But that was the stocking she had been holding and weeping over. She knew perfectly well the nickel was there.

  “You still put stuff in his stocking every year,” he said, incredulous.

  “Santa fills the stockings,” said Mother. “It has nothing to do with me.”

  Peter shook his head. “Oh, Mother.”

  “It has nothing to do with you,” said Mother. “Mind your business.”

  “This is morbid,” said Peter. “Grieving for your hero-boy as if he were dead. He’s fine. He’s not going to die, he’s in the most sterile, oversupervised school in the universe, and after he wins the war he’s going to come home amid cheers and confetti and give you a big hug.”

  “Put back the five dollars,” said Mother.

  “I will.”

  “While I’m watching.”

  That stung. “Don’t you trust me, Mother?” asked Peter. He spoke in a sarcastically aggrieved voice, to hide the fact that he really was hurt.

  “Not where Ender is concerned,” said Mother. “Or me, for that matter. The coin is Ender’s. It shouldn’t have anybody’s fingerprints on it but his.”

  “And Santa’s,” said Peter.

  “And Santa’s.”

  He dropped the coin down into the sock.

  “Now put it away.”

  “You realize you’re making it more and more tempting to set this thing on fire,” said Peter.

  “And you wonder why I don’t trust you.”

  “And you wonder why I’m hostile and untrustworthy.”

  “Doesn’t it make you just the tiniest bit uncomfortable that I have to wait until I’m sure you’re not going to be home before I can allow myself to miss my little boy?”

  “You can do what you want, Mother, whenever you want. You’re an adult. Adults have all the money and all the freedom.”

  “You really are the stupidest smart kid in the world,” said Mother.

  “Again, just for reference, please take note of all the reasons I have to feel loved and respected in my own family.”

  “I meant that in the nicest, most affectionate way.”

  “I’m sure you did, Mommy,” said Peter. He put the stocking into the box.

  Mother came over as he was starting to rise out of the chair. She pushed him back down, then reached into the box and took out Ender’s stocking. She reached inside.

  Peter took the coin out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Worth a shot, don’t you think?”

  “You’re still so envious of your younger brother that you have to covet everything that’s his?”

  “It’s a fiver,” said Peter, “and he isn’t going to spend it. I was going to invest it and let it earn him some interest before he gets home in, oh, another six or eight years or whatever.”

  Mother bent over and kissed his forehead. “Heaven knows why I still love you.” Then she dropped the coin into the stocking, put the stocking into the box, reached out and slapped Peter’s hand, and then took the box out of the room.

  The back of Peter’s hand stung from the slap, but it was where her lips had touched his brow that his skin tingled the most.

  3

  THE DEVIL’S QUESTIONS

  Zeck got into a hovercar with the man. There was one soldier driving; the rest of the soldiers got into a different vehicle, a larger one that looked dangerous.

  “I’m Captain Bridegan,” the soldier said.

  “I don’t care what your name is,” said Zeck.

  Captain Bridegan said nothing.

  Zeck said nothing.

  They got to Zeck’s house. The door was standing open. A woman was waiting inside, with papers spread out on the kitchen table, along with a pile of blocks and other paraphernalia, including a small machine. She must have noticed Zeck looking at it because she touched it and explained, “It’s a recorder. So other people can hear our session and evaluate it later.”

  Captured lightning, thought Zeck. Just another device used by Satan to snare the souls of men.

  “My name,” she said, “is Agnes O’Toole.”

  “He doesn’t care,” said Bridegan.

  Zeck extended his hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Agnes O’Toole.” Didn’t Bridegan understand the obligation of kindness and courtesy that all men owed to all women, since women’s destiny was to go down into the valley of the shadow of death in order to bring more souls into the world to become purified so they could serve God? What tragic ignorance.

  “I’ll wait out here,” said Bridegan. “If that’s all right with Zeck, here.”

  He seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t care what you do,” said Zeck, not bothering to look at him. He was a man of violence, as he had already proven, and so he was hopelessly impure. He had no authority in the eyes of God, and yet he had seized Zeck by the shoulders as if he had a right. Only Father had a duty to purify Zeck’s flesh; no other had a right to touch him.

  “His father beats him,” said Bridegan. And then he left.

  Agnes looked at him with raised eyebrows, but Zeck saw no need to explain. They had known about the chastisement of the impure flesh before they came—how else would Bridegan have known to take off his shirt and show the marks? Bridegan and Agnes obviously wanted to use these scars somehow. As if they thought Zeck wanted to be comforted and protected.

  From Father? From the instrument chosen by God to raise Zeck to manhood? As well might a man raise his puny hand to prevent God from working his will in the world.

  Agnes began the test. Whenever the questions dealt with something Zeck knew about, he answered forth-rightly, as his father had commanded him. But half the questions were about things completely outside Zeck’s experience. Maybe they were about things on the vids, which Zeck had never watched in his life; maybe they were things from the nets, which Zeck only knew about because they were damnable webs made of lightning, laid before the feet of foolish souls to snare them and drag them down to hell.

