Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 1 - Ender's Game Page 7

  "Sounds like that might work," said Ender.

  "OK, OK. It does work. But you did that practically on the first day."

  "Or somebody. Maybe Dap did it, to keep Bernard from getting too much control."

  "I found something else. I can't do it with your name."

  "Oh?"

  "Anything with Ender in it gets kicked out. I can't get inside your files at all, either. You made your own security system."

  "Maybe."

  Alai grinned. "I just got in and trashed somebody's files. He's right behind me on cracking the system. I need protection, Ender. I need your system."

  "If I give you my system, you'll know how I do it and you'll get in and trash me."

  "You say me?" Alai asked. "I the sweetest friend you got!"

  Ender laughed. "I'll set up a system for you."

  "Now?"

  "Can I finish eating?"

  "You never finish eating."

  It was true. Ender's tray always had food on it after a meal. Ender looked at the plate and decided he was through. "Let's go then."

  When they got to the barracks. Ender squatted down by his bed and said, "Get your desk and bring it over here. I'll show you how." But when Alai brought his desk to Ender's bed, Ender was just sitting there, his lockers still closed.

  "What up?" asked Alai.

  In answer Ender palmed his locker. "Unauthorised Access Attempt," it said. It didn't open.

  "Somebody done a dance on your head, mama," Alai said. "Somebody eated your face."

  "You sure you want my security system now?" Ender got up and walked away from his bed.

  "Ender," said Alai.

  Ender turned around. Alai was holding a little piece of paper.

  "What is it?"

  Alai looked up at him. "Don't you know? This was on your bed. You must have sat on it."

  Ender took it from him.

  ENDER WIGGIN -- ASSIGNED SALAMANDER ARMY -- COMMANDER BONZO MADRID -- EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY -- CODE GREEN GREEN BROWN -- NO POSSESSIONS TRANSFERRED

  "You're smart, Ender, but you don't do the battle-room any better than me."

  Ender shook his head. It was the stupidest thing he could think of, to promote him now. Nobody got promoted before they were eight years old. Ender wasn't even seven yet. And launches usually moved into the armies together, with most armies getting a new kid at the same time. There were no transfer slips on any of the other beds.

  Just when things were finally coming together. Just when Bernard was getting along with everybody, even Ender. Just when Ender was beginning to make a real friend out of Alai. Just when his life was finally getting liveable.

  Ender reached down to pull Alai up from the bed.

  "Salamander Army's in contention, anyway," Alai said.

  Ender was so angry at the unfairness of the transfer that tears were coming to his eyes. Mustn't cry, he told himself.

  Alai saw the tears but had the grace not to say so. "They're fart heads, Ender, they won't even let you take anything you own."

  Ender grinned and didn't cry after all. "Think I should strip and go naked?"

  Alai laughed, too.

  On impulse Ender hugged him, tight, almost as if he were Valentine. He even thought of Valentine then and wanted to go home. "I don't want to go," he said.

  Alai hugged him back. "I understand them, Ender. You are the best of us. Maybe they're in a hurry to teach you everything."

  "They don't want to teach me everything," Ender said. "I wanted to learn what it was like to have a friend."

  Alai nodded soberly. "Always my friend, always the best of my friends," he said. Then he grinned. "Go slice up the buggers."

  "Yeah." Ender smiled back.

  Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear. "Salaam." Then, red faced, he turned away and walked to his own bed at the back of the barracks. Ender guessed that the kiss and the word were somehow forbidden. A suppressed religion, perhaps. Or maybe the word had some private and powerful meaning for Alai alone. Whatever it meant to Alai, Ender knew that it was sacred; that he had uncovered himself for Ender, as once Ender's mother had done when he was very young, before they put the monitor in his neck, and she had put her hands on his head when she thought he was asleep, and prayed over him. Ender had never spoken of that to anyone, not even to Mother, but had kept it as a memory of holiness, of how his mother loved him when she thought that no one, not even he, could see or hear. That was what Alai had given him: a gift so sacred that even Ender could not be allowed to understand what it meant.

  After such a thing nothing could be said. Alai reached his bed and turned around to see Ender. Their eyes held for only a moment, locked in understanding. Then Ender left.

  ***

  There would be no green green brown in this part of the school; he would have to pick up the colours in one of the public areas. The others would be finished with dinner very soon; he didn't want to go near the mess hall. The game room would be nearly empty.

  None of the games appealed to him, the way he felt now. So he went to the bank of public desks at the back of the room and signed on to his own private game. He went quickly to Fairyland. The Giant was dead when he arrived now; he had to climb carefully down the table, jump to the leg of the Giant's overturned chair, and then make the drop to the ground. For a while there had been rats gnawing at the Giant's body, but Ender had killed one with a pin from the Giant's ragged shirt, and they had left him alone after that.

  The Giant's corpse had essentially finished its decay. What could be torn by the small scavengers was torn; the maggots had done their work on the organs, now it was a dessicated mummy, hollowed-out, teeth in a rigid grin, eyes empty, fingers curled. Ender remembered burrowing through the eye when it had been alive and malicious and intelligent. Angry and frustrated as he was, Ender wished to do such murder again. But the Giant had become part of the landscape now, and so there could be no rage against him.

