Ender 01 - Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Author:Orson Scott Card [Card, Orson Scott]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780312932084
Published: 1985-01-10T14:00:00+00:00

11

VENI VIDI VICI

“You can’t be serious about this schedule of battles.”

“Yes I can.”

“He’s only had his army three and a half weeks.”

“I told you. We did computer simulations on probable results. And here is what the computer estimated Ender would do. “

“W e want to teach him, not give him a nervous breakdown.”

“The computer knows him better than we do. ”

“The computer is also not famous for having mercy.”

“If you wanted to be merciful, you should have gone to a monastery.”

“You mean this isn’t a monastery?”

“This is best for Ender, too. We’re bringing him to his full potential.”

“I thought we’d give him two years as commander. We usually give them a battle every two weeks, starting after three months. This is a little extreme.”

“D o we have two years to spare?”

“I know. I just have this picture of Ender a year from now. Completely useless, worn out, because he was pushed farther than he or any living person could go. “

“W e told the computer that our highest priority was having the subject remain useful after the training program.”

“Well, as long as he’s useful—”

“Look, Colonel Graff, you’re the one who made me prepare this, over my protests, if you’ll remember.”

“I know, you’re right, I shouldn’t burden you with my conscience. But my eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind is wearing thin. The Polemarch has been to see the Hegemon. It seems Russian intelligence is concerned that some of the active citizens on the nets are already figuring how America ought to use the I.F. to destroy the Warsaw Pact as soon as the buggers are destroyed.”

“Seems premature.”

“It seems insane. Free speech is one thing, but to jeopardize the League over nationalistic rivalries—and it’s for people like that, short-sighted, suicidal people, that we’re pushing Ender to the edge of human endurance.”

“I think you underestimate Ender.”

“But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?”

“Sir, those words sound like treason.”

“It was black humor.”

“It wasn’t funny. When it comes to the buggers, nothing—”

“Nothing is funny, I know.”

Ender Wiggin lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. Since becoming commander, he never slept more than five hours a night. But the lights went off at 2200 and didn’t come on again until 0600. Sometimes he worked at his desk, anyway, straining his eyes to use the dim display. Usually, though, he stared at the invisible ceiling and thought.

Either the teachers had been kind to him after all, or he was a better commander than he thought. His ragged little group of veterans, utterly without honor in their previous armies, were blossoming into capable leaders. So much so that instead of the usual four toons, he had created five, each with a toon leader and a second; every veteran had a position. He had the army drill in eight-man toon maneuvers and four-man half-toons, so that at a single command, his army could be assigned as many as ten separate maneuvers and carry them out at once.

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