the boy, "would be as easy as pissing in the shower."

• "And not half as fun," said another.

• "I'm Ender Wiggin."

• "Listen up, scrunchface. You nobody. Got that? You nobody, got that? You not anybody till you gots you first kill. Got that?"

• The slang of the older boys had its own rhythm. Ender picked it up quick enough. "If I'm nobody, then how come you scared to play me two out of three?"

• Now the other guys were impatient. "Kill the squirt quick and let's get on with it."

• So Ender took his place at the unfamiliar controls. His hands were small, but the controls were simple enough. It took only a little experimentation to find out which buttons used certain weapons. Movement control was a standard wireball. His reflexes were slow at first. The other boy, whose name he still didn't know, got ahead quickly. But Ender learned a lot and was doing much better by the time the game ended.

• "Satisfied, launchy?"

• "Two out of three."

• "We don't allow two out of three games."

• "So you beat me the first time I ever touched the game," Ender said. "If you can't do it twice, you can't do it at all."

• They played again, and this time Ender was deft enough to pull off a few maneuvers that the boy had obviously never seen before. His patterns couldn't cope with them. Ender didn't win easily, but he won.

• The bigger boys stopped laughing and joking then. The third game went in total silence, Ender won it quickly and efficiently.

• When the game ended, one of the older boys said, "Bout time they replaced this machine. Getting so any pinbrain can beat it now."

• Not a word of congratulation. Just total silence as Ender walked away.

• He didn't go far. Just stood off in the near distance and watched as the next players tried to use the things he had shown them. Any pinbrain? Ender smiled inwardly. They won't forget me.

• He felt good. He had won something, and against older boys. Probably not the best of the older boys, but he no longer had the panicked feeling that he might be out of his depth, that Battle School might he too much for him. All he had to do was watch the game and understand how things worked, and then he could use the system, and even excel.

• It was the waiting and watching that cost the most. For during that time he had to endure. The boy whose arm he had broken was out for vengeance. His name, Ender quickly learned, was Bernard. He spoke his own name with a French accent, since the French, with their arrogant Separatism, insisted that the teaching of Standard not begin until the age of four, when the French language patterns were already set. His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.

• Ender became their enemy.

• Little things. Kicking his bed every time they went in and out of the door. Jostling him with his meal tray. Tripping him on the ladders. Ender learned quickly not to leave anything of his outside his lockers; he also learned to be quick on his feet, to catch himself. "Maladroit," Bernard called him once, and the name stuck.

• There were times when Ender was very angry. With Bernard, of course, anger was inadequate. It was the kind of person he was-- a tormentor. What enraged Ender was how willingly the others went along with him. Surely they knew there was no justice in Bernard's revenge. Surely they knew that he had struck first at Ender in the shuttle, that Ender had only been responding to violence. If they knew, they acted as if they didn't; even if they did not know, they should be able to tell from Bernard himself that he was a snake.

• After all, Ender wasn't his only target. Bernard was setting up a kingdom, wasn't he?

• Ender watched from the fringes of the group as Bernard established the hierarchy. Some of the boys were useful to him, and he flattered them outrageously. Some of the boys were willing servants, doing whatever he wanted even though he treated them with contempt.

• But a few chafed under Bernard's rule.

• Ender, watching, knew who resented Bernard. Shem was small, ambitious, and easily needled. Bernard had discovered that quickly, and started calling him Worm. "Because he's so small," Bernard said, "and because he wriggles. Look how he shimmies his butt when he walks."

• Shen stormed off, but they only laughed louder. "Look at his butt. Seeya, Worm!"

• Ender said nothing to Shen-- it would be too obvious, then, that he was starting his own competing gang. He just sat with his desk on his lap, looking as studious as possible.

• He was not studying. He was telling his desk to keep sending a message into the interrupt queue every thirty seconds. The message was to everyone, and it was short and to the point. What made it hard was figuring out how to disguise who it was from, the way the teachers could. Messages from one of the boys always had their name automatically inserted. Ender hadn't cracked the teachers security system yet, so he couldn't pretend to be a teacher. But he was able to set up a file for a nonexistent student, whom he whimsically named God.

