“So tell me how you’ve done in these eight battles.”

  Bean wanted to point out how time after time, his suggestions to Crazy Tom had made C toon the most effective in the army. How his tactical innovations and creative responses to flowing situations had been imitated by the other soldiers. But that would be brag and borderline insubordination. It wasn’t what a soldier who wanted to be an officer would say. Either Crazy Tom had reported Bean’s contribution or he hadn’t. It wasn’t Bean’s place to report on anything about himself that wasn’t public record. “Today was the first time they disabled me so early, but the computer listed me as getting eleven hits before I had to stop. I’ve never had less than five hits in a battle. I’ve also completed every assignment I’ve been given.”

  “Why did they make you a soldier so young, Bean?”

  “No younger than you were.” Technically not true, but close enough.

  “But why?”

  What was he getting at? It was the teachers’ decision. Had he found out that Bean was the one who composed the roster? Did he know that Bean had chosen himself? “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do, and so do I.”

  No, Wiggin wasn’t asking specifically about why Bean was made a soldier. He was asking why launchies were suddenly getting promoted so young. “I’ve tried to guess, but they’re just guesses.” Not that Bean’s guesses were ever just guesses—but then, neither were Wiggin’s. “You’re—very good. They knew that, they pushed you ahead—”

  “Tell me why, Bean.”

  And now Bean understood the question he was really asking. “Because they need us, that’s why.” He sat on the floor and looked, not into Wiggin’s face, but at his feet. Bean knew things that he wasn’t supposed to know. That the teachers didn’t know he knew. And in all likelihood, there were teachers monitoring this conversation. Bean couldn’t let his face give away how much he really understood. “Because they need somebody to beat the Buggers. That’s the only thing they care about.”

  “It’s important that you know that, Bean.”

  Bean wanted to demand, Why is it important that I know it? Or are you just saying that people in general should know it? Have you finally seen and understood who I am? That I’m you, only smarter and less likable, the better strategist but the weaker commander? That if you fail, if you break, if you get sick and die, then I’m the one? Is that why I need to know this?

  “Because,” Wiggin went on, “most of the boys in this school think the game is important for itself, but it isn’t. It’s only important because it helps them find kids who might grow up to be real commanders, in the real war. But as for the game, screw that. That’s what they’re doing. Screwing up the game.”

  “Funny,” said Bean. “I thought they were just doing it to us.” No, if Wiggin thought Bean needed to have this explained to him, he did not understand who Bean really was. Still, it was Bean in Wiggin’s quarters, having this conversation with him. That was something.

  “A game nine weeks earlier than it should have come. A game every day. And now two games in the same day. Bean, I don’t know what the teachers are doing, but my army is getting tired, and I’m getting tired, and they don’t care at all about the rules of the game. I’ve pulled the old charts up from the computer. No one has ever destroyed so many enemies and kept so many of his own soldiers whole in the history of the game.”

  What was this, brag? Bean answered as brag was meant to be answered. “You’re the best, Ender.”

  Wiggin shook his head. If he heard the irony in Bean’s voice, he didn’t respond to it. “Maybe. But it was no accident that I got the soldiers I got. Launchies, rejects from other armies, but put them together and my worst soldier could be a toon leader in another army. They’ve loaded things my way, but now they’re loading it all against me. Bean, they want to break us down.”

  So Wiggin did understand how his army had been selected, even if he didn’t know who had done the selecting. Or maybe he knew everything, and this was all that he cared to show Bean at this time. It was hard to guess how much of what Wiggin did was calculated and how much merely intuitive. “They can’t break you.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Wiggin breathed sharply, suddenly, as if there were a stab of pain, or he had to catch a sudden breath in a wind; Bean looked at him and realized that the impossible was happening. Far from baiting him, Ender Wiggin was actually confiding in him. Not much. But a little. Ender was letting Bean see that he was human. Bringing him into the inner circle. Making him . . . what? A counselor? A confidant?

  “Maybe you’ll be surprised,” said Bean.

  “There’s a limit to how many clever new ideas I can come up with every day. Somebody’s going to come up with something to throw at me that I haven’t thought of before, and I won’t be ready.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” asked Bean. “You lose one game.”

  “Yes. That’s the worst that could happen. I can’t lose any games. Because if I lose any . . .”

  He didn’t complete the thought. Bean wondered what Ender imagined the consequences would be. Merely that the legend of Ender Wiggin, perfect soldier, would be lost? Or that his army would lose confidence in him, or in their own invincibility? Or was this about the larger war, and losing a game here in Battle School might shake the confidence of the teachers that Ender was the commander of the future, the one to lead the fleet, if he could be made ready before the Bugger invasion arrived?

  Again, Bean did not know how much the teachers knew about what Bean had guessed about the progress of the wider war. Better to keep silence.

  “I need you to be clever, Bean,” said Ender. “I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven’t seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they’re absolutely stupid.”

  So what is this about, Ender? What have you decided about me, that brings me into your quarters tonight? “Why me?”

