Graff's smile grew even broader. "That's just what I told the . . . officer who assigned me to talk to you and ask these questions. I told him that we would end up telling you more, just by having the interview, than you would ever tell us, but he said, 'The kid is six, Colonel Graff.' "
"I think I'm seven."
"He was working from an old report and hadn't done the math."
"Just tell me what secret you want to make sure I don't know, and I'll tell you if I already knew it."
"Very helpful."
"Colonel Graff, am I doing a good job?"
"Absurd question. Of course you are."
"If I do know anything that you don't want us kids to know, have I talked about it? Have I told any of the other kids? Has it affected my performance in any way?"
"No."
"To me that sounds like a tree falling in the forest where no one can hear. If I do know something, because I figured it out, but I'm not telling anybody else, and it's not affecting my work, then why would you waste time finding out whether I know it? Because after this conversation, you may be sure that I'll be looking very hard for any secret that might be lying around where a seven-year-old might find it. Even if I do find such a secret, though, I still won't tell the other kids, so it still won't make a difference. So why don't we just drop it?"
Graff reached under the table and pressed something.
"All right," said Graff. "They've got the recording of our conversation and if that doesn't reassure them, nothing will."
"Reassure them of what? And who is 'them'?"
"Bean, this part is not being recorded."
"Yes it is," said Bean.
"I turned it off."
"Puh-leeze."
In fact, Graff was not altogether sure that the recording was off. Even if the machine he controlled was off, that didn't mean there wasn't another.
"Let's walk," said Graff.
"I hope not outside."
Graff got up from the table--laboriously, because he'd put on a lot of weight and they kept Eros at full gravity--and led the way out into the tunnels.
As they walked, Graff talked softly. "Let's at least make them work for it," he said.
"Fine," said Bean.
"I thought you'd want to know that the I.F. is going crazy because of an apparent security leak. It seems that someone with access to the most secret archives wrote letters to a couple of net pundits who then started agitating for the children of Battle School to be sent home to their native countries."
"What's a pundit?" asked Bean.
"My turn to say puh-leeze, I think. Look, I'm not accusing you. I just happen to have seen a text of the letters sent to Locke and Demosthenes--they're both being closely watched, as I'm sure you would expect--and when I read those letters--interesting the differences between them, by the way, very cleverly done--I realized that there was not really any top secret information in there, beyond what any child in Battle School knows. No, the thing that's really making them crazy is that the political analysis is dead on, even though it's based on insufficient information. From what is publicly known, in other words, the writer of those letters couldn't have figured out what he figured out. The Russians are claiming that somebody's been spying on them--and lying about what they found, of course. But I accessed the library on the destroyer Condor and found out what you were reading. And then I checked your library use on the ISL while you were in Tactical School. You've been a busy boy."
"I try to keep my mind occupied."
"You'll be happy to know that the first group of children has already been sent home."
"But the war's not over."
"You think that when you start a political snowball rolling, it will always go where you wanted it to go? You're smart but you're naive, Bean. Give the universe a push, and you don't know which dominoes will fall. There are always a few you never thought were connected. Someone will always push back a little harder than you expected. But still, I'm happy that you remembered the other children and set the wheels in motion to free them."
"But not us."
"The I.F. has no obligation to remind the agitators on Earth that Tactical School and Command School are still full of children."
"I'm not going to remind them."
"I know you won't. No, Bean, I got a chance to talk to you because you panicked some of the higher-ups with your educated guess about who would command your team. But I was hoping for a chance to talk to you because there are a couple of things I wanted to tell you. Besides the fact that your letter had pretty much the desired effect."
"I'm listening, though I admit to no letter."
"First, you'll be fascinated to know the identity of Locke and Demosthenes."
"Identity? Just one?"
"One mind, two voices. You see, Bean, Ender Wiggin was born third in his family. A special waiver, not an illegal birth. His older brother and sister are just as gifted as he is, but for various reasons were deemed inappropriate for Battle School. But the brother, Peter Wiggin, is a very ambitious young man. With the military closed off to him, he's gone into politics. Twice."
"He's Locke and Demosthenes," said Bean.
"He plans the strategy for both of them, but he only writes Locke. His sister Valentine writes Demosthenes."
Bean laughed. "Now it makes sense."
"So both your letters went to the same people."
"If I wrote them."
"And it's driving poor Peter Wiggin crazy. He's really tapping into all his sources inside the fleet to find out who sent those letters. But nobody in the Fleet knows, either. The six officers whose log-ins you used have been ruled out. And as you can guess, nobody is checking to see if the only seven-year-old ever to go to Tactical School might have dabbled in political epistolary in his spare time."
"Except you."
"Because, by God, I'm the only person who understands exactly how brilliant you children actually are."
"How brilliant are we?" Bean grinned.
"Our walk won't last forever, and I won't waste time on flattery. The other thing I wanted to tell you is that Sister Carlotta, being unemployed after you left, devoted a lot of effort to tracking down your parentage. I can see two officers approaching us right now who will put an end to this unrecorded conversation, and so I'll be brief. You have a name, Bean. You are Julian Delphiki."
