A War of Gifts (4 page)

Flip was already asleep. Dink folded the paper and slipped it into one of the shoes.

Stupid greedy kid. Leaving out both shoes.

But of course that wasn't it at all. If he had left only one shoe, that would have been proof positive of what he was doing. Someone might have guessed and then Flip would have been mocked mercilessly for being so homesick and childish. So…both shoes. Deniability. Not Sinterklaas Day at all—I just left my shoes by the side of my bed.

Dink crawled into his own bed and lay there for a little while, filled with a deep and unaccountable sadness. It wasn't homesickness, not really. It was the fact that Dink was no longer the child; now he was the one who helped Sinterklaas do his job. Of course the old saint couldn't get from Spain to Battle School, not in the ship
he
used. Somebody had to help him out.

Dink was being, not the child, but the dad. He would never be the child again.

Zeck saw the shoes. He saw Dink put something into the shoe in the darkness, when most kids were asleep. But it meant nothing to him, except that these two Dutch boys were doing something weird.

Zeck wasn't in Dink's toon. He wasn't really in
any
toon. Because nobody wanted him, and it wouldn't matter if they had. Zeck didn't play.

Which made it all the more remarkable that Rat Army was in second place—they won their battles with one less active soldier than anybody else.

At first Rosen had threatened him and tried to take away privileges—even meals—but Zeck simply ignored him, like he ignored other kids who shoved him and jostled him in the corridors. What did he care? Their physical brutality, mild as it might be, showed what kind of people they were—the impurity of their souls—because they rejoiced in violence.

Genesis, chapter six, verse thirteen: “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

Didn't they understand that it was the violence of the human race that had caused God to send the Buggers to attack the Earth? This became obvious to Zeck as he was forced to watch the vids of the Scouring of China. What could the Buggers represent, except the destroying angel? A flood the first time, and now fire, just as was prophesied.

So the proper response was to forswear violence and become peaceful, rejecting war. Instead, they sacrificed their children to the idolatrous god of war, taking them from their families and thrusting them up here into the hot metal arms of Moloch, where they would be trained to give themselves over entirely to violence.

Jostle me all you want. It will purify me and make you filthier.

Now, though, nobody bothered with Zeck. He was ignored. Not pointedly—if he asked a question, people answered. Scornfully, perhaps, but what was that to Zeck? Scorn was merely pity mingled with hate, and hate was pride mixed with fear. They feared him because he was different, and so they hated him, and so their pity—the touch of godliness that remained in them—was turned to scorn. A virtue made filthy by pride.

By morning he had forgotten all about Flip's shoes and the paper that Dink had put into one of them the night before.

But then he saw Dink step out of the food line with a full tray, and walk back to hand the tray to Flip.

Flip smiled, then laughed and rolled his eyes.

Zeck remembered the shoes then. He walked over and looked at the tray.

It was pancakes this morning, and on the top pancake, everything had been cut away except a big letter “F.” Apparently, this had some significance to the two Dutch boys that completely escaped Zeck. But then, a lot of things escaped him. His father had kept him sheltered from the world, and so he did not know many of the things most of the other children knew. He was proud of his ignorance. It was a mark of his purity.

This time, though, there was something about this that seemed wrong to him. As if the letter “F” in the pancake was some kind of conspiracy. What did it stand for? A bad word in Common? That was too easy, and besides, they weren't laughing like that—it wasn't wicked laughter. It was…sad laughter.

Sad laughter. It was hard to make sense of it, but Zeck knew that he was right. The F was funny, but it also made them sad.

He asked one of the other boys. “What's with the F Dink carved into Flip's pancake?”

The other kid shrugged. “They're Dutch,” he said, as if that accounted for any weirdness about them.

Zeck took that solitary clue—which he had already known, of course—and took it to his desk immediately after breakfast. He searched first for “Netherlands F.” Nothing that made sense. Then a few more combinations, but it was “Dutch shoes” that brought him to Sinterklaas Day, December sixth, and all the customs associated with it.

He didn't go to class. He went to Flip's tidily made bed and unmade it till he found, under the sheet and next to the mattress, Dink's poem.

