Enders In Exile

picking on me."
    "Your father and I did
not conceive you so that you could die at the hands of a Wiggin, like
your father did!"
    "Technically, Father
died at the hands of a Delphiki. Julian to be precise."
    "Delphiki,
Wiggin—sides of the same coin. I forbid you to let him kill
you."
    "I told you, Mother.
He'll find a way. It's what he does. He's a warrior."
    "No!"
    It took two hours to
calm her down, and before that he had to put up with crying and
screaming—he knew the neighbors had to be listening and
trying to make sense of it. But finally she was asleep.
    He went to the stock
control office and used the computer there to send Wiggin a message:
    I believe that I've
misjudged you. How can we end this?
    He did not expect an
answer until the next day. But it came before he could log off.
    When and where would
you like to meet?
    Was it really going to
be this easy?
    The time and place
didn't matter much. It had to be a time and place where they couldn't
be stopped by Virlomi and her minions; but there had to be enough light
to make a vid. What good would it be to die for his father's
sake, only to have the deed unrecorded, so that Wiggin could spin it
however he wanted, and thus get away with yet another murder?
    They made the
appointment. Achilles logged off.
    And then he sat there,
trembling. What have I done? This really is Ender Wiggin. I really have
set up my own death. I'm bigger and stronger than he is—but
so were the two boys he already killed. The hive queens were stronger,
too, and look what that got them. Ender Wiggin did not
lose
.
    This is what I was born
for. This is what Mother has instilled in me from infancy. I exist to
vindicate my father. To destroy the Hegemony, to bring down all the
works of Peter Wiggin. Well, maybe that's not possible. But bringing
down Ender Wiggin—I can do that merely by getting him to kill
me and letting the world see how it happened. Mother will
grieve—but grief is her lifeblood anyway.
    If he's so smart, he
must know what I'm planning. He can't believe that I'd suddenly change
my mind. How could I fool Ender Wiggin with such an obvious plan? He
must guess that I'll be having everything recorded.
    But maybe he doesn't
think he'll
have
to kill me. Maybe he thinks I'm
such an easy opponent that he can defeat me without killing me. Maybe
he thinks I'm such a giant oaf that I'll never even land a blow.
    Or maybe I'm
overestimating his cleverness. After all, he went through a whole war
against an alien enemy and never once suspected that it wasn't a
computer or his teachers playing a simulation with him. How dumb is
that?
    I'll go. I'll see what
happens. I'm ready to die, but only if it will bring him down.

    * * * * *
    They met two days
later, at first light, behind the composting bins. No one would come
here—the smell made people avoid it when they didn't have to
go there, and vegetative waste was dumped only at the end of a day's
work.
    His friends had rigged
the cameras to cover the whole area. Every word would be recorded.
Ender probably guessed that this would be the case—hadn't
Achilles done all his work with propaganda on the nets?—but
even
if Ender walked away, the confrontation would probably be rancorous and
work against him. And if he didn't, Achilles simply wouldn't use it.
    Several times during
the previous day, Achilles had thought of the possibility of dying and
each time it was like a different person was hearing the news.
Sometimes it seemed almost funny—Achilles was so strong, so
much taller, with so much greater a mass and reach. Other times it
seemed inevitable but pointless, and he thought: How stupid am I, to
throw my life away on an empty gesture toward the dead.
    But by the end of the
day, he realized: I'm not doing this for my father. I'm not doing it
because my mother raised me for vengeance. I'm doing it for the sake of
the human race as a whole. The great monsters of history were almost
never held accountable. They died of old age, or lived out their lives
in pampered exile, or—faced with defeat—they killed
themselves.
    Being Ender Wiggin's
last victim is worth it, not for some private family quarrel, but
because the world must see that great criminals like Ender Wiggin did
not go unpunished. Eventually they committed one crime too many and
they were brought to account.
    And I will be the last
victim, the one whose death brought down Ender the Xenocide.
    Another part of him
said, Don't believe your own propaganda.
    Another part