What answer was he hoping for? It was a sure thing Bean couldn’t nod or speak.

  Bonzo just stood there, smiling maliciously, as Bean struggled.

  Everything started turning black around the edges of Bean’s vision before Bonzo finally let him drop to the floor. He lay there, coughing and gasping.

  What have I done? I goaded Bonzo Madrid. A bully with none of Achilles’ subtlety. When Wiggin beats him, Bonzo isn’t going to take it. He won’t stop with a demonstration, either. His hatred for Wiggin runs deep.

  As soon as he could breathe again, Bean headed back to the barracks. Nikolai noticed the marks on his neck at once. “Who was choking you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bean.

  “Don’t give me that,” said Nikolai. “He was facing you, look at the fingermarks.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You remember the pattern of arteries on your own placenta.”

  “I’m not going to tell you,” said Bean. To that, Nikolai had no answer, though he didn’t like it.

  Bean signed on as Graff and wrote a note to Dimak, even though he knew it would do no good.

  “Bonzo is insane. He could kill somebody, and Wiggin’s the one he hates the most.”

  The answer came back quickly, almost as if Dimak had been waiting for the message. “Clean up your own messes. Don’t go crying to mama.”

  The words stung. It wasn’t Bean’s mess, it was Wiggin’s. And, ultimately, the teachers’, for having put Wiggin in Bonzo’s army to begin with. And then to taunt him because he didn’t have a mother—when did the teachers become the enemy here? They were supposed to protect us from crazy kids like Bonzo Madrid. How do they think I’m going to clean this mess up?

  The only thing that will stop Bonzo Madrid is to kill him.

  And then Bean remembered standing there looking down at Achilles, saying, “You got to kill him.”

  Why couldn’t I have kept my mouth shut? Why did I have to goad Bonzo Madrid? Wiggin is going to end up like Poke. And it will be my fault again.

  16

  COMPANION

  “So you see, Anton, the key you found has been turned, and it may be the salvation of the human race.”

  “But the poor boy. To live his life so small, and then die as a giant.”

  “Perhaps he’ll be . . . amused at the irony.”

  “How strange to think that my little key might turn out to be the salvation of the human race. From the invading beasts, anyway. Who will save us when we become our own enemy again?”

  “We are not enemies, you and I.”

  “Not many people are enemies to anyone. But the ones full of greed or hate, pride or fear—their passion is strong enough to lever all the world into war.”

  “If God can raise up a great soul to save us from one menace, might he not answer our prayers by raising up another when we need him?”

  “But Sister Carlotta, you know the boy you speak of was not raised up by God. He was created by a kidnapper, a baby-killer, an outlaw scientist.”

  “Do you know why Satan is so angry all the time? Because whenever he works a particularly clever bit of mischief, God uses it to serve his own righteous purposes.”

  “So God uses wicked people as his tools.”

  “God gives us the freedom to do great evil, if we choose. Then he uses his own freedom to create goodness out of that evil, for that is what he chooses.”

  “So in the long run, God always wins.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the short run, though, it can be uncomfortable.”

  “And when, in the past, would you have preferred to die, instead of being alive here today?”

  “There it is. We get used to everything. We find hope in anything.”

  “That’s why I’ve never understood suicide. Even those suffering from great depression or guilt—don’t they feel Christ the Comforter in their hearts, giving them hope?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “God not being convenient, I ask a fellow mortal.”

  “In my view, suicide is not really the wish for life to end.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.”

  “As Adam and Eve hid from the Lord.”

  “Because they were naked.”

  “If only such sad people could remember: Everyone is naked. Everyone wants to hide. But life is still sweet. Let it go on.”

  “You don’t believe that the Formics are the beast of the Apocalypse, then, Sister?”

  “No, Anton. I believe they are also children of God.”

  “And yet you found this boy specifically so he could grow up to destroy them.”

  “Defeat them. Besides, if God does not want them to die, they will not die.”

