“Let me lay it out for you, Achilles, since you’re clearly too stupid to see where you are. First thing is, you forgot where you were. Back on Earth, you were used to being a lot smarter than everybody around you. But here in Battle School, everybody is as smart as you, and most of us are smarter. You think Ambul didn’t see the way you looked at him? You think he didn’t know he was marked for death after he laughed at you? You think the other soldiers in Rabbit doubted me when I told them about you? They’d already seen that there was something wrong with you. The adults might have missed it, they might buy into the way you suck up to them, but we didn’t. And since we just had a case of one kid trying to kill another, nobody was going to put up with it again. Nobody was going to wait for you to strike. Because here’s the thing—we don’t give a shit about fairness here. We’re soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians. And you were too cocky, too stupid, too insane to realize that.”

  Achilles knew that Bean was right. He had miscalculated grossly. He had forgotten that when Bean said for Poke to kill him, he had not just been showing respect for Achilles. He had also been trying to get Achilles killed.

  This just wasn’t working out very well.

  “So you have only two ways for this to end. One way, you just hang there, we take turns watching to make sure you don’t figure some way out of this, until you’re dead and then we leave you and go about our lives. The other way, you confess to everything—and I mean everything, not just what you think I already know—and you keep confessing. Confess to the teachers. Confess to the psychiatrists they send you to. Confess your way into a mental hospital back on Earth. We don’t care which you choose. All that matters is that you never again walk freely through the corridors of Battle School. Or anywhere else. So . . . what will it be? Dry out on the line, or let the teachers know just how crazy you are?”

  “Bring me a teacher, I’ll confess.”

  “Didn’t you hear me explain how stupid we’re not? You confess now. Before witnesses. With a recorder. We don’t bring some teacher up here to see you hanging there and feel all squishy sorry for you. Any teacher who comes here will know exactly what you are, and there’ll be about six marines to keep you subdued and sedated because, Achilles, they don’t play around here. They don’t give people chances to escape. You’ve got no rights here. You don’t get rights again until you’re back on Earth. Here’s your last chance. Confession time.”

  Achilles almost laughed out loud. But it was important for Bean to think that he had won. As, for the moment, he had. Achilles could see now that there was no way for him to remain in Battle School. But Bean wasn’t smart enough just to kill him and have done. No, Bean was, completely unnecessarily, allowing him to live. And as long as Achilles was alive, then time would move things his way. The universe would bend until the door was opened and Achilles went free. And it would happen sooner rather than later.

  You shouldn’t have left a door open for me, Bean. Because I will kill you someday. You and everyone else who has seen me helpless here.

  “All right,” said Achilles. “I killed Poke. I strangled her and put her in the river.”

  “Go on.”

  “What more? You want to know how she wet herself and took a shit while she was dying? You want to know how her eyes bugged out?”

  “One murder doesn’t get you psychiatric confinement, Achilles. You know you’ve killed before.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Because it didn’t bother you.”

  It never bothered, not even the first time. You just don’t understand power. If it bothers you, you aren’t fit to have power. “I killed Ulysses, of course, but just because he was a nuisance.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not a mass murderer, Bean.”

  “You live to kill, Achilles. Spill it all. And then convince me that it really was all.”

  But Achilles had just been playing. He had already decided to tell it all.

  “The most recent was Dr. Vivian Delamar,” he said. “I told her not to do the operations under total anaesthetic. I told her to leave me alert, I could take it even if there was pain. But she had to be in control. Well, if she really loved control so much, why did she turn her back on me? And why was she so stupid as to think I really had a gun? By pressing hard in her back, I made it so she didn’t even feel the needle go in right next to where the tongue depressors were poking her. Died of a heart attack right there in her own office. Nobody even knew I’d been in there. You want more?”

  “I want it all, Achilles.”

  It took twenty minutes, but Achilles gave them the whole chronicle, all seven times he had set things right. He liked it, actually, telling them like this. Nobody had ever had a chance to understand how powerful he was till now. He wanted to see their faces, that’s the only thing that was missing. He wanted to see the disgust that would reveal their weakness, their inability to look power in the face. Machiavelli understood. If you intend to rule, you don’t shrink from killing. Saddam Hussein knew it—you have to be willing to kill with your own hand. You can’t stand back and let others do it for you all the time. And Stalin understood it, too—you can never be loyal to anybody, because that only weakens you. Lenin was good to Stalin, gave him his chance, raised him out of nothing to be the keeper of the gate to power. But that didn’t stop Stalin from imprisoning Lenin and then killing him. That’s what these fools would never understand. All those military writers were just armchair philosophers. All that military history—most of it was useless. War was just one of the tools that the great men used to get and keep their power. And the only way to stop a great man was the way Brutus did it.

  Bean, you’re no Brutus.

  Turn on the light. Let me see the faces.

