Enders In Exile

was almost inconsequential to
most of the people of the city of Andhra. Of course everyone turned out
to watch the shuttle land. And there was some commotion as a few trade
goods were loaded off and many supplies were loaded on. But the tasks
being carried out were repetitive and people quickly lost interest and
went back to their work. Governor Virlomi's visit to the shuttle was
taken as good manners by those who heard about it—few knew or
cared what the ordinary protocol would be, and so didn't realize that
it had been altered. And those who did know simply took it as part of
Virlomi's character—or her pose—that she did not
make the visitors come to her.
    Only when that
evening's supper saw strangers come to Virlomi's house—which
Achilles and his fellow "Natives of Ganges" liked to refer to as "the
governor's mansion"—did anyone's curiosity get aroused. A
teenage boy; a young woman of about twenty. Why were they the only
passengers on the starship? Why was Virlomi giving them special honors?
Were they new colonists or government officials or . . . what?
    Since this was the ship
that was supposed to take Achilles into exile for his "crime" of
striking the governor, he was, quite naturally, anxious to find out
anything he could to derail the plan. These guests were unusual,
unexpected, unannounced, unexplained. That had to mean they presented
an opportunity to embarrass Virlomi, at the very least—to
stymie her or destroy her, if things went well.
    It took two days of
having his supporters consort with the crew before someone finally got
their hands on the manifest and discovered the names of the passengers.
Valentine Wiggin, student. Andrew Wiggin, student.
    Student?
    Achilles didn't even
have to look anything up. The ship's last call had been to Shakespeare
Colony. Up to the time of that ship's arrival, the governor of
Shakespeare had been Andrew Wiggin, retired admiral of the I.F. and
much-cited commander of the I.F. forces in the Third Formic War. Two
starflights at relativistic speed explained the boy's age. Boy? One
year older than Achilles.
    Wiggin was tall, but
Achilles was taller; strong, but Achilles was stronger. Wiggin was
chosen for Battle School because he was smart, but Achilles
had never encountered anyone in his life who was as intelligent as he.
Virlomi was Battle School bright—but she forgot things that
he remembered, overlooked things that he noticed, thought two moves
ahead instead of ten. And she was the closest to being in his league.
    Achilles had learned to
conceal just how intelligent he was, and to treat others as if he
thought them his equal. But he knew the truth and counted on it: He was
quicker, smarter, deeper, subtler than anyone else. Hadn't he, as a
mere boy on a faraway colony world, using only the lowest-priority
ansible messaging, created a significant political movement on Earth?
    Even intelligent people
are sometimes just plain lucky. Wiggin's arrival just at this time
clearly fell into that category. Wiggin couldn't have known that he was
coming to the colony where dwelt the son of Achilles the Great, whom
Ender's brother had arranged to murder. And when
Achilles-who-was-called-Randall launched his attack on the reputation
of Ender Wiggin, labeling him as Ender the Xenocide, he had no idea
that within the month that very Andrew Wiggin would be having supper at
Virlomi's house.
    It was an easy thing to
get pictures of Virlomi and Wiggin together. It was just as easy to
get, from the nets, pictures of Peter the Hegemon at roughly the same
age as Ender was now. Juxtaposing their pictures made it easy to see
they were brothers, the resemblance was so strong. Achilles then put
pictures of Ender and Virlomi, so that anyone could see that Peter's
brother was consorting with the anti-native governor of Ganges.
    Never mind that it was
Peter who had sent Virlomi into exile. Achilles dismissed that as an
obvious fraud—Virlomi had been part of Peter's conspiracy all
along. Her consorting with Ender Wiggin proved it, if anyone had doubts.
    Now Achilles could
paint his exile as the result of an obvious conspiracy between Virlomi
and her Wiggin masters—Ender's sister was along for the ride.
They were exiling him so that Wiggin's xenocidal, anti-native plots
could proceed on Ganges without opposition.
    It would take a week
for any of this story to reach Earth, but the computers worked
impartially, and Virlomi couldn't stop him from sending them. And
locally, the story and