First meetings in the Enderverse

simultaneously touching a Dragon Army helmet at each corner. Then Ender assembled his army in vertical files near the knot of frozen Rabbit Army soldiers. Only three of Dragon Army’s soldiers were immobile. Their victory margin-38 to 0-was ridiculously high, and Ender began to laugh. Dragon Army joined him, laughing long and loud. They were still laughing when Lieutenant Anderson and Lieutenant Morris came in from the teachergate at the south end of the battleroom.
    Lieutenant Anderson kept his face stiff and unsmiling, but Ender saw him wink as he held out his hand and offered the stiff, formal congratulations that were ritually given to the victor in the game. Morris found Carn Carby and unfroze him, and the thirteen-year-old came and presented himself to Ender, who laughed without malice and held out his hand. Carn graciously took Ender’s hand and bowed his head over it. It was that or be flashed again.
    Lieutenant Anderson dismissed Dragon Army, and they silently left the battleroom through the enemy’s door-again part of the ritual. A light was blinking on the north side of the square door, indicating where the gravity was in that corridor. Ender, leading his soldiers, changed his orientation and went through the forcefield and into gravity on his feet. His army followed him at a brisk run back to the workroom. When they got there they formed up into squads, and Ender hung in the air, watching them.
    “Good first battle,” he said, which was excuse enough for a cheer, which he quieted. “Dragon Army did all right against Rabbits. But the enemy isn’t always going to be that bad. And if that had been a good army we would have been smashed. We still would have won, but we would have been smashed. Now let me see B and D toons out here. Your takeoff from the stars was way too slow. If Rabbit Army knew how to aim a flasher, you all would have been frozen solid before A and C even got to the wall.”
    They worked out for the rest of the day.
    That night Ender went for the first time to the commanders’ mess hall. No one was allowed there until he had won at least one battle, and Ender was the youngest commander ever to make it. There was no great stir when he came in. But when some of the other boys saw the Dragon on his breast pocket, they stared at him openly, and by the time he got his tray and sat at an empty table, the entire room was silent, with the other commanders watching him. Intensely self-conscious, Ender wondered how they all knew, and why they all looked so hostile.
    Then he looked above the door he had just come through. There was a huge Scoreboard across the entire wall. It showed the win/loss record for the commander of every army; that day’s battles were lit in red. Only four of them. The other three winners had barely made it-the best of them had only two men whole and eleven mobile at the end of the game. Dragon Army’s score of thirty-eight mobile was embarrassingly better.
    Other new commanders had been admitted to the commanders’ mess hall with cheers and congratulations. Other new commanders hadn’t won thirty-eight to zero. Ender looked for Rabbit Army on the Scoreboard. He was surprised to find that Carn Carby’s score to date was eight wins and three losses. Was he that good? Or had he only fought against inferior armies?
    Whichever, there was still a zero in Carn’s mobile and whole columns, and Ender looked down from the Scoreboard grinning. No one smiled back, and Ender knew that they were afraid of him, which meant that they would hate him, which meant that anyone who went into battle against Dragon Army would be scared and angry and less competent. Ender looked for Carn Carby in the crowd, and found him not too far away. He stared at Carby until one of the other boys nudged the Rabbit commander and pointed to Ender. Ender smiled again and waved slightly. Carby turned red, and Ender, satisfied, leaned over his dinner and began to eat.

    At the end of the week Dragon Army had fought seven battles in seven days. The score stood 7 wins and 0 losses. Ender had never had more than five boys frozen in any game. It was no longer possible for the other commanders to ignore Ender. A few of them sat with him and quietly conversed about game strategies that Ender’s opponents had used. Other much larger groups were talking with the commanders that Ender had defeated, trying to find out what Ender had done to beat them. In the middle of the meal the teacher door opened and the