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Fixer-Uppers [all day]

Yes, there was a dance tonight, but it wasn't like Ben needed more than five minutes to shower, change and do nothing to his hair. Of course he was at work. He'd brought more of Dink's audio tapes to listen to as well:

"Why are you giving me a five-year-old street urchin to tend?" Graff demanded and Ben frowned. "Urchin" was never a description that leapt to mind when he thought of Ender.

A new voice replied, "You've seen the scores," and Ben grunted. Bean. Of course.

"Am I supposed to take those seriously?" Graff asked.

"Since the whole Battle School program is based on the reliability of our juvenile testing program, yes, I think you should take his scores seriously," the other voice said a bit acerbically. "I did a little research. No child has ever done better. Not even your star pupil."

"It's not the validity of the tests that I doubt. It's the tester," Graff insisted and Ben was already irritated by the tenor of this conversation. He wondered if Graff had just set a new record.

"Sister Carlotta is a nun. You'll never find a more honest person," the man added.

"Honest people have been known to deceive themselves. To want so desperately, after all these years of searching, to find one -- just one -- child whose value will be worth all that work," Graff said and Ben hoped that it was just his imagination that added the slight wistfulness to the man's voice. He didn't want to feel sympathy for the man. He wanted to kick him good and hard where it would hurt.

"And she's found him."

"Look at the way she found him. Her first report touts this Achilles child, and this -- this Bean, this Legume -- he's just an afterthought. Then Achilles is gone, not another mention of him -- did he die? Wasn't she trying to get a leg operation for him? -- and it's Haricot Vert who is now her candidate." Ben snickered. He was absolutely certain that Bean would not appreciate the other nicknames Graff had just given him.

"''Bean' is the name he calls himself. Rather as your Andrew Wiggin calls himself 'Ender," the man said.

"He's not my Andrew Wiggin," Graff shot back and Ben rolled his eyes. "Keep telling yourself that, Graff," he muttered. "Tell your conscience how much you don't care what you did to him."

"And Bean is not Sister Carlotta's child, either," the second voice continued. "If she were inclined to fudge the scores or administer tests unfairly, she would have pushed other students into the program long before now, and we'd already know how unreliable she was. She has never done that. She washes out her most hopeful children herself, then finds some place for them on Earth or in a non-command program. I think you're merely annoyed because you've already decided to focus all your attention and energy on the Wiggin boy, and you don't want any distraction." Ben nodded along, agreeing with the man's argument. Obviously the guy hadn't met the annoyance that was (heh) Haricot Vert or he wouldn't be pushing this hard, but he wasn't wrong about Graff's fixation.

"When did I lie down on your couch? Of course I'll give this little one a chance. Even if I don't for one second believe these scores."

"Not just a chance. Advance him. Test him. Challenge him. Don't let him languish," the man said.

"You underestimate our program. We advance and test and challenge all our students." Ben frowned again. "Stop quoting the brochure, Graff."

"But some are more equal than others."

"Some take better advantage of the program than others," Graff corrected.

"I'll look forward to telling Sister Carlotta about your enthusiasm," the man concluded dryly and the audio went dead.

Ben rolled his eyes one more time for good measure before getting back to work on a Bluetooth he'd taken apart.

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"I'm surprised it took them this long to find another excuse for a party," Ender said, walking into the store with some sandwiches. His mocking amusement was a little bit of a put on today - he was still dwelling on the Hive Queen, what she'd told him, dreading the return of her voice and hoping for it just as much.

But it was there, anyway.

"The start of a month," Ben said. "We really are grasping straws."

"It is nominally a holiday," Ender offered, to mitigate that a bit. He put the sandwiches down on the desk, and pulled up a chair.

"To celebrate idiots?" Ben replied, reaching for a sandwich.

"And foolishness," Ender said, taking a sandwich himself, "And many other qualities most of us have many of."

"I have never done a foolish thing in--" Ben couldn't make it through the sentence without laughing. "Okay, point. Are you going to the dance?"

"I, for one, have done many foolish things in my life," Ender said, wryly, "And so I'll make an appearance. Not for very long, probably."

"Hot date later?" Ben asked with a little smile.

