-13-
Months wore on with battles every day, until at last Ender settled into the routine of the destruction of himself. He slept less every night, dreamed more, and he began to have terrible pains in his stomach. They put him on a very bland diet, but soon he didn’t even have an appetite for that. “Eat,” Maezr said, and Ender would mechanically put food in his mouth. But if nobody told him to eat he didn’t eat.
One day as he was drilling his toon leaders the room went black and he woke up on the floor with his face bloody where he had hit the controls.
They put him to bed then, and for three days he was very ill. He remembered seeing faces in his dreams, but they weren’t real faces, and he knew it even while he thought he saw them. He thought he saw Bean sometimes, and sometimes he thought he saw Lieutenant Anderson and Captain Graff. And then he woke up and it was only his enemy, Maezr Rackham.
“I’m awake,” he said to Maezr Rackham.
“So I see,” Maezr answered. “Took you long enough. You have a battle today.”
So Ender got up and fought the battle and he won it. But there was no second battle that day, and they let him go to bed earlier. His hands were shaking as he undressed.
During the night he thought he felt hands touching him gently, and he dreamed he heard voices saying, “How long can he go on?”
“Long enough.”
“So soon?”
“In a few days, then he’s through.”
“How will he do?”
“Fine. Even today, he was better than ever.”
Ender recognized the last voice as Maezr Rackham’s. He resented Rackham’s intruding even in his sleep.
He woke up and fought another battle and won.
Then he went to bed.
He woke up and won again.
And the next day was his last day in Command School, though he didn’t know it. He got up and went to the simulator for the battle.
– End Chapter Thirteen –