Zeck memorized it, put it back, and remade the bed—for it would be wrong to put Flip at risk of getting a demerit that he did not deserve. Then he went to Colonel Graff's office.

“I don't remember sending for you,” said Colonel Graff.

“You didn't,” said Zeck.

“If you have a problem, take it to your counselor. Who's assigned to you?” But Zeck knew at once that it wasn't that Graff couldn't remember the counselor's name—he simply had no idea who Zeck was.

“I'm Zeck Morgan,” he said. “I'm a spectator in Rat Army.”

“Oh,” said Graff, nodding. “You. Have you reconsidered your vow of nonviolence?”

“No sir,” said Zeck. “I'm here to ask you a question.”

“And you couldn't have asked somebody else?”

“Everybody else was busy,” said Zeck. Immediately he repented of the remark, because of course he hadn't even tried anybody else, and he only said this in order to hurt Graff's feelings by implying he was useless and had no work to do. “That was wrong of me to say that,” said Zeck, “and I ask your forgiveness.”

“What's your question,” said Graff impatiently, looking away.

“When you informed me that nonviolence was not an option here, you said it was because my motive is religious, and there is no religion in Battle School.”

“No open observance of religion,” said Graff. “Or we'd have classes constantly being interrupted by Muslims praying and every seventh day—not the
same
seventh day, mind you—we'd have Christians and Muslims and Jews celebrating one Sabbath or another. Not to mention the Macumba ritual of sacrificing chickens. Icons and statues of saints and little Buddhas and ancestral shrines and all kinds of other things would clutter up the place. So it's all banned. Period. So please get to class before I have to give you a demerit.”

“That was not my question,” said Zeck. “I would not have come here to ask you a question whose answer you had already told me.”

“Then why did you bring up—Never mind, what's your question?”

“If religious observance is banned, then why does Battle School tolerate the commemoration of the day of Saint Nicholas?”

“We don't,” said Graff.

“And yet you did,” said Zeck.

“No we didn't.”

“It was commemorated.”

“Would you please get to the point? Are you lodging a complaint? Did one of the teachers make some remark?”

“Filippus Rietveld put out his shoes for Saint Nicholas. Dink Meeker put a Sinterklaas poem in the shoe and then gave Flip a pancake carved with the initial ‘F.' An edible initial is a traditional treat on Sinterklaas Day. Which is today, December sixth.”

Graff sat down and leaned back in his chair. “A Sinterklaas poem?”

Zeck recited it.

Graff smiled and chuckled a little.

“So you think it's funny when they have
their
religious observance, but
my
religious observance is banned.”

“It was a poem in a shoe. I give you permission to write all the poems you want and insert them into people's wearing apparel.”

“Poems in shoes are not my religious observance. Mine is to contribute a small part to peace on Earth.”

“You're not even
on
Earth.”

“I would be, if I hadn't been kidnapped and enslaved to the service of Mammon,” said Zeck mildly.

You've been here almost a year, thought Graff, and you're still singing the same tune. Doesn't peer pressure have
any
effect on you?

“If these Dutch Christians have their Saint Nicholas Day, then the Muslims should have Ramadan and the Jews should have the Feast of Tabernacles and I should be able to live the gospel of love and peace.”

“Why are you even bothering with this?” said Graff. “The only thing I can do is punish them for a rather sweet gesture. It will make people hate you more.”

“You mean you intend to tell them who reported them?”

“No, Zeck. I know how you operate. You'll tell them yourself, so they'll be angry and people will persecute you and that will make you feel more purified.”

For a man who didn't recognize him when he came in, Graff certainly knew a lot about him. His face wasn't known, but his ideas were. Zeck's persistence in his faith
was
making an impression.

“If Battle School bans my religion because it forbids all religion, then all religion should
be
forbidden, sir.”

“I know that,” said Graff. “I also know you're an insufferable twit.”

“I believe that remark falls under the topic of ‘The commander's responsibility to build morale,' is that correct, sir?” asked Zeck.

“And that remark falls under the category of ‘You won't get out of Battle School by being a smartass,'” said Graff.

“Better a smartass than an insufferable twit, sir,” said Zeck.

