"Can I cut it into short lengths?"
"With a blowtorch," said Dimak.
"This is what I want."
"Just one?" asked Dap, rather sarcastically.
"And a blowtorch," said Bean.
"Denied," said Dimak.
"I was joking," said Bean. He walked out of the supply room and started jogging down the corridor, retracing the route they had just taken.
They jogged after him. "Slow down!" Dimak called out.
"Keep up!" Bean answered. "I've got a toon waiting for me to train them with this."
"Train them to do what!"
"I don't know!" He got to the pole and slid down. It passed him right through to the student levels. Going this direction, there was no security clearance at all.
His toon was waiting for him in the battleroom. They'd been working hard for him the past few days, trying all kinds of lame things. Formations that could explode in midair. Screens. Attacks without guns, disarming enemies with their feet. Getting into and out of spins, which made them almost impossible to hit but also kept them from shooting at anybody else.
The most encouraging thing was the fact that Ender spent almost the entire practice time watching Bean's squad whenever he wasn't actually responding to questions from leaders and soldiers in the other toons. Whatever they came up with, Ender would know about it and have his own ideas about when to use it. And, knowing that Ender's eyes were on them, Bean's soldiers worked all the harder. It gave Bean more stature in their eyes, that Ender really did care about what they did.
Ender's good at this, Bean realized again for the hundredth time. He knows how to form a group into the shape he wants it to have. He knows how to get people to work together. And he does it by the most minimal means possible.
If Graff were as good at this as Ender, I wouldn't have had to act like such a bully in there today.
The first thing Bean tried with the deadline was to stretch it across the battleroom. It reached, with barely enough slack to allow knots to be tied at both ends. But a few minutes of experimentation showed that it would be completely ineffective as a tripwire. Most enemies would simply miss it; those that did run into it might be disoriented or flipped around, but once it was known that it was there, it could be used like part of a grid, which meant it would work to the advantage of a creative enemy.
The deadline was designed to keep a man from drifting off into space. What happens when you get to the end of the line?
Bean left one end fastened to a handhold in the wall, but coiled the other end around his waist several times. The line was now shorter than the width of the battleroom's cube. Bean tied a knot in the line, then launched himself toward the opposite wall.
As he sailed through the air, the deadline tautening behind him, he couldn't help thinking: I hope they were right about this wire not being capable of cutting. What a way to end – sliced in half in the battleroom. That would be an interesting mess for them to clean up.
When he was a meter from the wall, the line went taut. Bean's forward progress was immediately halted at his waist. His body jacknifed and he felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. But the most surprising thing was the way his inertia was translated from forward movement into a sideways arc that whipped him across the battleroom toward where D toon was practicing. He hit the wall so hard he had what was left of his breath knocked out of him.
"Did you see that!" Bean screamed, as soon as he could breathe. His stomach hurt – he might not have been sliced in half, but he would have a vicious bruise, he knew that at once, and if he hadn't had his flash suit on, he could well believe there would have been internal injuries. But he'd be OK, and the deadline had let him change directions abruptly in midair. "Did you see it! Did you see it!"
"Are you all right!" Ender shouted.
He realized that Ender thought he was injured. Slowing down his speech, Bean called out again, "Did you see how fast I went! Did you see how I changed direction!"
The whole army stopped practice to watch as Bean played more with the deadline. Tying two soldiers together got interesting results when one of them stopped, but it was hard to hold on. More effective was when Bean had Ender use his hook to pull a star out of the wall and put it into the middle of the battleroom. Bean tied himself and launched from the star; when the line went taut, the edge of the star acted as a fulcrum, shortening the length of the line as he changed direction. And as the line wrapped around the star, it shortened even more upon reaching each edge. At the end, Bean was moving so fast that he blacked out for a moment upon hitting the star. But the whole of Dragon Army was stunned at what they had seen. The deadline was completely invisible, so it looked as though this little kid had launched himself and then suddenly started changing direction and speeding up in midflight. It was seriously disturbing to see it.