  “And if God wants us to die, we will. Why do you work so hard, then?”

  “Because these hands of mine, I gave them to God, and I serve him as best I can. If he had not wanted me to find Bean, I would not have found him.”

  “And if God wants the Formics to prevail?”

  “He’ll find some other hands to do it. For that job, he can’t have mine.”

  Lately, while the toon leaders drilled the soldiers, Wiggin had taken to disappearing. Bean used his Graff log-on to find what he was doing. He’d gone back to studying the vids of Mazer Rackham’s victory, much more intensely and single-mindedly than ever before. And this time, because Wiggin’s army was playing games daily and winning them all, the other commanders and many toon leaders and common soldiers as well began to go to the library and watch the same vids, trying to make sense of them, trying to see what Wiggin saw.

  Stupid, thought Bean. Wiggin isn’t looking for anything to use here in Battle School—he’s created a powerful, versatile army and he’ll figure out what to do with them on the spot. He’s studying those vids in order to figure out how to beat the Buggers. Because he knows now: He will face them someday. The teachers would not be wrecking the whole system here in Battle School if they were not nearing the crisis, if they did not need Ender Wiggin to save us from the invading Buggers. So Wiggin studies the Buggers, desperate for some idea of what they want, how they fight, how they die.

  Why don’t the teachers see that Wiggin is done? He’s not even thinking about Battle School anymore. They should take him out of here and move him into Tactical School, or whatever the next stage of his training will be. Instead, they’re pushing him, making him tired.

  Us too. We’re tired.

  Bean saw it especially in Nikolai, who was working harder than the others just to keep up. If we were an ordinary army, thought Bean, most of us would be like Nikolai. As it is, many of us are—Nikolai was not the first to show his weariness. Soldiers drop silverware or food trays at mealtimes. At least one has wet his bed. We argue more at practice. Our classwork is suffering. Everyone has limits. Even me, even genetically-altered Bean the thinking machine, I need time to relubricate and refuel, and I’m not getting it.

  Bean even wrote to Colonel Graff about it, a snippy little note saying only, “It is one thing to train soldiers and quite another to wear them out.” He got no reply.

  Late afternoon, with a half hour before mess call. They had already won a game that morning and then practiced after class, though the toon leaders, at Wiggin’s suggestion, had let their soldiers go early. Most of Dragon Army was now dressing after showers, though some had already gone on to kill time in the game room or the video room . . . or the library. Nobody was paying attention to classwork now, but a few still went through the motions.

  Wiggin appeared in the doorway, brandishing the new orders.

  A second battle on the same day.

  “This one’s hot and there’s no time,” said Wiggin. “They gave Bonzo notice about twenty minutes ago, and by the time we get to the door they’ll have been inside for a good five minutes at least.”

  He sent the four soldiers nearest the door—all young, but not launchies anymore, they were veterans now—to bring back the ones who had left. Bean dressed quickly—he had learned how to do it by himself now, but not without hearing plenty of jokes about how he was the only soldier who had to practice getting dressed, and it was still slow.

  As they dressed, there was plenty of complaining about how this was getting stupid, Dragon Army should have a break now and then. Fly Molo was the loudest, but even Crazy Tom, who usually laughed at everything, was pissed about it. When Tom said, “Same day nobody ever do two battles!” Wiggin answered, “Nobody ever beat Dragon Army, either. This be your big chance to lose?”

  Of course not. Nobody intended to lose. They just wanted to complain about it.

  It took a while, but finally they were gathered in the corridor to the battleroom. The gate was already open. A few of the last arrivals were still putting on their flash suits. Bean was right behind Crazy Tom, so he could see down into the room. Bright light. No stars, no grid, no hiding place of any kind. The enemy gate was open, and yet there was not a Salamander soldier to be seen.

  “My heart,” said Crazy Tom. “They haven’t come out yet, either.”

