Oh, suck it up, oomay, he told himself. What does it matter what Wiggin thinks of you? Your job is to train him. To make up for the weeks he wasted in Bonzo Madrid’s stupid Salamander Army and help this kid become what he’s supposed to become.

  Not that Wiggin had really wasted the time. The kid had been running practice sessions for launchies and other rejects during free time, and Dink had come and watched. Wiggin was doing new things. Moves that Dink had never seen before. They had possibilities. So Dink was going to use those techniques in his toon. Give Wiggin a chance to see his ideas played out in combat in the Battle Room.

  I’m not Bonzo. I’m not Rosen. Having a soldier under me who’s better than I am, smarter, more inventive, doesn’t threaten me. I learn from everybody. I help everybody. It’s about the only way I can be rebellious in this place—they chose us for our ambition and they prod us to be competitive. So I don’t compete. I cooperate.

  Dink was sitting in the game room, watching the other players—he had beaten all the games in the room, so he had nothing left to prove—when Wiggin found him. If Wiggin remembered Dink’s first dumb joke about his height, Wiggin didn’t show it. Instead, Dink let him know which of Rosen’s rules and orders he had to obey, and which he didn’t. He also let him know that Dink wouldn’t be playing power games with him—he was going to get Ender into the battles from the start, pushing him, giving him a chance to learn and grow.

  Wiggin clearly understood what Dink was doing for him. He left, satisfied.

  There’s my contribution to the survival of the human race, thought Dink. I’m not what great commanders are made of. But I know a great commander when I see one, and I can help get him ready. That’s good enough for me. I can take this stupid, ineffective school and accomplish something that actually might help us win this war. Something real.

  Not this stupid make-believe. Battle School! It was children’s games, but structured by adults in order to manipulate the children. But what did it have to do with the real war? You rise to the top of the standings, you beat everybody, and then what? Did you kill a single Bugger? Save a single human life? No. You just go on to the next school and start over as nothing again. Was there any evidence that Battle School accomplished anything?

  Sure, the graduates ended up filling important positions throughout the fleet. But then, Battle School only admits kids that are brilliant in the first place, so they would have been command material already. Was there any evidence that Battle School made a difference?

  I could have been home in Holland, walking by the North Sea. Watching it pound against the shore, trying to wash over and sweep away the dikes, the islands, and cover the land with ocean, as it used to be, before humans started their foolish terraforming experiment.

  Dink remembered reading—back on Earth, when he could read what he wanted—the silly claim that the Great Wall of China was the only human artifact that could be seen from space. In fact the claim wasn’t even true—at least not from geosynchronous orbit or higher. The wall didn’t even cast enough of a shadow to be seen.

  No, the human artifact that could be seen from space, that showed up in picture after picture without exciting any comment at all, was Holland. It should have been nothing but barrier islands with wide saltwater sounds behind them. Instead, because the Dutch built their dikes and pumped out the salt water and purified the soil, it was land. Lush, green land—visible from space.

  But nobody recognized it as a human artifact. It was just land. It grew plants and fed dairy cattle and held houses and highways, just like any other land. But we did it. We Dutch. And when the sea levels rose, we raised our dikes higher and made them thicker and stronger, and nobody thought, Wow, look at the Dutch, they created the largest human artifact on Earth, and they’re still making it, a thousand years later.

  I could have been home in Holland until they were actually ready to have me do something real. As real as the land behind the dikes.

  Free time was over. Dink went to practice. Then he ate with the rest of Rat Army—complete with the ritual of pretending that all their food was rat food. Dink noticed how Wiggin observed and seemed to enjoy the game—but didn’t take part. He stayed aloof, watching.

  That’s something else we have in common.

  Something else? Why had he thought of it that way? What was the first thing they had in common, that made it so standing aloof was something else?

  Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot. We’re the smartest kids in the room.

