Zeck came upon Wiggin at one of the elevator wells. It wasn’t one much used by students—it was out of the normal lanes of traffic, and mostly teachers used it, when it was used at all. Zeck used it precisely for that reason. He could wait in line at the busier elevators for a long time, but somehow he never got to the front of the line until everyone else had gone. That was usually fine with Zeck, but at mealtime, when everyone was headed for the same destination, it was the difference between a hot meal with a lot of choices and a colder one with almost no choices left.

So there was Wiggin, sitting with his back to the wall, gripping his left leg so tightly that his head rested on his own knee. He was obviously in pain.

Zeck almost walked past him. What did he owe any of these people?

Then he remembered the Samaritan who stopped for the injured man—and the priest and the Levite who didn’t.

“Something wrong?” asked Zeck.

“Thinking about something and didn’t watch where I was stepping,” said Wiggin through gritted teeth.

“Bruise? Broken skin?”

“Twisted ankle,” said Wiggin.

“Swollen?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Wiggin. “When I move it, it throbs.”

“Bring your other leg up so I can compare ankles.”

Wiggin did. Zeck pulled his shoes and socks off, despite the way Wiggin winced when he moved his left foot. The bare ankles looked exactly alike, as far as he could tell. “Doesn’t look swollen.”

“Good,” said Wiggin. “Then I guess I’m okay.” He reached out and grabbed Zeck’s upper arm and began to pull himself up.

“I’m not a fire pole,” said Zeck. “Let me help you up instead of just grabbing my arm.”

“Sure, sorry,” said Wiggin.

In a moment, Wiggin was up and wincing as he tried to walk off the injury. “Owie owie owie,” he breathed, in a parody of a suffering toddler. Then he gave Zeck a tiny smile. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Zeck. “Now what did you want to talk to me about?”

Wiggin smiled a little more broadly. “I don’t know,” he said. No attempt to deny that this whole thing had been staged to have an opportunity to talk. “I just know that whatever your plan is, it’s working too well or it isn’t working at all.”

“I don’t have a plan,” said Zeck. “I just want to go home.”

“We all want to go home,” said Wiggin. “But we also want other things. Honor. Victory. Save the world. Prove you can do something hard. You don’t care about anything except getting out of here, no matter what it costs.”

“That’s right.”

“So, why? And don’t tell me you’re homesick. We all cried for mommy and daddy our first few nights here, and then we stopped. If there’s anybody here tough enough to take a little homesickness, it’s you.”

“So now you’re my counselor? Forget it, Wiggin.”

“What are you afraid of?” asked Wiggin.

“Nothing,” said Zeck.

“Kuso,” said Wiggin.

“Now I’m supposed to pour out my heart to you, is that it? Because you asked what I was afraid of, and that shows me how insightful you are, and I tell you all my deepest fears, and you make me feel better, and then we’re lifelong friends and I decide to become a good soldier to please you.”

“You don’t eat,” said Wiggin. “Humans can’t live in the kind of isolation you’re living in. I think you’re going to die. If your body doesn’t die, your soul will.”

“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but you don’t believe in souls.”

“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” said Wiggin, “but you don’t know squat about what I believe. I have religious parents too.”

“Having religious parents says nothing about what you believe.”

“But nobody here is religious without religious parents,” said Wiggin. “Come on, how old were you when they took you? Six? Seven?”

“I hear you were five.”

“And now we’re so much older. You’re eight now?”

“Almost nine.”

“But we’re so mature.”

“They picked us because we have a mental age much higher than the norm.”

“I have religious parents,” said Wiggin. “Unfortunately not the same religion, which caused a little conflict. For instance, my mother doesn’t believe in infant baptism and my father does, so my father thinks I’m baptized and my mother doesn’t.”

Zeck winced a little at the idea. “You can’t have a strong marriage when the parents don’t share the same faith.”

“Well, my parents do their best,” said Wiggin. “And I bet your parents don’t agree on everything.”

Zeck shrugged.

“I bet they don’t agree on you.”

Zeck turned away. “This is completely none of your business.”