  But the light did not go on. When he was finished, when they left, there was only the light through the door, silhouetting them as they left. Five of them. All naked, but carrying the recording equipment. They even tested it, to make sure it had picked up Achilles’ confession. He heard his own voice, strong and unwavering. Proud of what he’d done. That would prove to the weaklings that he was “insane.” They would keep him alive. Until the universe bent things to his will yet again, and set him free to reign with blood and horror on Earth. Since they hadn’t let him see their faces, he’d have no choice. When all the power was in his hands, he’d have to kill everyone who was in Battle School at this time. That would be a good idea, anyway. Since all the brilliant military minds of the age had been assembled here at one time or another, it was obvious that in order to rule safely, Achilles would have to get rid of everyone whose name had ever been on a Battle School roster. Then there’d be no rivals. And he’d keep testing children as long as he lived, finding any with the slightest spark of military talent. Herod understood how you stay in power.

  Part Six

  VICTOR

  21

  GUESSWORK

  “We’re not waiting any longer for Colonel Graff to repair the damage done to Ender Wiggin. Wiggin doesn’t need Tactical School for the job he’ll be doing. And we need the others to move on at once. They have to get the feel of what the old ships can do before we bring them here and put them on the simulators, and that takes time.”

  “They’ve only had a few games.”

  “I shouldn’t have allowed them as much time as I have. ISL is two months away from you, and by the time they’re done with Tactical, the voyage from there to FleetCom will be four months. That gives them only three months in Tactical before we have to bring them to Command School. Three months in which to compress three years of training.”

  “I should tell you that Bean seems to have passed Colonel Graff’s last test.”

  “Test? When I relieved Colonel Graff, I thought his sick little testing program ended as well.”

  “We didn’t know how dangerous this Achilles was. We had been warned of some danger, but . . . he seemed so likable . . . I’m not faulting Colonel Graff, you understand, he had no way of knowing.”

  “Knowing what?’

  “That Achilles is a serial killer.”

  “That should make Graff happy. Ender’s count is up to two.”

  “I’m not joking, sir. Achilles has seven murders on his tally.”

  “And he passed the screening?”

  “He knew how to answer the psychological tests.”

  “Please tell me that none of the seven took place at Battle School.”

  “Number eight would have. But Bean got him to confess.”

  “Bean’s a priest now?”

  “Actually, sir, it was deft strategy. He outmaneuvered Achilles—led him into an ambush, and confession was the only escape.”

  “So Ender, the nice middle-class American boy, kills the kid who wants to beat him up in the bathroom. And Bean, the hoodlum street kid, turns a serial killer over to law enforcement.”

  “The more significant thing for our purposes is that Ender was good at building teams, but he beat Bonzo hand to hand, one on one. And then Bean, a loner who had almost no friends after a year in the school, he beats Achilles by assembling a team to be his defense and his witnesses. I have no idea if Graff predicted these outcomes, but the result was that his tests got each boy to act not only against our expectations, but also against his own predilections.”

  “Predilections. Major Anderson.”

  “It will all be in my report.”

  “Try to write the entire thing without using the word predilection once.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve assigned the destroyer Condor to take the group.”

  “How many do you want, sir?”

  “We have need of a maximum of eleven at any one time. We have Carby, Bee, and Momoe on their way to Tactical already, but Graff tells me that of those three, only Carby is likely to work well with Wiggin. We do need to hold a slot for Ender, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a spare. So send ten.”

  “Which ten?”

  “How the hell should I know? Well . . . Bean, him for sure. And the nine others that you think would work best with either Bean or Ender in command, whichever one it turns out to be.”

  “One list for both possible commanders?”

  “With Ender as the first choice. We want them all to train together. Become a team.”

  The orders came at 1700. Bean was supposed to board the Condor at 1800. It’s not as if he had anything to pack. An hour was more time than they gave Ender. So Bean went and told his army what was happening, where he was going.

  “We’ve only had five games,” said Itú.

  “Got to catch the bus when it comes to the stop, neh?” said Bean.

  “Eh,” said Itú.

  “Who else?” asked Ambul.

  “They didn’t tell me. Just . . . Tactical School.”

  “We don’t even know where it is.”

  “Somewhere in space,” said Itú.

  “No, really?” It was lame, but they laughed. It wasn’t all that hard a good-bye. He’d only been with Rabbit for eight days.

  “Sorry we didn’t win any for you,” said Itú.

  “We would have won, if I’d wanted to,” said Bean.

  They looked at him like he was crazy.

  “I was the one who proposed that we get rid of the standings, stop caring who wins. How would it look if we do that and I win every time?”

  “It would look like you really did care about the standings,” said Itú.

  “That’s not what bothers me,” said another toon leader. “Are you telling me you set us up to lose?”

  “No, I’m telling you I had a different priority. What do we learn from beating each other? Nothing. We’re never going to have to fight human children. We’re going to have to fight Buggers. So what do we need to learn? How to coordinate our attacks. How to respond to each other. How to feel the course of the battle, and take responsibility for the whole thing even if you don’t have command. That’s what I was working on with you guys. And if we won, if we went in and mopped up the walls with them, using my strategy, what does that teach you? You already worked with a good commander. What you needed to do was work with each other. So I put you in tough situations and by the end you were finding ways to bail each other out. To make it work.”