  Dink silently laughed at himself with perfect scorn. Right, I’m not competitive. I know I’m not the best—but without even thinking about it, I assume that I’m therefore second best. What an eemo.

  Dink went to the library and studied awhile. He hoped that Petra would come by, but she didn’t. Instead of talking to her—the only other kid he knew who shared his contempt for the system—he actually finished his assignments. It was history, so it mattered that he do well.

  He got back to the barracks a little early. Maybe he’d sleep. Maybe play some game on his desk. Maybe there’d be somebody in a talkative mood and Dink would have a conversation. No plans. He refused to care.

  Flip was there, too. Already getting undressed for bed. But instead of putting his shoes in his locker with the rest of his uniform and his flash suit and the few other possessions a kid could have in Battle School, he had set his shoes down on the floor near the foot of his bed, toes out.

  There was something familiar about it.

  Flip looked at him and smiled wanly and rolled his eyes. Then he swung up onto his bed and started reading something on his desk, scrolling through what must be homework, because now and then he’d run his finger across some section of the text to highlight it.

  The shoes. This was December fifth. It was Sinterklaas Eve. Flip was Dutch, so of course he had set out his shoes.

  Tonight, Sinterklaas—Sint Nikolaas, patron saint of children—would come from his home in Spain, with Black Peter carrying his bag of presents, and listen through the chimneys of the houses throughout Holland, checking to see if children were quarreling or disobedient. If the children were good, then they would knock on the door and, when it was opened, fling candy into the house. Children would rush out the door and find presents left in baskets—or in their shoes, left by the front door.

  And Flip had set his shoes out on Sinterklaas Eve.

  For some reason, Dink found his eyes clouding with tears. This was stupid. Yes, he missed home—missed his father’s house near the strand. But Sinterklaas was for little children, not for him. Not for a child in Battle School.

  But Battle School is nothing, right? I should be home. And if I were home, I’d be helping to make Sinterklaas Day for the younger children. If there had been any younger children in our house.

  Without really deciding to do it, Dink took out his desk and started to write.

  His shoes will sit and gather moss

  Without a gift from Sinterklaas

  For when a soldier cannot cross

  The battle room without a loss

  Then why should Sinterklaas equip

  A kid who cannot fly with zip

  But crawls instead just like a drip

  Of rain on glass, not like a ship

  That flies through space: I speak of Flip.

  It wasn’t a great poem, of course, but the whole idea of Sinterklaas poems was that they made fun of the recipient of the gift without giving offense. The lamer the poem, the more it made fun of the giver of the gift rather than the target of the rhyme. Flip still got teased about the fact that when he first was assigned to Rat Army, a couple of times he had bad launches from the wall of Battle Room and ended up floating like a feather across the room, a perfect target for the enemy.

  Dink would have written the verse in Dutch, but it was a dying language, and Dink didn’t know if he spoke it well enough to actually use it for poem-writing. Nor was he sure Flip could read a Dutch poem, not if there were any unusual words in it. Netherlands was just too close to Britain. The BBC had made the Dutch bilingual; the European Community had made them mostly anglophone.

  The poem was done, but there was no way to extrude printed paper from a desk. Ah well, the night was young. Dink put it in the print queue and got up from bed to wander the corridors, desk tucked under his arm. He’d pick up the poem before the printer room closed, and he’d also search for something that might serve as a gift.

  In the end he found no gift, but he did add two lines to the poem:

  If Piet gives you a gift today,

  You’ll find it on your breakfast tray.

  It’s not as if there were a lot of things available to the kids in Battle School. Their only games were in their desks or in the game room; their only sport was in the Battle Room. Desks and uniforms; what else did they need to own?

  This bit of paper, thought Dink. That’s what he’ll have in the morning.

  It was dark in the barracks, and most kids were asleep, though a few still worked on their desks, or played some stupid game. Didn’t they know the teachers did psychological analysis on them based on the games they played? Maybe they just didn’t care. Dink sometimes didn’t care either, and played. But not tonight. Tonight he was seriously pissed off. And he didn’t even know why.

