"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 pediliction 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 teaming 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.