The light in the cavern was dim, but he could see piles of jewels. He pa.s.sed them by, noting that, behind him, eyes glinted among the gems. A table covered with food did not interest him. He pa.s.sed through a group of cages hanging from the ceiling of the cave, each containing some exotic, friendly-looking creature. I"ll play with you later, Ender thought. At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds:
THE END OF THE WORLD
He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.
He stood on a small ledge, high on a cliff overlooking a terrain of bright and deep green forest with dashes of autumn color and patches here and there of cleared land, with oxdrawn plows and small villages, a castle on a rise in the distance, and clouds riding currents of air below him. Above him, the sky was the ceiling of a vast cavern, with crystals dangling in bright stalact.i.tes.
The door closed behind him. Ender studied the scene intently. With the beauty of it, he cared less for survival than usual. He cared little, at the moment, what the game of this place might be. He had found it, and seeing it was its own reward. And so, with no thought of consequences, he jumped from the ledge.
Now he plummeted downward toward a rolling river and savage rocks; but a cloud came between him and the ground as he fell, and caught him, and carried him away.
It took him to the tower of the castle, and through the open window, bearing him in. There it left him, in a room with no apparent door in floor or ceiling, and windows looking out over a certainly fatal fall.
A moment ago he had thrown himself from a ledge carelessly; this time he hesitated.
The small rug before the fire unraveled itself into a long, slender serpent with wicked teeth.
"I am your only escape," it said. "Death is your only escape.
Ender looked around the room for a weapon, when suddenly the screen went dark. Words flashed around the rim of the desk.
REPORT TO COMMANDER IMMEDIATELY.
YOU ARE LATE.
GREEN GREEN BROWN.
Furious, Ender snapped off the desk and went to the color wall, where he found the ribbon of green green brown, touched it, and followed it as it lit up before him. The dark green, light green, and brown of the ribbon reminded him of the early autumn kingdom he had found in the game. I must go back there, he told himself. The serpent is a long thread; I can let myself down from the tower and find my way through that place. Perhaps it"s called the end of the world because it"s the end of the games, because I can go to one of the villages and become one of the little boys working and playing there, with nothing to kill and nothing to kill me, just living there.
As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.
Armies were larger than launch groups, and the army barracks room was larger, too. It was long and narrow, with bunks on both sides; so long, in fact, that you could see the curvature of the floor as the far end bent upward, part of the wheel of the Battle School.
Ender stood at the door. A few boys near the door glanced at him, but they were older, and it seemed as though they hadn"t even seen him. They went on with their conversations, lying and leaning on bunks. They were discussing battles, of course; the older boys always did. They were all much larger than Ender. The ten- and eleven-year-olds towered over him; even the youngest were eight, and Ender was not large for his age.
He tried to see which of the boys was the commander, but most were somewhere between battle dress and what the soldiers always called their sleep uniform-- skin from head to toe. Many of them had desks out, but few were studying.
Ender stepped into the room. The moment he did, he was noticed.
"What do you want?" demanded the boy who had the upper bunk by the door. He was the largest of them. Ender had noticed him before, a young giant who had whiskers growing raggedly on his chin. "You"re not a Salamander."
"I"m supposed to be, I think," Ender said. "Green green brown, right? I was transferred." He showed the boy, obviously the doorguard, his paper.
The doorguard reached for it. Ender withdrew it just out of reach. "I"m supposed to give it to Bonzo Madrid."
Now another boy joined the conversation, a smaller boy, but still larger than Ender, "Not bahn-zoe, p.i.s.shead. Bone-So. The name"s Spanish. Bonzo Madrid. Aqui nosotros hablamos espanol, Senor Gran Fedor."
"You must be Bonzo, then?" Ender asked, p.r.o.nouncing the name correctly.
"No, just a brilliant and talented polyglot. Petra Arkanian. The only girl in Salamander Army. With more b.a.l.l.s than anybody else in the room."
"Mother Petra she talking?" said one of the boys. "She talking, she talking."
Another one chimed in. "s.h.i.t talking ... s.h.i.t talking, s.h.i.t talking!"
Quite a few laughed.
"Just between you and me," Petra said, "if they gave the Battle School an enema, they"d stick it in at green green brown."
Ender despaired. He already had nothing going for him: grossly undertrained, small, inexperienced, doomed to be resented for early advancement. And now, by chance, he had made exactly the wrong friend. An outcast in Salamander Army, and she had just linked him with her in the minds of the rest of the army. A good day"s work. For a moment, as Ender looked around at the laughing, jeering faces, he imagined their bodies covered with hair, their teeth pointed for tearing. Am I the only human being in this place? Are all the others animals, waiting only to devour?
Then he remembered Alai. In every army, surely, there was at least one worth knowing.
Suddenly, though no one said to be quiet, the laughter stopped and the group fell silent. Ender turned to the door. A boy stood there, tall and dark and slender, with beautiful black eyes and slender lips that hinted at refinement. I would follow such beauty, said something inside Ender. I would see as those eyes see.
"Who are you?" asked the boy quietly.
"Ender Wiggin, sir," Ender said. "Rea.s.signed from launch to Salamander Army." He held out the orders.
The boy took the paper in a swift, sure movement, without touching Ender"s hand. "How old are you, Wiggin?" he asked.
"Almost seven."
Still quietly, he said, "I asked how old you are, not how old you almost are."
"I am six years, nine months, and twelve days old."
"How long have you been working in the battleroom?"
"A few months, now. My aim is better."
"Any training in battle maneuvers? Have you ever been part of a toon? Have you ever carried out a joint exercise?"
Ender had never heard of such things. He shook his head.
Madrid looked at him steadily. "I see. As you will quickly learn, the officers in command of this school, most notably Major Anderson, who runs the game, are fond of playing tricks. Salamander Army is just beginning to emerge from indecent obscurity. We have won twelve of our last twenty games. We have surprised Rat and Scorpion and Hound, and we are ready to play for leadership in the game. So of course, of course I am given such a useless, untrained, hopeless specimen of underdevelopment as yourself."
Petra said, quietly, "He isn"t glad to meet you."
"Shut up, Arkanian," Madrid said. "To one trial we now add another. But whatever obstacles our officers choose to fling in our path, we are still--"