Page 1401 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Keep a shifting pattern of movement going in front of the door," Bean answered, loudly, so every soldier could hear him -- even the Salamanders, still clinging to the ceiling. "You never hold still when the enemy knows exactly where you are."
Wiggin turned to Anderson again. "As long as you're cheating, why don't you train the other army to cheat intelligently!"
Anderson was still calm, ignoring Wiggin's outburst. "I suggest that you remobilize your army."
Wiggin wasn't wasting time with rituals today. He pressed the buttons to thaw both armies at once. And instead of forming up to receive formal surrender, he shouted at once, "Dragon Army dismissed!"
Bean was one of those nearest the gate, but he waited till nearly last, so that he and Wiggin left together. "Sir," said Bean. "You just humiliated Bonzo and he's --"
"I know," said Wiggin. He jogged away from Bean, not wanting to hear about it.
"He's dangerous!" Bean called after him. Wasted effort. Either Wiggin already knew he'd provoked the wrong bully, or he didn't care.
Did he do it deliberately? Wiggin was always in control of himself, always carrying out a plan. But Bean couldn't think of any plan that required yelling at Major Anderson and shaming Bonzo Madrid in front of his whole army.
Why would Wiggin do such a stupid thing?
***
It was almost impossible to think of geometry, even though there was a test tomorrow. Classwork was utterly unimportant now, and yet they went on taking the tests and turning in or failing to turn in their assignments. The last few days, Bean had begun to get less-than-perfect scores. Not that he didn't know the answers, or at least how to figure them out. It's that his mind kept wandering to things that mattered more -- new tactics that might surprise an enemy; new tricks that the teachers might pull in the way they set things up; what might be, must be going on in the larger war, to cause the system to start breaking apart like this; what would happen on Earth and in the I.F. once the Buggers were defeated. If they were defeated. Hard to care about volumes, areas, faces, and dimensions of solids. On a test yesterday, working out problems of gravity near planetary and stellar masses, Bean finally gave up and wrote:
2 + 2 = pi*SQRT(2+n) : When you know the value of n, I'll finish this test.
He knew that the teachers all knew what was going on, and if they wanted to pretend that classwork still mattered, fine, let them, but he didn't have to play.