  Agnes manipulated the blocks and then had him answer questions about them. Zeck saw at once what the purpose of the test was. So he reached over and took the blocks from her. Then he manipulated them to show each and every example drawn on two dimensions on the paper. Except one. “You can’t make this one with these blocks,” he said.

  She put the blocks away.

  The next test was entitled “Worldview Diagnostics: Fundamentalist Christian Edition.” Since she covered this title almost instantly, it was obvious Zeck wasn’t supposed to know what he was being tested on.

  She began with questions about the creation and Adam and Eve.

  Zeck interrupted her, quoting Father. “The book of Genesis represents the best job that Moses could do, explaining evolution to people who didn’t even know the Earth was round.”

  “You believe in evolution? Then what about Adam as the first man?”

  “The name ‘Adam’ means ‘many,’ ” said Zeck. “There were many males in that troop of primates, when God chose one of them and touched him with his Spirit and put the soul of a man inside. It was Adam who first had language and named the other primates, the ones that looked like him but were not human because God had not given them human souls. Thus it says, ‘And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.’ What Moses originally wrote was much simpler: ‘Adam named all the beasts that were not in the image of God. None of them could speak to him, so he was utterly alone.’ ”

  “You know what God originally wrote?” asked Agnes.

  “You think we’re fundamentalists,” said Zeck. “But we’re not. We’re Puritans. We know that God can only teach us what we’re prepared to understand. The Bible was written by men and women of earlier times, and it holds only as much as they were capable of understanding. We have a greater knowledge of science, and so God can clarify and tell us more. He would be an unloving Father if he insisted on telling us only as much as humans could understand back in the infancy of our species.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “So then why does your father call electricity ‘lightning’?”

  “Aren’t they the same thing?” asked Zeck, trying to hide his contempt.

  “Well, yes, of course, but—”

  “So Father calls it ‘lightning’ to emphasize how dangerous it is, and how ephemeral,” said Zeck. “Your word ‘electricity’ is a lie, convincing you that because it runs through wires and shifts the on-off state of semiconductors, the lightning has been tamed and no longer poses a danger. But God says that it is in your machines that lightning is at its most dangerous, for lightning that strikes you out of the sky can only harm your body, while the lightning that has tamed you and trained you through the machines can steal your soul.”

  “So God speaks to your father,” said Agnes.

  “As he speaks to all men and women who purify themselves enough to hear his voice.”

  “Has God ever spoken to you?”

  Zeck shook his head. “I’m not yet pure.”

  “And that’s why your father whips you.”

  “My father is God’s instrument in the purification of his children.”

  “And you trust your father always to do God’s will?”

  “My father is the purest man on Earth right now.”

  “Yet you have never trusted him enough to let him know you have a word-for-word memory.”

  Her words struck him like a blow. She was absolutely right. Zeck had heeded Mother and never let Father see his unnatural ability. And why? Not because Zeck was afraid. Because Mother was afraid. He had taken her faithlessness inside himself as if it were his own, and so Father could not purify him. Could never purify him, because he had been deceiving Father for all these years.

  He rose to his feet.

  “Where are you going?” asked Agnes.

  “To Father.”

  “To tell him about your phenomenal memory?” she asked pleasantly.

  Zeck had no reason to tell her anything, and so he didn’t.

  Bridegan was waiting in the other room, blocking the door. “No sir,” he said. “You’re going nowhere.”

  Zeck went back into the kitchen and sat back down at the table. “You’re taking me into space, aren’t you,” he said.

  “Yes, Zeck,” she said. “You are one of the best we’ve ever tested.”

  “I’ll go with you. But I’ll never fight for you,” he said. “Taking me is a waste of time.”

  “Never is a long time,” she said.

  “You think that if you take me far enough from Earth, I’ll forget about God.”

  “Not forget,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll transform your understanding.”

  “Don’t you understand how dangerous I am?” said Zeck.

  “We’re actually counting on that,” she said.

  “Not dangerous as a soldier,” he said. “If I go with you, it will be as a teacher. I’ll help the other children in your Battle School see that God does not want them to kill their enemies.”

  “Oh, we’re not worried about you converting the other kids,” said Agnes.

  “You should be,” said Zeck. “The word of God has power unto salvation, and no power on earth or in hell can stand against it.”

  She shook her head. “I might worry,” she said. “If you were pure. But you’re not. So what power will you have to convert anybody?” She piled up the test booklets and stuffed them in the briefcase with the blocks and the recorder. “I have it on tape,” she said loudly, for Bridegan to hear. “He said, ‘I’ll go with you.’ ”

  Bridegan came into the kitchen. “Welcome to Battle School, soldier.”

  Zeck did not answer. He was still reeling from what she had said. How can I convert anyone, when I’m still impure myself?

  “I have to talk to Father,” said Zeck.

  “Not a chance,” said Agnes. “It’s the impure Zechariah Morgan that we want. Not the pure one who confessed everything to his father. Besides, we don’t have time to wait for another set of lash wounds to heal.”

