Page 1330 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"History. He the best, neh? How he get that way?" Bean wondered if he sounded quite natural with the soldier slang. He hadn't used it that much. The music of it, he still wasn't quite there.
"You find out, you tell me." He rolled his eyes in self-derision.
"I'll tell you," said Bean.
"I got a chance to be best like Ender?" Nikolai laughed. "*You* got a chance, the way you learn." "Wiggin's snot ain't honey," said Bean.
"What does that mean?"
"He human like anybody. I find out, I tell you, OK?"
Bean wondered why Nikolai already despaired about his own chances of being one of the best. Could it be that the teachers' negative evaluation was right after all? Or had they unconsciously let him see their disdain for him, and he believed them?
From the boys Nikolai had pointed out -- the brags and suckups, which wasn't an inaccurate evaluation as far as it went -- Bean learned what he wanted to know. The names of Wiggin's closest friends.
Shen. Alai. Petra -- her again! But Shen the longest.
Bean found him in the library during study time. The only reason to go there was for the vids -- all the books could be read from the desks. Shen wasn't watching vids, though. He had his desk with him, and he was playing the fantasy game.
Bean sat down beside him to watch. A lion-headed man in chain mail stood before a giant, who seemed to be offering him a choice of drinks -- the sound was shaped so that Bean couldn't hear it from beside the desk, though Shen seemed to be responding; he typed in a few words. His lion-man figure drank one of the substances and promptly died.
Shen muttered something and shoved the desk away.
"That the Giant's Drink?" said Bean. "I heard about that."
"You've never played it?" said Shen. "You can't win it. I *thought*." "I heard. Didn't sound fun."
"*Sound* fun? You haven't tried it? It's not like it's hard to find."