"Let's do it again, and see if I can shoot while I'm doing it," said Bean.
***
Evening practice didn't end till 2140, leaving little time before bed. But having seen the stunts Bean's squad was preparing, the army was excited instead of weary, fairly scampering through the corridors. Most of them probably understood that what Bean had come up with were stunts, nothing that would be decisive in battle. It was fun anyway. It was new. And it was Dragon.
Bean started out leading the way, having been given that honor by Ender. A time of triumph, and even though he knew he was being manipulated by the system – behavior modification through public honors – it still felt good.
Not so good, though, that he let up his alertness. He hadn't gone far along the corridor until he realized that there were too many Salamander uniforms among the other boys wandering around in this section. By 2140, most armies were in their barracks, with only a few stragglers coming back from the library or the vids or the game room. Too many Salamanders, and the other soldiers were often big kids from armies whose commanders bore no special love toward Ender. It didn't take a genius to recognize a trap.
Bean jogged back and tagged Crazy Tom, Vlad, and Hot Soup, who were walking together. "Too many Salamanders," Bean said. "Stay back with Ender." They got it at once – it was public knowledge that Bonzo was breathing out threats about what "somebody" ought to do to Ender Wiggin, just to put him in his place. Bean continued his shambling, easygoing run toward the back of the army, ignoring the smaller kids but tagging the other two toon leaders and all the seconds – the older kids, the ones who might have some chance of standing up to Bonzo's crew in a fight. Not much of a chance, but all that was needed was to keep them from getting at Ender until the teachers intervened. No way could the teachers stand aloof if an out-and-out riot erupted. Or could they?
Bean passed right by Ender, got behind him. He saw, coming up quickly, Petra Arkanian in her Phoenix Army uniform. She called out. "Ho, Ender!"
To Bean's disgust, Ender stopped and turned around. The boy was too trusting.
Behind Petra, a few Salamanders fell into step. Bean looked the other way, and saw a few more Salamanders and a couple of set-faced boys from other armies, drifting down the corridor past the last of the Dragons. Hot Soup and Crazy Tom were coming quickly, with more toon leaders and the rest of the larger Dragons coming behind them, but they weren't moving fast enough. Bean beckoned, and he saw Crazy Tom pick up his pace. The others followed suit.
"Ender, can I talk to you," said Petra.
Bean was bitterly disappointed. Petra was the Judas. Setting Ender up for Bonzo – who would have guessed? She hated Bonzo when she was in his army.
"Walk with me," said Ender.
"It's just for a moment," said Petra.
Either she was a perfect actress or she was oblivious, Bean realized. She only seemed aware of the other Dragon uniforms, never as much as glancing at anybody else. She isn't in on it after all, thought Bean. She's just an idiot.
At last, Ender seemed to be aware of his exposed position. Except for Bean, all the other Dragons were past him now, and that was apparently enough – at last – t
o make him uncomfortable. He turned his back on Petra and walked away, briskly, quickly closing the gap between him and the older Dragons.
Petra was angry for a moment, then jogged quickly to catch up with him. Bean stood his ground, looking at the oncoming Salamanders. They didn't even glance at him. They just picked up their pace, continuing to gain on Ender almost as fast as Petra was.
Bean took three steps and slapped the door of Rabbit Army barracks. Somebody opened it. Bean had only to say, "Salamander's making a move against Ender," and at once Rabbits started to pour out the door into the corridor. They emerged just as the Salamanders reached them, and started following along.
Witnesses, thought Bean. And helpers, too, if the fight seemed unfair.
Ahead of him, Ender and Petra were talking, and the larger Dragons fell in step around them. The Salamanders continued to follow closely, and the other thugs joined them as they passed. But the danger was dissipating. Rabbit Army and the older Dragons had done the job. Bean breathed a little easier. For the moment, at least, the danger was over.
Bean caught up with Ender in time to hear Petra angrily say, "How can you think I did? Don't you know who your friends are?" She ran off, ducked into a ladderway, scrambled upward.
