Zeck really was tuning out everything Wiggin said, yet something must have gotten through, because now, at Wiggin’s cue, he started thinking about his mother. And not just any picture of her. It was his mother saying to him, “Satan does not give good gifts. So your good gift comes from God.”

  And then Father, saying, “There are those who will tell you that a thing is from God, when it’s really from the devil.”

  Zeck had asked him why.

  “They are deceived by their own desire,” Father had said. “They wish the world were a better place, so they pretend that polluted things are pure, so they don’t have to fear them.”

  He couldn’t let Father know what Mother had said, because it was so impure of her. Can’t let Father know.

  If he whips Mother I’ll kill him.

  The thought struck him with such force he gasped and stumbled against the wall.

  If he whips Mother I’ll kill him.

  Wiggin was still there, talking. “Zeck, what’s wrong?” Wiggin touched him. Touched his arm. The forearm.

  Zeck couldn’t help himself. He yanked his arm away, but that wasn’t enough. He lashed out with his right leg and kicked Wiggin in the shin. Then shoved him backward. Wiggin fell against the wall, then to the floor. He looked helpless. Zeck was so filled with rage at him that he couldn’t contain it. It was all the weeks of isolation. It was all his fear for his mother. She really wasn’t pure. He should hate her for it. But he loved her. That made him evil. That made him deserve all the purification Father ever gave him—because he loved someone as impure as Mother.

  And for some reason, with all of this rage and fear, Zeck threw himself down on Wiggin and pummeled him in the chest and stomach.

  “Stop it!” cried Wiggin, trying to turn away from him. “What do you think you’re doing, purifying me?”

  Zeck stopped and looked at his own hands. Looked at Wiggin’s body, lying there helpless. The very helplessness of him, his wormlike, fetal pose, infuriated Zeck. He knew from class what this was. It was blood lust. It was the animal fever that took a soldier over and made him strong beyond his strength.

  It was what Father must have felt, purifying him. The smaller body, helpless, complete subject to his will. It filled a certain kind of man with rage that had to tear into its prey. That had to inflict pain, break the skin, draw blood and tears and screaming from the victim.

  It was something dark and evil. If anything was from Satan, this was.

  “I thought you were a pacifist,” said Wiggin softly.

  Zeck could hear his father going on and on about peace, how the servants of God did not go to war.

  “Beat your swords into ploughshares,” murmured Zeck, echoing his father quoting Micah and Isaiah, as he did all the time.

  “Bible quotations,” said Wiggin, uncurling himself. Now he lay flat on the ground. Completely open to any blows Zeck might try to land. But the rage was dissipating now. Zeck didn’t want to hit him. Or rather, he wanted to hit him, but not more than he wanted not to hit him.

  “Try this one,” said Wiggin. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

  “Don’t argue scripture with me,” said Zeck. “I know them all.”

  “But you only believe in the ones your father liked. Why do you think your father always quoted the ones about hating war and rejecting violence, when he beat you the way he did? Sounds like he was trying to talk himself out of what he found in his own heart.”

  “You don’t know my father.” Zeck hissed out the words through a tight throat. He could hit this kid again. He could. But he wouldn’t. At least he wouldn’t if the kid would just shut up.

  “I know what I just saw,” said Wiggin. “That rage. You weren’t pulling your punches. That hurt.”

  “Sorry,” said Zeck. “But shut up now, please.”

  “Oh, just because it hurt doesn’t mean I’m afraid of you. You know one of the reasons I was glad to leave home? Because my brother threatened to kill me, and even though I know he probably didn’t mean it, my guts didn’t know that. My guts churned all the time. With fear. Because my brother liked to hurt me. I don’t think that’s your father, though. I think your father hated what he did to you. And that’s why he preached peace.”

  “He preached peace because that’s what Christ preached,” said Zeck. He meant to say it with fervor and intensity. But the words sounded lame even as he said them.

  “The Lord is my strength and song,” quoted Wiggin. “And he is become my salvation.”

  “Exodus fifteen,” said Zeck. “It’s Moses. Old Testament. It doesn’t apply.”

  “He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”

  “What are you doing with the King James version anyway?” said Zeck. “Did you learn these scriptures just to argue with me?”

  “Yes,” said Wiggin. “You know the next verse.”

  “The Lord is a man of war,” said Zeck. “Jehovah is his name.”

  “The King James version just says ‘the Lord,’” said Wiggin.

  “But that’s what it means when the Bible puts it in small caps like that. They’re just avoiding putting down the name of God.”

  “The Lord is a man of war,” said Wiggin. “But if your dad quoted that, then he’d have no reason to try to control this bloodlust thing. This berserker rage. He’d kill you. So it’s really a good thing, isn’t it, that he ignored Jesus and Moses talking about how God is about war and peace. Because he loved you so much that he’d build half his religion up like a wall to keep him from killing you.”

  “Stay out of my family,” whispered Zeck.

  “He loved you,” said Wiggin. “But you were right to be afraid of him.”

  “Don’t make me hurt you,” said Zeck.

  “I’m not worried about you,” said Wiggin. “You’re twice the man your father is. Now that you’ve seen the violence inside you, you can control it. You won’t hit me for telling you the truth.”

