Enders In Exile

arms, he knew that they would cause
trouble."
    "And sent you to save
me," she said.
    "I doubt you need
saving," said Ender.
    "No, I don't," she
said. "I've already dealt with it. I provoked him into assaulting me in
my house. It's on vid and we've already held the trial and sentenced
him to be exiled. He's going back to Earth—along with any of
his malcontents who want to go with him."
    Ender shook his head.
"And it doesn't occur to you that that's exactly what he wants you to
do?"
    "Of course it did. But
I also don't care, as long as I don't have to deal with him."
    Ender sighed. "Of
course you care, Virlomi. If he already has a following there, and then
he returns to Earth as an exile from what he calls his 'native world,'
then you have just sown the seed that can bring down the FPE and
restore the Earth to the miserable chaos of war and hatred that Peter
Wiggin ended such a short time ago."
    "That's not my
problem," said Virlomi.
    "Our generation is gone
from power, Virlomi," said Ender, "except in a few remote colonies.
Peter is dead. His successors are lackluster placeholders. Do you think
they'll be competent to deal with this Randall Firth?"
    Virlomi hesitated. "No."
    "So if you knowingly
infect someone with a virus that you know their body can't fight off,
have you not murdered them?"
    Virlomi buried her face
in her hands. "I know," she said. "I tried not to know, but I know."
    "What I can't yet
determine," said Valentine, "is why your first words to us were a
protest that you hadn't told anyone that Ender was coming. Why would
that matter?"
    Virlomi raised her
face. "Because at the trial and ever since then, he has been using you.
And linking himself to his monster of a father. Who he
thinks
his father is."
    "Specifically,"
prompted Valentine.
    "He calls you 'Ender
the Xenocide,' " said Virlomi. "He says you're the worst war criminal
in all of history, because you were the one who slaughtered the native
people of all these worlds so that the robbers could come in and steal
their houses and lands."
    "Predictable," said
Ender.
    "And Peter is called
the 'Brother of the Xenocide,' who tried to extinguish all the native
cultures of Earth."
    "Oh my," said Ender.
    "While Achilles
Flandres was not a monster—that's just propaganda from the
pro-xenocide party. He was the only one who stood against Peter's and
Ender's evil plans. He tried to stop you in Battle School, so your
friends got him sent back to be imprisoned in an insane asylum on
Earth. Then, when he escaped and began his work of opposing the threat
of the Hegemon becoming dictator of the world, Peter's propaganda mill
went to work, slandering him." Virlomi sighed. "Here's the irony.
Through all of this, he pretends to honor me greatly. As a hero who
stood against the jeesh of the xenocides—Han Tzu, Alai,
Petra, all who served with you."
    "And yet he struck you."
    "He states that he was
provoked. That it was all a setup. That a man of his size—if
he had meant to hurt me, I'd be dead. He was merely trying to wake me
up to the enormity of the lies I was telling and believing. His
followers accept this explanation completely. Or don't care whether
it's true or not."
    "Well, it's nice that
even while I'm in stasis, somebody found me useful," said Ender.
    "It's not a joke," said
Virlomi. "All over the nets, his revisionist view is gaining more and
more acceptance. All the nonsense from Graff's court martial came into
even more prominence. Pictures of the dead bodies of . . . those
bullies . . ."
    "Oh, I can guess," said
Ender.
    "You had to know before
you got off the shuttle," said Virlomi. "He can't have known you were
coming. He just chose this time to invoke your name. I think it's
because I was using Achilles' name as the symbol of a monster. So he
decided to use your name to outmonster Achilles. If it weren't for that
horrible pack of lies called The Hive Queen, he
wouldn't have found so much fertile ground for his nonsense."
    "I did everything he
accuses me of," said Ender. "Those boys died. So did all the formics."
    "But you're not a
murderer. I read those trial transcripts too, you know. I
understood—I was in Battle School, I talked to people who
knew you, we all knew how the adults shaped our lives and controlled
us. And we all recognized that your devastating self-defense was
perfect military doctrine."
    Ender did what he
always did when somebody tried to exonerate him—he shunted
her words aside without comment. "Well, Virlomi, I'm not sure