  Yes he did. Flip was getting something from Sinterklaas—and Dink wasn’t. He should have. Dad would have made sure he got something from Black Piet’s bag. Dink would have hunted all over the house for it on Sinterklaas morning until he finally found it in some perverse hiding place.

  I’m homesick. That’s all. Isn’t that what the stupid counselor told him? You’re homesick—get over it. The other kids do, said the counselor.

  But they don’t, thought Dink. They just hide it. From each other, from themselves.

  The remarkable thing about Flip was that tonight he didn’t hide it.

  Flip was already asleep. Dink folded the paper and slipped it into one of the shoes.

  Stupid greedy kid. Leaving out both shoes.

  But of course that wasn’t it at all. If he had left only one shoe, that would have been proof positive of what he was doing. Someone might have guessed and then Flip would have been mocked mercilessly for being so homesick and childish. So . . . both shoes. Deniability. Not Sinterklaas Day at all—I just left my shoes by the side of my bed.

  Dink crawled into his own bed and lay there for a little while, filled with a deep and unaccountable sadness. It wasn’t homesickness, not really. It was the fact that Dink was no longer the child; now he was the one who helped Sinterklaas do his job. Of course the old saint couldn’t get from Spain to Battle School, not in the ship he used. Somebody had to help him out.

  Dink was being, not the child, but the dad. He would never be the child again.

  5

  SINTERKLAAS DAY

  Zeck saw the shoes. He saw Dink put something into the shoe in the darkness, when most kids were asleep. But it meant nothing to him, except that these two Dutch boys were doing something weird.

  Zeck wasn’t in Dink’s toon. He wasn’t really in any toon. Because nobody wanted him, and it wouldn’t matter if they had. Zeck didn’t play.

  Which made it all the more remarkable that Rat Army was in second place—they won their battles with one less active soldier than anybody else.

  At first Rosen had threatened him and tried to take away privileges—even meals—but Zeck simply ignored him, like he ignored other kids who shoved him and jostled him in the corridors. What did he care? Their physical brutality, mild as it might be, showed what kind of people they were—the impurity of their souls—because they rejoiced in violence.

  Genesis, chapter six, verse thirteen: “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

  Didn’t they understand that it was the violence of the human race that had caused God to send the Buggers to attack the Earth? This became obvious to Zeck as he was forced to watch the vids of the Scouring of China. What could the Buggers represent, except the destroying angel? A flood the first time, and now fire, just as was prophesied.

  So the proper response was to forswear violence and become peaceful, rejecting war. Instead, they sacrificed their children to the idolatrous god of war, taking them from their families and thrusting them up here into the hot metal arms of Moloch, where they would be trained to give themselves over entirely to violence.

  Jostle me all you want. It will purify me and make you filthier.

  Now, though, nobody bothered with Zeck. He was ignored. Not pointedly—if he asked a question, people answered. Scornfully, perhaps, but what was that to Zeck? Scorn was merely pity mingled with hate, and hate was pride mixed with fear. They feared him because he was different, and so they hated him, and so their pity—the touch of godliness that remained in them—was turned to scorn. A virtue made filthy by pride.

  By morning he had forgotten all about Flip’s shoes and the paper that Dink had put into one of them the night before.

  But then he saw Dink step out of the food line with a full tray, and walk back to hand the tray to Flip.

  Flip smiled, then laughed and rolled his eyes.

  Zeck remembered the shoes then. He walked over and looked at the tray.

  It was pancakes this morning, and on the top pancake, everything had been cut away except a big letter “F.” Apparently, this had some significance to the two Dutch boys that completely escaped Zeck. But then, a lot of things escaped him. His father had kept him sheltered from the world, and so he did not know many of the things most of the other children knew. He was proud of his ignorance. It was a mark of his purity.