“I bet your mother was glad you went into space. To get you away from your father. That’s how much they disagree on religion.”

Zeck turned around to face him, furious now. “What did those bunducks tell you about me? They have no right.”

“Nobody told me anything,” said Wiggin. “It’s you, oomay. Back when people were still talking to you, when you first came into Rat Army, it was always, Your father this, your father that.”

“You only just joined Rat yourself.”

“People talk outside their armies,” said Wiggin. “And I listen. Always your father. Like your father was some kind of prophet. And I thought, I bet his mother’s glad he isn’t under his father’s influence anymore.”

“My mother wants me to respect my father.”

“She just doesn’t want you to live with him. He beat you, didn’t he?”

Zeck shoved Wiggin. Before he even thought of doing it, there was his hand, shoving the kid away.

“Come on,” said Wiggin. “You shower. People see the scars. I’ve seen the scars.”

“It was purification. There’s no way a pagan like you would understand that.”

“Purification of what?” asked Wiggin. “You were the perfect son.”

“Graff’s been feeding you information from their observation of me, hasn’t he! That’s illegal!”

“Come on, Zeck. I know you. If you decide something’s right, then that’s the thing you’ll do, no matter what it costs you. You believe in your father. Whatever he says, you’ll do. So what have you done wrong that makes it so you need all this purification?”

Zeck didn’t answer. He just closed down. Refused to listen. He let his mind go off somewhere else. To the place where it always went when Father purified him. So he wouldn’t scream. So he wouldn’t feel anything at all.

“There it is,” said Wiggin. “That’s the Zeck he made you into. The Zeck who isn’t really here. Doesn’t really exist.”

Zeck heard him without hearing.

“And that’s why you have to get home,” said Wiggin. “Because without you there, he’ll have to find somebody else to purify, won’t he? Do you have a brother? A sister? Some other kid in the congregation?”

“He never touched any other kid,” murmured Zeck. “I’m the impure one.”

“Oh, I know. It’s your mother, isn’t it? Do you think he’ll try to purify your mother?”

At Wiggin’s cue, Zeck started thinking about his mother. And not just any picture of her. It was his mother saying to him, “Satan does not give good gifts. So your good gift comes from God.”

And then Father, saying, “There are those who will tell you that a thing is from God, when it’s really from the devil.”

Zeck had asked him why.

“They are deceived by their own desire,” Father had said. “They wish the world were a better place, so they pretend that polluted things are pure, so they don’t have to fear them.”

He couldn’t let Father know what Mother had said, because it was so impure of her. Can’t let Father know.

If he whips Mother I’ll kill him.

The thought struck him with such force he gasped and stumbled against the wall.

If he whips Mother I’ll kill him.

Wiggin was still there, talking. “Zeck, what’s wrong?” Wiggin touched him. Touched his arm. The forearm.

Zeck couldn’t help himself. He yanked his arm away, but that wasn’t enough. He lashed out with his right leg and kicked Wiggin in the shin. Then shoved him backward. Wiggin fell against the wall, then to the floor. He looked helpless. Zeck was so filled with rage at him that he couldn’t contain it. It was all the weeks of isolation. It was all his fear for his mother. She really wasn’t pure. He should hate her for it. But he loved her. That made him evil. That made him deserve all the purification Father ever gave him—because he loved someone as impure as Mother.

And for some reason, with all of this rage and fear, Zeck threw himself down on Wiggin and pummeled him in the chest and stomach.

“Stop it!” cried Wiggin, trying to turn away from him. “What do you think you’re doing, purifying me?”

Zeck stopped and looked at his own hands. Looked at Wiggin’s body, lying there helpless. The very helplessness of him, his wormlike, fetal pose, infuriated Zeck. He knew from class what this was. It was blood lust. It was the animal fever that took a soldier over and made him strong beyond his strength.

It was what Father must have felt, purifying him. The smaller body, helpless, complete subject to his will. It filled a certain kind of man with rage that had to tear into its prey. That had to inflict pain, break the skin, draw blood and tears and screaming from the victim.

It was something dark and evil. If anything was from Satan, this was.