  “Because even though there are some better soldiers than you in Dragon Army—not many, but some—there’s nobody who can think better and faster than you.”

  He had seen. And after a month of frustration, Bean realized that it was better this way. Ender had seen his work in battle, had judged him by what he did, not by his reputation in classes or the rumors about his having the highest scores in the history of the school. Bean had earned this evaluation, and it had been given him by the only person in this school whose high opinion Bean longed for.

  Ender held out his desk for Bean to see. On it were twelve names. Two or three soldiers from each toon. Bean immediately knew how Ender had chosen them. They were all good soldiers, confident and reliable. But not the flashy ones, the stunters, the show-offs. They were, in fact, the ones that Bean valued most highly among those who were not toon leaders. “Choose five of these,” said Ender. “One from each toon. They’re a special squad, and you’ll train them. Only during the extra practice sessions. Talk to me about what you’re training them to do. Don’t spend too long on any one thing. Most of the time you and your squad will be part of the whole army, part of your regular toons. But when I need you. When there’s something to be done that only you can do.”

  There was something else about these twelve. “These are all new. No veterans.”

  “After last week, Bean, all our soldiers are veterans. Don’t you realize that on the individual soldier standings, all forty of our soldiers are in the top fifty? That you have to go down seventeen places to find a soldier who isn’t a Dragon?”

  “What if I can’t think of anything?” asked Bean.

  “Then I was wrong about you.”

  Bean grinned. “You weren’t wrong.”

  The lights went out.

  “Can you find your way back, Bean?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then stay here. If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.”

  “They won’t give us another battle tomorrow, will they?” Bean meant it as a joke, but Ender didn’t answer.

  Bean heard him climb into bed.

  Ender was still small for a commander. His feet didn’t come near the end of the bunk. There was plenty of room for Bean to curl up at the foot of the bed. So he climbed up and then lay still, so as not to disturb Ender’s sleep. If he was sleeping. If he was not lying awake in the silence, trying to make sense of . . . what?

  For Bean, the assignment was merely to think of the unthinkable—stupid ploys that might be used against them, and ways to counter them; equally stupid innovations they might introduce in order to sow confusion among the other armies and, Bean suspected, get them sidetracked into imitating completely nonessential strategies. Since few of the other commanders understood why Dragon Army was winning, they kept imitating the nonce tactics used in a particular battle instead of seeing the underlying method Ender used in training and organizing his army. As Napoleon said, the only thing a commander ever truly controls is his own army—training, morale, trust, initiative, command and, to a lesser degree, supply, placement, movement, loyalty, and courage in battle. What the enemy will do and what chance will bring, those defy all planning. The commander must be able to change his plans abruptly when obstacles or opportunities appear. If his army isn’t ready and willing to respond to his will, his cleverness comes to nothing.

  The less effective commanders didn’t understand this. Failing to recognize that Ender won because he and his army responded fluidly and instantly to change, they could only think to imitate the specific tactics they saw him use. Even if Bean’s creative gambits were irrelevant to the outcome of the battle, they would lead other commanders to waste time imitating irrelevancies. Now and then something he came up with might actually be useful. But by and large, he was a sideshow.

  That was fine with Bean. If Ender wanted a sideshow, what mattered was that he had chosen Bean to create that show, and Bean would do it as well as it could be done.

  But if Ender was lying awake tonight, it was not because he was concerned about Dragon Army’s battles tomorrow and the next day and the next. Ender was thinking about the Buggers and how he would fight them when he got through his training and was thrown into war, with the real lives of real men depending on his decisions, with the survival of humanity depending on the outcome.

  In that scheme, what is my place? thought Bean. I’m glad enough that the burden is on Ender, not because I could not bear it—maybe I could—but because I have more confidence that Ender can bring it off than that I could. Whatever it is that makes men love the commander who decides when they will die, Ender has that, and if I have it no one has yet seen evidence of it. Besides, even without genetic alteration, Ender has abilities that the tests didn’t measure for, that run deeper than mere intellect.

  But he shouldn’t have to bear all this alone. I can help him. I can forget geometry and astronomy and all the other nonsense and concentrate on the problems he faces most directly. I’ll do research into the way other animals wage war, especially swarming hive insects, since the Formics resemble ants the way we resemble primates.

  And I can watch his back.

  Bean thought again of Bonzo Madrid. Of the deadly rage of bullies in Rotterdam.

  Why have the teachers put Ender in this position? He’s an obvious target for the hatred of the other boys. Kids in Battle School had war in their hearts. They hungered for triumph. They loathed defeat. If they lacked these attributes, they would never have been brought here. Yet from the start, Ender had been set apart from the others—younger but smarter, the leading soldier and now the commander who makes all other commanders look like babies. Some commanders responded to defeat by becoming submissive—Carn Carby, for instance, now praised Ender behind his back and studied his battles to try to learn how to win, never realizing that you had to study Ender’s training, not his battles, to understand his victories. But most of the other commanders were resentful, frightened, ashamed, angry, jealous, and it was in their character to translate such feelings into violent action . . . if they were sure of victory.

