This guy might be real tough as the only adult on a shuttle full of kids, but if he were a kid on the streets of Rotterdam, he’d “maneuver” himself into starvation in a month. If he wasn’t killed before that just for talking like he thought his piss was perfume.

  The man turned to head back to the control cabin.

  Bean called out to him.

  “What’s your name?”

  The man turned and fixed him with a withering stare. “Already drafting the orders to have my balls ground to powder, Bean?”

  Bean didn’t answer. Just looked him in the eye.

  “I’m Captain Dimak. Anything else you want to know?”

  Might as well find out now as later. “Do you teach at Battle School?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Coming down to pick up shuttle-loads of little boys and girls is how we get Earthside leave. Just as with you, my being on this shuttle means my vacation is over.”

  The refueling planes peeled away and rose above them. No, it was their own craft that was sinking. And the tail was sinking lower than the nose of the shuttle.

  Metal covers came down over the windows. It felt like they were falling faster, faster . . . until, with a bone-shaking roar, the rockets fired and the shuttle began to rise again, higher, faster, faster, until Bean felt like he was going to be pushed right through the back of his chair. It seemed to go on forever, unchanging.

  Then . . . silence.

  Silence, and then a wave of panic. They were falling again, but this time there was no downward direction, just nausea and fear.

  Bean closed his eyes. It didn’t help. He opened them again, tried to reorient himself. No direction provided equilibrium. But he had schooled himself on the street not to succumb to nausea—a lot of the food he had to eat had already gone a little bad, and he couldn’t afford to throw it up. So he went into his anti-nausea routine—deep breaths, distracting himself by concentrating on wiggling his toes. And, after a surprisingly short time, he was used to the null-G. As long as he didn’t expect any direction to be down, he was fine.

  The other kids didn’t have his routine, or perhaps they were more susceptible to the sudden, relentless loss of balance. Now the reason for the prohibition against eating before the launch became clear. There was plenty of retching going on, but with nothing to throw up, there was no mess, no smell.

  Dimak came back into the shuttle cabin, this time standing on the ceiling. Very cute, thought Bean. Another lecture began, this time about how to get rid of planetside assumptions about directions and gravity. Could these kids possibly be so stupid they needed to be told such obvious stuff?

  Bean occupied the time of the lecture by seeing how much pressure it took to move himself around within his loosely-fitting harness. Everybody else was big enough that the harnesses fit snugly and prevented movement. Bean alone had room for a little maneuvering. He made the most of it. By the time they arrived at Battle School, he was determined to have at least a little skill at movement in null-G. He figured that in space, his survival might someday depend on knowing just how much force it would take to move his body, and then how much force it would take to stop. Knowing it in his mind wasn’t half so important as knowing it with his body. Analyzing things was fine, but good reflexes could save your life.

  6

  ENDER’S SHADOW

  “Normally your reports on a launch group are brief. A few troublemakers, an incident report, or—best of all—nothing.”

  “You’re free to disregard any portion of my report, sir.”

  “Sir? My, but aren’t we the prickly martinet today.”

  “What part of my report did you think was excessive?”

  “I think this report is a love song.”

  “I realize that it might seem like sucking up, to use with every launch the technique you used with Ender Wiggin—”

  “You use it with every launch?”

  “As you noticed yourself, sir, it has interesting results. It causes an immediate sorting out.”

  “A sorting out into categories that might not otherwise exist. Nevertheless, I accept the compliment implied by your action. But seven pages about Bean—really, did you actually learn that much from a response that was primarily silent compliance?”

  “That is just my point, sir. It was not compliance at all. It was—I was performing the experiment, but it felt as though his were the big eye looking down the microscope, and I were the specimen on the slide.”

  “So he unnerved you.”

  “He would unnerve anyone. He’s cold, sir. And yet—”

  “And yet hot. Yes, I read your report. Every scintillating page of it.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I think you know that it is considered good advice for us not to get crushes on our students.”

  “Sir?”

  “In this case, however, I am delighted that you are so interested in Bean. Because, you see, I am not. I already have the boy I think gives us our best chance. Yet there is considerable pressure, because of Bean’s damnable faked-up test scores, to give him special attention. Very well, he shall have it. And you shall give it to him.”

  “But sir . . .”

  “Perhaps you are unable to distinguish an order from an invitation.”

  “I’m only concerned that . . . I think he already has a low opinion of me.”

  “Good. Then he’ll underestimate you. Unless you think his low opinion might be correct.”

  “Compared to him, sir, we might all be a little dim.”

  “Close attention is your assignment. Try not to worship him.”

  All that Bean had on his mind was survival, that first day in Battle School. No one would help him—that had been made clear by Dimak’s little charade in the shuttle. They were setting him up to be surrounded by . . . what? Rivals at best, enemies at worst. So it was the street again. Well, that was fine. Bean had survived on the street. And would have kept on surviving, even if Sister Carlotta hadn’t found him. Even Pablo—Bean might have made it even without Pablo the janitor finding him in the toilet of the clean place.