“Get out of my office.”

 

An hour later, Flip and Dink had been called in and reprimanded and the poem confiscated.

“Aren't you going to take his shoes, sir?” asked Dink. “And I'm sure we can recover his initial when he shits it out. I'll reshape it for you so there's no mistaking it, sir.”

Graff said nothing, except to send them back to class. He knew that word of this would circulate throughout Battle School. But if he hadn't done it, then Zeck would have made sure that word of how this “religious observance” had been tolerated would spread, and then there really would be a nightmare of kids demanding their holidays.

It was inevitable. The two recusants, Zeck and Dink, both of whom refused to cooperate with the program here, were bound to become allies. Not that they knew they were allied. But in fact they were—they were deliberately stressing the system in order to try to make it collapse.

Well, I won't let you, dear genius children. Because nobody gives a rat's ass about Sinterklaas Day, or about Christian nonviolence. When you go to war—which is where you've gone, believe it or not, Dink and Zeck—then childish things are put away. In the face of a threat to the survival of the species, all these planetside trivialities are put aside until the crisis passes.

And it has not passed, whatever you little twits might think about it.

Dink left Graff's office seething. “If they can't see the difference between praying eight times a day and putting a poem in a shoe once a year…”

“It was a great poem,” said Flip.

“It was dumb,” said Dink.

“Wasn't that the point? It was a
great
dumb poem. I just feel bad I didn't write one for you.”

“I didn't put out my shoes.”

Flip sighed. “I'm sorry I did that.

I was just feeling homesick. I didn't think anybody would do anything about it.”

“Sorry.”

“We're both so very very sorry,” said Flip. “Except that we're not sorry at all.”

“No, we're not,” said Dink.

“In fact, it's kind of fun to get in trouble for keeping Sinterklaas Day. Imagine what would happen if we celebrated Christmas.”

“Well,” said Dink, “we've still got nineteen days.”

“Right,” said Flip.

By the time they got back to Rat Army barracks, it was obvious that the story was already known. Everybody fell silent when Dink and Flip stood in the doorway.

“Stupid,” said Rosen.

“Thanks,” said Dink. “That means so much, coming from you.”

“Since when did you get religion?” Rosen demanded. “Why make some kind of holy war out of it?”

“It wasn't religious,” said Dink. “It was
Dutch.
”

“Well, eemo, you be Rat Army now, not Dutch.”

“In three months I won't be in Rat Army,” said Dink. “But I'll be Dutch until I die.”

“Nations don't matter up here,” said one of the other boys.

“Religions neither,” said another.

“Well it's obvious religion
does
matter,” said Flip, “or we wouldn't have been called in and reprimanded for cutting a pancake into an ‘F' and writing a funny poem and sticking it in a shoe.”

Dink looked down the long corridor, which curved upward toward the end. Zeck, who slept at the very back of the barracks, couldn't even be seen from the door.

“He's not here,” said Rosen.

“Who?”

“Zeck,” said Rosen. “He came in and told us what he'd done, and then he left.”

“Anybody know where he goes when he takes off by himself?” asked Dink.

“Why?” said Rosen. “You planning to slap him around a little? I can't allow that.”

“I want to talk to him,” said Dink.

“Oh,
talk,
” said Rosen.

“When I say talk, I mean talk,” said Dink.

“I
don't
want to talk to him,” said Flip. “Stupid prig.”

“He just wants to get out of Battle School,” said Dink.

“If we put it to a vote,” said one of the other boys, “he'd be gone in a second. What a waste of space.”

“A vote,” said Flip. “What a military idea.”

“Go stick your finger in a dike,” the boy answered.

“So now we're anti-Dutch,” said Dink.

“They can't help it if they still believe in Santa Claus,” said an American kid.

“Sinterklaas,” said Dink. “Lives in Spain, not the North Pole. Has a friend who carries his bag—Black Piet.”

“Friend?” said a kid from South Africa. “Black Piet sounds like a slave to me.”

Rosen sighed. “It's a relief when Christians are fighting each other instead of slaughtering Jews.”

That was when Ender Wiggin joined the discussion for the first time. “Isn't this exactly what the rules are supposed to prevent? People sniping at each other because of religion or nationality?”

