By the recommendation of cat, I picked up this book from the library earlier this afternoon; "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott Card. It's a companion volume to "Ender's Game", which is the original novel that got famous in the 90's.
The following is the synopsis on the back of this book:
"Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School; he was just the best of the best. Here is the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean - the one who became Ender's right hand, his strategist, and his friend.
Bean's past was a battle just to survive on the streets of Rotterdam. He was a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else's. Bean's desperate struggle, and his remarkable success, brought him to the attention of the Battle School's recruiters, those people scouring the planet for leaders, tacticians and generals to save Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Bean was sent into orbit, to the Battle School. And there he met Ender..."
I've already reached Part II of the book, around page 90 out of the 467. And I just reached this certain part I really wanted to point out, after so many more before this one.
Here's the excerpt from the book I want to share.
***
Some of the kids were complaining about how hungry they were. There was a strict rule against eating for twenty-four hours before the shuttle flight, and most of these kids had never gone so long without eating. For Bean, twenty-four hours without food was barely noticeable. In his crew, you didn't worry about hunger until the second week.
The shuttle took off, just like any airplane, though it had a long, long runway to get it up to speed, it was so heavy. Bean was surprised at the motion of the plane, the way it charged forward yet seemed to hold still, the way it rocked a little and sometimes bumped, as if it were rolling over irregularities on an invisible road.
When they got up to a high altitude, they rendezvoused with two fuel planes, in order to take on the rest of the rocket fuel needed to achieve escape velocity. The plane could never have lifted off the ground with that much fuel onboard. During the refueling, a man emerged from the control cabin and stood at the front of the rows of seats. His sky blue uniform was crisp and perfect, and his smile looked every bit starched and pressed and unstainable as his clothes.
"My dear darling little children," he said. "Some of you apparently can't read yet. Your seat harnesses are to remain in place throughout the entire flight. Why are so many of them unfastened? Are you going somewhere?"
Lots of little clicks answered him like scattered applause.
"And let me also warn you that no matter how annoying or enticing some other child might be, keep your hands to yourself. You should keep in mind that the children around you scored every bit high as you did on every test you took, and some of them scored higher."
Bean thought: That's impossible. Somebody here had to have the highest score.
A boy across the aisle apparently had the same thought. "Right," he said sarcastically.
"I was making a point, but I'm willing to digress," said the man. "Please, share with us the thought that so enthralled you that you could not contain it silently within you."
The boy knew he had made a mistake, but decided to tough it out. "Somebody here has the highest score."
The man continued looking at him, as if inviting him to continue.
Inviting him to dig himself a deeper grave, thought Bean.
"I mean, you said that everybody scored as high as everybody else, and some scored higher, and that's just obviously not true."
The man waited some more.
"That's all I had to say."
"Feel better?" said the man.
The boy sullenly kept his silence.
Without disturbing his perfect smile, the man's tone changed, and instead of bright sarcasm, there was now a sharp whiff of menace. "I asked you a question, boy."
"No, I don't feel better."
"What's your name?" asked the man.
"Nero."
A couple of children who knew a little bit about history laughed at the name. Bean knew about the emperor Nero. He did not laugh, however. He knew that a child named Bean was wise not to laugh at other kids' names. Besides, a name like that could be a real burden to bear. It said something about the boy's strength or at least his defiance that he didn't give some nickname.
Or maybe Nero
was his nickname.
"Just... Nero?" asked the man.
"Nero Boulanger."
"French? Or just hungry?"
Bean did not get the joke. Was Boulanger a name that had something to do with food?
"Algerian."
"Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it's actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn."
Nero grumbled something.
"Listen - another flatulence, but this time even less articulate than before. Tell us, Nero. Speak up. You are teaching us all by the example of your courage, however half-assed it might be."
A couple of students laughed.
"And listen - your fart has drawn out other farts, from people equally stupid, for they think they are somehow superior to you, and that they could not just as easily have been chosen to be examples of higher intellect."
There would be no more laughter.
Bean felt a kind of dread, for he knew that somehow, this verbal sparring, or rather this one-sided verbal assault, this torture, this public exposure, was going to find some twisted path that led to him. He did not know how he sensed this, for the uniformed man had not so much as glanced at Bean, and Bean had made no sound, had done nothing to call attention to himself. Yet he knew that he, not Nero, would end up receiving the cruelest thrust from this man's dagger.
Then Bean realized why he was sure it would turn against him. This had turned into a nasty little argument about whether someone had higher test scores than anyone else on the shuttle. And Bean had assumed, for no reason whatsoever, that he was the child with the highest scores.
Now that he had seen his own belief, he knew it was absurd. These children were all older and had grown up with far more advantages. He had had only Sister Carlotta as a teacher - Sister Carlotta and, of course, the street, though few of the things he learned
there had shown up on the tests. There was no way that Bean had the highest score.
Yet he still knew, with absolute certainty, that this discussing was full of danger for him.
"I told you to speak up, Nero. I'm waiting."
"I still don't see how anything I said was stupid," said Nero.
"First, it was stupid because I have all the authority here, and you have none, so I have the power to make your life miserable, and you have no power to protect yourself. So how much intelligence does it take just to keep your mouth shut and avoid calling attention to yourself? What could be a more obvious decision to make when confronted with such a lopsided distribution of power?"
Nero withered in his seat.
"Second, you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time."
Bean silently disagreed. The criminal misuse of time was
pointing out the mistakes. Catching them - noticing them - that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not
learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.
The part of the man's statement that was true, however, was about the uselessness of speaking up. If I know that the teacher is wrong, and say nothing, then I remain the only one who knows, and that gives me an advantage over those who believe the teacher.
"Third," said the man, "my statement only seems to be self-contradictory and impossible because you did not think beneath the surface of the situation. In fact it is not necessarily true that one person has the highest scores of everyone on this shuttle. That's because there were many tests, physical, mental, social and psychological, and many ways to define 'highest' as well, since there were many ways to be physically or socially or psychologically fit for command. Children who tested highest on stamina may not have tested highest on strength; children who tested highest on memory may not have tested highest on anticipatory analysis. Children with remarkable social skills might be weaker in delay of gratification. Are you beginning to grasp the shallowness of your thinking that led to your stupid and useless conclusion?"
Nero nodded.
"Let us hear the sound of your flatulence again, Nero. Be just as loud in acknowledging your errors as you were in making them."
"I was wrong."
There was not a boy on that shuttle who would not have avowed a preference for death to being in Nero's place at that moment. And yet Bean felt a kind of envy as well, though he did not understand why he would envy the victim of such torture.
"And yet," said the man, "you happen to be less wrong on this particular shuttle flight than you would have been in any other shuttle filled with launchies heading for Battle School. And do you know why?"
He did not choose to speak.
***
Pure. Awesome.
Later.