"My laptop takes offense to that," said Ender, though he knew Jane wouldn't. "Should I expect you back tonight at all?"

Ben shook his head, cheeks going pink. "I think I'll be crashing with Tahiri."

Ender smiled a little at him. "Got it," he said, "I won't be sending out any 'where is my roommate' letters before dawn, then."

"Or send out the tracking dogs," Ben added, still blushing.

"Or the droids," Ender filled in, "Which could get pretty embarrassing."

He didn't really want to be joking about this, he realised, but he kept it up anyway.

"A bit," Ben agreed. "The trip back with Karla went surprisingly quietly."

It was a rather bald attempt at a change in subject, but talking about that part of his life with Tahiri to Ender felt...odd.

"Well, that's a relief," Ender said, though for a moment it wasn't clear to him whether he was talking about the subject change or Ben's safe return. "And a little unexpected."

Ben nodded, chewing on his lower lip for a second. "I'm worried about reprisals," he admitted.

Alderaan was still large in his mind.

Ben's instincts were usually pretty good about this, and Ender let whatever remnants of other feelings he'd just been coping with go to give the matter his full attention.

"What did you do?"

"Karla gave several villages the Queen's Gift: it'll help renew the land for better harvests," Ben explained.

He paused, then added: "Basically, she bled into a bucket."

That part had made him go "huh."

Ender's eyebrows went up briefly, but if anyone knew what blood signified in Karla's world, it was him. "And I take it she didn't do it anonymously," he guessed.

"It'd be impossible for her to," Ben admitted. "There aren't any other Sapphire jeweled Black Widows with an interest in Glacia."

"Trying to get the rumor that she's around and still working for the people going," Ender surmised. "Clever, but risky."

"Safer for her getting in and out," Ben said, "which I approve of, but I worry about the villages."

"Whispers between townsfolk might be a good way to get her reputation back up, but also to get a bullseye paitned on the villagers' backs," Ender agreed, "And does she know when she's planning to assault Hobart's position as it is? She might be out an element of surprise now."

"She hasn't mentioned anything to me," Ben said, "but then she didn't tell me about her idea about the villages until the day before we left."

"I don't doubt that this'll have given some of the people some hope," Ender said, sliding out of his own perspective and into what he imagined the villagers must be feeling pretty smoothly. "Sowed some seeds. But will they have time to grow? If Karla wants to back up what she's starting here, she's going to have to get more active about it - she's going to have to be able to guarantee these people that she won't just turn up to spit in Hobart's face occasionally, but that she can protect them any time something goes wrong."

Ben nodded thoughtfully. "I guess we'll be making more trips, then," he said. "Morton's in the capital city where Hobart would miss him."

"It depends on what Hobart's strategy is going to be," Ender said, taking a bite of his sandwich before Ben could wind up chastising him for not touching it. "If he finds the rumors troubling enough and assaults the town, he might make martyrs for Karla's cause - or send a message to the rest of the populace, depending on Karla's reaction. But if he decides to play the more subtle game and has her or Morton or the villagers sniped in dark alleys..."

It was sad that he could probably come up with a good strategy to stop Karla on the spot. Or maybe just an aspersion cast on Hobart's strategic skills.

"I think he'll go with the first option," Ben said, "if only because nothing so far has struck me with the idea that Hobart could even define 'subtle.'"

"Maybe," Ender said, chewing on another bit of sandwich. "I hope Karla's keeping an eye on these villages, whatever happens."

He'd kind of given up on not getting involved. Right now he was focusing on 'not getting involved too much'.

"I'm not sure how much, if anything, she can feel through the blood she left in the land, but I'm sure she'll keep an eye out," Ben agreed.

"Which, if Hobart's clever, he'll keep in mind," Ender said, after a beat. "But I don't know if he's likely to set up alarms of his own."

Had he mentioned recently how glad he was he didn't have to play Risk with the Earth?

"I think it depends how entrenched his spying network is among the smaller villages," Ender said. "Karla's not going near the bigger cities."

"Smart," Ender said, rubbing at his hair. "We'd need more intelligence."

Please don't remark on his usage of the word 'we'.

"I'll put out feelers the next village we visit," Ben promised.

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