A War of Gifts: An Ender Story

back, and remade the bed-for it would be wrong to put Flip at risk of getting a demerit that he did not deserve. Then he went to Colonel Graff’s office.
    “I don’t remember sending for you,” said Colonel Graff.
    “You didn’t,” said Zeck.
    “If you have a problem, take it to your counselor. Who’s assigned to you?” But Zeck knew at once that it wasn’t that Graff couldn’t remember the counselor’s name-he simply had no idea who Zeck was.
    “I’m Zeck Morgan,” he said. “I’m a spectator in Rat Army.”
    “Oh,” said Graff, nodding. “You. Have you reconsidered your vow of nonviolence?”
    “No sir,” said Zeck. “I’m here to ask you a question.”
    “And you couldn’t have asked somebody else?”
    “Everybody else was busy,” said Zeck. Immediately he repented of the remark, because of course he hadn’t even tried anybody else, and he only said this in order to hurt Graff’s feelings by implying he was useless and had no work to do. “That was wrong of me to say that,” said Zeck, “and I ask your forgiveness.”
    “What’s your question,” said Graff impatiently, looking away.
    “When you informed me that nonviolence was not an option here, you said it was because my motive is religious, and there is no religion in Battle School.”
    “No open observance of religion,” said Graff. “Or we’d have classes constantly being interrupted by Muslims praying and every seventh day-not the same seventh day, mind you-we’d have Christians and Muslims and Jews celebrating one Sabbath or another. Not to mention the Macumba ritual of sacrificing chickens. Icons and statues of saints and little Buddhas and ancestral shrines and all kinds of other things would clutter up the place. So it’s all banned. Period. So please get to class before I have to give you a demerit.”
    “That was not my question,” said Zeck. “I would not have come here to ask you a question whose answer you had already told me.”
    “Then why did you bring up-Never mind, what’s your question?”
    “If religious observance is banned, then why does Battle School tolerate the commemoration of the day of Saint Nicholas?”
    “We don’t,” said Graff.
    “And yet you did,” said Zeck.
    “No we didn’t.”
    “It was commemorated.”
    “Would you please get to the point? Are you lodging a complaint? Did one of the teachers make some remark?”
    “Filippus Rietveld put out his shoes for Saint Nicholas. Dink Meeker put a Sinterklaas poem in the shoe and then gave Flip a pancake carved with the initial ‘F’ An edible initial is a traditional treat on Sinterklaas Day. Which is today, December sixth.”
    Graff sat down and leaned back in his chair. “A Sinterklaas poem?”
    Zeck recited it.
    Graff smiled and chuckled a little.
    “So you think it’s funny when they have their religious observance, but my religious observance is banned.”
    “It was a poem in a shoe. I give you permission to write all the poems you want and insert them into people’s wearing apparel.”
    “Poems in shoes are not my religious observance. Mine is to contribute a small part to peace on Earth.”
    “You’re not even on Earth.”
    “I would be, if I hadn’t been kidnapped and enslaved to the service of Mammon,” said Zeck mildly. You’ve been here almost a year, thought Graff, and you’re still singing the same tune. Doesn’t peer pressure have any effect on you?
    “If these Dutch Christians have their Saint Nicholas Day, then the Muslims should have Ramadan and the Jews should have the Feast of Tabernacles and I should be able to live the gospel of love and peace.”
    “Why are you even bothering with this?” said Graff. “The only thing I can do is punish them for a rather sweet gesture. It will make people hate you more.”
    “You mean you intend to tell them who reported them?”
    “No, Zeck. I know how you operate. You’ll tell them yourself, so they’ll be angry and people will persecute you and that will make you feel more purified.”
    For a man who didn’t recognize him when he came in, Graff certainly knew a lot about him. His face wasn’t known, but his ideas were. Zeck’s persistence in his faith was making an impression.
    “If Battle School bans my religion because it forbids all religion, then all religion should be forbidden, sir.”
    “I know that,” said Graff. “I also know you’re an insufferable twit.”
    “I believe that remark falls under the topic of ‘The commander’s