Carn Carby of Rabbit caught up with Bean. "Everything OK?"
"I hope you don't mind my calling out your army."
"They came and got me. We seeing Ender safely to bed?"
"Eh."
Carn dropped back and walked along with the bulk of his soldiers. The Salamander thugs were now outnumbered about three to one. They backed off even more, and some of them peeled away and disappeared up ladderways or down poles.
When Bean caught up with Ender again, he was surrounded by his toon leaders. There was nothing subtle about it now – they were clearly his bodyguards, and some of the younger Dragons had realized what was happening and were filling out the formation. They got Ender to the door of his quarters and Crazy Tom pointedly entered before him, then allowed him to go in when he certified that no one was lying in wait. As if one of them could palm open a commander's door. But then, the teachers had been changing a lot of the rules lately. Anything could happen.
Bean lay awake for a while, trying to think what he could do. There was no way they could be with Ender every moment. There was classwork – armies were deliberately broken up then. Ender was the only one who could eat in the commanders' mess, so if Bonzo jumped him there ... but he wouldn't, not with so many other commanders around him. Showers. Toilet stalls. And if Bonzo assembled the right group of thugs, they'd slap Ender's toon leaders aside like balloons.
What Bean had to do was try to peel away Bonzo's support. Before he slept, he had a half-assed little plan that might help a little, or might make things work [sic – should be worse], but at least it was something, and it would be public, so the teachers couldn't claim after the fact, in their typical bureaucrat cover-my-butt way that they hadn't known anything was going on.
He thought he could do something at breakfast, but of course there was a battle first thing in the morning. Pol Slattery, Badger Army. The teachers had found a new way to mess with the rules, too. When Badgers were flashed, instead of staying frozen till the end of the game they thawed after five minutes, the way it worked in practice. But Dragons, once hit, stayed rigid. Since the battleroom was packed with stars – plenty of hiding places – it took a while to realize that they were having to shoot the same soldiers more than once as they maneuvered through the stars, and Dragon Army came closer to losing than it ever had. It was all hand to hand, with a dozen of the remaining Dragons having to watch batches of frozen Badgers, reshooting them periodically and meanwhile frantically looking around for some other Badger sneaking up from behind.
The battle took so long that by the time they got out of the battleroom, breakfast was over. Dragon Army was pissed off – the ones who had been frozen early on, before they knew the trick, had spent more than an hour, some of them, floating in their rigid suits, growing more and more frustrated as the time wore on. The others, who had been forced to fight outnumbered and with little visibility against enemies who kept reviving, they were exhausted. Including Ender.
Ender gathered his army in the corridor and said, "Today you know everything. No practice. Get some rest. Have some fun. Pass a test."
They were all grateful for the reprieve, but still, they weren't getting any breakfast today and nobody felt like cheering. As they walked back to the barracks, some of them grumbled, "Bet they're serving breakfast to Badger Army right now."
"No, they got them up and served them breakfast before."
"No, they ate breakfast and then five minutes later they get to eat another."
Bean, however, was frustrated because he hadn't had a chance to carry out his plan at breakfast. It would have to wait till lunch.
The good thing was that because Dragon wasn't practicing, Bonzo's guys wouldn't know where to lie in wait for him. The bad thing was that if Ender went off by himself, there'd be nobody to protect him.
So Bean was relieved when he saw Ender go into his quarters. In consultation with the other toon leaders, Bean set up a watch on Ender's door. One Dragon sat outside the barracks for a half-hour shift, then knocked on the door and his replacement came out. No way was Ender going to go wandering off without Dragon Army knowing it.
But Ender never came out and finally it was lunchtime. All the toon leaders sent the soldiers on ahead and then detoured past Ender's door. Fly Molo knocked loudly – actually, he slapped the door hard five times. "Lunch, Ender."
"I'm not hungry." His voice was muffled by the door. "Go on and eat."