“I thought you were a pacifist,” said Wiggin softly.

Zeck could hear his father going on and on about peace, how the servants of God did not go to war.

“‘Beat your swords into ploughshares,’” murmured Zeck, echoing his father quoting Micah and Isaiah, as he did all the time.

“Bible quotations,” said Wiggin, uncurling himself. Now he lay flat on the ground. Completely open to any blows Zeck might try to land. But the rage was dissipating now. Zeck didn’t want to hit him. Or rather, he wanted to hit him, but not more than he wanted not to hit him.

“Try this one,” said Wiggin. “‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’”

“Don’t argue scripture with me,” said Zeck. “I know them all.”

“But you only believe in the ones your father liked. Why do you think your father always quoted the ones about hating war and rejecting violence, when he beat you the way he did? Sounds like he was trying to talk himself out of what he found in his own heart.”

“You don’t know my father.” Zeck hissed out the words through a tight throat. He could hit this kid again. He could. But he wouldn’t. At least he wouldn’t if the kid would just shut up.

“I know what I just saw,” said Wiggin. “That rage. You weren’t pulling your punches. That hurt.”

“Sorry,” said Zeck. “But shut up now, please.”

“Oh, just because it hurt doesn’t mean I’m afraid of you. You know one of the reasons I was glad to leave home? Because my brother threatened to kill me, and even though I know he probably didn’t mean it, my guts didn’t know that. My guts churned all the time. With fear. Because my brother liked to hurt me. I don’t think that’s your father, though. I think your father hated what he did to you. And that’s why he preached peace.”

“He preached peace because that’s what Christ preached,” said Zeck. He meant to say it with fervor and intensity. But the words sounded lame even as he said them.

“‘The Lord is my strength and song,’” quoted Wiggin. “‘And he is become my salvation.’”

“Exodus fifteen,” said Zeck. “It’s Moses. Old Testament. It doesn’t apply.”

“‘He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.’”

“What are you doing with the King James version anyway?” said Zeck. “Did you learn these scriptures just to argue with me?”

“Yes,” said Wiggin. “You know the next verse.”

“‘The Lord is a man of war,’” said Zeck. “‘Jehovah is his name.’”

“The King James version just says ‘the Lord,’” said Wiggin.

“But that’s what it means when the Bible puts it in small caps like that. They’re just avoiding putting down the name of God.”

“‘The Lord is a man of war,’” said Wiggin. “But if your dad quoted that, then he’d have no reason to try to control this bloodlust thing. This berzerker rage. He’d kill you. So it’s really a good thing, isn’t it, that he ignored Jesus and Moses talking about how God is about war and peace. Because he loved you so much that he’d build half his religion up like a wall to keep him from killing you.”

“Stay out of my family,” whispered Zeck.

“He loved you,” said Wiggin. “But you were right to be afraid of him.”

“Don’t make me hurt you,” said Zeck.

“I’m not worried about you,” said Wiggin. “You’re twice the man your father is. Now that you’ve seen the violence inside you, you can control it. You won’t hit me for telling you the truth.”

“Nothing that you’ve said is true.”

“Zeck,” said Wiggin. “‘It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.’ Did your father quote that very much?”

He wanted to kill Wiggin. He also wanted to cry. He didn’t do either. “He quoted it all the time.”

“And then he took you out and made all those scars on your back.”

“I wasn’t pure.”

“No, he wasn’t pure. He wasn’t.”

“Some people are looking so hard to find Satan that they see him even where he isn’t!” cried Zeck.

“I don’t remember that from the Bible.”

It wasn’t the Bible. It was Mother. He couldn’t say that.

“I’m not sure what you’re saying,” said Wiggin. “That I’m finding Satan where he isn’t? I don’t think so. I think a man who whips a little kid and then blames the kid for it, I think that’s exactly where Satan lives.”

The urge to cry was apparently going to win. Zeck could hardly get the words out. “I have to go home.”

“And do what?” asked Wiggin. “Stand between your mother and father until your father finally loses control and kills you?”

“If that’s what it takes!”

