“You’re not even on Earth.”

  “I would be, if I hadn’t been kidnapped and enslaved to the service of Mammon,” said Zeck mildly.

  You’ve been here almost a year, thought Graff, and you’re still singing the same tune. Doesn’t peer pressure have any effect on you?

  “If these Dutch Christians have their Saint Nicholas Day, then the Muslims should have Ramadan and the Jews should have the Feast of Tabernacles and I should be able to live the gospel of love and peace.”

  “Why are you even bothering with this?” said Graff. “The only thing I can do is punish them for a rather sweet gesture. It will make people hate you more.”

  “You mean you intend to tell them who reported them?”

  “No, Zeck. I know how you operate. You’ll tell them yourself, so they’ll be angry and people will persecute you and that will make you feel more purified.”

  For a man who didn’t recognize him when he came in, Graff certainly knew a lot about him. His face wasn’t known, but his ideas were. Zeck’s persistence in his faith was making an impression.

  “If Battle School bans my religion because it forbids all religion, then all religion should be forbidden, sir.”

  “I know that,” said Graff. “I also know you’re an insufferable twit.”

  “I believe that remark falls under the topic of ‘The commander’s responsibility to build morale,’ is that correct, sir?” asked Zeck.

  “And that remark falls under the category of ‘You won’t get out of Battle School by being a smartass,’ ” said Graff.

  “Better a smartass than an insufferable twit, sir,” said Zeck.

  “Get out of my office.”

  An hour later, Flip and Dink had been called in and reprimanded and the poem confiscated.

  “Aren’t you going to take his shoes, sir?” asked Dink. “And I’m sure we can recover his initial when he shits it out. I’ll reshape it for you so there’s no mistaking it, sir.”

  Graff said nothing, except to send them back to class. He knew that word of this would circulate throughout Battle School. But if he hadn’t done it, then Zeck would have made sure that word of how this “religious observance” had been tolerated would spread, and then there really would be a nightmare of kids demanding their holidays.

  It was inevitable. The two recusants, Zeck and Dink, both of whom refused to cooperate with the program here, were bound to become allies. Not that they knew they were allied. But in fact they were—they were deliberately stressing the system in order to try to make it collapse.

  Well, I won’t let you, dear genius children. Because nobody gives a rat’s ass about Sinterklaas Day, or about Christian nonviolence. When you go to war—which is where you’ve gone, believe it or not, Dink and Zeck—then childish things are put away. In the face of a threat to the survival of the species, all these planetside trivialities are put aside until the crisis passes.

  And it has not passed, whatever you little twits might think about it.

  6

  HOLY WAR

  Dink left Graff’s office seething. “If they can’t see the difference between praying eight times a day and putting a poem in a shoe once a year . . .”

  “It was a great poem,” said Flip.

  “It was dumb,” said Dink.

  “Wasn’t that the point? It was a great dumb poem. I just feel bad I didn’t write one for you.”

  “I didn’t put out my shoes.”

  Flip sighed. “I’m sorry I did that.

  I was just feeling homesick. I didn’t think anybody would do anything about it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “We’re both so very very sorry,” said Flip. “Except that we’re not sorry at all.”

  “No, we’re not,” said Dink.

  “In fact, it’s kind of fun to get in trouble for keeping Sinterklaas Day. Imagine what would happen if we celebrated Christmas.”

  “Well,” said Dink, “we’ve still got nineteen days.”

  “Right,” said Flip.

  By the time they got back to Rat Army barracks, it was obvious that the story was already known. Everybody fell silent when Dink and Flip stood in the doorway.

  “Stupid,” said Rosen.

  “Thanks,” said Dink. “That means so much, coming from you.”

  “Since when did you get religion?” Rosen demanded. “Why make some kind of holy war out of it?”

  “It wasn’t religious,” said Dink. “It was Dutch.”

  “Well, eemo, you be Rat Army now, not Dutch.”

  “In three months I won’t be in Rat Army,” said Dink. “But I’ll be Dutch until I die.”

  “Nations don’t matter up here,” said one of the other boys.

