I saw, I wrote, and the world changed a little. It was a heady feeling. It made all the work at Tactical School seem almost meaningless by comparison. He wanted to bound into the classroom and tell the others about his triumph. But they would look at him like he was crazy. They knew nothing about the world at large, and took no responsibility for it. They were closed into the military world.

  Three days after Bean sent his letters to Locke and Demosthenes, the children came to class and found that they were to depart immediately for Command School, this time joined by Carn Carby, who had been a class ahead of them in Tactical School. They had spent only three months at ISL, and Bean couldn’t help wondering if his letters had not had some influence over the timing. If there was some danger that the children might be sent home prematurely, the I.F. had to make sure their prize specimens were out of reach.

  22

  REUNION

  “I suppose I should congratulate you for undoing the damage you did to Ender Wiggin.”

  “Sir, I respectfully disagree that I did any damage.”

  “Ah, good then, I don’t have to congratulate you. You do realize that your status here will be as observer.”

  “I hope that I will also have opportunities to offer advice based on my years of experience with these children.”

  “Command School has worked with children for years.”

  “Respectfully, sir, Command School has worked with adolescents. Ambitious, testosterone-charged, competitive teenagers. And quite aside from that, we have a lot riding on these particular children, and I know things about them that must be taken into account.”

  “All those things should be in your reports.”

  “They are. But with all respect, is there anyone there who has memorized my reports so thoroughly that the appropriate details will come to mind the instant they’re needed?”

  “I’ll listen to you, Colonel Graff. And please stop assuring me of how respectful you are whenever you’re about to tell me I’m an idiot.”

  “I thought that my leave of absence was designed to chasten me. I’m trying to show that I’ve been chastened.”

  “Are there any of these details about the children that come to mind right now?”

  “An important one, sir. Because so much depends on what Ender does or does not know, it is vital that you isolate him from the other children. During actual practices he can be there, but under no circumstances can you allow free conversation or sharing of information.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because if Bean ever comes to know about the ansible, he’ll leap straight to the core situation. He may figure it out on his own as it is—you have no idea how difficult it is to conceal information from him. Ender is more trusting—but Ender can’t do his job unless he knows about the ansible. You see? He and Bean cannot be allowed to have any free time together. Any conversation that is not on point.”

  “But if this is so, then Bean is not capable of being Ender’s backup, because then he would have to be told about the ansible.”

  “It won’t matter then.”

  “But you yourself were the author of the proposition that only a child—”

  “Sir, none of that applies to Bean.”

  “Because?”

  “Because he’s not human.”

  “Colonel Graff, you make me tired.”

  The voyage to Command School was four long months, and this time they were being trained continuously, as thorough an education in the mathematics of targeting, explosives, and other weapons-related subjects as could be managed on board a fast-moving cruiser. Finally, too, they were being forged again into a team, and it quickly became clear to everyone that the leading student was Bean. He mastered everything immediately, and was soon the one whom the others turned to for explanations of concepts they didn’t grasp at once. From being the lowest in status on the first voyage, a complete outsider, Bean now became an outcast for the opposite reason—he was alone in the position of highest status.

  He struggled with the situation, because he knew that he needed to be able to function as part of the team, not just as a mentor or expert. Now it became vital that he take part in their downtime, relaxing with them, joking, joining in with reminiscences about Battle School. And about even earlier times.

  For now, at last, the Battle School tabu against talking about home was gone. They all spoke freely of mothers and fathers who by now were distant memories, but who still played a vital role in their lives.

  The fact that Bean had no parents at first made the others a little shy with him, but he seized the opportunity and began to speak openly about his entire experience. Hiding in the toilet tank in the clean room. Going home with the Spanish custodian. Starving on the streets as he scouted for his opportunity. Telling Poke how to beat the bullies at their own game. Watching Achilles, admiring him, fearing him as he created their little street family, marginalized Poke, and finally killed her. When he told them of finding Poke’s body, several of them wept. Petra in particular broke down and sobbed.

  It was an opportunity, and Bean seized it. Naturally, she soon fled the company of others, taking her emotions into the privacy of her quarters. As soon afterward as he could, Bean followed her.

  “Bean, I don’t want to talk.”

  “I do,” said Bean. “It’s something we have to talk about. For the good of the team.”

  “Is that what we are?” she asked.

  “Petra, you know the worst thing I’ve ever done. Achilles was dangerous, I knew it, and I still went away and left Poke alone with him. She died for it. That burns in me every day of my life. Every time I start to feel happy, I remember Poke, how I owe my life to her, how I could have saved her. Every time I love somebody, I have that fear that I’ll betray them the same way I did her.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Bean?”

  “Because you betrayed Ender and I think it’s eating at you.”

  Her eyes flashed with rage. “I did not! And it’s eating at you, not me!”

