1 Ender's Game Read Online Free PDF

seeing his facial expressions. I'm used to feeling them.”
      "Come on, we're not talking about psychoanalysis here. We're soldiers, not witch doctors. You just saw him beat the guts out of the leader of a gang.”
      "He was thorough. He didn't just beat him, he beat him deep. Like Mazer Rackham at the--”
      "Spare me. So in the judgment of the committee, he passes.
      "Mostly. Let's see what he does with his brother, now that the monitor's off.”
      "His brother. Aren't you afraid of what his brother will do to him?”
      "You were the one who told me that this wasn't a no-risk business.”
      "I went back through some of the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think were going to screw him up.”
      "Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive.”
     
      “I'm sorry, Ender,” Valentine whispered. She was looking at the bandaid on his neck.
      Ender touched the wall and the door closed behind him. "I don't care. I'm glad it's gone.”
      “What's gone?” Peter walked into the parlor, chewing on a mouthful of bread and peanut butter.
      Ender did not see Peter as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, thick, tousled hair and a face that could have belonged to Alexander the Great. Ender looked at Peter only to detect anger or boredom, the dangerous moods that almost always led to pain. Now as Peter's eyes discovered the bandaid on his neck, the telltale flicker of anger appeared.
      Valentine saw it too. “Now he's like us,” she said, trying to soothe him before he had time to strike.
      But Peter would not be soothed. "Like us? He keeps the little sucker till he's six years old. When did you lose yours? You were three. I lost mine before I was five. He almost made it, little bastard, little bugger.”
      This is all right, Ender thought. Talk and talk, Peter. Talk is fine.
      “Well, now your guardian angels aren't watching over you,” Peter said. "Now they aren't checking to see if you feel pain, listening to hear what I'm saying, seeing what I'm doing to you. How about that? How about it?”
      Ender shrugged.
      Suddenly Peter smiled and clapped his hands together in a mockery of good cheer. “Let's play buggers and astronauts,” he said.
      “Where's Mom?” asked Valentine.
      “Out,” said Peter. "I'm in charge.”
      "I think I'll call Daddy.”
      “Call away,” said Peter. "You know he's never in.”
      “I'll play,” Ender said.
      “You be the bugger,” said Peter.
      “Let him be the astronaut for once,” Valentine said.
      “Keep your fat face out of it, fart mouth,” said Peter. "Come on upstairs and choose your weapons.”
      It would not be a good game, Ender knew it was not a question of winning. When kids played in the corridors, whole troops of them, the buggers never won, and sometimes the games got mean. But here in their flat, the game would start mean, and the bugger couldn't just go empty and quit the way buggers did in the real wars. The bugger was in it until the astronaut decided it was over.
      Peter opened his bottom drawer and took out the bugger mask. Mother had got upset at him when Peter bought it, but Dad pointed out that the war wouldn't go away just because you hid bugger masks and wouldn't let your kids play with make-believe laser guns. The better to play the war games, and have a better chance of surviving when the buggers came again.
      If I survive the games, thought Ender. He put on the mask. It closed him in like a hand pressed tight against his face. But this isn't how it feels to he a bugger, thought Ender. They don't wear this face like a mask, it is their face. On their home worlds, do the buggers put on human masks, and play? And what do they call its? Slimies, because we're so soft and oily compared to them?
      “Watch out, Slimy,” Ender said.
      He could barely see Peter through the eyeholes. Peter smiled at him.