  “Religions neither,” said another.

  “Well it’s obvious religion does matter,” said Flip, “or we wouldn’t have been called in and reprimanded for cutting a pancake into an ‘F’ and writing a funny poem and sticking it in a shoe.”

  Dink looked down the long corridor, which curved upward toward the end. Zeck, who slept at the very back of the barracks, couldn’t even be seen from the door.

  “He’s not here,” said Rosen.

  “Who?”

  “Zeck,” said Rosen. “He came in and told us what he’d done, and then he left.”

  “Anybody know where he goes when he takes off by himself?” asked Dink.

  “Why?” said Rosen. “You planning to slap him around a little? I can’t allow that.”

  “I want to talk to him,” said Dink.

  “Oh, talk,” said Rosen.

  “When I say talk, I mean talk,” said Dink.

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” said Flip. “Stupid prig.”

  “He just wants to get out of Battle School,” said Dink.

  “If we put it to a vote,” said one of the other boys, “he’d be gone in a second. What a waste of space.”

  “A vote,” said Flip. “What a military idea.”

  “Go stick your finger in a dike,” the boy answered.

  “So now we’re anti-Dutch,” said Dink.

  “They can’t help it if they still believe in Santa Claus,” said an American kid.

  “Sinterklaas,” said Dink. “Lives in Spain, not the North Pole. Has a friend who carries his bag—Black Piet.”

  “Friend?” said a kid from South Africa. “Black Piet sounds like a slave to me.”

  Rosen sighed. “It’s a relief when Christians are fighting each other instead of slaughtering Jews.”

  That was when Ender Wiggin joined the discussion for the first time. “Isn’t this exactly what the rules are supposed to prevent? People sniping at each other because of religion or nationality?”

  “And yet we’re doing it anyway,” said the American kid. “Aren’t we up here to save the human race?” asked Dink. “Humans have religions and nationalities. And customs. Why can’t we be humans too?”

  Wiggin didn’t answer.

  “Makes no sense for us to live like Buggers,” said Dink. “They don’t celebrate Sinterklaas Day, either.”

  “Part of being human,” said Wiggin, “is to massacre each other from time to time. So maybe till we beat the Formics we should try not to be so very very human.”

  “And maybe,” said Dink, “soldiers fight for what they care about, and what they care about is their families and their traditions and their faith and their nation—the very stuff they don’t allow us to have here.”

  “Maybe we fight so we can get back home and find all that stuff still there, waiting for us,” said Wiggin.

  “Maybe none of us are fighting at all,” said Flip. “It’s not like anything we do here is real.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s real,” said Dink. “I was Sinterklaas’s helper last night.” Then he grinned.

  “So you’re finally admitting you’re an elf,” said the American kid, grinning back.

  “How many Dutch kids are there in Battle School?” said Dink. “Sinterklaas is definitely a minority cultural icon, right? Nothing like Santa Claus, right?”

  Rosen kicked Dink lightly on the shin. “What do you think you’re doing, Dink?”

  “Santa Claus isn’t a religious figure, either. Nobody prays to Santa Claus. It’s an American thing.”

  “Canadian too,” said another kid.

  “Anglophone Canadian,” said another. “Papa Noël for some of us.”

  “Father Christmas,” said a Brit.

  “See? Not Christian, national,” said Dink. “It’s one thing to stifle religious expression. But to try to erase nationality—the whole fleet is thick with national loyalties. They don’t make Dutch admirals pretend not to be Dutch. They wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “There aren’t any Dutch admirals,” said the Brit.

  It wasn’t that Dink let idiotic comments like this make him angry. He didn’t want to hit anybody. He didn’t want to raise his voice. But still, there was this deep defiance that could not be ignored. He had to do something that other people wouldn’t like. Even though he knew it would cause trouble and accomplish nothing at all, he was going to do it, and it was going to start right now.

  “They were able to stifle our Dutch holiday because there are so few of us,” said Dink. “But it’s time for us to insist on expressing our national cultures like any other soldiers in the International Fleet. Christmas is a holy day for Christians, but Santa Claus is a secular figure. Nobody prays to Saint Nicholas.”