"That's Nikolai's last name."
"Julian is the name of Nikolai's father. And of your father. Your mother's name is Elena. You are identical twins. Your fertilized eggs were implanted at different times, and your genes were altered in one very small but significant way. So when you look at Nikolai, you see yourself as you would have been, had you not been genetically altered, and had you grown up with parents who loved you and cared for you."
"Julian Delphiki," said Bean.
"Nikolai is among those already heading for Earth. Sister Carlotta will see to it that, when he is repatriated to Greece, he is informed that you are indeed his brother. His parents already know that you exist--Sister Carlotta told them. Your home is a lovely place, a house on the hills of Crete overlooking the Aegean. Sister Carlotta tells me that they are good people, your parents. They wept with joy when they learned that you exist. And now our interview is coming to an end. We were discussing your low opinion of the quality of teaching here at Command School."
"How did you guess."
"You're not the only one who can do that."
The two officers--an admiral and a general, both wearing big false smiles--greeted them and asked how the interview had gone.
"You have the recording," said Graff. "Including the part where Bean insisted that it was still being recorded."
"And yet the interview continued."
"I was telling him," said Bean, "about the incompetence of the teachers here at Command School."
"Incompetence?"
"Our battles are always against exceptionally stupid computer opponents. And then the teachers insist on going through long, tedious a
nalyses of these mock combats, even though no enemy could possibly behave as stupidly and predictably as these simulations do. I was suggesting that the only way for us to get decent competition here is if you divide us into two groups and have us fight each other."
The two officers looked at each other. "Interesting point," said the general.
"Moot," said the admiral. "Ender Wiggin is about to be introduced into your game. We thought you'd want to be there to greet him."
"Yes," said Bean. "I do."
"I'll take you," said the admiral.
"Let's talk," the general said to Graff.
On the way, the admiral said little, and Bean could answer his chat without thought. It was a good thing. For he was in turmoil over the things that Graff had told him. It was almost not a surprise that Locke and Demosthenes were Ender's siblings. If they were as intelligent as Ender, it was inevitable that they would rise into prominence, and the nets allowed them to conceal their identity enough to accomplish it while they were still young. But part of the reason Bean was drawn to them had to be the sheer familiarity of their voices. They must have sounded like Ender, in that subtle way in which people who have lived long together pick up nuances of speech from each other. Bean didn't realize it consciously, but unconsciously it would have made him more alert to those essays. He should have known, and at some level he did know.
But the other, that Nikolai was really his brother--how could he believe that? It was as if Graff had read his heart and found the lie that would penetrate most deeply into his soul and told it to him. I'm Greek? My brother happened to be in my launch group, the boy who became my dearest friend? Twins? Parents who love me?
Julian Delphiki?
No, I can't believe this. Graff has never dealt honestly with us. Graff was the one who did not lift a finger to protect Ender from Bonzo. Graff does nothing except to accomplish some manipulative purpose.
My name is Bean. Poke gave me that name, and I won't give it up in exchange for a lie.
They heard his voice, first, talking to a technician in another room. "How can I work with squadron leaders I never see?"
"And why would you need to see them?" asked the technician.
"To know who they are, how they think--"
"You'll learn who they are and how they think from the way they work with the simulator. But even so, I think you won't be concerned. They're listening to you right now. Put on the headset so you can hear them."
They all trembled with excitement, knowing that he would soon hear their voices as they now heard his.
"Somebody say something," said Petra.
"Wait till he gets the headset on," said Dink.
"How will we know?" asked Vlad.
"Me first," said Alai.
A pause. A new faint hiss in their earphones.
"Salaam," Alai whispered.
"Alai," said Ender.
"And me," said Bean. "The dwarf."
"Bean," said Ender.
Yes, thought Bean, as the others talked to him. That's who I am. That's the name that is spoken by the people who know me.
23
ENDER'S GAME
"General, you are the Strategos. You have the authority to do this, and you have the obligation."
"I don't need disgraced former Battle School commandants to tell me my obligations."
"If you do not arrest the Polemarch and his conspirators--"
"Colonel Graff, if I do strike first, then I will bear the blame for the war that ensues."
"Yes, you would, sir. Now tell me, which would be the better outcome--everybody blames you, but we win the war, or nobody blames you, because you've been stood up against a wall and shot after the Polemarch's coup results in worldwide Russian hegemony?"
"I will not fire the first shot."
"A military commander not willing to strike preemptively when he has firm intelligence--"
"The politics of the thing--"
"If you let them win it's the end of politics!"
"The Russians stopped being the bad guys back in the twentieth century!"
"Whoever is doing the bad things, that's the bad guy. You're the sheriff, sir, whether people approve of you or not. Do your job."
With Ender there, Bean immediately stepped back into his place among the toon leaders. No one mentioned it to him. He had been the leading commander, he had trained them well, but Ender had always been the natural commander of this group, and now that he was here, Bean was small again.
And rightly so, Bean knew. He had led them well, but Ender made him look like a novice. It wasn't that Ender's strategies were better than Bean's--they weren't, really. Different sometimes, but more often Bean watched Ender do exactly what he would have done.
