Anderson stood and saluted. “Thank you, sir.”
He had almost reached the door when Graff called his name. He turned and faced the captain.
“Anderson,” Captain Graff said. “Have you been outside, lately I mean?”
“Not since last leave, six months ago.”
“I didn’t think so. Not that it makes any difference. But have you ever been to Beaman Park, there in the city? Hmm? Beautiful park. Trees. Grass. No nullo, no battles, no worries. Do you know what else there is in Beaman Park?”
“What, sir?” Lieutenant Anderson asked.
“Children,” Graff answered.
“Of course, children,” said Anderson.
“I mean children. I mean kids who get up in the morning when their mothers call them and they go to school and then in the afternoons they go to Beaman Park and play. They’re happy, they smile a lot, they laugh, they have fun. Hmmm?”
“I’m sure they do, sir.”
“Is that all you can say, Anderson?”
Anderson cleared his throat. “It’s good for children to have fun, I think, sir. I know I did when I was a boy. But right now the world needs soldiers. And this is the way to get them.”
Graff nodded and closed his eyes. “Oh, indeed, you’re right, by statistical proof and by all the important theories, and dammit they work and the system is right but all the same Ender’s older than I am. He’s not a child. He’s barely a person.”
“If that’s true, sir, then at least we all know that Ender is making it possible for the others of his age to be playing in the park.”
“And Jesus died to save all men, of course.” Graff sat up and looked at Anderson almost sadly. “But we’re the ones,” Graff said, “we’re the ones who are driving in the nails.”
ENDER WIGGINS LAY on his bed staring at the ceiling. He never slept more than five hours a night—but the lights went off at 2200 and didn’t come on again until 0600. So he stared at the ceiling and thought.
He’d had his army for three and a half weeks. Dragon Army. The name was assigned, and it wasn’t a lucky one. Oh, the charts said that about nine years ago a Dragon Army had done fairly well. But for the next six years the name had been attached to inferior armies, and finally, because of the superstition that was beginning to play about the name, Dragon Army was retired. Until now. And now, Ender thought, smiling, Dragon Army was going to take them by surprise.
The door opened quietly. Ender did not turn his head. Someone stepped softly into his room, then left with the sound of the door shutting. When soft steps died away Ender rolled over and saw a white slip of paper lying on the floor. He reached down and picked it up.
“Dragon Army against Rabbit Army, Ender Wiggins and Carn Carby, 0700.”
The first battle. Ender got out of bed and quickly dressed. He went rapidly to the rooms of each of his toon leaders and told them to rouse their boys. In five minutes they were all gathered in the corridor, sleepy and slow. Ender spoke softly.
“First battle, 0700 against Rabbit Army. I’ve fought them twice before but they’ve got a new commander. Never heard of him. They’re an older group, though, and I know a few of their old tricks. Now wake up. Run, doublefast, warmup in workroom three.”
For an hour and a half they worked out, with three mock battles and calisthenics in the corridor out of the nullo. Then for fifteen minutes they all lay up in the air, totally relaxing in the weightlessness. At 0650 Ender roused them and they hurried into the corridor. Ender led them down the corridor, running again, and occasionally leaping to touch a light panel on the ceiling. The boys all touched the same light panel. And at 0658 they reached their gate to the battleroom.
The members of toons C and D grabbed the first eight handholds in the ceiling of the corridor. Toons A, B, and E crouched on the floor. Ender hooked his feet into two handholds in the middle of the ceiling, so he was out of everyone’s way.
“Which way is the enemy’s door?” he hissed.
“Down!” they whispered back, and laughed.
“Flashers on.” The boxes in their hands glowed green. They waited for a few seconds more, and then the grey wall in front of them disappeared and the battleroom was visible.
Ender sized it up immediately. The familiar open grid of most early games, like the monkey bars at the park, with seven or eight boxes scattered through the grid. They called the boxes stars. There were enough of them, and in forward enough positions, that they were worth going for. Ender decided this in a second, and he hissed, “Spread to near stars. E hold!”
The four groups in the corners plunged through the forcefield at the doorway and fell down into the battleroom. Before the enemy even appeared through the opposite gate Ender’s army had spread from the door to the nearest stars.
Then the enemy soldiers came through the door. From their stance Ender knew they had been in a different gravity, and didn’t know enough to disorient themselves from it. They came through standing up, their entire bodies spread and defenseless.
“Kill ’em, E!” Ender hissed, and threw himself out the door knees first, with his flasher between his legs and firing. While Ender’s group flew across the room the rest of Dragon Army lay down a protecting fire, so that E group reached a forward position with only one boy frozen completely, though they had all lost the use of their legs—which didn’t impair them in the least. There was a lull as Ender and his opponent, Carn Carnby, assessed their positions. Aside from Rabbit Army’s losses at the gate, there had been few casualties, and both armies were near full strength. But Carn had no originality—he was in a four-corner spread that any five-year-old in the teacher squads might have thought of. And Ender knew how to defeat it.
He called out, loudly, “E covers A, C down. B, D angle east wall.” Under E toon’s cover, B and D toons lunged away from their stars. While they were still exposed, A and C toons left their stars and drifted toward the near wall. They reached it together, and together jackknifed off the wall. At double the normal speed they appeared behind the enemy’s stars, and opened fire. In a few seconds the battle was over, with the enemy almost entirely frozen, including the commander, and the rest scattered to the corners. For the next five minutes, in squads of four, Dragon Army cleaned out the dark corners of the battleroom and shepherded the enemy into the center, where their bodies, frozen at impossible angles, jostled each other. Then Ender took three of his boys to the enemy gate and went through the formality of reversing the one-way field by simultaneously touching a Dragon Army helmet at each corner. Then Ender assembled his army in vertical files near the knot of frozen Rabbit Army soldiers.
Only three of Dragon Army’s soldiers were immobile. Their victory margin—38 to 0—was ridiculously high, and Ender began to laugh. Dragon Army joined him, laughing long and loud. They were still laughing when Lieutenant Anderson and Lieutenant Morris came in from the teachergate at the south end of the battleroom.
Lieutenant Anderson kept his face stiff and unsmiling, but Ender saw him wink as he held out his hand and offered the stiff, formal congratulations that were ritually given to the victor in the game.
Morris found Carn Carby and unfroze him, and the thirteen-year-old came and presented himself to Ender, who laughed without malice and held out his hand. Carn graciously took Ender’s hand and bowed his head over it. It was that or be flashed again.
Lieutenant Anderson dismissed Dragon Army, and they silently left the battleroom through the enemy’s door—again part of the ritual. A light was blinking on the north side of the square door, indicating where the gravity was in that corridor. Ender, leading his soldiers, changed his orientation and went through the forcefield and into gravity on his feet. His army followed him at a brisk run back to the workroom. When they got there they formed up into squads, and Ender hung in the air, watching them.