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Orson Scott Card |
Featured Excerpt
From Ender’s Game (1985)
“But what about the League? What about the buggers?” Valentine didn’t know what Peter was getting at, but he often launched discussions like this, practical discussions of world events. He used her to test his ideas, to refine them. In the process, she also refined her own thinking. She found that while she rarely agreed with Peter about what the world ought to be, they rarely disagreed about what the world actually was. They had become quite deft at sifting accurate information out of the stories of the hopelessly ignorant, gullible news writers. The news herd, as Peter called them.
“The Polemarch is Russian, isn’t he? And he knows what’s happening with the fleet. Either they’ve found out the buggers aren’t a threat after all, or we’re about to have a big battle. One way or another, the bugger war is about to be over. They’re moving troops, it must be under the direction of the Strategos.”
“It’s all internal, within the Warsaw Pact.”
This was troubling. The façade of peace and cooperation had been undisturbed almost since the bugger wars began. What Peter had detected was a fundamental shift in the world order. She had a mental picture, as clear as memory, of the way the world had been before the buggers forced peace upon them. “So it’s back to the way it was before.”
“A few changes. The shields make it so nobody bothers with nuclear weapons anymore. We have to kill each other thousands at a time instead of millions.” Peter grinned. “Val, it was bound to happen. Right now there’s a vast international fleet and army in existence, with North American hegemony. When the bugger wars are over, all that power will vanish, because it’s all built on fear of the buggers. And suddenly we’ll look around and discover that all the old alliances are gone, dead and gone, except one, the Warsaw Pact. And it’ll be the dollar against the five million lasers. We’ll have the asteroid belt, but they’ll have Earth, and you run out of raisins and celery kind of fast out there, without Earth.”
What disturbed Valentine most of all was that Peter did not seem at all worried. “Peter, why do I get the idea that you are thinking of this as a golden opportunity for Peter Wiggin?”
“For both of us, Val.”
“Peter, you’re twelve years old. I’m ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.”
“But we don’t think like other children, do we, Val? We don’t talk like other children. And above all, we don’t write like other children.”
“For a discussion that began with death threats, Peter, we’ve strayed from the topic, I think.” Still, Valentine found herself getting excited. Writing was something Val did better than Peter. They both knew it. Peter had even named it once, when he said that he could always see what other people hated most about themselves, and bully them, while Val could always see what other people liked best about themselves, and flatter them. It was a cynical way of putting it, but it was true. Valentine could persuade other people to her point of view—she could convince them that they wanted what she wanted them to want. Peter, on the other hand, could only make them fear what he wanted them to fear. When he first pointed this out to Val, she resented it. She had wanted to believe she was good at persuading people because she was right, not because she was clever. But no matter how much she told herself that she didn’t ever want to exploit people the way Peter did, she enjoyed knowing that she could, in her way, control other people. And not just control what they did. She could control, in a way, what they wanted to do. She was ashamed that she took pleasure in this power, and yet she found herself using it sometimes. To get teachers to do what she wanted, and other students. To get Mother and Father to see things her way. Sometimes, she was able to persuade even Peter. That was the most frightening thing of all—that she could understand Peter well enough, could empathize with him enough to get inside him that way. There was more Peter in her than she could bear to admit, though sometimes she dared to think about it anyway. This is what she thought as Peter spoke: You dream of power, Peter, but in my own way I am more powerful than you.
“I’ve been studying history,” Peter said. “I’ve been learning things about patterns in human behavior. There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world. Think what Pericles did in Athens, and Demosthenes—”
“Yes, they managed to wreck Athens twice.”
“Pericles, yes, but Demosthenes was right about Philip—”
“Or provoked him—”
“See? This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in a flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismarck. Lenin.”
“Not exactly parallel cases, Peter.” Now she was disagreeing with him out of habit; she saw what he was getting at, and she thought it might just be possible.
“I didn’t take you to understand. You still believe that teachers know something worth learning.”
I understand more than you think, Peter. “So you see yourself as Bismarck?”
“I see myself as knowing how to insert ideas into the public mind. Haven’t you ever thought of a phrase, Val, a clever thing to say, and said it, and then two weeks or a month later you hear some adult saying it to another adult, both of them strangers? Or you see it on a video or pick it up on a net?”
