ENDER IN EXILE

"Achilles Flandres murdered everyone who showed him kindness. A nun who arranged for his crippled leg to be restored. The surgeon who fixed the leg. A girl who took him in when he was the least successful street bully in Rotterdam—he pretended to love her, but then he strangled her and threw her body in the Rhine. He blew up the house where your father was living, in the effort to kill him and his whole family. He kidnapped Petra and tried to seduce her but she despised him. It was Julian Delphiki that she loved. You are their child, born of their love and hope."

Achilles rushed at him again—but deliberately made it a clumsy move, so that Ender would have plenty of time to block him, to strike at him.

But again Ender made no move to step away. He took the blow, this time a deep punch in the stomach, and fell to the ground, gasping, retching.

And then rose up again. "I know you better than you know yourself," said Ender.

"You're the father of lies," said Achilles.

"Never call yourself by that vile name again. You're not Achilles. Your father is the hero who rid the world of that monster."

Again Achilles struck at him—this time walking up slowly and bringing his fist hugely into Ender's nose, breaking it. Blood spurted from his nostrils and covered the front of his shirt almost instantly.

Valentine cried out as Ender staggered and then fell to his knees.

"Fight me," hissed Achilles.

"Don't you get it?" said Ender. "I will never raise my hand against the son of my friends."

Achilles kicked him in the jaw so hard it flung him over backward. This was no staged fight like in the silly vids, where the hero and the villain delivered killing blows, yet their opponent got up to fight again. The damage to Ender's body was deep and real. It made him clumsy and unbalanced. An easy target.

He's not going to kill me, thought Achilles.

It came to him as such a relief that he laughed aloud.

And then he thought: It's Mother's plan after all. Why did I ever imagine I should let him kill me? I'm the son of Achilles Flandres. His true son. I can kill the ones who need killing. I can end this pernicious life, once and for all, avenging my father and the hive queens and those two boys that Ender killed.

Achilles kicked Ender in the ribs as he lay on his back in the grass. The ribs broke so loudly that even Valentine could hear them; she screamed.

"Hush," said Ender. "This is how it goes."

Then Ender rolled over—wincing, then crying out softly with the pain. Yet he managed, somehow, to rise to his feet.

Whereupon he put his hands in his pockets.

"You can destroy the vids you're recording," said Ender. "No one will know that you murdered me. They won't believe Valentine. So you can claim self-defense. Everyone will believe it—you've made them hate me and fear me. Of course you had to kill me to save your own life."

Ender wanted to die? Now? At Achilles' hand? "What's your game?" Achilles asked.

"Your supposed mother raised you to take vengeance for her fantasy lover, your fraudulent father. Do it—do what she raised you to do, be who she planned you to be. But I will not raise my hand against the son of my friends, no matter how deluded you are."

"Then you're the fool," said Achilles. "Because I will do it. For my father's sake, and my mother's, for that poor boy Stilson, and Bonzo Madrid, and the formics, and the whole human race."

Achilles began the beating in earnest then. Another blow to the belly. Another blow to the face. Two more kicks to the body as he lay unmoving on the ground. "Is this what you did to the Stilson boy?" he asked. "Kicking him again and again—that's what the report said."

"Son," said Ender. "Of my friends."

"Please," begged Valentine. Yet she made no move to stop him. Nor did she summon help.

"Now it's time for you to die," said Achilles.

A kick to the head would do it. And if it didn't, two kicks. The human brain could not stand being rattled around inside the skull like that. Either dead or so brain-damaged he might as well be. That was how the life of Ender the Xenocide would end.

He approached Wiggin's supine body. The eyes were looking up at him through the blood still pouring from his broken nose.

But for some reason, despite the hot rage pounding in his own head, Achilles did not kick him.

Stood there unmoving.

"The son of Achilles would do it," whispered Ender.

Why am I not killing him? Am I a coward after all? Am I so unworthy of my father? Ender is right—my father would have killed him because it was necessary, without any qualms, without this hesitation.