So he leaped back out of the way and stood poised near the door.
The old man stopped thrashing about and sat up, cross-legged again, laughing. Better, this time, boy. But slow. You will have to be better with a fleet than you are with your body or no one will be safe with you in command. Lesson learned?
Ender nodded slowly.
Maezr smiled. Good. Then well never have such a battle again. All the rest with the simulator. I will program your battles, I will devise the strategy of your enemy, and you will learn to be quick and discover what tricks the enemy has for you. Remember, boy. From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.
Then Maezrs face became serious again. You will be about to lose, Ender, but you will win. You will learn to defeat the enemy. He will teach you how.
Maezr got up and walked toward the door. Ender stepped back out of the way. As the old man touched the handle of the door, Ender leaped into the air and kicked Maezr in the small of the back with both feet. He hit hard enough that he rebounded onto his feet, as Maezr cried out and collapsed on the floor.
Maezr got up slowly, holding on to the door handle, his face contorted with pain. He seemed disabled, but Ender didnt trust him. He waited warily. And yet in spite of his suspicion he was caught off guard by Maezrs speed. In a moment he found himself on the floor near the opposite wall, his nose and lip bleeding where his face had hit the bed. He was able to turn enough to see Maezr open the door and leave. The old man was limping and walking slowly.
Ender smiled in spite of the pain, then rolled over onto his back and laughed until his mouth filled with blood and he started to gag. Then he got up and painfully made his way to the bed. He lay down and in a few minutes a medic came and took care of his injuries.
As the drug had its effect and Ender drifted off to sleep he remembered the way Maezr limped out of his room and laughed again. He was still laughing softly as his mind went blank and the medic pulled the blanket over him and snapped off the light. He slept until the pain woke him in the morning. He dreamed of defeating Maezr.
THE NEXT DAY Ender went to the simulator room with his nose bandaged and his lip still puffy. Maezr was not there. Instead, a captain who had worked with him before showed him an addition that had been made. The captain pointed to a tube with a loop at one end. Radio. Primitive, I know, but it loops over your ear and we tuck the other end into your mouth like this.
Watch it, Ender said as the captain pushed the end of the tube into his swollen lip.
Sorry. Now you just talk.
Good. Who to?
The captain smiled. Ask and see.
Ender shrugged and turned to the simulator. As he did a voice reverberated through his skull. It was too loud for him to understand, and he ripped the radio off his ear.
What are you trying to do, make me deaf?
The captain shook his head and turned a dial on a small box on a nearby table. Ender put the radio back on.
Commander, the radio said in a familiar voice.
Ender answered, Yes.
Instructions, sir?
The voice was definitely familiar. Bean? Ender asked.
Yes, sir.
Bean, this is Ender.
Silence. And then a burst of laughter from the other side. Then six or seven more voices laughing, and Ender waited for silence to return. When it did, he asked, Who else?
A few voices spoke at once, but Bean drowned them out. Me, Im Bean, and Peder, Wins, Younger, Lee, and Vlad.
Ender thought for a moment. Then he asked what the hell was going on. They laughed again.
They cant break up the group, Bean said. We were commanders for maybe two weeks, and here we are at Command School, training with the simulator, and all of a sudden they told us we were going to form a fleet with a new commander. And thats you.
Ender smiled. Are you boys any good?
If we arent, youll let us know.
Ender chuckled a little. Might work out. A fleet.
For the next ten days Ender trained his toon leaders until they could maneuver their ships like precision dancers. It was like being back in the battleroom again, except that now Ender could always see everything, and could speak to his toon leaders and change their orders at any time.
One day as Ender sat down at the control board and switched on the simulator, harsh green lights appeared in the spacethe enemy.
This is it, Ender said. X, Y, bullet, C, D, reserve screen, E, south loop, Bean, angle north.
The enemy was grouped in a globe, and outnumbered Ender two to one. Half of Enders force was grouped in a tight, bulletlike formation, with the rest in a flat circular screenexcept for a tiny force under Bean that moved off the simulator, heading behind the enemys formation. Ender quickly learned the enemys strategy: whenever Enders bullet formation came close, the enemy would give way, hoping to draw Ender inside the globe where he would be surrounded. So Ender obligingly fell into the trap, bringing his bullet to the center of the globe.
The enemy began to contract slowly, not wanting to come within range until all their weapons could be brought to bear at once. Then Ender began to work in earnest. His reserve screen approached the outside of the globe, and the enemy began to concentrate his forces there. Then Beans force appeared on the opposite side, and the enemy again deployed ships on that side.
Which left most of the globe only thinly defended. Enders bullet attacked, and since at the point of attack it outnumbered the enemy overwhelmingly, he tore a hole in the formation. The enemy reacted to try to plug the gap, but in the confusion the reserve force and Beans small force attacked simultaneously, with the bullet moved to another part of the globe. In a few more minutes the formation was shattered, most of the enemy ships destroyed, and the few survivors rushing away as fast as they could go.
Ender switched the simulator off. All the lights faded. Maezr was standing beside Ender, his hands in his pockets, his body tense. Ender looked up at him.
I thought you said the enemy would be smart, Ender said.
Maezrs face remained expressionless. What did you learn?
I learned that a sphere only works if your enemys a fool. He had his forces so spread out that I outnumbered him whenever I engaged him.
And?
And, Ender said, you cant stay committed to one pattern. It makes you too easy to predict.
Is that all? Maezr asked quietly.
Ender took off his radio. The enemy could have defeated me by breaking the sphere earlier.
Maezr nodded. You had an unfair advantage.
Ender looked up at him coldly. I was outnumbered two to one.
Maezr shook his head. You have the ansible. The enemy doesnt. We include that in the mock battles. Their messages travel at the speed of light.