  “Nothing that you’ve said is true.”

  “Zeck,” said Wiggin, “‘It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.’ Did your father quote that very much?”

  He wanted to kill Wiggin. He also wanted to cry. He didn’t do either. “He quoted it all the time.”

  “And then he took you out and made all those scars on your back.”

  “I wasn’t pure.”

  “No, he wasn’t pure. He wasn’t.”

  “Some people are looking so hard to find Satan that they see him even where he isn’t!” cried Zeck.

  “I don’t remember that from the Bible.”

  It wasn’t the Bible. It was Mother. He couldn’t say that.

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying,” said Wiggin. “That I’m finding Satan where he isn’t? I don’t think so. I think a man who whips a little kid and then blames the kid for it, I think that’s exactly where Satan lives.”

  The urge to cry was apparently going to win. Zeck could hardly get the words out. “I have to go home.”

  “And do what?” asked Wiggin. “Stand between your mother and father until your father finally loses control and kills you?”

  “If that’s what it takes!”

  “You know my biggest fear?” said Wiggin.

  “I don’t care about your fear,” said Zeck.

  “As much as I hate my brother, what I’m afraid of is that I’m just like him.”

  “I don’t hate my father.”

  “You’re terrified of him,” said Wiggin, “and you should be. But I think what you’re really planning to do when you go home is kill the old son of a bitch.”

  “No I’m not!” cried Zeck. The rage filled him again, and he couldn’t stop himself from lashing out, but at least he aimed his blows at the wall and the floor, not at Wiggin. So it hurt only Zeck’s own hands and arms and elbows. Only himself.

  “If he laid one hand on your mother,” said Wiggin.

  “I’ll kill him!” Then Zeck hurled himself backward, threw himself to the floor away from Wiggin and beat on the floor and kept beating on it till the skin of the palm of his left hand broke open and bled. And even then, he only stopped because Wiggin took hold of his wrist. Held it and then put something in his palm and closed Zeck’s fist around it.

  “You’ve done enough bleeding,” said Wiggin. “In my opinion, anyway.”

  “Don’t tell,” whispered Zeck. “Don’t tell anybody.”

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” said Wiggin, “except try to get home to protect your mother. Because you know your father is crazy and dangerous.”

  “Just like me,” said Zeck.

  “No,” said Wiggin. “The opposite of you. Because you controlled it. You stopped yourself from beating the little kid. Even when he deliberately provoked you. Your father couldn’t stop himself from beating you—even when you did absolutely nothing wrong at all. You are not alike.”

  “The rage,” said Zeck.

  “One of the soldierly virtues,” said Wiggin. “Turn it on the Buggers instead of on yourself or your father. And especially instead of me.”

  “I don’t believe in war.”

  “Not many soldiers do,” said Wiggin. “You could get killed doing that stuff. But you train to fight well, so that when a war does come, you can win and come home and find everything safe.”

  “There’s nothing safe at home.”

  “I bet that things are fine at home,” said Wiggin. “Because, see, with you not there, your mother doesn’t have any reason to stay with your father, does she? So I think she’s not going to put up with any more crap from him. Don’t you think so? She can’t be weak. If she were weak, she could never have produced somebody as tough as you. You couldn’t have gotten your toughness from your father—he doesn’t have much, if he can’t even keep himself from doing what he did. So your toughness comes from her, right? She’ll leave him if he raises his hand against her. She doesn’t have to stay to look out for you anymore.”

  It was as much the tone of Wiggin’s voice as the words he said that calmed him. Zeck pulled his body together, rolled himself up into a sitting position. “I keep expecting to see some teacher rush down the corridor demanding to know what’s going on.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Wiggin. “I think they know exactly what’s going on—probably watching it on a holo somewhere—and maybe they’re keeping any other kids from coming along here to see. But they’re going to let us work it out on our own.”

  “Work what out?” said Zeck. “I got no quarrel with you.”

  “You had a quarrel with everybody who stood between you and going home.”

  “I still hate this place. I want to get out of here.”

  “Welcome to the club,” said Wiggin. “Look, we’re missing lunch. You can do what you want, but I’m going to go eat.”

  “You still planning to limp on that left ankle?”

  “Yes,” said Wiggin. “After you kicked me? I won’t have to act.”

  “Chest OK? I didn’t break any ribs, did I?”

  “You sure have an inflated opinion of your own strength,” said Wiggin.

  Then he stepped into the elevator and held the bar as it drifted upward, carrying him along with it.

  Zeck sat there a while longer, looking at nothing, thinking about what just happened. He wasn’t sure if anything had been decided. Zeck still hated Battle School. And everybody in Battle School hated him. And now he hated his father and didn’t believe in his father’s phony pacifism. Wiggin had pretty much convinced him that his father was no prophet. Hell, Zeck had known it all along. But believing in his father’s spirituality was the only way he could keep himself from hating him and fearing him. The only way he could bear it. Now he didn’t have to bear it anymore. Wiggin was right. Mother was free, now that she didn’t have to look out for Zeck.