  “Little kids do,” said the American, but he was laughing.

  “Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Papa Noël, Sinterklaas, they may have begun with a Christian feast day, but they’re national now, and people with no religion at all still celebrate the holiday. It’s the day of gift-giving, right? December twenty-fifth, whether you’re a believing Christian or not. They can keep us from being religious, but they can’t stop us from giving gifts on Santa Claus day.”

  Some of them were laughing. Some were thinking.

  “You’re going to get in such deep doodoo,” said one.

  “É,” said Dink. “But then, that’s where I live all the time anyway.”

  “Don’t even try it.”

  Dink looked up to see who had spoken so angrily.

  Zeck.

  “I think we already know where you stand,” said Dink.

  “In the name of Christ I forbid you to bring Satan into this place.”

  All the smiles disappeared. Everyone fell silent.

  “You know, don’t you, Zeck,” said Dink, “that you just guaranteed that I’ll have support for my little Santa Claus movement.”

  Zeck seemed genuinely frightened. But not of Dink. “Don’t bring this curse down on your own heads.”

  “I don’t believe in curses, I only believe in blessings,” said Dink. “And I sure as hell don’t believe I’ll be cursed because I give presents to people in the name of Santa Claus.”

  Zeck glanced around and seemed to be trying to calm himself. “Religious observances are forbidden for everybody.”

  “And yet you observe your religion all the time,” said Dink. “Every time you don’t fire your weapon in the Battle Room, you’re doing it. So if you oppose our little Santa Claus revolution, eemo, then we want to see you firing that gun and taking people out. Otherwise you’re a flaming hypocrite. A fraud. A pious fake. A liar.” Dink was in his face now. Close enough to make some of the other kids uncomfortable.

  “Back off, Dink,” one of them muttered. Who? Wiggin, of course. Great, a peacemaker. Again, Dink felt defiance swell up inside him.

  “What are you going to do?” said Zeck softly. “Hit me? I’m three years younger than you.”

  “No,” said Dink. “I’m going to bless you.”

  He set his hand in the air just over Zeck’s head. As Dink expected, Zeck stood there without flinching. That was what Zeck was best at: taking whatever anybody dished out without even trying to get away.

  “I bless you with the spirit of Santa Claus,” said Dink. “I bless you with compassion and generosity. With the irresistible impulse to make other people happy. And you know what else? I bless you with the humility to realize that you aren’t any better than the rest of us in the eyes of God.”

  “You know nothing about God,” said Zeck.

  “I know more than you do,” said Dink. “Because I’m not filled with hate.”

  “Neither am I,” said Zeck.

  “No,” murmured another boy. “You’re filled with kuso.”

  “Toguro,” said another, laughing.

  “I bless you,” said Dink, “with love. Believe me, Zeck, it’ll be such a shock to you, when you finally feel it, that it might just kill you. Then you can go talk to God yourself and find out where you screwed up.”

  Dink turned around and faced the bulk of Rat Army. “I don’t know about you, but I’m playing Santa Claus this year. We don’t own anything up here, so gift-giving isn’t exactly easy. Can’t get on the nets and order stuff to be shipped up here, all gift-wrapped. But gifts don’t have to be toys and stuff. What I gave Flip here, the gift that got us in so much trouble, was a poem.”

  “Oh how sweet,” said the Brit. “A love poem?”

  In answer, Flip recited it. Blushing, of course, because the joke was on him. But also loving it—because the joke was on him.

  Dink could see that a lot of them thought it was cool to have a toon leader write a satirical poem about one of his soldiers. It really was a gift.

  “And just to prove that we aren’t celebrating actual Christmas,” said Dink, “let’s just give each other whatever gifts we think of on any day at all in December. It can be Hanukkah. It can be . . . hell, it can be Sinterklaas Day, can’t it? The day is still young.”

  “If Dink would give us all a gift,” intoned the Jamaican kid, “that would give our hearts a lift.”