• Only when the message was ready to go did he try to catch Shen's eye. Like all the other boys, he was watching Bernard and his cronies latigh and joke, making fun of the math teacher, who often stopped in midsentence and looked around as if he had been let off the bus at the wrong stop and didn't know where he was.

• Eventually, though, Shen glanced around. Ender nodded to him, pointed to his desk, and smiled. Shen looked puzzled. Ender held up his desk a little and then pointed at it. Shen reached for his own desk. Ender sent the message then, Shen saw it almost at once. Shen read it, then laughed aloud. He looked at Ender as if to say, Did you do this? Ender shrugged, to say, I don't know who did it but it sure wasn't me.

• Shen laughed again, and several of the other boys who were not close to Bernard's group got out their desks and looked. Every thirty seconds the message appeared on every desk, marched around the screen quickly, then disappeared. The boys laughed together.

• "What's so funny?" Bernard asked, Ender made sure he was not smiling when Bernard looked around the room, imitating the fear that so many others felt. Shen, of course, smiled all the more defiantly. It took a moment; then Bernard told one of his boy's to bring out a desk. Together they read the message.

• COVER YOUR BUTT. BERNARD IS WATCHING.

• --GOD

• Bernard went red with anger. "Who did this!" he shouted.

• "God," said Shen.

• "It sure as hell wasn't you," Bernard said. "This takes too much brains for a worm."

• Ender's message expired after five minutes. After a while, a message from Bernard appeared on his desk.

• I KNOW IT WAS YOU.

• --BERNARD

• Ender didn't look up. He acted, in fact, as if he hadn't seen the message. Bernard just wants to catch me looking guilty. He doesn't know.

• Of course, it didn't matter if he knew. Bernard would punish him all the more, because he had to rebuild his position. The one thing he couldn't stand was having the other boys laughing at him. He had to make clear who was boss. So Ender got knocked down in the shower that morning. One of Bernard's boys pretended to trip over him, and managed to plant a knee in his belly. Ender took it in silence. He was still watching, as far as the open war was concerned. He would do nothing.

• But in the other war, the war of desks, he already had his next attack in place. When he got back from the shower, Bernard was raging, kicking beds and yelling at boys. "I didn't write it! Shut up!"

• Marching constantly around every boy's desk was this message:

• I LOVE YOUR BUTT. LET ME KISS IT.

• --BERNARD

• "I didn't write that message!" Bernard shouted. After the shouting had been going on for some time, Dap appeared at the door.

• "What's the fuss?" he asked.

• "Somebody's been writing messages using my name." Bernard was sullen.

• "What message."

• "It doesn't matter what message!"

• "It does to me." Dap picked up the nearest desk, which happened to belong to the boy' who bunked above Ender. Dap read it, smiled very slightly, gave back the desk.

• "Interesting," he said.

• "Aren't you going to find out who did it?" demanded Bernard.

• "Oh, I know who did it," Dap said.

• Yes, Ender thought. The system was too easily broken. They mean us to break it, or sections of it. They know it was me.

• "Well, who, then?" Bernard shouted.

• "Are you shouting at me, soldier?" asked Dap, very softly.

• At once the mood in the room changed. From rage on the part of Bernard's closest friends and barely contained mirth among the rest, all became somber. Authority was about to speak.

• "No, sir," said Bernard.

• "Everybody knows that the system automatically puts on the name of the sender."

• "I didn't write that!" Bernard said.

• "Shouting?" asked Dap.

• "Yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD," Bernard said.

• "Really?" said Dap. "I didn't know he was signed onto the system." Dap turned and left, and the room filled with laughter.

• Bernard's attempt to be ruler of the room was broken-- only a few stayed with him now. But they were the most vicious. And Ender knew that until he was through watching, it would go hard on him. Still, the tampering with the system had done its work, Bernard was contained, and all the boys who had some quality were free of him. Best of all, Ender had done it without sending him to the hospital. Much better this way.

