Ender’s Game

“Not any more,” she said, taking her hand back.

“Want to swim?”

In answer, she dropped herself over the side of the raft. The water was clear and clean, and there was no chlorine in it. She swam for a while, then returned to the raft and lay on it in the hazy sunlight. A wasp circled her, then landed on the raft beside her head. She knew it was there, and ordinarily would have been afraid of it. But not today. Let it walk on this raft, let it bake in the sun as I’m doing.

Then the raft rocked, and she turned to see Ender calmly crushing the life out of the wasp with one finger. “These are a nasty breed,” Ender said. “They sting you without waiting to be insulted first,” he smiled. “I’ve been learning about preemptive strategies. I’m very good. No one ever beat me. I’m the best soldier they ever had.”

“Who would expect less?” she said. “You’re a Wiggin.”

“Whatever that means,” he said.

“It means that you are going to make a difference in the world.” And she told him what she and Peter were doing.

“How old is Peter, fourteen? Already pla

“He thinks he’s Alexander the Great. And why shouldn’t he be? Why shouldn’t you be, too?”

“We can’t both be Alexander.”

“Two faces of the same coin. And I am the metal in between.” Even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. She had shared so much with Peter these last few years that even when she thought she despised him, she understood him. While Ender had been only a memory till now. A very small, fragile boy who needed her protection. Not this cold-eyed, dark-ski

“The trouble with coins is, when one face is up, the other face is down.”

And right now you think you’re down. “They want me to encourage you to go on with your studies.”

“They aren’t studies, they’re games. All games, from begi

“But you can use them, too.”

“Only if they want to be used. Only if they think they’re using you. No, it’s too hard, I don’t want to play anymore. Just when I start to be happy, just when I think I can handle things, they stick in another knife. I keep having nightmares, now that I’m here. I dream I’m in the battleroom, only instead of being weightless, they’re playing games with gravity. They keep changing its direction. So I never end up on the wall I launched for. I never end up where I meant to go. And I keep pleading with them just to let me get to the door, and they won’t let me out, they keep sucking me back in.”

She heard the anger in his voice and assumed it was directed at her. “I suppose that’s what I’m here for. To suck you back in.”

“I didn’t want to see you.”

“They told me.”

“I was afraid that I’d still love you.”

“I hoped that you would.”

“My fear, your wish―both granted.”

“Ender, it really is true. We may be young, but we’re not powerless. We play by their rules long enough, and it becomes our game.” She giggled. “I’m on a presidential commission. Peter is so angry.”

“They don’t let me use the nets. There isn’t a computer in the place, except the household machines that run the security system and the lighting. Ancient things. Installed back a century ago, when they made computers that didn’t hook up with anything. They took away my army, they took away my desk, and you know something? I don’t really mind.”

“You must be good company for yourself.”

“Not me. My memories.”

“Maybe that’s who you are, what you remember.”

“No. My memories of strangers. My memories of the buggers.”

Valentine shivered, as if a cold breeze had suddenly passed. “I refuse to watch the bugger vids anymore. They’re always the same.

“I used to study them for hours. The way their ships move through space. And something fu

“Maybe it’s a secret weapon.”

“No, no, I don’t care about how we killed them. It’s the buggers themselves. I don’t know anything about them, and yet someday I’m supposed to fight them. I’ve been through a lot of fights in my life, sometimes games, sometimes―not games. Every time, I’ve won because I could understand the way my enemy thought. From what they did. I could tell what they thought I was doing, how they wanted the battle to take shape. And I played off of that. I’m very good at that. Understanding how other people think.”

“The curse of the Wiggin children.” She joked, but it frightened her, that Ender might understand her as completely as he did his enemies. Peter always understood her, or at least thought he did, but he was such a moral sinkhole that she never had to feel embarrassed when he guessed even her worst thoughts. But Ender―she did not want him to understand her. It would make her naked before him. She would be ashamed. “You don’t think you can beat the buggers unless you know them.”

“It goes deeper than that. Being here alone with nothing to do, I’ve been thinking about myself, too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.”

“No, Ender.”

“Don’t tell me ‘No, Ender.’ It took me a long time to realize that I did, but believe me, I did. Do. And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them―”

“You beat them.” For a moment she was not afraid of his understanding.

“No, you don’t understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.”

“Of course you don’t.” And now the fear came again, worse than before. Peter has mellowed, but you, they’ve made you into a killer. Two sides of the same coin, but which side is which?

“I’ve really hurt some people, Val. I’m not making this up.”

“I know, Ender.” How will you hurt me?

“See what I’m becoming, Val?” he said softly. “Even you are afraid of me.” And he touched her cheek so gently that she wanted to cry. Like the touch of his soft baby hand when he was still an infant. She remembered that, the touch of his soft and i

“I’m not,” she said, and in that moment it was true.

“You should be.”

No. I shouldn’t. “You’re going to shrivel up if you stay in the water. Also, the sharks might get you.

He smiled. “The sharks learned to leave me alone a long time ago.” But he pulled himself onto the raft, bringing a wash of water across it as it tipped. It was cold on Valentine’s back.

“Ender, Peter’s going to do it. He’s smart enough to take the time it takes, but he’s going to win his way into power―if not right now, then later. I’m not sure yet whether that’ll be a good thing or a bad thing. Peter can be cruel, but he knows the getting and keeping of power, and there are signs that once the bugger war is over, and maybe even before it ends, the world will collapse into chaos again. The Warsaw Pact was on its way to hegemony before the First Invasion. If they try for it afterward―”

“So even Peter might be a better alternative.”