A War of Gifts: An Ender Story

A War of Gifts
    An Ender Story
    Orson Scott Card
    To Tom Ruby,
    who has kept the faith
    in and out of Battle School

    1

    SAINT NICK

    Zeck Morgan sat attentively on the front row of the little sanctuary of the Church of the Pure Christ in Eden, North Carolina. He did not fidget, though he had two itches, one on his foot and one on his eyebrow. He knew the eyebrow itch was from a fly that had landed there. The foot itch, too, probably, though he did not look down to see whether anything was crawling there. He did not look out the windows at the falling snow. He did not glance to left or right, not even to glare at the parents of the crying baby in the row behind him-it was for others to judge whether it was more important for the parents to stay and hear the sermon, or leave and preserve the stillness of the meeting.
    Zeck was the minister’s son, and he knew his duty.
    Reverend Habit Morgan stood at the small pulpit-really an old dictionary stand picked up at a library sale. No doubt the dictionary that had once rested on it had been replaced by a computer, just one more sign of the degradation of the human race, to worship the False God of Tamed Lightning. “They think because they have pulled the lightning from the sky and contained it in their machines they are gods now, or the friends of gods. Do they not know that the only thing written by lightning is fire? Yea, I say unto you, it is the fire of hell, and the gods they have befriended are devils!”
    It had been one of Father’s best sermons. He gave it when Zeck was three, but Zeck had not forgotten a word of it. Zeck did not forget a word of anything. As soon as he knew what words were, he remembered them.
    But he did not tell Father that he remembered. Because when Mother realized that he could repeat whole sermons word for word, she told him, very quietly but very intensely, “This is a great gift that God has given you, Zeck. But you must not show it to anyone, because some might think it comes from Satan.”
    “Does it?” Zeck had asked. “Come from Satan?”
    “Satan does not give good gifts,” said Mother. “So it comes from God.”
    “Then why would anyone think it comes from Satan?”
    Her forehead frowned, though her lips kept their smile. Her lips always smiled when she knew anyone was looking. It was her duty as the minister’s wife to show that the pure Christian life made one happy.
    “Some people are looking so hard to find Satan,” she finally said, “that they see him even where he isn’t.”
    Naturally, Zeck remembered this conversation word for word. So it was there in his mind when he was four, and Father said, “There are those who will tell you that a thing is from God, when it’s really from the devil.”
    “Why, Father?”
    “They are deceived,” said Father, “by their own desire. They wish the world were a better place, so they pretend that polluted things are pure, so they don’t have to fear them.”
    Ever since then, Zeck had balanced these two conversations, for he knew that Mother was warning him about Father, and Father was warning him about Mother.
    It was impossible to choose between them. He did not want to choose. Still… he never let Father see his perfect memory. It was not a lie, however. If Father ever asked him to repeat a conversation or a sermon or anything at all, Zeck would do it, and honestly, showing that he knew it word for word. But Father did not ask anybody anything, except when he asked God. Which he had just done. Standing there at the pulpit, glaring out at the congregation, Father said,
    “What about Santa Claus! Saint Nick! Is he the same thing as ‘Old Nick’? Does he have anything to do with Christ? Is our worship pure, when we have this ‘Old Saint Nick’ in our hearts? Is he really jolly?
    Does he laugh because he knows he is leading our children down to hell?”
    He glared around the congregation as if waiting for an answer. And finally someone gave the only answer that was appropriate for this point in the sermon:
    “Brother Habit, we don’t know. Would you ask God and tell us what he says?”
    Whereupon Father roared out, “God in heaven! Thou knowest our question! Tell us thine answer! We thy children ask thee for bread, O Father! Do not give us a stone!”
    Then he gripped the pulpit-the dictionary stand, which trembled under his hands-and continued glaring upward. Zeck knew that when Father looked upward like that, he did not see the roof beams or the ceiling