  “Petra, whether you admit it to yourself or not, when you tried to slow Ender down in the corridor that day, there’s no way you didn’t know what you were doing. I’ve seen you in action, you’re sharp, you see everything. In some ways you’re the best tactical commander in the whole group. It’s absolutely impossible that you didn’t see how Bonzo’s thugs were all there in the corridor, waiting to beat the crap out of Ender, and what did you do? You tried to slow him down, peel him off from the group.”

  “And you stopped me,” said Petra. “So it’s moot, isn’t it?”

  “I have to know why.”

  “You don’t have to know squat.”

  “Petra, we have to fight shoulder to shoulder someday. We have to be able to trust each other. I don’t trust you because I don’t know why you did that. And now you won’t trust me because you know I don’t trust you.”

  “Oh what a tangled web we weave.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “My father said it. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

  “Exactly. Untangle this for me.”

  “You’re the one who’s weaving a web for me, Bean. You know things you don’t tell the rest of us. You think I don’t see that? So you want me to restore your trust in me, but you don’t tell me anything useful.”

  “I opened my soul to you,” said Bean.

  “You told me about your feelings.” She said it with utter contempt. “So good, it’s a relief to know you have them, or at least to know that you think it’s worth pretending to have them, nobody’s quite sure about that. But what you don’t ever tell us is what the hell is actually going on here. We think you know.”

  “All I have are guesses.”

  “The teachers told you things back in Battle School that none of the rest of us knew. You knew the name of every kid in the school, you knew things about us, all of us. You knew things you had no business knowing.”

  Bean was stunned to realize that his special access had been so noticeable to her. Had he been careless? Or was she even more observant than he had thought? “I broke into the student data,” said Bean.

  “And they didn’t catch you?”

  “I think they did. Right from the start. Certainly they knew about it later.” And he told her about choosing the roster for Dragon Army.

  She flopped down on her bunk and addressed the ceiling. “You chose them! All those rejects and those little launchy bastards, you chose them!”

  “Somebody had to. The teachers weren’t competent to do it.”

  “So Ender had the best. He didn’t make them the best, they already were the best.”

  “The best that weren’t already in armies. I’m the only one who was a launchy when Dragon was formed who’s with this team now. You and Shen and Alai and Dink and Carn, you weren’t in Dragon, and you’re obviously among the best. Dragon won because they were good, yes, but also because Ender knew what to do with them.”

  “It still turns one little corner of my universe upside down.”

  “Petra, this was a trade.”

  “Was it?”

  “Explain why you weren’t a judas back in Battle School.”

  “I was a judas,” said Petra. “How’s that for an explanation?”

  Bean was sickened. “You can say it like that? Without shame?”

  “Are you stupid?” asked Petra. “I was doing the same thing you were doing, trying to save Ender’s life. I knew Ender had trained for combat, and those thugs hadn’t. I was also trained. Bonzo had been working these guys up into a frenzy, but the fact is, they didn’t like Bonzo very much, he had just pissed them off at Ender. So if they got in a few licks against Ender, right there in the corridor where Dragon Army and other soldiers would get into it right away, where Ender would have me beside him in a limited space so only a few of them could come at us at once—I figured that Ender would get bruised, get a bloody nose, but he’d come out of it OK. And all those walking scabies would be satisfied. Bonzo’s ranting would be old news. Bonzo would be alone again. Ender would be safe from anything worse.”

  “You were gambling a lot on your fighting ability.”

  “And Ender’s. We were both damn good then, and in excellent shape. And you know what? I think Ender understood what I was doing, and the only reason he didn’t go along with it was you.”

  “Me?”

  “He saw you plunging right into the middle of everything. You’d get your head beaten in, that was obvious. So he had to avoid the violence then. Which means that because of you, he got set up the next day when it really was dangerous, when Ender was completely alone with no one for backup.”

  “So why didn’t you explain this before?”

  “Because you were the only one besides Ender who knew I was setting him up, and I didn’t really care what you thought then, and I’m not that concerned about it now.”

  “It was a stupid plan,” said Bean.

  “It was better than yours,” said Petra.

  “Well, I guess when you look at how it all turned out, we’ll never know how stupid your plan was. But we sure know that mine was shot to hell.”

  Petra flashed him a brief, insincere grin. “Now, do you trust me again? Can we go back to the intimate friendship we’ve shared for so long?”

  “You know something, Petra? All that hostility is wasted on me. In fact, it’s bad aim on your part to even try it. Because I’m the best friend you’ve got here.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes, really. Because I’m the only one of these boys who ever chose to have a girl as his commander.”

  She paused a moment, staring at him blankly before saying, “I got over the fact that I’m a girl a long time ago.”