• Then he settled down to the serious business of designing a security system for his own desk, since the safeguards built into the system were obviously inadequate. If a six-year-old could break them down, they were obviously put there as a plaything, not serious security. Just another game that the teachers set up for us. And this is one I'm good at.

• "How did you do that?" Shen asked him at breakfast.

• Ender noted quietly that this was the first time another Launchy from his own class had sat with him at a meal. "Do what?" he asked.

• "Send a message with a fake name. And Bernard's name! That was great. They're calling him Buttwatcher now. Just Watcher in front of the teachers, but everybody knows what he's watching."

• "Poor Bernard," Ender murmured. "And he's so sensitive."

• "Come on, Ender. You broke into the system. How'd you do it?"

• Ender shook his head and smiled. "Thanks for thinking I'm bright enough to do that. I just happened to see it first, that's all."

• "OK, you don't have to tell me," said Shen. "Still, it was great." They ate in silence fora moment. "Do I wiggle my butt when I walk?"

• "Naw." Ender said. "Just a little. Just don't take such big long steps, that's all."

• Shen nodded.

• "The only person who'd ever notice was Bernard."

• "He's a pig," said Shen.

• Ender shrugged. "On the whole, pigs aren't so bad."

• Shen laughed. "You're right. I wasn't being fair to the pigs."

• They laughed together, and two other Launchies joined them. Ender's isolation was over. The war was just beginning.

Chapter 6 -- The Giant's Drink

• "We've had our disappointments in the past, hanging on for years, hoping they'll pull through, and then they don't. Nice thing about Ender, he's determined to ice within the first six months."

• "Oh?"

• "Don't you see what's going on here? He's stuck at the Giant's Drink in the mind game. Is the boy suicidal? You never mentioned it."

• "Everybody gets the Giant sometime."

• "But Ender won't leave it alone. Like Pinual."

• "Everybody looks like Pinual at one time or another. But he's the only one who killed himself. I don't think it had anything to do with the Giant's Drink."

• "You're betting my life on that. And look what he's done with his launch group."

• "Wasn't his fault, you know."

• "I don't care. His fault or not, he's poisoning that group. They're supposed to bond, and right where he stands there's a chasm a mile wide."

• "I don't plan to leave him there very long, anyway."

• "Then you'd better plan again. That launch is sick, and he's the source of the disease. He stays till it's cured."

• "I was the source of the disease. I was isolating him, and it worked."

• "Give him time. To see what he does with it."

• "We don't have time."

• "We don't have time to rush a kid ahead who has as much chance of being a monster as a military genius."

• "Is this an order?"

• "The recorders on, it's always on, your ass is covered, go to hell."

• "If it's an order, then I'll--"

• "It's an order. Hold him where he is until we see now he handles things in his launch group. Graff, you give me ulcers."

• "You wouldn't have ulcers if you'd leave the school to me and take care of the fleet yourself."

• "The fleet is looking for a battle commander. There's nothing to take care of until you get me that."

• They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side. Null gravity was frightening, disorienting; they soon found that things went better if they didn't use their feet at all.

• Worse, the suits were confining. It was harder to make precise movements, since the suits bent just a bit slower, resisted a bit more than any clothing they had ever worn before.

• Ender gripped the handhold and flexed his knees. He noticed that along with the sluggishness, the suit had an amplifying effect on movement. It was hard to get them started, but the suit's legs kept moving, and strongly, after his muscles had stopped. Give them a push this strong, and the suit pushes with twice the force. I'll be clumsy for a while. Better get started.

• So, still grasping the handhold, he pushed off strongly with his feet.

• Instantly he flipped around, his feet flying over his head, and landed fiat on his back against the wall. The rebound was stronger, it seemed, and his hands tore loose from the handhold. He flew across the battleroom, tumbling over and over.

• For a sickening moment he tried to retain his old up-and-down orientation, his body attempting to right itself, searching for the gravity that wasn't there. Then he forced himself to change his view. He was hurtling toward a wall. That was down. And at once he had control of himself. He wasn't flying, he was falling. This was a dive. He could choose how he would hit the surface.

