ENDER IN EXILE

"He took blows to the head," said the doctor. "Look at his eyes. There's serious concussion. Maybe worse. We have to get him to the clinic."

"I'll carry him," said . . . not Achilles . . . Arkanian.

The doctor grimaced. "Letting the beater carry the beaten? But I don't want to wait for anyone else. What a hideous time of day for you to have this . . . duel?"

As they walked along the road to the clinic, a few early risers looked at them quizzically, and one even approached, but the doctor waved her off.

"I meant for him to kill me," said Arkanian.

"I know," said Valentine.

"What he did to those other boys. I thought he'd do again."

"He meant for you to think he'd fight back."

"And then the things he said. The opposite of everything."

"But you believed him. Right away, you knew it was true," she said.

"Yes."

"Made you furious."

Arkanian made a sound, somewhere between a whimper and a howl. He didn't plan it; he didn't understand it. Like a wolf baying at the moon, he only knew that the sound was in him and had to come out.

"But you couldn't kill him," she said. "Because you're not such a fool as to think you can hide from the truth by killing the messenger."

"We're here," said the doctor. "And I can't believe you're reassuring the one who beat your brother like this."

"Oh, didn't you know?" said Valentine. "This is Ender the Xenocide. He deserves whatever anyone does to him."

"Nobody deserves this," the doctor said.

"How can I undo this," said Arkanian. And this time he did not mean Ender's injuries.

"You can't," said Valentine. "And it was already there, it was inherent in that book, The Hive Queen. If you hadn't said it, somebody else would have. As soon as the human race understood that it was a tragedy to destroy the hive queens, we had to find someone to blame for it, so that the rest of us could be absolved. It would have happened without you."

"But it didn't happen without me. I have to tell the truth—I have to admit what I was . . ."

"No you don't," she said. "You have to live your life. Yours. And Ender will live his."

"And what about you?" asked the doctor, sounding even more cynical than before.

"Oh, I'll live Ender's life, too. It's so much more interesting than my own."

CHAPTER

23

To: ADelphiki%Ganges@ColLeague.Adm, PWiggin%ret@FPE.adm

From: EWiggin%Ganges@ColLeague.Adm/voy

Subj: Arkanian Delphiki, behold your mother. Petra, behold your son.

Dear Petra, Dear Arkanian,

In so many ways too late, but in the ways that count, just in time. The last of your children, Petra; your real mother, Arkanian. I will let him tell you his story, and you can tell him yours. Graff did the genetic testing long ago, and there is no doubt. He never told you, because he could never bring you together and I think he believed it would only make you sad. He might be right, but I think you deserve to have the sadness, if that's what it is, because it belongs to you by right. This is what life has done to the two of you. Now let's see what YOU do for each other's lives.

Let me tell you this much, though, Petra. He's a good boy. Despite the madness of his upbringing, in the crisis, he was Bean's son, and yours. He will never know his father, except through you. But Petra, I have seen, in him, what Bean became. The giant in body. The gentle heart.

Meanwhile, I voyage on, my friends. It's what I already planned to do, Arkanian. I'm on another errand. You did not deflect me from my course. Except that they won't let me go into stasis on this ship until my wounds are healed—there's no healing in stasis.

With love,

Andrew Wiggin

In his little house overlooking the wild coast of Ireland, not far from Doonalt, a feeble old man knelt in his garden, pulling up weeds. O'Connor rode up on his skimmer to deliver groceries and mail, and the old man rose slowly to his feet to receive him. "Come in," he said. "There's tea."

"Can't stay," said O'Connor.

"You can never stay," said the old man.

"Ah, Mr. Graff," said O'Connor, "that's the truth. I can never stay. But it's not for lack of will. I have a lot of houses waiting for me to bring them what I brought you."

"And we have nothing to say to each other," said Graff, smiling. No, laughing silently, his frail chest heaving.

"Sometimes you don't need to say a thing," said O'Connor. "And sometimes a man has no time for tea."

"I used to be a fat man," said Graff. "Can you believe it?"

"And I used to be a young man," said O'Connor. "Nobody believes that."

"There," said Graff. "We had a conversation after all."

O'Connor laughed—but he did not stay, once he had helped put the groceries away.

And so Graff was alone when he opened the letter from Valentine Wiggin.

He read the account as if he was hearing it in her own voice—that was her gift as a writer, now that she had left off being the Demosthenes that Peter made her create, and had become herself, even if she did still use that name for her histories.