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

Suddenly Peter smiled and clapped his hands together in a mockery of good
cheer. "Let's play buggers and astronauts," he said.

"Where's Mom?" asked Valentine.

"Out," said Peter. "I'm in charge."

"I think I'll call Daddy."

"Call away," said Peter. "You know he's never in."

"I'll play," Ender said.

"You be the bugger," said Peter.

"Let him be the astronaut for once," Valentine said.

"Keep your fat face out of it, fart mouth," said Peter. "Come on upstairs and
choose your weapons."

It would not be a good game, Ender knew it was not a question of winning. When
kids played in the corridors, whole troops of them, the buggers never won, and
sometimes the games got mean. But here in their flat, the game would start mean,
and the bugger couldn't just go empty and quit the way buggers did in the real
wars. The bugger was in it until the astronaut decided it was over.

Peter opened his bottom drawer and took out the bugger mask. Mother had got
upset at him when Peter bought it, but Dad pointed out that the war wouldn't go
away just because you hid bugger masks and wouldn't let your kids play with
make-believe laser guns. The better to play the war games, and have a better
chance of surviving when the buggers came again.

If I survive the games, thought Ender. He put on the mask. It closed him in
like a hand pressed tight against his face. But this isn't how it feels to he a
bugger, thought Ender. They don't wear this face like a mask, it is their face.
On their home worlds, do the buggers put on human masks, and play? And what do
they call its? Slimies, because we're so soft and oily compared to them?

"Watch out, Slimy," Ender said.

He could barely see Peter through the eyeholes. Peter smiled at him. "Slimy,
huh? Well, bugger-wugger, let's see how you break that face of yours."

Ender couldn't see it coming, except a slight shift of Peter's weight; the
mask cut our his peripheral vision. Suddenly there was the pain and pressure of
a blow to the side of his head; he lost balance, fell that way.

"Don't see too well, do you, bugger?" said Peter.

Ender began to take off the mask. Peter put his toe against Ender's groin.