ENDER IN EXILE

But Achilles immediately tamped down that quibble. We're all just the product of our genes and upbringing, combined with the random events of our lifetime. "Fault" and "blame" are childish concepts. What matters is that Ender's actions have been monstrous, and will continue to be monstrous unless he is stopped. As it is, he might live forever, surfacing here and there to stir up trouble. But I will put an end to it. Not vengeance, but prevention. And because he will be an example, perhaps other monsters will be stopped before they have killed so often, and so many.

Ender stepped out of the shadows. "Ho, Achilles."

It took half a second—half a step—for Achilles to realize what name Ender had addressed him by.

"The name you call yourself in private," said Ender. "In your dreams."

How could he know? What was he?

"You have no access to my dreams," said Achilles.

"I want you to know," said Ender, "that I've been pleading with Virlomi to commute your sentence. Because I have to leave on this ship, when it goes, and I don't want to go back to Earth."

"I would think not," said Achilles. "They're howling for your blood there."

"For the moment," said Ender. "These things come and go."

No apparent recognition that Achilles was the one who had made all this happen.

"I have an errand to run, and taking you back to Earth as an exile will waste my time. I think I've almost got her persuaded that the Free People of Earth never gave governors the right to throw back colonists they don't want."

"I'm not afraid to return to Earth."

"That's what I was afraid of—that you did all this in hopes of being sent there. 'Please don't throw me in the briar patch!' "

"They read you Uncle Remus stories at bedtime in Battle School?" asked Achilles.

"Before I went there. Did your mother read those tales to you?"

Achilles realized that he was being led off on a tangent. He resolutely returned to the subject.

"I said I'm not afraid to return to Earth," said Achilles. "Nor do I think you've been pleading for me with Virlomi."

"Believe what you want," said Ender. "You've been surrounded by lies all your life—who could expect you to notice when a true thing finally came along?"

Here it came—the beginning of the taunts that would goad Achilles into action. What Ender could not understand was that Achilles came here precisely so that he could be goaded, so that Ender could then kill him in "self-defense."

"Are you calling my mother a liar?"

"Haven't you wondered why you're so tall? Your mother isn't tall. Achilles Flandres wasn't tall."

"We'll never know how tall he might have grown," said Achilles.

"I know why you're as big as you are," said Ender. "It's a genetic condition. You grow at a single, steady rate all your life. Small as a child, then about normal size when suddenly all the other kids shoot up with the puberty growth spurt and you fall behind again. But they stop growing; you don't. On and on. Eventually you'll die of it. You're sixteen now; probably by twenty-one or twenty-two your heart will give out from trying to supply blood to a body that's far too large."

Achilles didn't know how to process this. What was he talking about? Telling him that he was going to die in his twenties? Was this some kind of voodoo to unnerve his opponent?

But Ender wasn't through. "Some of your brothers and sisters had the condition; some didn't. We didn't know about you, not with certainty. Not until I saw you and realized that you were becoming a giant, like your father."

"Don't talk about my father," said Achilles. Meanwhile, he thought: Why am I afraid of what you're saying? Why am I so angry?

"But I was so glad to see you, anyway. Even though your life will be tragically short, I looked at you—when you turned around like that, mocking me—I saw your father, I saw your mother in you."

"My mother? I don't look anything like my mother."

"I don't mean the surrogate mother who raised you."

"So you're trying to get me to attack you by goading me exactly the way Virlomi did," said Achilles. "Well it won't work." Yet as he said it, it was working; and he was willing to have the wrath rise within him. Because he had to make it believable, that Ender goaded him into attacking, so that when Ender killed him everyone who saw the vids would know that it wasn't really self-defense at all. They'd realize it had never been self-defense.

"I knew your father best of all the kids in Battle School. He was better than I was—did you know that? All of the jeesh knew it—he was quicker and smarter. But he always was loyal to me. At the last moment, when it all looked so hopeless, he knew what to do. He virtually told me what to do. And yet he left it to me. He was generous. He was truly great. It broke my heart to learn how his body betrayed him. The way it's betraying you."

"Suriyawong betrayed him," said Achilles. "Julian Delphiki killed him."