A War of Gifts: An Ender Story by Orson Scott Card Page B

true, I’m sure. Our Muslim friends did not consult you on the timetable. But as an answer to my accusation that you did this, it was such a pathetically obvious lie. A dodge. If you really had nothing to do with it, you wouldn’t have needed a dodge. You answered like someone with something to hide.”
    This time Zeck said nothing.
    “You think this will help your chances of getting out of Battle School. Maybe you even think it will disrupt Battle School and hurt the war effort-which makes you a traitor, from one point of view, or a hero of Christianity, from another. But you won’t stop this war, and you won’t hurt Battle School in the long run. You want to know what you really accomplished? Someday this war will end. If we win, then we’ll all go home. The kids in this school are the brightest military minds of our generation. They’ll be running things in country after country. Ahmed-someday he’ll be Pakistan. And you just guaranteed that he will hate the idea of trying to live with non-Muslims in peace. In other words, you just started a war thirty or forty years from now.”
    “Or ten,” said Wiggin.
    “Ahmed will still be pretty young in ten years,” said Flip, chuckling a little. Zeck hadn’t thought of what this might lead to back on Earth. But what did Dink know? He couldn’t predict the future. “I didn’t start promoting Santa Claus,” said Zeck, meeting Dink’s gaze.
    “No, you just reported a little private joke between two Dutch kids and made a big deal out of it,”
    said Dink.
    8

    PEACE

    The Santa Claus thing was over. Dink didn’t imagine that he controlled it anymore-it had grown way past him now. But when the Muslim kids were arrested in the mess hall, it stopped being a game. It stopped being just a way to tweak the nose of authority. There were real consequences, and as Zeck had pointed out, they were more Dink’s fault than anyone else’s.
    So Dink asked all his friends to ask everybody they knew to stop doing the stocking thing. To stop giving gifts that had anything to do with Santa Claus.
    And, within a day, it stopped.
    He thought that would be the end of it.
    But it wasn’t the end. Because of Zeck.
    Nothing Zeck did, of course. Zeck was Zeck, completely unchanged. Zeck didn’t do anything in practice except fly around, and he didn’t do anything in battle except take up space. But he went to class, he did his schoolwork, he turned in his assignments.
    And everybody ignored him. They always had. But not like this. Before, they had ignored him in a kind of tolerant, almost grudgingly respectful way: He’s an idiot, but at least he’s consistent.
    Now they ignored him in a pointed way. They didn’t even bother teasing him or jostling him. He just didn’t exist. If he tried to speak to anybody, they turned away. Dink saw it, and it made him feel bad. But Zeck had brought it on himself. It’s one thing to be an outsider because you’re different. It’s another thing to get other people in trouble for your own selfish reasons. And that’s what Zeck had done. He didn’t care about the no-religion rule-he violated it all the time himself. He just used Dink’s Sinterklaas present to Flip as a means of making a lame point with the commandant.
    So I was childish too, thought Dink. I knew when to stop. He didn’t. Not my fault.
    And yet Dink couldn’t stop observing him. Just glances. Just… noticing. He had read a little bit about primate behavior, as part of the theory of group loyalties. He knew how chimps and baboons that were shut out of their troop behaved, what happened to them. Depression. Self-destruction. Before, Zeck had seemed to thrive on isolation. Now that the isolation was complete, he wasn’t thriving anymore. He looked drawn. He would start walking in some direction and then just stop. Then go again, but slowly. He didn’t eat much. Things weren’t going well for him.
    And if there was one thing Dink knew, it was that the counselors and teachers