First meetings in the Enderverse

He didn’t want to obey stupid people.
    At the same time, he didn’t want to stay in this situation, either. Crowded into their apartment most of the day. Mother always so tired. None of them learning all they could. Never quite enough to eat, nothing but shabby threadbare clothing, never warm enough in winter, always sweltering in summer. They all think we’re being heroes, like St. John Paul II under the Nazis and the Communists. Standing up for the faith against the lies and evils of the world, the way St. John Paul II did as pope. But what if we’re just being stubborn and stupid? What if everybody else is right, and we shouldn’t have had more than two children in our family?
    Then I wouldn’t have been born.
    Am I really here because God wants me to be? Maybe God wanted all kinds of children to be born, and all the rest of the world was blocking them from coming by their sins, because of the Hegemon’s laws. Maybe it was like the story of Abraham and Sodom, where God would be willing to save the city from destruction if twenty righteous people could be found, or even ten. Maybe we’re the righteous people who save the world just by existing, just by serving God and refusing to bow to the Hegemon. But existing is not all I want, thought John Paul. I want to do something. I want to learn everything and know everything and do every good thing. To have choices. And I want my brothers and sisters to have those choices too. I will never have power like this again, to change the world around me. The moment these people from the Fleet decide they don’t want me anymore, I’ll never have another chance. I have to do something now.
    “I don’t want to stay here,” said John Paul.
    He could feel Father’s body stiffen on the couch next to him, and Mother gasped just the tiniest of gasps inside her throat.
    “But I don’t want to go into space,” said John Paul. Graff did not move. But he blinked.
    “I’ve never been to a school. I don’t know if I’ll like it,” said John Paul. “Everybody I know is Polish and Catholic. I don’t know what it’s like to be with people who aren’t.”
    “If you don’t go into the Battle School program,” said Graff, “there’s nothing we can do about the rest.”
    “Can’t we go somewhere and try it out?” asked John Paul. “Can’t we all go somewhere that we can go to school and nobody will care that we’re Catholics and there are nine of us children?”
    “There’s nowhere in the world like that,” said Father bitterly. John Paul looked at Graff questioningly.
    “Your father is partly right,” said Graff. “A family with nine children will always be resented, no matter where you go. And here, because there are so many other noncompliant families, you sustain each other. There’s solidarity. In some ways it would be worse if you left Poland.”
    “In every way,” said Father.
    “But we could set you up in a large city, and then send no more than two of your brothers and sisters to any one school. That way, if they are careful, no one will know that their family is noncompliant.”
    “If they become liars, you mean,” said Mother.
    “Oh,” said Graff, “forgive me. I didn’t know that your family never, ever told a lie to protect your family’s interests.”
    “You’re trying to seduce us,” said Mother. “To divide the family. To get our children into schools that will teach them to deny the faith, to despise the Church.”
    “Ma’am,” said Graff, “I’m trying to get a very promising boy to agree to come to Battle School because the world faces a terrible enemy.”
    “Does it?” said Mother. “I keep hearing about this terrible enemy, these Buggers, these monsters from space, but where are they?”
    “The reason you don’t see them,” said Graff patiently, “is because we defeated their first two invasions. And if you ever do see them, it will be because we lost the third time. And even then you won’t see them, because they will do such terrible things to the surface of the Earth that there will be no humans alive when the first of the Buggers sets foot here. We want your son to help us prevent that.”
    “If God sends these monsters to kill us, maybe it’s as it was in the days of Noah,” said Mother.
    “Maybe the world is so wicked it needs to be destroyed.”
    “Well, if that’s so,” said Graff, “then we’ll lose the war, no matter what we do, and that’s that. But what if God wants us to win, so we