“I always figured I heard it before and only thought I was making it up.”
“You were wrong. There are maybe two or three thousand people in the world as smart as us, little sister. Most of them are making a living somewhere. Teaching, the poor bastards, or doing research. Precious few of them are actually in positions of power.”
“I guess we’re the lucky few.”
“Funny as a one-legged rabbit, Val.”
“Of which there are no doubt several in these woods.”
“Hopping in neat little circles.”
Valentine laughed at the gruesome image and hated herself for thinking it was funny.
“Val, we can say the words that everyone else will be saying two weeks later. We can do that. We don’t have to wait until we’re grown up and safely put away in some career.”
“Peter, you’re twelve.”
“Not on the nets I’m not. On the nets I can name myself anything I want, and so can you.”
“On the nets we are clearly identified as students, and we can’t even get into the real discussions except in audience mode, which means we can’t say anything anyway.”
“I have a plan.”
“You always do.” She pretended nonchalance, but she listened eagerly.
“We can get on the nets as full-fledged adults, with whatever net names we want to adopt, if Father gets us onto his citizen’s access.”
“And why would he do that? We already have student access. What do you tell him, I need citizen’s access so I can take over the world?”
“No, Val. I won’t tell him anything. You’ll tell him how you’re worried about me. How I’m trying so very hard to do well at school, but you know it’s driving me crazy because I can never talk to anybody intelligent, everybody always talks down to me because I’m young, I never get to converse with my peers. You can prove that the stress is getting to me. There’s even evidence.”
Valentine though of the corpse of the squirrel in the woods and realized that even that discovery was part of Peter’s plan. Or at least he had made it part of his plan, after it happened.
“So you get him to authorize us to share his citizen’s access. To adopt our own identities there, to conceal who we are so people will give us the intellectual respect we deserve.”
Valentine could challenge him on ideas, but never on things like this. She could not say, What makes you think you deserve respect? She had read about Adolf Hitler. She wondered what he was like at the age of twelve. Not this smart, not like Peter that way, but craving honor, probably that. And what would it have meant to the world if in childhood he had been caught in a thresher or trampled by a horse?
“Val,” Peter said. “I know what you think of me. I’m not a nice person, you think.”
Valentine threw a pine needle at him. “An arrow through your heart.”
“I’ve been planning to come talk to you for a long time. But I kept being afraid.”
She put a pine needle in her mouth and blew it at him. It dropped almost straight down. “Another failed launch.” Why was he pretending to be weak?
“Val, I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me. That you wouldn’t believe I could do it.”
“Peter, I believe you could do anything, and probably will.”
“But I was even more afraid that you’d believe me and try to stop me.”
“Come on, threaten to kill me again, Peter.” Did he actually believe she could be fooled by his nice-and-humble-kid act?
“So I’ve got a sick sense of humor. I’m sorry. You know I was teasing. I need your help.”
“You’re just what the world needs. A twelve-year-old to solve all our problems.”
“It’s not my fault I’m twelve right now. And it’s not my fault that right now is when the opportunity is open. Right now is the time when I can shape events. The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win. Everybody thinks Hitler got to power because of his armies, because they were willing to kill, and that’s partly true, because in the real world power is always built on the threat of death and dishonor. But mostly he got to power on words, on the right words at the right time.”
“I was just thinking of comparing you to him.”
“I don’t hate Jews, Val. I don’t want to destroy anybody. And I don’t want war, either. I want the world to hold together. Is that so bad? I don’t want us to go back to the old way. Have you read about the world wars?”
“Yes.”
“We can go back to that again. Or worse. We could find ourselves locked into the Warsaw Pact. Now, there’s a cheerful thought.”
“Peter, we’re children, don’t you understand that? We’re going to school, we’re growing up—” But even as she resisted, she wanted him to persuade her. She had wanted him to persuade her from the beginning.