  Bridegan laughed harshly. “If that bastard raises his hand against this boy one more time, I’ll blast it off.”

  Zeck whirled on him, filled with rage. “Then what would that make you?”

  Bridegan only kept on laughing. “It would make me what I’ve always been—a bloody-minded soldier. My job is defending the helpless against the cruel. That’s what we’re doing, fighting the Formics—and it’s what I’d be doing if I took off your father’s hands up to the elbows.”

  In reply, Zeck recited from the book of Daniel. “ ‘A stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces.’ ”

  “Without hands. A neat trick,” said Bridegan.

  “ ‘And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth,’ ” said Zeck.

  “He’s got the whole King James version by heart,” said Agnes.

  “ ‘And in the days of these kings,’ ” recited Zeck, “ ‘shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.’ ”

  “They’re going to love him up in Battle School,” said Bridegan.

  So Zeck spent that Christmas in space, heading up to the station that housed Battle School. He did nothing to cause disturbance, obeyed every order he was given. When his launch group first went into the Battle Room, Zeck learned to fly just like all the others. He even pointed his weapon at targets that were assigned.

  It took quite a while before anyone noticed that Zeck never actually hit anybody with his weapon. In every battle, he was zero for zero. Statistically, he was the worst soldier in the history of the school. In vain did the teachers point out that it was just a game.

  “ ‘Neither shall they learn war any more,’ ” quoted Zeck in return. “I will not offend God by learning war.” They could take him into space, they could make him wear the uniform, they could force him into the Battle Room, but they couldn’t make him shoot.

  It took many months, and they still wouldn’t send him home, but at least they left him alone. He belonged to an army, he practiced with them, but on every battle report, he was listed with zero effectiveness. There was no soldier in the school prouder of his record.

  4

  SINTERKLAAS EVE

  Dink Meeker watched as Ender Wiggin came through the door into Rat Army’s barracks. As usual, Rosen was near the entrance, and he immediately launched into his “I Rose de Nose, Jewboy extraordinaire” routine. It was how Rosen wrapped himself in the military reputation of Israel, even though Rosen wasn’t Israeli and he also wasn’t a particularly good commander.

  Not a bad one, either. Rat Army was in second place in the standings. But how much of that was Rosen, and how much was the fact that Rosen relied so heavily on Dink’s toon—which Dink had trained?

  Dink was the better commander, and he knew it—he had been offered Rat Army and Rosen only got it when Dink turned down the promotion. Nobody knew that, of course, except Dink and Colonel Graff and whatever other teachers might have known. There was no reason to tell it—it would only weaken Rosen and also make Dink look like a braggart or a fool, depending on whether people believed his claim. So he made no claim.

  This was Rosen’s show. Let him write the script.

  “That’s the great Ender Wiggin?” asked Flip. His name was short for Filippus, and, like Dink, he was Dutch. He was also very young and had yet to do anything impressive. It had to gall a young kid like Flip that Ender Wiggin had been placed into the Battle Room early and then rose to the very top of the standings almost instantly.

  “I told you,” said Dink, “he’s number one because his commander wouldn’t let him shoot his weapon. So when he finally did it—disobeying his commander, I might add—he got this incredible kill ratio. It’s a fluke of how they keep the stats.”

  “Kuso,” said Flip. “If Ender’s such a big nothing, why did you go out of your way to get him in your toon?”

  So somebody had overheard Dink ask Rosen to assign Ender to his toon, and word had spread. “Because I needed somebody smaller than you,” said Dink.

  “And you’ve been watching him. I’ve seen you. Watching him.”

  It was easy to forget sometimes that every kid in this place was brilliant. Observant. Clear memory and sharp analytical skills. Even the ones who were still too timid to have done much of anything. Not a good place for doing anything surreptitious.

  “É,” said Dink. “I think he’s got something.”

  “What’s he got that I don’t got?”

  “Command of English grammar,” said Dink.

  “Everybody talks like that,” said Flip.

  “Everybody’s a sheep,” said Dink. “I’m getting out of here.” Moments later, Dink pushed past Rosen and Ender and left the room.

  He didn’t want to talk to Ender right away. Because this genius kid probably remembered the first time they met. In a bathroom, right after Ender was put in Salamander Army’s uniform, his first day in the game. Dink had seen how small he was and said something like, “He’s so small he could walk between my legs without touching my balls.” It didn’t mean anything, and one of his friends had immediately said, “Cause you got none, Dink, that’s why,” so it’s not like Dink had scored any points.

  But it was a stupid thing to say, which was fine; you could be stupid around new kids. Except it had been Ender Wiggin, and Dink now knew that this kid was something else, someone important, and he deserved better. Dink wanted to be the guy who knew right away what Ender Wiggin was. Instead, he’d been the idiot who made a stupid joke about how short Ender was.

  Short? Ender was small because he was young. It was a mark of brilliance, to be brought to Battle School a year younger than other kids. And then he was advanced to Salamander Army while all the rest of his launch group were still in basic. So he was really under age. And therefore small. So what kind of idiot would mock the kid for being smarter than anybody else?