First meetings in the Enderverse Read Online Free PDF

suggested it…
    “Nine of us,” said John Paul. “It’s very hard for my mother to teach us all at once.”
    “What if the Fleet can persuade the government of Poland-”
    “Poland has no government,” said John Paul, and then he smiled up at his father, who beamed down at him.
    “The current rulers of Poland,” said Graff cheerfully enough. “What if we can persuade them to lift the sanctions on your brothers and sisters.”
    John Paul thought about this for a moment. He tried to imagine what it would be like, if they could all go to school. Easier for Mother. That would be good.
    He looked up at his father.
    Father blinked. John Paul knew that face. Father was trying to keep from showing that he was disappointed. So there was something wrong.
    Of course. There were sanctions on Father, too. Andrew had explained to him once that Father wasn’t allowed to work at his real job, which should have been teaching at a university. Instead Father had to do a clerical job all day, sitting at a computer, and then manual labor by night, odd jobs off the books in the Catholic underground. If they would lift the sanctions on the children, why not on the parents?
    “Why can’t they change all the stupid rules?” said John Paul.
    Graff looked at Capt. Rudolf, then at John Paul’s parents. “Even if we could,” he said to them, “should we?”
    Mother rubbed John Paul’s back a little. “John Paul means well, but of course we can’t. Not even the sanctions against the children’s schooling.”
    John Paul was instantly furious. What did she mean, “of course?” If they had only bothered to explain things to him then he wouldn’t be making mistakes, but no, even after these people from the Fleet came to prove that John Paul wasn’t just a stupid kid, they treated him like a stupid kid. But he did not show his anger. That never got good results from Father, and it made Mother anxious so she didn’t think well.
    The only answer he made was to say, with wide-eyed innocence, “Why not?”
    “You’ll understand when you’re older,” said Mother.
    He wanted to say, “And when will you understand anything about me? Even after you realized I could read, you still think I don’t know anything.”
    But then, he apparently didn’t know everything he needed to, or he’d see what was obvious to all these adults.
    If his parents wouldn’t tell him, maybe this captain would.
    John Paul looked expectantly at Graff.
    And Graff gave the explanation he needed.
    “All of your parents’ friends are noncompliant Catholics. If your brothers and sisters suddenly get to go to school, if your father suddenly gets to go back to the university, what will they think?”
    So this was about the neighborhood. John Paul could hardly believe that his parents would sacrifice their children, even themselves, just so the neighbors wouldn’t resent t hem.
    “We could move,” said John Paul.
    “Where?” asked Father. “There are noncompliants like us, and there are people who gave up their faith. There’s only the two groups, and I’d rather go on as we are than to cross that line. It’s not about the neighbors, John Paul. It’s about our own integrity. It’s about faith.”
    It wasn’t going to work, John Paul could see that now. He had thought that his Battle School idea could be turned to help his family. He would have gone into space for that, gone away and not come home for years, if it would have helped his family.
    “You can still come,” said Graff. “Even if your family doesn’t want to be free of these sanctions.”
    Father erupted then, not shouting, but his voice hot and intense. “We want to be free of the sanctions, you fool. We just don’t want to be the only ones free of them! We want the Hegemony to stop telling Catholics they have to commit mortal sin, to repudiate the Church. We want the Hegemony to stop forcing Poles to act like… like Germans.”
    But John Paul knew this rant, and knew that his father