But Peter didn’t know that he had already won. “If I believe that, if I accept that, then I’ve got to sit back and watch while all the opportunities vanish, and then when I’m old enough it’s too late. Val, listen to me, I know how you feel about me, you always have. I was a vicious, nasty brother. I was cruel to you and crueler to Ender before they took him. But I didn’t hate you. I loved you both, I just had to be—had to have control, do you understand that? It’s the most important thing to me, it’s my greatest gift, I can see where the weak points are, I can see how to get in and use them. I just see those things without even trying. I could become a businessman and run some big corporation. I’d scramble and maneuver until I was at the top of everything and what would I have? Nothing. I’m going to rule, Val, I’m going to have control of something. But I want it to be something worth ruling. I want to accomplish something worthwhile. A Pax Americana through the whole world. So that when somebody else comes, after we beat the buggers, when somebody else comes here to defeat us, they’ll find we’ve already spread over a thousand worlds, we’re at peace with ourselves and impossible to destroy. Do you understand? I want to save mankind from self-destruction.”
She had never seen him speak with such sincerity. With no hint of mockery, no trace of a lie in his voice. He was getting better at this. Or maybe he was actually touching on the truth. “So a twelve-year-old boy and his kid sister are going to save the world?”
“How old was Alexander? I’m not going to do it overnight. I’m just going to start now. If you’ll help me.”
“I don’t believe what you did to those squirrels was part of an act. I think you did it because you love to do it.”
Suddenly Peter wept into his hands. Val assumed that he was pretending, but then she wondered. It was possible, wasn’t it, that he loved her, and that in this time of terrifying opportunity he was willing to weaken himself before her in order to win her love. He’s manipulating me, she thought, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t sincere. His cheeks were wet when he took his hands away, his eyes rimmed in red. “I know,” he said. “It’s what I’m most afraid of. That I really am a monster. I don’t want to be a killer but I just can’t help it.”
She had never seen him show such weakness. You’re so clever, Peter. You saved your weakness so you could use it to move me now.
And yet it did move her. Because if it were true, even partly true, then Peter was not a monster, and so she could satisfy her Peter-like love of power without fear of becoming monstrous herself. She knew that Peter was calculating even now, but she believed that under the calculations he was telling the truth. It had been hidden layers deep, but he had probed her until he found her trust.
“Val, if you don’t help me, I don’t know what I’ll become. But if you’re there, my partner in everything, you can keep me from becoming—like that. Like the bad ones.”
She nodded. You are only pretending to share power with me, she thought, but in fact I have power over you, even though you don’t know it. “I will. I’ll help you.”
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Additional Excerpts
From Ender’s Game (1985)
« 02 »
He was still in the corridor leading out of the battleroom when he found himself face to face with little Bean. Bean looked angry. Ender didn’t want problems right now.
“Ho, Bean.”
“Ho, Ender.”
Pause.
“Sir,” Ender said softly.
“I know what you’re doing, Ender, sir, and I’m warning you.”
“Warning me?”
“I can be the best man you’ve got, but don’t play games with me.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll be the worst man you’ve got. One or the other.”
“And what do you want, love and kisses?” Ender was getting angry now.
Bean looked unworried. “I want a toon.”
Ender walked back to him and stood looking down into his eyes. “Why should I give you a toon?”
“Because I’d know what to do with it.”
“Knowing what to do with a toon is easy,” Ender said. “It’s getting them to do it that’s hard. Why would any soldier want to follow a little pinprick like you?”
“They used to call you that, I hear. I hear Bonzo Madrid still does.”
“I asked you a question, soldier.”
“I’ll earn their respect, sir, if you don’t stop me.”
Ender grinned. “I’m helping you.”
“Like hell,” said Bean.
“Nobody would notice you, except to feel sorry for the little kid. But I made sure they all noticed you today. They’ll be watching every move you make. All you have to do to earn their respect now is be perfect.”
“So I don’t even get a chance to learn before I’m being judged.”
“Poor kid. Nobody’s treatin’ him fair.” Ender gently pushed Bean back against the wall. “I’ll tell you how to get a toon. Prove to me you know what you’re doing as a soldier. Prove to me you know how to use other soldiers. And then prove to me that somebody’s willing to follow you into battle. Then you’ll get your toon. But not bloody well until.”
Bean smiled. “That’s fair. If you actually work that way, I’ll be a toon leader in a month.”
Ender reached down and grabbed the front of his uniform and shoved him into the wall. “When I say I work a certain way, Bean, then that’s the way I work.”
