But if she was to have any chance to get free of these people and this place, she had to be out of this room and into a place where she could earn enough trust to be able to get free.
Trust. They'd expect her to lie, they'd expect her to plot. Therefore she had to be as convincing as possible. Her long time in solitary was a help, of course--everyone knew that isolation caused untold mental pressures. Another thing that helped was that it was undoubtedly known to them by now, from the other children, that she was the first one who broke under pressure during the battles on Eros. So they would be predisposed to believe a breakdown now.
She began to cry. It wasn't hard. There were plenty of real tears pent up in her. But she shaped those emotions, made it into a whimpering cry that went on and on and on. Her nose filled with mucus, but she did not blow it. Her eyes streamed with tears but she did not wipe them. Her pillow got soaked with tears and covered with snot but she did not evade the wet place. Instead she rolled her hair right through it as she turned over, did it again and again until her hair was matted with mucus and her face stiff with it. She made sure her crying did not get more desperate--let no one think she was trying to get attention. She toyed with the idea of falling silent when anyone came into the room, but decided against it--she figured it would be more convincing to be oblivious to other people's coming and going.
It worked. Someone came in after a day of this and slapped her with another injection. And this time when she woke up, she was in a hospital bed with a window that showed a cloudless northern sky. And sitting by her bed was Dink Meeker.
"Ho Dink," she said.
"Ho Petra. You pasted these conchos over real good."
"One does what one can for the cause," she said. "Who else?"
"You're the last to come out of solitary. They got the whole team from Eros, Petra. Except Ender, of course. And Bean."
"He's not in solitary?"
"No, they didn't keep it a secret who was still in the box. We thought you made a pretty fine showing."
"Who was second-longest?"
"Nobody cares. We were all out in the first week. You lasted five."
So it had been two and a half weeks before she started her calendar.
"Because I'm the stupid one."
"'Stubborn' is the right word."
"Know where we are?"
"Russia."
"I meant where in Russia."
"Far from any borders, they assure us."
"What are our resources?"
"Very thick walls. No tools. Constant observation. They weigh our bodily wastes, I'm not kidding."
"What have they got us doing?"
"Like a really dumbed-down Battle School. We put up with it for a long time till Fly Molo finally gave up and when one of the teachers was quoting one of Von Clausewitz's stupider generalizations, Fly continued the quotation, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, and the rest of us joined in as best we could--I mean, nobody has a memory like Fly, but we do OK--and they finally got the idea that we could teach the stupid classes to them. So now it's just . . . war games."
"Again? You think they're going to spring it on us later that the games are real?"
"No, this is just planning stuff. Strategy for a war between Russia and Turkmenistan. Russia and an alliance between Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. War with the United States and Canada. War with the old NATO alliance except Germany. War with Germany. On and on. China. India. Really stupid stuff, too, like between Brazil and Peru, which makes no sense but maybe they were testing our compliance or something."
"All this in five weeks?"
"Three weeks of kuso classes, and then two weeks of war games. When we finish our plan, see, they run it on the computer to show us how it went. Someday they're going to catch on that the only way to do this that isn't a waste of time is to have one of us making the plan for the opponent as well."
"My guess is you just told them."
"I've told them before but they're hard to persuade. Typical military types. Makes you understand why the whole concept of Battle School was developed in the first place. If the war had been up to adults, there'd be Buggers at every breakfast table in the world by now."
"But they are listening?"