  Bean rolled his eyes. Of course they were out. But in a room without cover, they had simply formed themselves up on the ceiling, gathered around Dragon Army’s gate, ready to destroy everybody as they came out.

  Wiggin caught Bean’s facial expression and smiled as he covered his own mouth to signal them all to be silent. He pointed all around the gate, to let them know where Salamander was gathered, then motioned for them to move back.

  The strategy was simple and obvious. Since Bonzo Madrid had kindly pinned his army against a wall, ready to be slaughtered, it only remained to find the right way to enter the battleroom and carry out the massacre.

  Wiggin’s solution—which Bean liked—was to transform the larger soldiers into armored vehicles by having them kneel upright and freeze their legs. Then a smaller soldier knelt on each big kid’s calves, wrapped one arm around the bigger soldier’s waist, and prepared to fire. The largest soldiers were used as launchers, throwing each pair into the battleroom.

  For once being small had its advantages. Bean and Crazy Tom were the pair Wiggin used to demonstrate what he wanted them all to do. As a result, when the first two pairs were thrown into the room, Bean got to begin the slaughter. He had three kills almost at once—at such close range, the beam was tight and the kills came fast. And as they began to go out of range, Bean climbed around Crazy Tom and launched off of him, heading east and somewhat up while Tom went even faster toward the far side of the room. When other Dragons saw how Bean had managed to stay within firing range, while moving sideways and therefore remaining hard to hit, many of them did the same. Eventually Bean was disabled, but it hardly mattered—Salamander was wiped out to the last man, and without a single one of them getting off the wall. Even when it was obvious they were easy, stationary targets, Bonzo didn’t catch on that he was doomed until he himself was already frozen, and nobody else had the initiative to countermand his original order and start moving so they wouldn’t be so easy to hit. Just one more example of why a commander who ruled by fear and made all the decisions himself would always be beaten, sooner or later.

  The whole battle had taken less than a full minute from the time Bean rode Crazy Tom through the door until the last Salamander was frozen.

  What surprised Bean was that Wiggin, usually so calm, was pissed off and showing it. Major Anderson didn’t even have a chance to give the official congratulations to the victor before Wiggin shouted at him, “I thought you were going to put us against an army that could match us in a fair fight.”

  Why would he think that? Wiggin must have had some kind of conversation with Anderson, must have been promised something that hadn’t been delivered.

  But Anderson explained nothing. “Congratulations on the victory, commander.”

  Wiggin wasn’t going to have it. It wasn’t going to be business as usual. He turned to his army and called out to Bean by name. “If you had commanded Salamander Army, what would you have done?”

  Since another Dragon had used him to shove off in midair, Bean was now drifting down near the enemy gate, but he heard the question—Wiggin wasn’t being subtle about this. Bean didn’t want to answer, because he knew what a serious mistake this was, to speak slightingly of Salamander and call on the smallest Dragon soldier to correct Bonzo’s stupid tactics. Wiggin hadn’t had Bonzo’s hand around his throat the way Bean had. Still, Wiggin was commander, and Bonzo’s tactics had been stupid, and it was fun to say so.

  “Keep a shifting pattern of movement going in front of the door,” Bean answered, loudly, so every soldier could hear him—even the Salamanders, still clinging to the ceiling. “You never hold still when the enemy knows exactly where you are.”

  Wiggin turned to Anderson again. “As long as you’re cheating, why don’t you train the other army to cheat intelligently!”

  Anderson was still calm, ignoring Wiggin’s outburst. “I suggest that you remobilize your army.”

  Wiggin wasn’t wasting time with rituals today. He pressed the buttons to thaw both armies at once. And instead of forming up to receive formal surrender, he shouted at once, “Dragon Army dismissed!”

  Bean was one of those nearest the gate, but he waited till nearly last, so that he and Wiggin left together. “Sir,” said Bean. “You just humiliated Bonzo and he’s—”

  “I know,” said Wiggin. He jogged away from Bean, not wanting to hear about it.