Bean just smiled. Ender let go of him and walked away. When he got to his room he lay down on his bed and trembled. What am I doing? My first practice session, and I’m already bullying people the way Bonzo did. And Peter. Shoving people around. Picking on some poor little kid so the others’ll have somebody they all hate. Sickening. Everything I hated in a commander, and I’m doing it.
Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was? I can quit right now, if that’s so.
Over and over he thought of the things he did and said in his first practice with his new army. Why couldn’t he talk like he always did in his evening practice group? No authority except excellence. Never had to give orders, just made suggestions. But that wouldn’t work, not with an army. His informal practice group didn’t have to learn to do things together. They didn’t have to develop a group feeling; they never had to learn how to hold together and trust each other in battle. They didn’t have to respond instantly to commands.
And he could go to the other extreme, too. He could be as lax and incompetent as Rose the Nose, if he wanted. He could make stupid mistakes no matter what he did. He had to have discipline, and that meant demanding—and getting—quick, decisive obedience. He had to have a well-trained army, and that meant drilling the soldiers over and over again, long after they thought they had mastered a technique, until it was so natural to them that they didn’t have to think about it anymore.
But what was this thing with Bean? Why had he gone for the smallest, weakest, and possibly the brightest of the boys? Why had he done to Bean what had been done to Ender by commanders that he despised?
Then he remembered that it hadn’t begun with his commanders. Before Rose and Bonzo treated him with contempt, he had been isolated in his launch group. And it wasn’t Bernard who began that, either. It was Graff.
It was the teachers who had done it. It was a strategy. Graff had deliberately set him up to be separate from the other boys, made it impossible for him to be close to them. And he began now to suspect the reason behind it. It wasn’t to unify the rest of the group—in fact, it was divisive. Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else. That was the only way he could win respect and friendship. It made him a better soldier than he would ever have been otherwise. It also made him lonely, afraid, angry, untrusting. And maybe those traits, too, made him a better soldier.
That’s what I’m doing to you, Bean. I’m hurting you to make you a better soldier in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what’s going to happen next, so you always have to be ready for anything, ready to improvise, determined to win no matter what. I’m also making you miserable. That’s why they brought you to me, Bean. So you could be just like me. So you could grow up to be just like the old man.
And me—am I supposed to grow up like Graff? Fat and sour and unfeeling, manipulating the lives of little boys so they turn out factory perfect, generals and admirals ready to lead the fleet in defense of the homeland? You get all the pleasures of the puppeteer. Until you get a soldier who can do more than anyone else. You can’t have that. It spoils the symmetry. You must get him in line, break him down, isolate him, beat him until he gets in line with everyone else.
Well, what I’ve done to you this day, Bean, I’ve done. But I’ll be watching you, more compassionately than you know, and when the time is right you’ll find that I’m your friend, and you are the soldier you want to be.
« 03 »
Valentine waited nervously outside the principal’s office until Dr. Lineberry opened the door and beckoned her inside. Her last doubt was removed when she saw the soft-bellied man in the uniform of an I.F. colonel sitting in the one comfortable chair in the room.
“You’re Valentine Wiggin,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I’m Colonel Graff. We’ve met before.”
Before? When had she had any dealings with the I.F.?
“I’ve come to talk to you in confidence, about your brother.”
It’s not just me, then, she thought. They have Peter. Or is this something new? Has he done something crazy? I thought he stopped doing crazy things.
“Valentine, you seem frightened. There’s no need to be. Please, sit down. I assure you that your brother is well. He has more than fulfilled our expectations.”
And now, with a great inward gush of relief, she realized that it was Ender they had come about. This must be the officer who had taken him away. Ender. It wasn’t punishment at all, it was little Ender, who had disappeared so long ago, who was no part of Peter’s plots now. You were the lucky one, Ender. You got away before Peter could trap you into his conspiracy.
“How do you feel about your brother, Valentine?”
“Ender?”
“Of course.”
“How can I feel about him? I haven’t seen him orr heard from him since I was eight.”
“Dr. Lineberry, will you excuse us?”
Lineberry was annoyed.
“On second thought. Dr. Lineberry, I think Valentine and I will have a much more productive conversation if we walk. Outside. Away from the recording devices that your assistant principal has placed in this room.”
It was the first time Valentine had seen Dr. Lineberry speechless. Colonel Graff lifted a picture out from the wall and peeled a sound-sensitive membrane from the wall, along with its small broadcast unit. “Cheap,” said Graff, “but effective. I thought you knew.”