“And yet we're doing it anyway,” said the American kid. “Aren't we up here to save the human race?” asked Dink. “Humans have religions and nationalities. And customs. Why can't we be humans too?”

Wiggin didn't answer.

“Makes no sense for us to live like Buggers,” said Dink. “
They
don't celebrate Sinterklaas Day, either.”

“Part of being human,” said Wiggin, “is to massacre each other from time to time. So maybe till we beat the Formics we should try
not
to be so very very human.”

“And maybe,” said Dink, “soldiers fight for what they care about, and what they care about is their families and their traditions and their faith and their nation—the very stuff they don't allow us to have here.”

“Maybe we fight so we can get back home and find all that stuff still there, waiting for us,” said Wiggin.

“Maybe none of us are fighting at all,” said Flip. “It's not like anything we do here is real.”

“I'll tell you what's real,” said Dink. “I was Sinterklaas's helper last night.” Then he grinned.

“So you're finally admitting you're an elf,” said the American kid, grinning back.

“How many Dutch kids are there in Battle School?” said Dink. “Sinterklaas is definitely a minority cultural icon, right? Nothing like Santa Claus, right?”

Rosen kicked Dink lightly on the shin. “What do you think you're doing, Dink?”

“Santa Claus isn't a religious figure, either. Nobody prays to Santa Claus. It's an
American
thing.”

“Canadian too,” said another kid.

“Anglophone Canadian,” said another. “Papa Noël for some of us.”

“Father Christmas,” said a Brit.

“See? Not Christian,
national,
” said Dink. “It's one thing to stifle religious expression. But to try to erase nationality—the whole fleet is thick with national loyalties. They don't make Dutch
admirals
pretend not to be Dutch. They wouldn't stand for it.”

“There aren't any Dutch admirals,” said the Brit.

It wasn't that Dink let idiotic comments like this make him
angry.
He didn't want to hit anybody. He didn't want to raise his voice. But still, there was this deep defiance that could not be ignored. He had to do something that other people wouldn't like. Even though he knew it would cause trouble and accomplish nothing at all, he was going to do it, and it was going to start right now.

“They were able to stifle our Dutch holiday because there are so few of us,” said Dink. “But it's time for us to insist on expressing our national cultures like any other soldiers in the International Fleet. Christmas is a holy day for Christians, but Santa Claus is a secular figure. Nobody prays to Saint Nicholas.”

“Little kids do,” said the American, but he was laughing.

“Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Papa Noël, Sinterklaas, they may have begun with a Christian feast day, but they're national now, and people with no religion at all still celebrate the holiday. It's the day of gift-giving, right? December twenty-fifth, whether you're a believing Christian or not. They can keep us from being religious, but they can't stop us from giving gifts on Santa Claus day.”

Some of them were laughing. Some were thinking.

“You're going to get in such deep doodoo,” said one.

“É,” said Dink. “But then, that's where I live all the time anyway.”

“Don't even try it.”

Dink looked up to see who had spoken so angrily.

Zeck.

“I think we already know where you stand,” said Dink.

“In the name of Christ I forbid you to bring Satan into this place.”

All the smiles disappeared. Everyone fell silent.

“You know, don't you, Zeck,” said Dink, “that you just guaranteed that I'll have support for my little Santa Claus movement.”

Zeck seemed genuinely frightened. But not of Dink. “Don't bring this curse down on your own heads.”

“I don't believe in curses, I only believe in blessings,” said Dink. “And I sure as hell don't believe I'll be cursed because I give presents to people in the name of Santa Claus.”

Zeck glanced around and seemed to be trying to calm himself. “Religious observances are forbidden for everybody.”

“And yet
you
observe your religion all the time,” said Dink. “Every time you don't fire your weapon in the Battle Room, you're doing it. So if you oppose our little Santa Claus revolution, eemo, then we want to see you firing that gun and taking people out. Otherwise you're a flaming hypocrite. A fraud. A pious fake. A liar.” Dink was in his face now. Close enough to make some of the other kids uncomfortable.