  This time, though, there was something about this that seemed wrong to him. As if the letter “F” in the pancake was some kind of conspiracy. What did it stand for? A bad word in Common? That was too easy, and besides, they weren’t laughing like that—it wasn’t wicked laughter. It was . . . sad laughter.

  Sad laughter. It was hard to make sense of it, but Zeck knew that he was right. The F was funny, but it also made them sad.

  He asked one of the other boys. “What’s with the F Dink carved into Flip’s pancake?”

  The other kid shrugged. “They’re Dutch,” he said, as if that accounted for any weirdness about them.

  Zeck took that solitary clue—which he had already known, of course—and took it to his desk immediately after breakfast. He searched first for “Netherlands F.” Nothing that made sense. Then a few more combinations, but it was “Dutch shoes” that brought him to Sinterklaas Day, December sixth, and all the customs associated with it.

  He didn’t go to class. He went to Flip’s tidily made bed and unmade it till he found, under the sheet and next to the mattress, Dink’s poem.

  Zeck memorized it, put it back, and remade the bed—for it would be wrong to put Flip at risk of getting a demerit that he did not deserve. Then he went to Colonel Graff’s office.

  “I don’t remember sending for you,” said Colonel Graff.

  “You didn’t,” said Zeck.

  “If you have a problem, take it to your counselor. Who’s assigned to you?” But Zeck knew at once that it wasn’t that Graff couldn’t remember the counselor’s name—he simply had no idea who Zeck was.

  “I’m Zeck Morgan,” he said. “I’m a spectator in Rat Army.”

  “Oh,” said Graff, nodding. “You. Have you reconsidered your vow of nonviolence?”

  “No sir,” said Zeck. “I’m here to ask you a question.”

  “And you couldn’t have asked somebody else?”

  “Everybody else was busy,” said Zeck. Immediately he repented of the remark, because of course he hadn’t even tried anybody else, and he only said this in order to hurt Graff’s feelings by implying he was useless and had no work to do. “That was wrong of me to say that,” said Zeck, “and I ask your forgiveness.”

  “What’s your question,” said Graff impatiently, looking away.

  “When you informed me that nonviolence was not an option here, you said it was because my motive is religious, and there is no religion in Battle School.”

  “No open observance of religion,” said Graff. “Or we’d have classes constantly being interrupted by Muslims praying and every seventh day—not the same seventh day, mind you—we’d have Christians and Muslims and Jews celebrating one Sabbath or another. Not to mention the Macumba ritual of sacrificing chickens. Icons and statues of saints and little Buddhas and ancestral shrines and all kinds of other things would clutter up the place. So it’s all banned. Period. So please get to class before I have to give you a demerit.”

  “That was not my question,” said Zeck. “I would not have come here to ask you a question whose answer you had already told me.”

  “Then why did you bring up—Never mind, what’s your question?”

  “If religious observance is banned, then why does Battle School tolerate the commemoration of the day of Saint Nicholas?”

  “We don’t,” said Graff.

  “And yet you did,” said Zeck.

  “No we didn’t.”

  “It was commemorated.”

  “Would you please get to the point? Are you lodging a complaint? Did one of the teachers make some remark?”

  “Filippus Rietveld put out his shoes for Saint Nicholas. Dink Meeker put a Sinterklaas poem in the shoe and then gave Flip a pancake carved with the initial ‘F.’ An edible initial is a traditional treat on Sinterklaas Day. Which is today, December sixth.”

  Graff sat down and leaned back in his chair. “A Sinterklaas poem?”

  Zeck recited it.

  Graff smiled and chuckled a little.

  “So you think it’s funny when they have their religious observance, but my religious observance is banned.”

  “It was a poem in a shoe. I give you permission to write all the poems you want and insert them into people’s wearing apparel.”

  “Poems in shoes are not my religious observance. Mine is to contribute a small part to peace on Earth.”