The important difference was in the way he led the others. He had their fierce devotion instead of the ever-so-slightly-resentful obedience Bean got from them, which helped from the start. But he also earned that devotion by noticing, not just what was going on in the battle, but what was going on in his commanders' minds. He was stern, sometimes even snappish, making it clear that he expected better than their best. And yet he had a way of giving an intonation to innocuous words, showing appreciation, admiration, closeness. They felt known by the one whose honor they needed. Bean simply did not know how to do that. His encouragement was always more obvious, a bit heavy-handed. It meant less to them because it felt more calculated. It was more calculated. Ender was just . . . himself. Authority came from him like breath.
They flipped a genetic switch in me and made me an intellectual athlete. I can get the ball into the goal from anywhere on the field. But knowing when to kick. Knowing how to forge a team out of a bunch of players. What switch was it that was flipped in Ender Wiggin's genes? Or is that something deeper than the mechanical genius of the body? Is there a spirit, and is what Ender has a gift from God? We follow him like disciples. We look to him to draw water from the rock.
Can I learn to do what he does? Or am I to be like so many of the military writers I've studied, condemned to be second-raters in the field, remembered only because of their chronicles and explanations of other commanders' genius? Will I write a book after this, telling all about how Ender did it?
Let Ender write that book. Or Graff. I have work to do here, and when it's done, I'll choose my own work and do it as well as I can. If I'm remembered only because I was one of Ender's companions, so be it. Serving with Ender is its own reward.
But ah, how it stung to see how happy the others were, and how they paid no attention to him at all, except to tease him like a little brother, like a mascot. How they must have hated it when he was their leader.
And the worst thing was, that's how Ender treated him, too. Not that any of them were ever allowed to see Ender. But during their long separation, Ender had apparently forgotten how he once relied on Bean. It was Petra that he leaned on most, and Alai, and Dink, and Shen. The ones who had never been in an army with him. Bean and the other toon leaders from Dragon Army were still used, still trusted, but when there was something hard to do, something that required creative flair, Ender never thought of Bean.
Didn't matter. Couldn't think about that. Because Bean knew that along with his primary assignment as one of the squadron chiefs, he had another, deeper work to do. He had to watch the whole flow of each battle, ready to step in at any moment, should Ender falter. Ender seemed not to guess that Bean had that kind of trust from the teachers, but Bean knew it, and if sometimes it made him a little distracted in fulfilling his official assignments, if sometimes Ender grew impatient with him for being a little late, a little inattentive, that was to be expected. For what Ender did not know was that at any moment, if the supervisor signaled him, Bean could take over and continue Ender's plan, watching over all of the squadron leaders, saving the game.
At first, that assignment seemed empty--Ender was healthy, alert. But then came the change.
It was the day after Ender mentioned to them, casually, that he had a different te
acher from theirs. He referred to him as "Mazer" once too often, and Crazy Tom said, "He must have gone through hell, growing up with that name."
"When he was growing up," said Ender, "the name wasn't famous."
"Anybody that old is dead," said Shen.
"Not if he was put on a lightspeed ship for a lot of years and then brought back."
That's when it dawned on them. "Your teacher is the Mazer Rackham?"
"You know how they say he's a brilliant hero?" said Ender.
Of course they knew.
"What they don't mention is, he's a complete hard-ass."
And then the new simulation began and they got back to work.
Next day, Ender told them that things were changing. "So far we've been playing against the computer or against each other. But starting now, every few days Mazer himself and a team of experienced pilots will control the opposing fleet. Anything goes."
A series of tests, with Mazer Rackham himself as the opponent. It smelled fishy to Bean.
These aren't tests, these are setups, preparations for the conditions that might come when they face the actual Bugger fleet near their home planet. The I.F. is getting preliminary information back from the expeditionary fleet, and they're preparing us for what the Buggers are actually going to throw at us when battle is joined.
The trouble was, no matter how bright Mazer Rackham and the other officers might be, they were still human. When the real battle came, the Buggers were bound to show them things that humans simply couldn't think of.
Then came the first of these "tests"--and it was embarrassing how juvenile the strategy was. A big globe formation, surrounding a single ship.
In this battle it became clear that Ender knew things that he wasn't telling them. For one thing, he told them to ignore the ship in the center of the globe. It was a decoy. But how could Ender know that? Because he knew that the Buggers would show a single ship like that, and it was a lie. Which means that the Buggers expect us to go for that one ship.
Except, of course, that this was not really the Buggers, this was Mazer Rackham. So why would Rackham expect the Buggers to expect humans to strike for a single ship?
Bean thought back to those vids that Ender had watched over and over in Battle School--all the propaganda film of the Second Invasion.
They never showed the battle because there wasn't one. Nor did Mazer Rackham command a strike force with a brilliant strategy. Mazer Rackham hit a single ship and the war was over. That's why there's no video of hand-to-hand combat. Mazer Rackham killed the queen. And now he expects the Buggers to show a central ship as a decoy, because that's how we won last time.