1 Ender's Game (7 page)

  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. Shen 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. See ya, 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 laugh 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 for a 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.

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 accidentally 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.”

  Ender noticed that it was assumed that Bernard and Alai were the leaders of the battle. Well, that was fine. Bernard knew that Ender and Alai had learned to use the guns together. And Ender and Alai were friends. Bernard might believe that Ender had joined his group, but it wasn't so. Ender had joined a new group. Alai's group. Bernard had joined it too.

  It wasn't obvious to everyone; Bernard still blustered and sent his cronies on errands. But Alai now moved freely through the whole room, and when Bernard was crazy, Alai could joke a little and calm him down. When it came time to choose their launch leader, Alai was the almost unanimous choice. Bernard sulked for a few days and then he was fine, and everyone settled into the new pattern. The launch was no longer divided into Bernard's in-group and Ender's outcasts. Alai was the bridge.

  Ender sat on his bed with his desk on his knees. It was private study time, and Ender was doing Free Play. It was a shifting, crazy kind of game in which the school computer kept bringing up new things, building a maze that you could explore. You could go back to events that you liked, for a while; if you left them alone too long, they disappeared and something else took its place.

  Sometimes funny things. Sometimes exciting, and he had to be quick to stay alive. He had lots of deaths, but that was OK, games were like that, you died a lot until you got the hang of it.