  Just like the streets of Rotterdam. Just like the bullies, struggling for supremacy, for rank, for respect. Ender has stripped Bonzo naked. It cannot be borne. He’ll have his revenge, as surely as Achilles avenged his humiliation.

  And the teachers understand this. They intend it. Ender has clearly mastered every test they set for him—whatever Battle School usually taught, he was done with. So why didn’t they move him on to the next level? Because there was a lesson they were trying to teach, or a test they were trying to get him to pass, which was not within the usual curriculum. Only this particular test could end in death. Bean had felt Bonzo’s fingers around his throat. This was a boy who, once he let himself go, would relish the absolute power that the murderer achieves at his victim’s moment of death.

  They’re putting Ender into a street situation. They’re testing him to see if he can survive.

  They don’t know what they’re doing, the fools. The street is not a test. The street is a lottery.

  I came out a winner—I was alive. But Ender’s survival won’t depend on his ability. Luck plays too large a role. Plus the skill and resolve and power of the opponent.

  Bonzo may be unable to control the emotions that weaken him, but his presence in Battle School means that he is not without skill. He was made a commander because a certain type of soldier will follow him into death and horror. Ender is in mortal danger. And the teachers, who think of us as children, have no idea how quickly death can come. Look away for only a few minutes, step away far enough that you can’t get back in time, and your precious Ender Wiggin, on whom all your hopes are pinned, will be quite, quite dead. I saw it on the streets of Rotterdam. It can happen just as easily in your nice clean rooms here in space.

  So Bean set aside classwork for good that night, lying at Ender’s feet. Instead, he had two new courses of study. He would help Ender prepare for the war he cared about, with the Buggers. But he would also help him in the street fight that was being set up for him.

  It wasn’t that Ender was oblivious, either. After some kind of fracas in the battleroom during one of Ender’s early freetime practices, Ender had taken a course in self-defense, and knew something about fighting man to man. But Bonzo would not come at him man to man. He was too keenly aware of having been beaten. Bonzo’s purpose would not be a rematch, it would not be vindication. It would be punishment. It would be elimination. He would bring a gang.

  And the teachers would not realize the danger until it was too late. They still didn’t think of anything the children did as “real.”

  So after Bean thought of clever, stupid things to do with his new squad, he also tried to think of ways to set Bonzo up so that, in the crunch, he would have to take on Ender Wiggin alone or not at all. Strip away Bonzo’s support. Destroy the morale, the reputation of any bully who might go along with him.

  This is one job Ender can’t do. But it can be done.

  Part Five

  LEADER

  17

  DEADLINE

  “I don’t even know how to interpret this. The mind game had only one shot at Bean, and it puts up this one kid’s face, and he goes off the charts with—what, fear? Rage? Isn’t there anybody who knows how this so-called game works? It ran Ender through a wringer, brought in those pictures of his brother that it couldn’t possibly have had, only it got them. And this one—was it some deeply insightful gambit that leads to powerful new conclusions about Bean’s psyche? Or was it simply the only person Bean knew whose picture was already in the Battle School files?”

  “Was that a rant, or is there any particular one of those questions you want answered?”

  “What I want you to answer is this question: How the hell can you tell me that something was ‘very significant’ if you have no idea what it signifies!”

  “If someone runs after your car, screaming and waving his arms, you know that something significant is intended, even if you can’t hear a word he’s saying.”

  “So that’s what this was? Screaming?”

  “That was an analogy. The image of Achilles was extraordinarily important to Bean.”

  “Important positive, or important negative?”

  “That’s too cut-and-dried. If it was negative, are his negative feelings because Achilles caused some terrible trauma in Bean? Or negative because having been torn away from Achilles was traumatic, and Bean longs to be restored to him?”

  “So if we have an independent source of information that tells us to keep them apart . . .”

  “Then either that independent source is really really right. . . .”

  “Or really really wrong.”

  “I’d be more specific if I could. We only had a minute with him.”

  “That’s disingenuous. You’ve had the mind game linked to all his work with his teacher-identity.”

  “And we’ve reported to you about that. It’s partly his hunger to have control—that’s how it began—but it has since become a way of taking responsibility. He has, in a way, become a teacher. He has also used his inside information to give himself the illusion of belonging to the community.”

  “He does belong.”

  “He has only one close friend, and that’s more of a big brother, little brother thing.”

  “I have to decide whether I can put Achilles into Battle School while Bean is there, or give up one of them in order to keep the other. Now, from Bean’s response to Achilles’ face, what counsel can you give me.”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “From that incident, we can tell you that putting them together will be either a really really bad thing, or—”

  “I’m going to have to take a long, hard look at your budget.”

  “Sir, the whole purpose of the program, the way it works, is that the computer makes connections we would never think of, and gets responses we weren’t looking for. It’s not actually under our control.”