• I'm going too fast to catch ahold and stay, but I can soften the impact, can fly off at an angle if I roll when I hit and use my feet--

• It didn't work at all the way he had planned. He went off at an angle, but it was not the one he had predicted. Nor did he have time to consider. He hit another wall, this time too soon to have prepared for it. But quite accidently he discovered a way to use his feet to control the rebound angle. Now he was soaring across the room again, toward the other boys who still clung to the wall. This time he had slowed enough to be able to grip a rung. He was at a crazy angle in relation to the other boys, but once again his orientation had changed, and as far as he could tell, they were all lying on the floor, not hanging on a wall, and he was no more upside down than they were.

• "What are you trying to do, kill yourself?" asked Shen.

• "Try it," Ender said. "The suit keeps you from hurting yourself, and you can control your bouncing with your legs, like this." He approximated the movement he had made.

• Shen shook his head-- he wasn't trying any fool stunt like that. But one boy did take off, not as fast as Ender had, because he didn't begin with a flip, but fast enough. Ender didn't even have to see his face to know that it was Bernard. And right after him, Bernard's best friend, Alai.

• Ender watched them cross the huge room, Bernard struggling to orient himself to the direction he thought of as the floor, Alai surrendering to the movement and preparing to rebound from the wall. No wonder Bernard broke his arm in the shuttle, Ender thought. He tightens up when he's flying. He panics. Ender stored the information away for future reference.

• And another bit of information, too. Alai did not push off in the same direction as Bernard. He aimed for a corner of the room. Their paths diverged more and more as they flew, and where Bernard made a clumsy, crunching landing and bounce on his wall, Alai did a glancing triple bounce on three surfaces near the corner that left him most of his speed and sent him flying off at a surprising angle. Alai shouted and whooped, and so did the boys watching him. Some of them forgot they were weightless and let go of the wall to clap their hands. Now they drifted lazily in many directions, waving their arms, trying to swim.

• Now, that's a problem, thought Ender. What if you catch yourself drifting? There's no way to push off.

• He was tempted to set himself adrift and try to solve the problem by trial and error. But he could see the others, their useless efforts at control, and he couldn't think of what he would do that they weren't already doing.

• Holding onto the floor with one hand, he fiddled idly with the toy gun that was attached to his suit in front, just below the shoulder. Then he remembered the hand rockets sometimes used by marines when they did a boarding assault on an enemy station. He pulled the gun from his suit and examined it. He had pushed all the buttons back in the room, but the gun did nothing there. Maybe here in the battleroom it would work. There were no instructions on it. No labels on the controls. The trigger was obvious-- he had had toy guns, as all children had, almost since infancy. There were two buttons that his thumb could easily reach, and several others along the bottom of the shaft that were almost inaccessible without using two hands. Obviously, the two buttons near his thumb were meant to be instantly usable.

• He aimed the gun at the floor and pulled back on the trigger. He felt the gun grow instantly warm; when he let go of the trigger, it cooled at once. Also, a tiny circle of light appeared on the floor where he was aiming.

• He thumbed the red button at the top of the gun, and pulled the trigger again. Same thing.

• Then he pushed the white button. It gave a bright flash of light that illuminated a wide area, but not as intensely. The gun was quite cold when the button was pressed.

• The red button makes it like a laser-- but it is not a laser, Dap had said-- while the white button makes it a lamp. Neither will be much help when it comes to maneuvering.

• So everything depends on how you push off, the course you set when you start. It means we're going to have to get very good at controlling our launches and rebounds or we're all going to end up floating around in the middle of nowhere. Ender looked around the room. A few of the boys were drifting close to walls now, flailing their arms to catch a handhold. Most were bumping into each other and laughing; some were holding hands and going around in circles. Only a few, like Ender, were calmly holding onto the walls and watching.

• One of them, he saw, was Alai. He had ended up on another wall not too far from Ender. On impulse, Ender pushed off and moved quickly toward Alai. Once in the air, he wondered what he would say. Alai was Bernard's friend. What did Ender have to say to him?