  Ender had always gone over the bridge to the castle of the Queen of Hearts, where there were games enough for him; but none of those appealed to him now. He went around the giant's corpse and followed the brook upstream, to where it emerged from the forest. There was a playground there, slides and monkey bars, teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds, with a dozen children laughing as they played. Ender came and found that in the game he had become a child, though usually his figure in the games was adult. In fact, he was smaller than the other children.

  He got in line for the slide. The other children ignored him. He climbed up to the top, watched the boy before him whirl down the long spiral to the ground. Then he sat and began to slide.

  He had not slid for a moment when he fell right through the slide and landed on the ground under the ladder. The slide would not hold him.

  Neither would the monkey bars. He could climb a ways, but then at random a bar seemed to be insubstantial and he fell. He could sit on the see-saw until he rose to the apex; then he fell. When the merry-go-round went fast, he could not hold onto any of the bars, and centrifugal force hurled him off.

  And the other children: their laughter was raucous, offensive. They circled around him and pointed and laughed for many seconds before they went back to their play.

  Ender wanted to hit them, to throw them in the brook. Instead he walked into the forest. He found a path, which soon became an ancient brick road, much overgrown with weeds but still usable. There were hints of possible games off to either side, but Ender followed none of them. He wanted to see where the path led.

  It led to a clearing, with a well in the middle, and a sign that said, "Drink, traveller." Ender went forward and looked at the well. Almost at once, he heard a snarl. Out of the woods emerged a dozen slavering wolves with human faces. Ender recognised them-- they were the children from the playground. Only now their teeth could tear; Ender, weaponless, was quickly devoured.

  His next figure appeared, as usual, in the same spot, and was eaten again, though Ender tried to climb down into
the well.

  The next appearance, though, was at the playground. Again the children laughed at him. Laugh all you like, Ender thought. I know what you are. He pushed one of them. She followed him, angry. Ender led her up the slide. Of course he fell through; but this time, following so closely behind him, she also fell through. When she hit the ground, she turned into a wolf and lay there, dead or stunned.

  One by one Ender led each of the others into a trap. But before he had finished off the last of them, the wolves began reviving, and were no longer children. Ender was torn apart again.

  This time, shaking and sweating, Ender found his figure revived on the Giant's table. I should quit, he told himself. I should go to my new army.

  But instead he made his figure drop down from the table and walk around the Giant's body to the playground.

  This time, as soon as the child hit the ground and turned into a wolf, Ender dragged the body to the brook and pulled it in. Each time, the body sizzled as though the water were acid; the wolf was consumed, and a dark cloud of smoke arose and drifted away. The children were easily dispatched, though they began following him in twos and threes at the end. Ender found no wolves waiting for him in the clearing, and he lowered himself into the well on the bucket rope.

  The light in the cavern was dim, but he could see piles of jewels. He passed them by, noting that, behind him, eyes glinted among the gems. A table covered with food did not interest him. He passed through a group of cages hanging from the ceiling of the cave, each containing some exotic, friendly-looking creature. I'll play with you later, Ender thought. At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds:

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

  He stood on a small ledge, high on a cliff overlooking a terrain of bright and deep green forest with dashes of autumn colour and patches here and there of cleared land, with oxdrawn ploughs and small villages, a castle on a rise in the distance, and clouds riding currents of air below him. Above him, the sky was the ceiling of a vast cavern, with crystals dangling in bright stalactites.

  The door closed behind him. Ender studied the scene intently. With the beauty of it, he cared less for survival than usual. He cared little, at the moment, what the game of this place might be. He had found it, and seeing it was its own reward. And so, with no thought of consequences, he jumped from the ledge.

  Now he plummeted downward toward a roiling river and savage rocks; but a cloud came between him and the ground as he fell, and caught him, and carried him away.

  It took him to the tower of the castle, and through the open window, bearing him in. There it left him, in a room with no apparent door in floor or ceiling, and windows looking out over a certainly fatal fall.

  A moment ago he had thrown himself from a ledge carelessly; this time he hesitated.

  The small rug before the fire unravelled itself into a long, slender serpent with wicked teeth.

  "I am your only escape," it said. "Death is your only escape.

  Ender looked around the room for a weapon, when suddenly the screen went dark. Words flashed around the rim of the desk.

  REPORT TO COMMANDER IMMEDIATELY. YOU ARE LATE. -- GREEN GREEN BROWN.

  Furious, Ender snapped off the desk and went to the colour wall, where he found the ribbon of green green brown, touched it, and followed it as it lit up before him. The dark green, light green, and brown of the ribbon reminded him of the early autumn kingdom he had found in the game. I must go back there, he told himself. The serpent is a long thread; I can let myself down from the tower and find my way through that place. Perhaps it's called the end of the world because it's the end of the games, because I can go to one of the villages and become one of the little boys working and playing there, with nothing to kill and nothing to kill me, just living there.

