"Our job isn't to find theorists here. It's too late for theory anyway."
"I just think . . . look, a kid so small, who'd follow him? He's being wasted here. But when he writes, nobody knows how little he is. Nobody knows how young he is."
"I see your point, but we're not going to breach security, period."
"Isn't he already a grave security risk?"
"The mouse who scutters through the ducts?"
"No. I think he's grown too big for that. He doesn't do those side-arm pushups anymore. I thought the security risk came from the fact that he guessed that an offensive fleet had been launched generations ago, so why were we still training children for command?"
"From analysis of his papers, from his activities when he signs on as a teacher, we think he's got a theory and it's wonderfully wrong. But he believes his false theory only because he doesn't know about the ansible. Do you understand? Because that's the main thing we'd have to tell him about, isn't it?"
"Of course."
"So you see, that's the one thing we can't tell him."
"What is his theory?"
"That we're assembling children here in preparation for a war between nations, or between nations and the I.F. A landside war, back on Earth."
"Why would we take the kids into space to prepare for a war on Earth?"
"Think just a minute and you'll get it."
"Because . . . because when we've licked the Formics, there probably will be a little landside conflict. And all the talented commanders--the I.F. would already have them."
"You see? We can't have this kid publishing, not even within the I.F. Not everybody has given up loyalty to groups on Earth."
"So why did you call me in?"
"Because I do want to use him. We aren't running the war here, but we are running a school. Did you read his paper about the ineffectiveness of using officers as teachers?"
"Yes. I felt slapped."
"This time he's mostly wrong, because he has no way of knowing how nontraditional our recruitment of faculty has always been. But he may also be a little bit right. Because our system of testing for officer potential was designed to produce candidates with the traits identified in the most highly regarded officers in the Second Invasion."
"Hi-ho."
"You see? Some of the highly regarded were officers who performed well in battle, but the war was too short to weed out the deadwood. The officers they tested included just the kind of people he criticized in his paper. So . . ."
"So he had the wrong reason, but the right result."
"Absolutely. It gives us little pricks like Bonzo Madrid. You've known officers like him, haven't you? So why should we be surprised that our tests give him command of an army even though he has no idea what to do with it. All the vanity and all the stupidity of Custer or Hooker or--hell, pick your own vain incompetent, it's the most common kind of general officer."
"May I quote you?"
"I'll deny it. The thing is, Bean has been studying the dossiers of all the other students. We think he's evaluating them for loyalty to their native identity group, and also for their excellence as commanders."
"By his standards of excellence."
"We need to get Ender the command of an army. We're under a lot of pressure to get our leading candidates into Command School. But if we bust one of the current commanders in order to make a place for Ender, it'll cause too much resentment."
"So you have to give him a new army."
"Dragon."
"There are still kids here who remember the last Dragon Army."