  So he watched. He listened. Everything the others learned, he had to learn just as well, maybe better. And on top of that, he had to learn what the others were oblivious to—the workings of the group, the systems of the Battle School. How teachers got on with each other. Where the power was. Who was afraid of whom. Every group had its bosses, its suckups, its rebels, its sheep. Every group had its strong bonds and its weak ones, friendships and hypocrisies. Lies within lies within lies. And Bean had to find them all, as quickly as possible, in order to learn the spaces in which he could survive.

  They were taken to their barracks, given beds, lockers, little portable desks that were much more sophisticated than the one he had used when studying with Sister Carlotta. Some of the kids immediately began to play with them, trying to program them or exploring the games built into them, but Bean had no interest in that. The computer system of Battle School was not a person; mastering it might be helpful in the long run, but for today it was irrelevant. What Bean needed to find out was all outside the launchy barracks.

  Which is where, soon enough, they went. They arrived in the “morning” according to space time—which, to the annoyance of many in Europe and Asia, meant Florida time, since the earliest stations had been controlled from there. For the kids, having launched from Europe, it was late afternoon, and that meant they would have a serious time-lag problem. Dimak explained that the cure for this was to get vigorous physical exercise and then take a short nap—no more than three hours—in the early afternoon, following which they would again have plenty of physical exercise so they could fall asleep that night at the regular bedtime for students.

  They piled out to form a line in the corridor. “Green Brown Green,” said Dimak, and showed them how those lines on the corridor walls would always lead them back to their barracks. Bean found himself jostled out of line several times, and ended up right at the back. He didn’t care—mere jostling drew no blood and left no bruise, and last in line was the best place from which to observe.

  Other kids passed them in the corridor, sometimes individuals, sometimes pairs or trios, most with brightly-colored uniforms in many different designs. Once they passed an entire group dressed alike and wearing helmets and carrying extravagant sidearms, jogging along with an intensity of purpose that Bean found intriguing. They’re a crew, he thought. And they’re heading off for a fight.

  They weren’t too intense to notice the new kids walking along the corridor, looking up at them in awe. Immediately there were catcalls. “Launchies!” “Fresh meat!” “Who make cocó in the hall and don’t clean it up!” “They even smell stupid!” But it was all harmless banter, older kids asserting their supremacy. It meant nothing more than that. No real hostility. In fact it was almost affectionate. They remembered being launchies themselves.

  Some of the launchies ahead of Bean in line were resentful and called back some vague, pathetic insults, which only caused more hooting and derision from the older kids. Bean had seen older, bigger kids who hated younger ones because they were competition for food, and drove them away, not caring if they caused the little ones to die. He had felt real blows, meant to hurt. He had seen cruelty, exploitation, molestation, murder. These other kids didn’t know love when they saw it.

  What Bean wanted to know was how that crew was organized, who led it, how he was chosen, what the crew was for. The fact that they had their own uniform meant that it had official status. So that meant that the adults were ultimately in control—the opposite of the way crews were organized in Rotterdam, where adults tried to break them up, where newspapers wrote about them as criminal conspiracies instead of pathetic little leagues for survival.

  That, really, was the key. Everything the children did here was shaped by adults. In Rotterdam, the adults were either hostile, unconcerned, or, like Helga with her charity kitchen, ultimately powerless. So the children could shape their own society without interference. Everything was based on survival—on getting enough food without getting killed or injured or sick. Here, there were cooks and doctors, clothing and beds. Power wasn’t about access to food—it was about getting the approval of adults.

  That’s what those uniforms meant. Adults chose them, and children wore them because adults somehow made it worth their while.

  So the key to everything was understanding the teachers.

  All this passed through Bean’s mind, not so much verbally as with a clear and almost instantaneous understanding that within that crew there was no power at all, compared to the power of the teachers, before the uniformed catcallers reached him. When they saw Bean, so much smaller than any of the other kids, they broke out laughing, hooting, howling. “That one isn’t big enough to be a turd!” “I can’t believe he can walk!” “Did’ums wose ums mama?” “Is it even human?”

  Bean tuned them out immediately. But he could feel the enjoyment of the kids ahead of him in line. They had been humiliated in the shuttle; now it was Bean’s turn to be mocked. They loved it. And so did Bean—because it meant that he was seen as less of a rival. By diminishing him, the passing soldiers had made him just that much safer from . . .

  From what? What was the danger here?

  For there would be danger. That he knew. There was always danger. And since the teachers had all the power, the danger would come from them. But Dimak had started things out by turning the other kids against him. So the children themselves were the weapons of choice. Bean had to get to know the other kids, not because they themselves were going to be his problem, but because their weaknesses, their desires could be used against him by the teachers. And, to protect himself, Bean would have to work to undercut their hold on the other children. The only safety here was to subvert the teachers’ influence. And yet that was the greatest danger—if he was caught doing it.