  As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

  ***

  Armies were larger than launch groups, and the army barracks room was larger, too. It was long and narrow, with bunks on both sides; so long, in fact, that you could see the curvature of the floor as the far end bent upward, part of the wheel of the Battle School.

  Ender stood at the door. A few boys near the door glanced at him, but they were older, and it seemed as though they hadn't even seen him. They went on with their conversations, lying and leaning on bunks. They were discussing battles, of course; the older boys always did. They were all much larger than Ender. The ten- and eleven-year-olds towered over him; even the youngest were eight, and Ender was not large for his age.

  He tried to see which of the boys was the commander, but most were somewhere between battle dress and what the soldiers always called their sleep uniform-- skin from head to toe. Many of them had desks out, but few were studying.

  Ender stepped into the room. The moment he did, he was noticed.

  "What do you want?" demanded the boy who had the upper bunk by the door. He was the largest of them. Ender had noticed him before, a young giant who had whiskers growing raggedly on his chin. "You're not a Salamander."

  "I'm supposed to be, I think," Ender said. "Green green brown, right? I was transferred." He showed the boy, obviously the door guard, his paper.

  The door guard reached for it. Ender withdrew it just out of reach. "I'm supposed to give it to Bonzo Madrid."

  Now another boy joined the conversation, a smaller boy, but still larger than Ender, "Not bahn-zoe, piss head. Bone-So. The name's Spanish. Bonzo Madrid. Aqui nosotros hablamos español, Señor Gran Fedor."

  "You must be Bonzo, then?" Ender asked, pronouncing the name correctly.

  "No, just a brilliant and talented polyglot. Petra Arkanian. The only girl in Salamander Army. With more balls than anybody else in the room."

  "Mother Petra she talking?" said one of the boys. "She talking, she talking."

  Another one chimed in. "Shit talking ... shit talking, shit talking!"

  Quite a few laughed.

  "Just between you and me," Petra said, "if they gave the Battle School an enema, they'd stick it in at green green brown."

  Ender despaired. He already had nothing going for him: grossly under trained, small, inexperienced, doomed to be resented for early advancement. And now, by chance, he had made exactly the wrong friend. An outcast in Salamander Army, and she had just linked him with her in the minds of the rest of the army. A good day's work. For a moment, as Ender looked around at the laughing, jeering faces, he imagined their bodies covered with hair, their teeth pointed for tearing. Am I the only human being in this place? Are all the others animals, waiting only to devour?

  Then he remembered Alai. In every army, surely, there was at least one worth knowing.

  Suddenly, though no one said to be quiet, the laughter stopped and the group fell silent. Ender turned to the door. A boy stood there, tall and dark and slender, with beautiful black eyes and slender lips that hinted at refinement. I would follow such beauty, said something inside Ender. I would see as those eyes see.

  "Who are you?" asked the boy quietly.

  "Ender Wiggin, sir," Ender said. "Reassigned from launch to Salamander Army." He held out the orders.

  The boy took the paper in a swift, sure movement, without touching Ender's hand. "How old are you, Wiggin?" he asked.

  "Almost seven."

  Still quietly, he said, "I asked how old you are, not how old you almost are."

  "I am six years, nine months, and twelve days old."

  "How long have you been working in the battle room?"

  "A few months, now. My aim is better."

  "Any training in battle manoeuvres? Have you ever been part of a toon? Have you ever carried out a joint exercise?"

  Ender had never heard of such things. He shook his head.

  Madrid looked at him steadily. "I see. As you will quickly learn, the officers in command of this school, most notab
ly Major Anderson, who runs the game, are fond of playing tricks. Salamander Army is just beginning to emerge from indecent obscurity. We have won twelve of our last twenty games. We have surprised Rat and Scorpion and Hound, and we are ready to play for leadership in the game. So of course, of course I am given such a useless, untrained, hopeless specimen of of underdevelopment as yourself."

  Petra said, quietly, "He isn't glad to meet you."

  "Shut up, Arkanian," Madrid said. "To one trial we now add another. But whatever obstacles our officers choose to fling in our path, we are still--"

  "Salamander!" cried the soldiers, in one voice. Instinctively, Ender's perception of these events changed. It was a pattern, a ritual. Madrid was not trying to hurt him, merely taking control of a surprising event and using it to strengthen his control of his army.

  "We are the fire that will consume them, belly and bowel, head and heart, many flames of us, but one fire."

  "Salamander!" they cried again.

  "Even this one will not weaken us."

  For a moment, Ender allowed himself to hope. "I'll work hard and learn quickly," he said.

  "I didn't give you permission to speak," Madrid answered. "I intend to trade you away as quickly as I can. I'll probably have to give up someone valuable along with you, but as small as you are you are worse than useless. One more frozen, inevitably, in every battle, that's all you are, and we're now at a point where every frozen soldier makes a difference in the standings. Nothing personal, Wiggin, but I'm sure you can get your training at someone else's expense."

  "He's all heart," Petra said.

  Madrid stepped closer to the girl and slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. It made little sound, for only his fingernails had hit her. But there were bright red marks, four of them, on her cheek, and little pricks of blood marked where the tips of his fingernails had struck.