"Orson Scott Card - Ender's Saga 01 - Ender's Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

Andrew shrugged.

"His monitor," she whispered to the others.

Andrew reached up and felt his neck. There was a bandaid. It was gone. He was
just like everybody else now.

"Washed out, Andy?" asked a boy who sat across the aisle and behind him.
Couldn't think of his name. Peter. No, that was someone else.

"Quiet, Mr. Stilson," said Miss Pumphrey. Stilson smirked.

Miss Pumphrey talked about multiplication. Ender doodled on his desk, drawing
contour maps of mountainous islands and then telling his desk to display them in
three dimensions from every angle. The teacher would know, of course, that he
wasn't paying attention, but she wouldn't bother him. He always knew the answer,
even when she thought he wasn't paying attention.

In the corner of his desk a word appeared and began marching around the
perimeter of the desk. It was upside down and backward at first, but Ender knew
what it said long before it reached the bottom of the desk and turned right side
up.

THIRD

Ender smiled. He was the one who had figured out how to send messages and make
them march-- even as his secret enemy called him names, the method of delivery
praised him. It was not his fault he was a Third. It was the government's idea,
they were the ones who authorized it-- how else could a Third like Ender have
got into school? And now the monitor was gone. The experiment entitled Andrew
Wiggin hadn't worked out alter all. If they could, he was sure they would like
to rescind the waivers that had allowed him to be born at all. Didn't work, so
erase the experiment.

The bell rang. Everyone signed off their desks or hurriedly typed in reminders
to themselves. Some were dumping lessons or data into their computers at home. A
few gathered at the printers while something they wanted to show was printed
out. Ender spread his hands over the child-size keyboard near the edge of the
desk and wondered what it would feel like to have hands as large as a
grown-up's. They must feel so big and awkward, thick stubby fingers and beefy
palms. Of course, they had bigger keyboards-- but how could their thick fingers
draw a fine line, the way Ender could, a thin line so precise that he could make
it spiral seventy-nine times from the center to the edge of the desk without the
lines ever touching or overlapping. It gave him something to do while the
teacher droned on about arithmetic. Arithmetic! Valentine had taught him
arithmetic when he was three.

"Are you all right. Andrew?"

"Yes, ma'am."