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"Because you--" Because you spoke nicely to me, and honestly "You didn't lie"

"I won't lie now, either," said Graff "My job isn't to be friends My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world In the whole history of the world We need a Napoleon An Alexander Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander fla We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself dictator, and died for it My job is to produce such a creature, and all the men and women he'll need to help him Nowhere in that does it say I have to make friends with children"

"You made them hate me"

"So? What will you do about it? Crawl into a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will ood at what you do that they can't ignore you I told them you were the best Now you damn well better be"

"What if I can't?"

"Then too bad Look, Ender, I'ers are out there Ten billion, a hundred billion, a million billion of them, for all we know With as many ships, for all we know With weapons we can't understand And a willingness to use those weapons to wipe us out It isn't the world at stake, Ender Just us Just humankind As far as the rest of the biosphere is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution But humanity doesn't want to die As a species, we have evolved to survive And the e do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius The one who invents the wheel And light And flight The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire Do you understand any of this?"

Ender thought he did, but wasn't sure, and so said nothing

"No Of course not So I'll put it bluntly Hus are free except when hu Maybe huht both do despicable things, Ender, but if huood tools"

"Is that all? Just tools?"

"Individual hus are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive"

"That's a lie"

"No It's just a half truth You can worry about the other half after in this war"

"It'll be over before I grow up," Ender said

"I hope you're wrong," said Graff "By the way, you aren't helping your-self at all, talking toeach other that old Ender Wiggin is back there licking up to Graff If word once gets around that you're a teachers' boy, you're iced for sure"

In other words, go away and leave me alone "Goodbye," Ender said He pulled hione