"We can wait," said Fly. "Don't want you walking to the commanders' mess alone."
"I'm not going to eat any lunch at all," said Ender. "Go on and I'll see you after."
"You heard him," said Fly to the others. "He'll be safe in here while we eat."
Bean had noticed that Ender did not promise to stay in his room throughout lunch. But at least Bonzo's people wouldn't know where he was. Unpredictability was helpful. And Bean wanted to get the chance to make his speech at lunch.
So he ran to the messroom and did not get in line, but instead bounded up onto a table and clapped his hands loudly to get attention. "Hey, everybody!"
He waited until the group went about as close to silent as it was going to get.
"There's some of you here who need a reminder of a couple of points of I.F. law. If a soldier is ordered to do something illegal or improper by his commanding officer, he has a responsibility to refuse the order and report it. A soldier who obeys an illegal or improper order is fully responsible for the consequences of his actions. Just in case any of you here are too dim to know what that means, the law says that if some commander orders you to commit a crime, that's no excuse. You are forbidden to obey."
Nobody from Salamander would meet Bean's gaze, but a thug in Rat uniform answered in a surly tone. "You got something in mind, here, pinprick?"
"I've got you in mind, Lighter. Your scores are pretty much in the bottom ten percent in the school, so I thought you might need a little extra help."
"You can shut your facehole right now, that's the help I need!"
"Whatever Bonzo had you set to do last night, Lighter, you and about twenty others, what I'm telling you is if you'd actually tried something, every single one of you would have been out of Battle School on his ass. Iced. A complete failure, because you listened to Bonehead Madrid. Can I be any more clear than that?"
Lighter laughed – it sounded forced, but then, he wasn't the only one laughing. "You don't even know what's going on, pinprick," one of them said.
"I know Bonehead's trying to turn you into a street crew, you pathetic losers. He can't beat Ender in the battleroom, so he's going to get a dozen tough guys to beat up one little kid. You all hear that? You know what Ender is – the best damn commander ever to come through here. He might be the only one able to do what Mazer Rackham did
and beat the Buggers when they come back, did you think of that? And these guys are so smart they want to beat his brains out. So when the Buggers come, and we've only got pus-brains like Bonzo Madrid to lead our fleets to defeat, then as the Buggers scour the Earth and kill every last man, woman, and child, the survivors will all know that these fools are the ones who got rid of the one guy who could have led us to victory!"
The whole place was dead silent now, and Bean could see, looking at the ones he recognized as having been with Bonzo's group last night, that he was getting through to them.
"Oh, you forgot the Buggers, is that it? You forgot that this Battle School wasn't put here so you could write home to Mommy about your high standings on the scoreboard. So you go ahead and help Bonzo out, and while you're at it, why not just slit your own throats, too, cause that's what you're doing if you hurt Ender Wiggin. But for the rest of us – well, how many here think that Ender Wiggin is the one commander we would all want to follow into battle? Come on, how many of you!"
Bean began to clap his hands slowly, rhythmically. Immediately, all the Dragons joined in. And very quickly, most of the rest of the soldiers were also clapping. The ones who weren't were conspicuous and could see how the others looked at them with scorn or hate.
Pretty soon, the whole room was clapping. Even the food servers.
Bean thrust both his hands straight up in the air. "The butt-faced Buggers are the only enemy! Humans are all on the same side! Anybody who raises a hand against Ender Wiggin is a Bugger-lover!"
They responded with cheers and applause, leaping to their feet.
It was Bean's first attempt at rabble-rousing. He was pleased to see that, as long as the cause was right, he was pretty damn good at it.
Only later, when he had his food and was sitting with C toon, eating it, did Lighter himself come up to Bean. He came up from behind, and the rest of C toon was on their feet, ready to take him on, before Bean even knew he was there. But Lighter motioned them to sit down, then leaned over and spoke right into Bean's ear. "Listen to this, Queen Stupid. The soldiers who are planning to take Wiggin apart aren't even here. So much for your stupid speech."
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