  “He’s dangerous!” Bean called after him. Wasted effort. Either Wiggin already knew he’d provoked the wrong bully, or he didn’t care.

  Did he do it deliberately? Wiggin was always in control of himself, always carrying out a plan. But Bean couldn’t think of any plan that required yelling at Major Anderson and shaming Bonzo Madrid in front of his whole army.

  Why would Wiggin do such a stupid thing?

  It was almost impossible to think of geometry, even though there was a test tomorrow. Classwork was utterly unimportant now, and yet they went on taking the tests and turning in or failing to turn in their assignments. The last few days, Bean had begun to get less-than-perfect scores. Not that he didn’t know the answers, or at least how to figure them out. It’s that his mind kept wandering to things that mattered more—new tactics that might surprise an enemy; new tricks that the teachers might pull in the way they set things up; what might be, must be going on in the larger war, to cause the system to start breaking apart like this; what would happen on Earth and in the I.F. once the Buggers were defeated. If they were defeated. Hard to care about volumes, areas, faces, and dimensions of solids. On a test yesterday, working out problems of gravity near planetary and stellar masses, Bean finally gave up and wrote:

  WHEN YOU KNOW THE VALUE OF N, I’LL FINISH THIS TEST.

  He knew that the teachers all knew what was going on, and if they wanted to pretend that classwork still mattered, fine, let them, but he didn’t have to play.

  At the same time, he knew that the problems of gravity mattered to someone whose only likely future was in the International Fleet. He also needed a thorough grounding in geometry, since he had a pretty good idea of what math was yet to come. He wasn’t going to be an engineer or artillerist or rocket scientist or even, in all likelihood, a pilot. But he had to know what they knew better than they knew it, or they’d never respect him enough to follow him.

  Not tonight, that’s all, thought Bean. Tonight I can rest. Tomorrow I’ll learn what I need to learn. When I’m not so tired.

  He closed his eyes.

  He opened them again. He opened his locker and took out his desk.

  Back on the streets of Rotterdam he had been tired, worn out by hunger and malnutrition and despair. But he kept watching. Kept thinking. And therefore he was able to stay alive. In this army everyone was getting tired, which meant that there would be more and more stupid mistakes. Bean, of all of them, could least afford to become stupid. Not being stupid was the only asset he had.

  He signed on. A message appeared in his display.

  See me at once—Ender

  It was only ten minutes before lights out. Maybe Wiggin sent the message three hours ago. But better late than never. He slid off his bunk, not bothering with shoes, and padded out into the corridor in his stocking feet. He knocked at the door marked

  COMMANDER

  DRAGON ARMY

  “Come in,” said Wiggin.

  Bean opened the door and came inside. Wiggin looked tired in the way that Colonel Graff usually looked tired. Heavy skin around the eyes, face slack, hunched in the shoulders, but eyes still bright and fierce, watching, thinking. “Just saw your message,” said Bean.

  “Fine.”

  “It’s near lights-out.”

  “I’ll help you find your way in the dark.”

  The sarcasm surprised Bean. As usual, Wiggin had completely misunderstood the purpose of Bean’s comment. “I just didn’t know if you knew what time it was—”

  “I always know what time it is.”

  Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Wiggin, it turned into some kind of pissing contest, which Bean always lost even when it was Wiggin whose deliberate misunderstanding caused the whole thing. Bean hated it. He recognized Wiggin’s genius and honored him for it. Why couldn’t he see anything good in Bean?

  But Bean said nothing. There was nothing he could say that would improve the situation. Wiggin had called him in. Let Wiggin move the meeting forward.

  “Remember four weeks ago, Bean? When you told me to make you a toon leader?”

  “Eh.”

  “I’ve made five toon leaders and five assistants since then. And none of them was you.” Wiggin raised his eyebrows. “Was I right?”

  “Yes, sir.” But only because you didn’t bother to give me a chance to prove myself before you made the assignments.