  They palmed in on a wall-mounted pad, then slid down a pole—the first time Bean had ever done it with a smooth shaft. In Rotterdam, all his sliding had been on rainspouts, signposts, and lightpoles. They ended up in a section of Battle School with higher gravity. Bean did not realize how light they must have been on the barracks level until he felt how heavy he was down in the gym.

  “This is just a little heavier than Earth normal gravity,” said Dimak. “You have to spend at least a half-hour a day here, or your bones start to dissolve. And you have to spend the time exercising, so you keep at peak endurance. And that’s the key—endurance exercise, not bulking up. You’re too small for your bodies to endure that kind of training, and it fights you here. Stamina, that’s what we want.”

  The words meant almost nothing to the kids, but soon the trainer had made it clear. Lots of running on treadmills, riding on cycles, stair-stepping, pushups, situps, chinups, backups, but no weights. Some weight equipment was there, but it was all for the use of teachers. “Your heartrate is monitored from the moment you enter here,” said the trainer. “If you don’t have your heartrate elevated within five minutes of arrival and you don’t keep it elevated for the next twenty-five minutes, it goes on your record and I see it on my control board here.”

  “I get a report on it too,” said Dimak. “And you go on the pig list for everyone to see you’ve been lazy.”

  Pig list. So that’s the tool they used—shaming them in front of the others. Stupid. As if Bean cared.

  It was the monitoring board that Bean was interested in. How could they possibly monitor their heartrates and know what they were doing, automatically, from the moment they arrived? He almost asked the question, until he realized the only possible answer: The uniform. It was in the clothing. Some system of sensors. It probably told them a lot more than heartrate. For one thing, they could certainly track every kid wherever he was in the station, all the time. There must be hundreds and hundreds of kids here, and there would be computers reporting the whereabouts, the heartrates, and who could guess what other information about them. Was there a room somewhere with teachers watching every step they took?

  Or maybe it wasn’t the clothes. After all, they had to palm in before coming down here, presumably to identify themselves. So maybe there were special sensors in this room.

  Time to find out. Bean raised his hand. “Sir,” he said.

  “Yes?” The trainer did a doubletake on seeing Bean’s size, and a smile played around the corners of his mouth. He glanced at Dimak. Dimak did not crack a smile or show any understanding of what the trainer was thinking.

  “Is the heartrate monitor in our clothing? If we take off any part of our clothes while we’re exercising, does it—”

  “You are not authorized to be out of uniform in the gym,” said the trainer. “The room is kept cold on purpose so that you will not need to remove clothing. You will be monitored at all times.”

  Not really an answer, but it told him what he needed to know. The monitoring depended on the clothes. Maybe there was an identifier in the clothing and by palming in, they told the gym sensors which kid was wearing which set of clothing. That would make sense.

  So clothing was probably anonymous from the time you put on a clean set until you palmed in somewhere. That was important—it meant that it might be possible to be untagged without being naked. Naked, Bean figured, would probably be conspicuous around here.

  They all exercised and the trainer told them which of them were not up to the right heartrate and which of them were pushing too hard and would fatigue themselves too soon. Bean quickly got an idea of the level he had to work at, and then forgot about it. He’d remember by reflex, now that he knew.

  It was mealtime, then. They were alone in the mess hall—as fresh arrivals, they were on a separate schedule that day. The food was good and there was a lot of it. Bean was stunned when some of the kids looked at their portion and complained about how little there was. It was a feast! Bean couldn’t finish it. The whiners were informed by the cooks that the quantities were all adapted to their individual dietary needs—each kid’s portion size came up on a computer display when he palmed in upon entering the mess hall.

  So you don’t eat without your palm on a pad. Important to know.

  Bean soon found out that his size was going to get official attention. When he brought his half-finished tray to the disposal unit, an electronic chiming sound brought the on-duty nutritionist to speak to him. “It’s your first day, so we aren’t going to be rigid about it. But your portions are scientifically calibrated to meet your dietary needs, and in the future you will finish every bit of what you are served.”

  Bean looked at him without a word. He had already made his decision. If his exercise program made him hungrier, then he’d eat more. But if they were expecting him to gorge himself, they could forget it. It would be a simple enough matter to dump excess food onto the trays of the whiners. They’d be happy with it, and Bean would eat only as much as his body wanted. He remembered hunger very well, but he had lived with Sister Carlotta for many months, and he knew to trust his own appetite. For a while he had let her goad him into eating more than he actually was hungry for. The result had been a sense of loginess, a harder time sleeping and a harder time staying awake. He went back to eating only as much as his body wanted, letting his hunger be his guide, and it kept him sharp and quick. That was the only nutritionist he trusted. Let the whiners get sluggish.

  Dimak stood after several of them had finished eating. “When you’re through, go back to the barracks. If you think you can find it. If you have any doubt, wait for me and I’ll bring the last group back myself.”

  The corridors were empty when Bean went out into the corridor. The other kids palmed the wall and their green-brown-green strip turned on. Bean watched them go. One of them turned back. “Aren’t you coming?” Bean said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was obviously standing still. It was a stupid question. The kid turned around and jogged on down the corridor toward the barracks.