Ender's Shadow

alive, preserved by the relativistic changes of near-lightspeed travel. Maybe it's only been a few years to him. And he's ready. We aren't needed.
      Bean calmed his breathing. His heartrate slowed. I can't let myself get carried away with fantasies like that. I would be so embarrassed if anyone knew the stupid theory I came up with in my sleep. I can't even tell this as a dream. The game is as it always was.
      Reveille sounded over the intercom. Bean got out of bed -- a bottom bunk, this time -- and joined in as normally as possible with the banter of Crazy Tom and Hot Soup, while Fly Molo kept his morning surliness to himself and Alai did his prayers. Bean went to mess and ate as he normally ate. Everything was normal. It didn't mean a thing that he couldn't get his bowels to unclench at the normal time. That his belly gnawed at him all day, and at mealtime he was faintly nauseated. That was just lack of sleep.
      Near the end of three months on Eros, their work on the simulators changed. There would be ships directly under their control, but they also had others under them to whom they had to give commands out loud, besides using the controls to enter them manually. "Like combat," said their supervisor.
      "In combat," said Alai, "we'd know who the officers serving under us were.”
      "That would matter if you depended on them to give you information. But you do not. All the information you need is conveyed to your simulator and appears in the display. So you give your orders orally as well as manually. Just assume that you will be obeyed. Your teachers will be monitoring the orders you give to help you learn to be explicit and immediate. You will also have to master the technique of switching back and forth between crosstalk among yourselves and giving orders to individual ships. It's quite simple, you see. Turn your heads to the left or right to speak to each other, whichever is more comfortable for you. But when your face is pointing straight at the display, your voice will be carried to whatever ship or squadron you have selected with your controls. And to address all the ships under your control at once, head straight forward and duck your chin, like this.”
      "What happens if we raise our heads?" asked Shen.
      Alai answered before the teacher could. "Then you're talking to God.”
      After the laughter died down, the teacher said, "Almost right, Alai. When you raise your chin to speak, you'll be talking to your commander.”
      Several spoke at once. " Our commander?”
      "You did not think we were training all of you to be supreme commander at once, did you? No no. For the moment, we will assign one of you at random to be that commander, just for practice. Let's say ... the little one. You. Bean.”
      "I'm supposed to be commander?”
      "Just for the practices. Or is he not competent? You others will not obey him in battle?”
      The others answered the teacher with scorn. Of course Bean was competent. Of course they'd follow him.
      "But then, he never did win a battle when he commanded Rabbit Army," said Fly Molo.
      "Excellent. That means that you will all have the challenge of making this little one a winner in spite of himself. If you do not think that is a realistic military situation, you have not been reading history carefully enough.”
      So it was that Bean found himself in command of the ten other kids from Battle School. It was exhilarating, of course, for neither he nor the others believed for one moment that the teacher's choice had been random. They knew that Bean was better at the simulator than anybody. Petra was the one who said it after practice one day. "Hell, Bean, I think you have this all in your head so clear you could close your eyes and still play." It was almost true. He did not have to keep checking to see where everyone was. It was all in his head at once.
      It took a couple of days for them to handle it smoothly, taking orders from Bean and giving their own orders orally along with the physical controls. There were constant mistakes at first, heads in the wrong position so that comments and questions and orders went to the wrong destination. But soon enough it became instinctive.
      Bean then insisted that others take turns being in the command position. "I need practice taking orders just like they do," he said. "And learning how to change my head position to speak up and sideways." The teacher agreed, and after another day, Bean had mastered the