  He unclenched his fist and saw what Wiggin had stuffed into it to stanch the bleeding. One of his socks, covered in blood.

  * * *

  Dink saw how Wiggin walked with his food tray and knew something was wrong. And it wasn’t just because his tray was double-loaded. Who was he getting lunch for? Didn’t matter—what mattered was that Wiggin was in pain. Dink pulled out the chair beside him.

  “What happened?” he asked as soon as Wiggin sat down.

  “Got lunch for Zeck,” said Wiggin.

  “I mean what happened to you,” said Dink.

  “Happened?” Wiggin’s voice was all innocence, but his eyes, lasering in at Dink’s eyes, were telling him to back off.

  “Suit yourself,” said Dink. “Keep your dandruff to yourself for all I care.”

  The conversation at the table flowed around them after that. Dink joined in now and then, but he noticed that Wiggin just ate, and that he was careful about how he breathed. Something had injured his chest. Broken rib? No, more likely a bruise. And he’d been favoring one leg when he walked. Trying not to show it, but favoring it all the same. And he was saving lunch for Zeck. They’d had a fight. The pacifist and the genius? Fighting each other? That was stupid. But what else could it have been? Who else but a pacifist would attack somebody as little as Wiggin?

  Half the soldiers were gone from the table by the time Zeck came in. The food line had already closed down, but Wiggin saw him and stood up and waved him over. He was slow raising his hand to wave, though, what with his chest hurting and all.

  Zeck approached. “Got lunch for you,” said Wiggin, stepping away from his chair so that Zeck could sit in it.

  The other kids at the table were obviously poising themselves to leave if Zeck sat down there.

  “No, I’m not hungry,” said Zeck.

  Had he been crying? No. And what was with his hand? He kept it in a fist, but Dink could see that it had been injured. That there had been blood.

  “I just wanted to give you something,” said Zeck.

  He laid a stocking down on the table beside Wiggin’s tray.

  “Sorry it’s wet,” said Zeck. “I had to wash it.”

  “Toguro,” said Wiggin. “Now sit and eat.” He almost pushed Zeck down into the chair.

  It was the stocking that did it. Wiggin had given Zeck a gift—a Santa Claus gift, of all things—and Zeck had accepted it. Now Wiggin stood with his hands on Zeck’s shoulders, staring at each of the other Rat Army soldiers in turn, as if he was daring them to stand up and go.

  Dink knew that if he got up, the others would too. But he didn’t get up, and the others stayed.

  “So I’ve got this poem,” said Dink. “It really sucks, but sometimes you just gotta say it to get it out of your system.”

  “We’ve just eaten, Dink,” said Flip. “Couldn’t you wait till our food is digested?”

  “No, this will be good for you,” said Dink. “Your food’s turning to shit right now, and this will help.”

  That got him a laugh, which bought him enough time to finish coming up with the rhymes he needed.

  “What do you do with Zeck?

  You want to break his neck.

  But I warn you not to try

  Cause Zeck’s too stubborn to die.”

  As poems go, it was pretty weak. But as a symbol of Dink’s decision that Zeck should be given another chance, well, it did the job. Between Wiggin’s stocking and Dink’s poem, Zeck had returned to his previous status: barely tolerated.

  Dink looked up at Wiggin, who was still standing behind Zeck, who now seemed to be eating with some appetite.

  “Merry Christmas,” Dink mouthed silently.

  Wiggin smiled.

  Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools. His most recent series, the young adult Pathfinder series (Pathfinder, Ruins, Visitors) and the fantasy Mithermages series (Lost Gate, Gate Thief) are taking readers in new directions. Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series, The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts.

  Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University. Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, where his primary activities are writing a review column for the local Rhinoceros Times and feeding birds, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, and raccoons on the patio.

  2017

  Renegat

  In 1977, Orson Scott Card burst onto the science fiction field with a novella in Analog Science Fiction and Fact that would launch an empire. “Ender’s Game” later expanded into a novel which spawned a whole series of sequels, won the 1985 Nebula Award and 1986 Hugo Award for “Best Novel.” It has been recommended reading by the US Marine Corp for soldiers at many ranks, and it was made into a film starring Harrison Ford in 2013. The latest spinoff series, Fleet School, debuts in 2017, and this story is the first appearance in print of its protagonist, Dabeet Ochoa. It also stars Ender and Valentine Wiggin, and is a bit of a murder mystery in colonial space written just for this book. Our adventure begins with . . .

  Dabeet Ochoa was surprised that the speaker for the dead came so soon, but apparently he had already been en route to Catalunya, for reasons that were apparently none of Dabeet’s business. Yet Dabeet was proconsul of Starways Congress here—in effect, governor—so everything on Catalunya was supposed to be his business.

  He made the decision to meet the speaker at the shuttleport before he was aware that he was considering such a gesture of respect. He knew himself well enough to know that part of his motive had to be a bit of bureaucratic resentment and dread that there would now be, in this colony, a person who had secrets, a person who had protection from Congress or the Fleet that trumped his own. Dabeet put those feelings in the compartment of his mind where he kept his painful self-knowledge. He would be constantly aware of those feelings, so he could guard himself against acting upon them.