  “Oh how sweet,” said the Brit.

  “Crazy Tom thinks everything’s sweet,” said the Canadian, “except for Tom’s own mold-covered feet.”

  Most of them laughed.

  “Was that supposed to be a present?” said Crazy Tom. “Father Christmas is doing a substandard job this year.”

  “It would be pleasant to get a present,” said Wiggin. Everybody laughed a little. Wiggin went on, “It would be better to get a letter.”

  Only a few people chuckled at that. Then they were all quiet.

  “That’s the only gift I want,” said Wiggin softly. “A letter from home. If you can give me that, I’m with you.”

  “I can’t,” said Dink, now just as serious as Wiggin. “They’ve cut us off from everything. The best I can do is this: At home you know your family’s doing Santa stuff. Hanging up stockings, right? You’re American, right?”

  Wiggin nodded.

  “Hang up your stocking this year, Wiggin, and you’ll get something in it.”

  “Coal,” said Crazy Tom, the Brit.

  “I don’t know what it is yet,” said Dink, “but it’ll be there.”

  “It won’t really be from them,” said Wiggin.

  “No, it won’t,” said Dink. “It’ll be from Santa Claus.” He grinned.

  Wiggin shook his head. “Don’t do it, Dink,” he said. “It’s not worth the trouble it’ll cause.”

  “What trouble? It’ll build morale.”

  “We’re here to study war,” said Wiggin.

  Zeck whispered: “Study war no more.”

  “Are you still here, Zeck?” said Dink, then pointedly turned his back on him. “We’re here to build an army, Wiggin. A group of men who work together as one. Not a bunch of kids hammered down by teachers who think they can erase ten thousand years of human history and culture by making a rule.”

  Wiggin looked away and said, sadly, “Do what you want, Dink.”

  “I always do,” answered Dink.

  “The only gift that God respects,” said Zeck, “is a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”

  A lot of kids groaned at that, but Dink gave Zeck one last look. “And when were you ever contrite?”

  “Contrition,” said Zeck, “is a gift I give to God, not to you.” Only then did Zeck walk away, back toward his bed, where he’d be hidden behind the curvature of the barracks room.

  7

  STOCKINGS

  Rat Army was only a small percentage of the population of Battle School, but word spread quickly. The other armies began picking it up as a joke. Someone would pick up some scrap of leftover food and drop it on someone else’s meal tray, saying, “There you are, from Santa with love.” And everybody at the table would laugh.

  But even as a joke, it was a gift, wasn’t it? Santa Claus was giving gifts all over Battle School within days.

  It was more than just gifts. It was stockings. Nobody could say who started it, but after a while it seemed that the giving of every gift was accompanied by a stocking. Rolled up, hidden inside something else, but always a stocking. Nobody hung the stocking up in hopes of getting it filled, of course. It was the other way around—the stockings were being given as part of the gift.

  And the recipient of the stocking found a way to wear it, whether it fit or not. Dangling from a sleeve. On a foot, but not matched with the other sock. Inside a flash suit. Sticking out of a pocket. Just for a day, the sock was worn, and then it was given back. It was the stocking more than the words now that said, This is from Santa Claus.

  The stockings were needed, because what were the gifts? A few were poems, written on paper. Some of them were food scraps. As the days passed, however, more and more of the gifts took the form of favors. Tutoring. Extra practice time in the Battle Room. A bed that was already made when somebody came back from the showers. Showing somebody how to get to a hidden level in one of the video games.

  Even when it wasn’t a tangible gift, there was the stocking to make it real.

  Father was right, thought Zeck. The parents of these children put the lie of Santa in their hearts, and now it bears fruits. Liars, all of them, giving gifts as homage to the Father of Lies. Zeck could hear his father’s voice in his memory: “He will answer their prayers with the ashes of sin in their mouths, with the poison of atheism and unbelief in the plasma of their blood.” These children were not believers—not in Christ, and not in Santa Claus. They knew they served a lie. If only they could see that when you do charity in the name of Satan it turns to sin. The devil cannot do good.