“Back off, Dink,” one of them muttered. Who? Wiggin, of course. Great, a peacemaker. Again, Dink felt defiance swell up inside him.

“What are you going to do?” said Zeck softly. “Hit me? I'm three years younger than you.”

“No,” said Dink. “I'm going to bless you.”

He set his hand in the air just over Zeck's head. As Dink expected, Zeck stood there without flinching. That was what Zeck was best at: taking whatever anybody dished out without even trying to get away.

“I bless you with the spirit of Santa Claus,” said Dink. “I bless you with compassion and generosity. With the irresistible impulse to make other people happy. And you know what else? I bless you with the humility to realize that you aren't any better than the rest of us in the eyes of God.”

“You know nothing about God,” said Zeck.

“I know more than you do,” said Dink. “Because I'm not filled with hate.”

“Neither am I,” said Zeck.

“No,” murmured another boy. “You're filled with kuso.”

“Toguro,” said another, laughing.

“I bless you,” said Dink, “with love. Believe me, Zeck, it'll be such a shock to you, when you finally feel it, that it might just kill you. Then you can go talk to God yourself and find out where you screwed up.”

Dink turned around and faced the bulk of Rat Army. “I don't know about you, but I'm playing Santa Claus this year. We don't own anything up here, so gift-giving isn't exactly easy. Can't get on the nets and order stuff to be shipped up here, all gift-wrapped. But gifts don't have to be toys and stuff. What I gave Flip here, the gift that got us in so much trouble, was a poem.”

“Oh how sweet,” said the Brit. “A love poem?”

In answer, Flip recited it. Blushing, of course, because the joke was on him. But also loving it—because the joke was on
him.

Dink could see that a lot of them thought it was cool to have a toon leader write a satirical poem about one of his soldiers. It really
was
a gift.

“And just to prove that we aren't celebrating actual Christmas,” said Dink, “let's just give each other whatever gifts we think of on any day at all in December. It can be Hanukkah. It can be…hell, it can be Sinterklaas Day, can't it? The day is still young.”

“If Dink would give us all a gift,” intoned the Jamaican kid, “that would give our hearts a lift.”

“Oh how sweet,” said the Brit.

“Crazy Tom thinks everything's sweet,” said the Canadian, “except for Tom's own mold-covered feet.”

Most of them laughed.

“Was that supposed to be a
present
?” said Crazy Tom. “Father Christmas is doing a substandard job this year.”

“It would be pleasant to get a present,” said Wiggin. Everybody laughed a little. Wiggin went on, “It would be better to get a letter.”

Only a few people chuckled at that. Then they were all quiet.

“That's the only gift
I
want,” said Wiggin softly. “A letter from home. If you can give me that, I'm with you.”

“I can't,” said Dink, now just as serious as Wiggin. “They've cut us off from everything. The best I can do is this: At home you know your family's doing Santa stuff. Hanging up stockings, right? You're American, right?”

Wiggin nodded.

“Hang up your stocking this year, Wiggin, and you'll get something in it.”

“Coal,” said Crazy Tom, the Brit.

“I don't know what it is yet,” said Dink, “but it'll be there.”

“It won't really be from them,” said Wiggin.

“No, it won't,” said Dink. “It'll be from Santa Claus.” He grinned.

Wiggin shook his head. “Don't do it, Dink,” he said. “It's not worth the trouble it'll cause.”

“What trouble? It'll build morale.”

“We're here to study war,” said Wiggin.

Zeck whispered: “Study war no more.”

“Are you still here, Zeck?” said Dink, then pointedly turned his back on him. “We're here to build an army, Wiggin. A group of men who work together as one. Not a bunch of kids hammered down by teachers who think they can erase ten thousand years of human history and culture by making a rule.”

Wiggin looked away and said, sadly, “Do what you want, Dink.”

“I always do,” answered Dink.

“The only gift that God respects,” said Zeck, “is a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”

A lot of kids groaned at that, but Dink gave Zeck one last look. “And when were you ever contrite?”

“Contrition,” said Zeck, “is a gift I give to God, not to you.” Only then did Zeck walk away, back toward his bed, where he'd be hidden behind the curvature of the barracks room.