Lineberry took the device and sat down heavily at her desk. Graff led Valentine outside.
They walked out into the football field. The soldiers followed at a discreet distance; they split up and formed a large circle, to guard them from the widest possible perimeter.
“Valentine, we need your help for Ender.”
“What kind of help?”
“We aren’t even sure of that. We need you to help us figure out how you can help us.”
“Well, what’s wrong?”
“That’s part of the problem. We don’t know.”
Valentine couldn’t help but laugh. “I haven’t seen him in three years! You’ve got him up there with you all the time!”
“Valentine, it costs more money than your father will make in his lifetime for me to fly to Earth and back to the Battle School again. I don’t commute casually.”
“The king had a dream,” said Valentine, “but he forgot what it was, so he told his wise men to interpret the dream or they’d die. Only Daniel could interpret it, because he was a prophet.”
“You read the Bible?”
“We’re doing classics this year in advanced English. I’m not a prophet.”
“I wish I could tell you everything about Ender’s situation. But it would take hours, maybe days, and afterward I’d have to put you in protective confinement because so much of it is strictly confidential. So let’s see what we can do with limited information. There’s a game that our students play with the computer.” And he told her about the End of the World and the closed room and the picture of Peter in the mirror.
“It’s the computer that puts the picture there, not Ender. Why not ask the computer?”
“The computer doesn’t know.”
“I’m supposed to know?”
“This is the second time since Ender’s been with us that he’s taken this game to a dead end. To a game that seems to have no solution.”
“Did he solve the first one?”
“Eventually.”
“Then give him time, he’ll probably solve this one.”
“I’m not sure, Valentine, your brother is a very unhappy little boy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
Valentine thought for a moment that the man might get angry. Instead, though, he decided to laugh. “No, not much. Valentine, why would Ender keep seeing your brother Peter in the mirror?”
“He shouldn’t. It’s stupid.”
“Why is it stupid?”
“Because if there’s ever anybody who was the opposite of Ender, it’s Peter.”
“How?”
Valentine could not think of a way to answer him that wasn’t dangerous. Too much questioning about Peter could lead to real trouble. Valentine knew enought about the world to know that no one would take Peter’s plan for world domination seriously, as a danger to existing governments. But they might well decide he was insane and needed treatment for his megalomania.
“You’re preparing to lie to me,” Graff said.
“I’m preparing not to talk to you anymore,” Valentine answered.
“And you’re afraid. Why are you afraid?”
“I don’t like the questions about my family. Just leave my family out of this.”
“Valentine, I’m trying to leave your family out of this. I’m coming to you so I don’t have to start a battery of tests on Peter and question your parents. I’m trying to solve this problem now, with the person Ender loves and trusts most in the world, perhaps the only person he loves and trusts at all. If we can’t solve it this way, then we’ll sequester your family and do as we like from then on. This is not a trivial matter, and I won’t just go away.”
The only person Ender loves and trusts at all. She felt a deep stab of pain, of regret, of shame that now it was Peter she was close to, Peter who was the centor of her life. For you, Ender, I light fires on your birthday. For Peter I help fulfil all his dreams. “I never thought you were a nice man. Not when you came to take Ender away, and not now.”
“Don’t pretend to be an ignorant little girl. I saw your tests when you were little, and at the present moment there aren’t very many college professors who could keep up with you.”
“Ender and Peter hate each other.”
“I knew that. You said they were opposites. Why?”
“Peter—can be hateful sometimes.”
“Hateful in what way?”
“Mean. Just mean, that’s all.”
“Valentine, for Ender’s sake, tell me what he does when he’s being mean.”
He threatens to kill people a lot. He doesn’t mean it. But when we were little, Ender and I were both afraid of him. He told us he’d kill us. Actually, he told us he’d kill Ender.”
“We monitored some of that.”
“It was because of the monitor.”
“Is that all? Tell me more about Peter.”
So she told him about the children in every school that Peter attended. He never hit them, but he tortured them just the same. Found what they were most ashamed of and told it to the person whose respect they most wanted. Found what they most feared and made sure they faced it often.
“Did he do this with Ender?”
Valentine shook her head.