  “We never made it work well enough to win.”

  “That’s not how I measured it. You made it work. When the Buggers come again, they’re going to make things go wrong. Besides the normal friction of war, they’re going to be doing stuff we couldn’t think of because they’re not human, they don’t think like us. So plans of attack, what good are they then? We try, we do what we can, but what really counts is what you do when command breaks down. When it’s just you with your squadron, and you with your transport, and you with your beat-up strike force that’s got only five weapons among eight ships. How do you help each other? How do you make do? That’s what I was working on. And then I went back to the officers’ mess and told them what I learned. What you guys showed me. I learned stuff from them, too. I told you all the stuff I learned from them, right?”

  “Well, you could have told us what you were learning from us,” said Itú. They were all still a bit resentful.

  “I didn’t have to tell you. You learned it.”

  “At least you could have told us it was OK not to win.”

  “But you were supposed to try to win. I didn’t tell you because it only works if you think it counts. Like when the Buggers come. It’ll count then, for real. That’s when you get really smart, when losing means that you and everybody you ever cared about, the whole human race, will die. Look, I didn’t think we’d have long together. So I made the best use of the time, for you and for me. You guys are all ready to take command of armies.”

  “What about you, Bean?” asked Ambul. He was smiling, but there was an edge to it. “You ready to command a fleet?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on whether they want to win.” Bean grinned.

  “Here’s the thing, Bean,” said Ambul. “Soldiers don’t like to lose.”

  “And that,” said Bean, “is why losing is a much more powerful teacher than winning.”

  They heard him. They thought about it. Some of them nodded.

  “If you live,” Bean added. And grinned at them.

  They smiled back.

  “I gave you the best thing I could think of to give you during this week,” said Bean. “And learned from you as much as I was smart enough to learn. Thank you.” He stood and saluted them.

  They saluted back.

  He left.

  And went to Rat Army barracks.

  “Nikolai just got his orders,” a toon leader told him.

  For a moment Bean wondered if Nikolai would be going to Tactical School with him. His first thought was, No way is he ready. His second thought was, I wish he could come. His third thought was, I’m not much of a friend, to think first how he doesn’t deserve to be promoted.

  “What orders?” Bean asked.

  “He’s got him an army. Hell, he wasn’t even a toon leader here. Just got here last week.”

  “Which army?”

  “Rabbit.” The toon leader looked at Bean’s uniform again. “Oh. I guess he’s replacing you.”

  Bean laughed and headed for the quarters he had just left.

  Nikolai was sitting inside with the door open, looking lost.

  “Can I come in?”

  Nikolai looked up and grinned. “Tell me you’re here to take your army back.”

  “I’ve got a hint for you. Try to win. They think that’s important.”

  “I couldn’t believe you lost all five.”

  “You know, for a school that doesn’t list standings anymore, everybody sure keeps track.”

  “I keep track of you.”

  “Nikolai, I wish you were coming with me.”

  “What’s happening, Bean? Is this it? Are the Buggers here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, you figure these things out.”

  “If the Buggers were really coming, would they leave all you guys here in the station? Or send you back to Earth? Or evacuate you to some obscure asteroid? I don’t know. Some things point to the end being really close. Other things seem like nothing important’s going to happen anywhere around here.”

  “So maybe they’re about to launch this huge fleet against the Bugger world and you guys are supposed to grow up on the voyage.”

  “Maybe,” said Bean. “But the time to launch that fleet was right after the Second Invasion.”

  “Well, what if they didn’t find out where the Bugger home world was until now?”

  That stopped Bean cold. “Never crossed my mind,” said Bean. “I mean, they must have been sending signals home. All we had to do was track that direction. Follow the light, you know. That’s what it says in the manuals.”

  “What if they don’t communicate by light?”

  “Light may take a year to go a lightyear, but it’s still faster than anything else.”

  “Anything else that we know about,” said Nikolai.

  Bean just looked at him.

  “Oh, I know, that’s stupid. The laws of physics and all that. I just—you know, I keep thinking, that’s all. I don’t like to rule things out just because they’re impossible.”

  Bean laughed. “Merda, Nikolai, I should have let you talk more and me talk less back when we slept across from each other.”

  “Bean, you know I’m not a genius.”

  “All geniuses here, Nikolai.”

  “I was scraping by.”

  “So maybe you’re not a Napoleon, Nikolai. Maybe you’re just an Eisenhower. Don’t expect me to cry for you.”

  It was Nikolai’s turn to laugh.

  “I’ll miss you, Bean.”

  “Thanks for coming with me to face Achilles, Nikolai.”

  “Guy gave me nightmares.”

  “Me too.”

  “And I’m glad you brought the others along too. Itú, Ambul, Crazy Tom, I felt like we could’ve used six more, and Achilles was hanging from a wire. Guys like him, you can understand why they invented hanging.”