“You know my biggest fear?” said Wiggin.

“I don’t care about your fear,” said Zeck.

“As much as I hate my brother, what I’m afraid of is that I’m just like him.”

“I don’t hate my father.”

“You’re terrified of him,” said Wiggin, “and you should be. But I think what you’re really planning to do when you go home is kill the old son of a bitch.”

“No I’m not!” cried Zeck. The rage filled him again, and he couldn’t stop himself from lashing out, but at least he aimed his blows at the wall and the floor, not at Wiggin. So it hurt only Zeck’s own hands and arms and elbows. Only himself.

“If he laid one hand on your mother—” said Wiggin.

“I’ll kill him!” Then Zeck hurled himself backward, threw himself to the floor away from Wiggin and beat on the floor and kept beating on it till the skin of the palm of his left hand broke open and bled. And even then, he only stopped because Wiggin took hold of his wrist. Held it and then put something in his palm and closed Zeck’s fist around it.

“You’ve done enough bleeding,” said Wiggin. “In my opinion, anyway.”

“Don’t tell,” whispered Zeck. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” said Wiggin, “except try to get home to protect your mother. Because you know your father is crazy and dangerous.”

“Just like me,” said Zeck.

“No,” said Wiggin. “The opposite of you. Because you controlled it. You stopped yourself from beating the little kid. Even when he deliberately provoked you. Your father couldn’t stop himself from beating you—even when you did absolutely nothing wrong at all. You are not alike.”

“The rage,” said Zeck.

“One of the soldierly virtues,” said Wiggin. “Turn it on the Buggers instead of on yourself or your father. And especially instead of me.”

“I don’t believe in war.”

“Not many soldiers do,” said Wiggin. “You could get killed doing that stuff. But you train to fight well, so that when a war does come, you can win and come home and find everything safe.”

“There’s nothing safe at home.”

“I bet that things are fine at home,” said Wiggin. “Because, see, with you not there, your mother doesn’t have any reason to stay with your father, does she? So I think she’s not going to put up with any more crap from him. Don’t you think so? She can’t be weak. If she were weak, she could never have produced somebody as tough as you. You couldn’t have gotten your toughness from your father—he doesn’t have much, if he can’t even keep himself from doing what he did. So your toughness comes from her, right? She’ll leave him if he raises his hand against her. She doesn’t have to stay to look out for you anymore.”

It was as much the tone of Wiggin’s voice as the words he said that calmed him. Zeck pulled his body together, rolled himself up into a sitting position. “I keep expecting to see some teacher rush down the corridor demanding to know what’s going on.”

“I don’t think so,” said Wiggin. “I think they know exactly what’s going on—probably watching it on a holo somewhere—and maybe they’re keeping any other kids from coming along here to see. But they’re going to let us work it out on our own.”

“Work what out?” said Zeck. “I got no quarrel with you.”

“You had a quarrel with everybody who stood between you and going home.”

“I still hate this place. I want to get out of here.”

“Welcome to the club,” said Wiggin. “Look, we’re missing lunch. You can do what you want, but I’m going to go eat.”

“You still planning to limp on that left ankle?”

“Yes,” said Wiggin. “After you kicked me? I won’t have to act.”

“Chest okay? I didn’t break any ribs, did I?”

“You sure have an inflated opinion of your own strength,” said Wiggin.

Then he stepped into the elevator and held the bar as it drifted upward, carrying him along with it.

Zeck sat there awhile longer, looking at nothing, thinking about what just happened. He wasn’t sure if anything had been decided. Zeck still hated Battle School. And everybody in Battle School hated him. And now he hated his father and didn’t believe in his father’s phony pacifism. Wiggin had pretty much convinced him that his father was no prophet. Hell, Zeck had known it all along. But believing in his father’s spirituality was the only way he could keep himself from hating him and fearing him. The only way he could bear it. Now he didn’t have to bear it anymore. Wiggin was right. Mother was free, now that she didn’t have to look out for Zeck.

He unclenched his fist and saw what Wiggin had stuffed into it to stanch the bleeding. One of his socks, covered in blood.