  “But they didn’t. And you know they didn’t. You know that it bothers them all the time, that you’re not really one of the guys. They’re your friends, sure, at least Dink is, but they all like you. At the same time, there were what, a dozen girls in the whole school? And except for you, none of them were really topflight soldiers. They didn’t take you seriously.”

  “Ender did,” said Petra.

  “And I do,” said Bean. “The others all know what happened in the corridor, you know. It’s not like it was a secret. But you know why they haven’t had this conversation with you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they all figured you were an idiot and didn’t realize how close you came to getting Ender pounded into the deck. I’m the only one who had enough respect for you to realize that you would never make such a stupid mistake by accident.”

  “I’m supposed to be flattered?”

  “You’re supposed to stop treating me like the enemy. You’re almost as much of an outsider in this group as I am. And when it comes down to actual combat, you need someone who’ll take you as seriously as you take yourself.”

  “Do me no favors.”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  “About time.”

  “And when you think about this more and you realize I’m right, you don’t have to apologize. You cried for Poke, and that makes us friends. You can trust me, and I can trust you, and that’s all.”

  She was starting some retort as he left, but he didn’t stick around long enough to hear what it was. Petra was just that way—she had to act tough. Bean didn’t mind. He knew they’d said the things they needed to say.

  Command School was at FleetCom, and the location of FleetCom was a closely guarded secret. The only way you ever found out where it was was to be assigned there, and very few people who had been there ever came back to Earth.

  Just before arrival, the kids were briefed. FleetCom was in the wandering asteroid Eros. And as they approached, they realized that it really was in the asteroid. Almost nothing showed on the surface except the docking station. They boarded the shuttlebug, which reminded them of school-buses, and took the five-minute ride down to the surface. There the shuttlebug slid inside what looked like a cave. A snakelike tube reached out to the bug and enclosed it completely. They got out of the shuttlebug into near-zero gravity, and a strong air current sucked them like a vacuum cleaner up into the bowels of Eros.

  Bean knew at once that this place was not shaped by human hands. The tunnels were all too low—and even then, the ceilings had obviously been raised after the initial construction, since the lower walls were smooth and only the top half-meter showed tool marks. The Buggers made this, probably when they were mounting the Second Invasion. What was once their forward base was now the center of the International Fleet. Bean tried to imagine the battle required to take this place. The Buggers scuttering along the tunnels, the infantry coming in with low-power explosives to burn them out. Flashes of light. And then cleanup, dragging the Formic bodies out of the tunnels and bit by bit converting it into a human space.

  This is how we got our secret technologies, thought Bean. The Buggers had gravity-generating machines. We learned how they worked and built our own, installing them in the Battle School and wherever else they were needed. But the I.F. never announced the fact, because it would have frightened people to realize how advanced their technology was.

  What else did we learn from them?

  Bean noticed how even the children hunched a little to walk through the tunnels. The headroom was at least two meters, and not one of the kids was nearly that tall, but the proportions were all wrong for human comfort, so the roof of the tunnels seemed oppressively low, ready to collapse. It must have been even worse when we first arrived, before the roofs were raised.

  Ender would thrive here. He’d hate it, of course, because he was human. But he’d also use the place to help him get inside the minds of the Buggers who built it. Not that you could ever really understand an alien mind. But this place gave you a decent chance to try.

  The boys were bunked up in two rooms; Petra had a smaller room to herself. It was even more bare here than Battle School, and they could never escape the coldness of the stone around them. On Earth, stone had always seemed solid. But in space, it seemed downright porous. There were bubble holes all through the stone, and Bean couldn’t help feeling that air was leaking out all the time. Air leaking out, and cold leaking in, and perhaps something else, the larvae of the Buggers chewing like earthworms through the solid stone, crawling out of the bubble holes at night when the room was dark, crawling over their foreheads and reading their minds and . . .

  He woke up, breathing heavily, his hand clutching his forehead. He hardly dared to move his hand. Had something been crawling on him?

  His hand was empty.

  He wanted to go back to sleep, but it was too close to reveille for him to hope for that. He lay there thinking. The nightmare was absurd—there could not possibly be any Buggers alive here. But something made him afraid. Something was bothering him, and he wasn’t sure what.

  He thought back to a conversation with one of the technicians who serviced the simulators. Bean’s had malfunctioned during practice, so that suddenly the little points of light that represented his ships moving through three-dimensional space were no longer under his control. To his surprise, they didn’t just drift on in the direction of the last orders he gave. Instead, they began to swarm, to gather, and then changed color as they shifted to be under someone else’s control.

  When the technician arrived to replace the chip that had blown, Bean asked him why the ships didn’t just stop or keep drifting. “It’s part of the simulation,” the technician said. “What’s being simulated here is not that you’re the pilot or even the captain of these ships. You’re the admiral, and so inside each ship there’s a simulated captain and a simulated pilot, and so when your contact got cut off, they acted the way the real guys would act if they lost contact. See?”