• Still, there was no changing course now. So he watched straight ahead, and practiced making tiny leg and hand movements to control which way he was facing as he drifted. Too late, he realized that he had aimed too well. He was not going to land near Alai-- he was going to hit him.

• "Here, snag my hand!" Alai called.

• Ender held out his hand. Alai took the shock of impact and helped Ender make a fairly gentle landing against the wall.

• "That's good," Ender said. "We ought to practice that kind of thing."

• "That's what I thought, only everybody's turning to butter out there," Alai said. "What happens if we get out there together? We should be able to shove each other in opposite directions."

• "Yeah."

• "OK?"

• It was an admission that all might not be right between them. Is it OK for us to do something together? Ender's answer was to take Alai by the wrist and get ready to push off.

• "Ready?" said Alai. "Go."

• Since they pushed off with different amounts of force, they began to circle each other. Ender made some small hand movements, then shifted a leg. They slowed. He did it again. They stopped orbiting. Now they were drifting evenly.

• "Packed head, Ender." Alai said. It was high praise. "Let's push off before we run into that bunch."

• "And then let's meet over in that corner." Ender did not want this bridge into the enemy camp to fail.

• "Last one there saves farts in a milk bottle," Alai said.

• Then, slowly, steadily, they maneuvered until they faced each other, spread-eagled, hand to hand, knee to knee.

• "And then we just scrunch?" asked Alai.

• "I've never done this before either," said Ender.

• They pushed off. It propelled them faster than they expected. Ender ran into a couple of boys and ended up on a wall that he hadn't expected. It took him a moment to reorient and find the corner where he and Alai were to meet. Alai was already headed toward it. Ender plotted a course that would include two rebounds, to avoid the largest clusters of boys.

• When Ender reached the corner, Alai had hooked his arms through two adjacent handholds and was pretending to doze.

• "You win."

• "I want to see your fart collection," Alai said.

• "I stored it in your locker. Didn't you notice?"

• "I thought it was my socks."

• "We don't wear socks anymore."

• "Oh yeah." A reminder that they were both far from home. It took some of the fun out of having mastered a bit of navigation.

• Ender took his pistol and demonstrated what he had learned about the two thumb buttons.

• "What does it do when you aim at a person?" asked Alai.

• "I don't know."

• "Why don't we find out?"

• Ender shook his head. "We might hurt somebody."

• "I meant why don't we shoot each other in the foot or something. I'm not Bernard, I never tortured cats for fun."

• "Oh."

• "It can't be too dangerous, or they wouldn't give these guns to kids."

• "We're soldiers now."

• "Shoot me in the foot."

• "No, you shoot me."

• "Let's shoot each other."

• They did. Immediately Ender felt the leg of the suit grow stiff, immobile at the knee and ankle joints.

• "You frozen?" asked Alai.

• "Stiff as a board."

• "Let's freeze a few," Alai said. "Let's have our first war. Us against them."

• They grinned. Then Ender said, "Better invite Bernard."

• Alai cocked an eyebrow. "Oh?"

• "And Shen."

• "That little slanty-eyed butt-wiggler?"

• Ender decided that Alai was joking. "Hey, we can't all be niggers."

• Alai grinned. "My grandpa would've killed you for that."

• "My great great grandpa would have sold him first,"

• "Let's go get Bernard and Shen and freeze these bugger-lovers."

• In twenty minutes, everyone in the room was frozen except Ender, Bernard, Shen, and Alai. The four of them sat there whooping and laughing until Dap came in.

• "I see you've learned how to use your equipment," he said. Then he did something to a control he held in his hand. Everybody drifted slowly toward the wall he was standing on. He went among the frozen boys, touching them and thawing their suits. There was a tumult of complaint that it wasn't fair how Bernard and Alai had shot them all when they weren't ready.

• "Why weren't you ready?" asked Dap. "You had your suits just as long as they did. You had just as many minutes flapping around like drunken ducks. Stop moaning and we'll begin."