“Are you sure? Didn’t Ender have a weak place? A thing he feared most, or that he was ashamed of?”
“Ender never did anything to be ashamed of.” And suddenly, deep in her own shame for having forgotten and betrayed Ender, she started to cry.
“Why are you crying?”
She shook her head. She couldn’t explain what it was like to think of her little brother, who was so good, whom she had protected for so long, and then remember that now she was Peter’s ally. Peter’s helper, Peter’s slave in a scheme that was completely out of her control. Ender never surrendered to Peter, but I have turned, I’ve become part of him, as Ender never was. “Ender never gave in,” she said.
“To what?”
“To Peter. To being like Peter.”
They walked in silence along the goal line.
“How would Ender ever be like Peter?”
Valentine shuddered. “I already told you.”
“But Ender never did that kind of thing. He was just a little boy.”
“We both wanted to, though. We both wanted to—to kill Peter.”
“Ah.”
“No, that wasn’t true. We never said it. Ender never said that he wanted to do that. I just—thought it. It was me, not Ender. He never said that he wanted to kill him.”
“What did he want?”
“He just didn’t want to be—”
“To be what?”
“Peter tortures squirrels. He stakes them out on the ground and skins them alive and sits and watches them until they die. He did that for a while, after Ender left; he doesn’t do it now. But he did it. If Ender knew that, if Ender saw him, I think that he’d—”
“He’d what? Rescue the squirrels? Try to heal them?”
“No, in those days you didn’t—undo what Peter did. You didn’t cross him. But Ender would be kind to squirrels. Do you understand? He’d feed them.”
“But if he fed them, they’d become tame, and that much easier for Peter to catch.”
Valentine began to cry again. “No matter what you do, it always helps Peter. Everything helps Peter, everything, you just can’t get away, no matter what.”
“Are you helping Peter?” asked Graff.
She didn’t answer.
“Is Peter such a very bad person, Valentine?”
She nodded.
“Is Peter the worst person in the world?”
“How can he be? I don’t know. He’s the worst person I know.”
“And yet you and Ender are his brother and sister. You have the same genes, the same parents, how can he be so bad if—”
Valentine turned and screamed at him, screamed as if he were killing her. “Ender is not like Peter! He is not like Peter in any way! Except that he’s smart, that’s all—in every other way a person could possibly be like Peter he is nothing nothing nothing like Peter! Nothing!”
“I see,” said Graff.
“I know what you’re thinking, you bastard, you’re thinking that I’m wrong, that Ender’s like Peter. Well maybe I’m like Peter, but Ender isn’t, he isn’t at all, I used to tell him that when he cried, I told him that lots of times, you’re not like Peter, you never like to hurt people, you’re kind and good and not like Peter at all!”
“And it’s true.”
His acquiescence calmed her. “Damn right it’s true. It’s true.”
“Valentine, will you help Ender?”
“I can’t do anything for him now.”
“It’s really the same thing you always did for him before. Just comfort him and tell him that he never likes to hurt people, that he’s good and kind and not like Peter at all. That’s the most important thing. That he’s not like Peter at all.”
“I can see him?”
“No. I want you to write a letter.”
“What good does that do? Ender never answered a single letter I sent.”
Graff sighed. “He answered every letter he got.”
It took only a second for her to understand. “You really stink.”
“Isolation is—the optimum environment for creativity. It was his ideas we wanted, not the—never mind, I don’t have to defend myself to you.”
Then why are you doing it, she did not ask.
“But he’s slacking off. He’s coasting. We want to push him forward, and he won’t go.”
“Maybe I’d be doing Ender a favor if I told you to go stuff yourself.”
“You’ve already helped me. You can help me more. Write to him.”
“Promise me you won’t cut out anything I write.”
“I won’t promise any such thing.”
“Then forget it.”
“No problem. I’ll write your letter myself. We can use your other letters to reconcile the writing styles. Simple matter.”
“I want to see him.”
“He gets his first leave when he’s eighteen.”
“You told him it would be when he was twelve.”
“We changed the rules.”
“Why should I help you!”
“Don’t help me. Help Ender. What does it matter if that helps us, too?”
“What kind of terrible things are you doing to him up there?”
Graff chuckled. “Valentine, my dear little girl, the terrible things are only about to begin.”