Ender glanced toward the simulator. Is there enough space to make a difference?
Dont you know? Maezr asked. None of the ships was ever closer than thirty thousand kilometers to any other.
Ender tried to figure the size of the enemys sphere. Astronomy was beyond him. But now his curiosity was stirred.
What kind of weapons are on those ships? To be able to strike so fast?
Maezr shook his head. The science is too much for you. Youd have to study many more years than youve lived to understand even the basics. All you need to know is that the weapons work.
Why do we have to come so close to be in range?
The ships are all protected by forcefields. A certain distance away the weapons are weaker and cant get through. Closer in the weapons are stronger than the shields. But the computers take care of all that. Theyre constantly firing in any direction that wont hurt one of our ships. The computers pick targets, aim; they do all the detail work. You just tell them when and get them in a position to win. All right?
No. Ender twisted the tube of the radio around his fingers. I have to know how the weapons work.
I told you, it would take
I cant command a fleetnot even on the simulatorunless I know. Ender waited a moment, then added, Just the rough idea.
Maezr stood up and walked a few steps away. All right, Ender. It wont make any sense, but Ill try. As simply as I can. He shoved his hands into his pockets. Its this way, Ender. Everything is made up of atoms, little particles so small you cant see them with your eyes. These atoms, there are only a few different types, and theyre all made up of even smaller particles that are pretty much the same. These atoms can be broken, so that they stop being atoms. So that this metal doesnt hold together anymore. Or the plastic floor. Or your body. Or even the air. They just seem to disappear, if you break the atoms. All thats left is the pieces. And they fly around and break more atoms. The weapons on the ships set up an area where its impossible for atoms of anything to stay together. They all break down. So things in that areathey disappear.
Ender nodded. Youre right, I dont understand it. Can it be blocked?
No. But it gets wider and weaker the farther it goes from the ship, so that after a while a forcefield will block it. OK? And to make it strong at all, it has to be focused, so that a ship can only fire effectively in maybe three or four directions at once.
Ender nodded again, but he didnt really understand, not well enough. If the pieces of the broken atoms go breaking more atoms, why doesnt it just make everything disappear?
Space. Those thousands of kilometers between the ships, theyre empty. Almost no atoms. The pieces dont hit anything, and when they finally do hit something, theyre so spread out they cant do any harm. Maezr cocked his head quizzically. Anything else you need to know?
Do the weapons on the shipsdo they work against anything besides ships?
Maezr moved in close to Ender and said firmly, We only use them against ships. Never anything else. If we used them against anything else, the enemy would use them against us. Got it?
Maezr walked away, and was nearly out the door when Ender called to him.
I dont know your name yet, Ender said blandly.
Maezr Rackham.
Maezr Rackham, Ender said, I defeated you.
Maezr laughed.
Ender, you werent fighting me today, he said. You were fighting the stupidest computer in the Command School, set on a ten-year-old program. You dont think Id use a sphere, do you? He shook his head. Ender, my dear little fellow, when you fight me youll know it. Because youll lose. And Maezr left the room.
ENDER STILL PRACTICED ten hours a day with his toon leaders. He never saw them, though, only heard their voices on the radio. Battles came every two or three days. The enemy had something new every time, something harderbut Ender coped with it. And won every time. And after every battle Maezr would point out mistakes and show Ender that he had really lost. Maezr only let Ender finish so that he would learn to handle the end of the game.
Until finally Maezr came in and solemnly shook Enders hand and said, That, boy, was a good battle.
Because the praise was so long in coming, it pleased Ender more than praise had ever pleased him before. And because it was so condescending, he resented it.
So from now on, Maezr said, we can give you hard ones.
From then on Enders life was a slow nervous breakdown.
He began fighting two battles a day, with problems that steadily grew more difficult. He had been trained in nothing but the game all his life, but now the game began to consume him. He woke in the morning with new strategies for the simulator and went fitfully to sleep at night with the mistakes of the day preying on him. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night crying for a reason he didnt remember. Sometimes he woke with his knuckles bloody from biting them. But every day he went impassively to the simulator and drilled his toon leaders until the battles, and drilled his toon leaders after the battles, and endured and studied the harsh criticism that Maezr Rackham piled on him. He noted that Rackham perversely criticized him more after his hardest battles. He noted that every time he thought of a new strategy the enemy was using it within a few days. And he noted that while his fleet always stayed the same size, the enemy increased in numbers every day.
He asked his teacher.
We are showing you what it will be like when you really command. The ratios of enemy to us.
Why does the enemy always outnumber us?
Maezr bowed his grey head for a moment, as if deciding whether to answer. Finally he looked up and reached out his hand and touched Ender on the shoulder. I will tell you, even though the information is secret. You see, the enemy attacked us first. He had good reason to attack us, but that is a matter for politicians, and whether the fault was ours or his, we could not let him win. So when the enemy came to our worlds, we fought back, hard, and spent the finest of our young men in the fleets. But we won, and the enemy retreated.
Maezr smiled ruefully. But the enemy was not through, boy. The enemy would never be through. They came again, with more numbers, and it was harder to beat them. And another generation of young men was spent. Only a few survived. So we came up with a planthe big men came up with the plan. We knew that we had to destroy the enemy once and for all, totally, eliminate his ability to make war against us. To do that we had to go to his home worldshis home world, really, since the enemys empire is all tied to his capital world.
And so? Ender asked.
And so we made a fleet. We made more ships than the enemy ever had. We made a hundred ships for every ship he had sent against us. And we launched them against his twenty-eight worlds. They started leaving a hundred years ago. And they carried on them the ansible, and only a few men. So that someday a commander could sit on a planet somewhere far from the battle and command the fleet. So that our best minds would not be destroyed by the enemy.
Enders question had still not been answered. Why do they outnumber us?