Enders In Exile

of him
said, Live!
    But he answered them:
If there's one true thing about Ender Wiggin, it's that he cannot bear
to lose. That's how I will tempt him—I will make him stare
defeat in the face, and he will lash out to avoid it—and when
he kills me,
then
he really
will
be defeated. It is his fatal flaw—that he can be manipulated
by facing him with defeat.
    Deep inside him, a
question tried to surface where he would have to deal with it: Doesn't
this mean that it's not his fault, because he really had no choice but
to destroy his enemies?
    But Achilles
immediately tamped down that quibble. We're all just the product of our
genes and upbringing, combined with the random events of our lifetime.
"Fault" and "blame" are childish concepts. What matters is that Ender's
actions have been monstrous, and will continue to be monstrous unless
he is stopped. As it is, he might live forever, surfacing here
and there to stir up trouble. But I will put an end to it. Not
vengeance, but prevention. And because he will be an example, perhaps
other monsters will be stopped before they have killed so often, and so
many.
    Ender stepped out of
the shadows. "Ho, Achilles."
    It took half a
second—half a step—for Achilles to realize what
name Ender had addressed him by.
    "The name you call
yourself in private," said Ender. "In your dreams."
    How could he know? What
was
he?
    "You have no access to
my dreams," said Achilles.
    "I want you to know,"
said Ender, "that I've been pleading with Virlomi to commute your
sentence. Because I have to leave on this ship, when it goes, and I
don't want to go back to Earth."
    "I would think not,"
said Achilles. "They're howling for your blood there."
    "For the moment," said
Ender. "These things come and go."
    No apparent recognition
that Achilles was the one who had made all this happen.
    "I have an errand to
run, and taking you back to Earth as an exile will waste my time. I
think I've almost got her persuaded that the Free People of Earth never
gave governors the right to throw back colonists they don't want."
    "I'm not afraid to
return to Earth."
    "That's what I was
afraid of—that you did all this in hopes of being sent there.
'Please don't throw me in the briar patch!' "
    "They read you Uncle
Remus stories at bedtime in Battle School?" asked Achilles.
    "Before I went there.
Did your mother read those tales to you?"
    Achilles realized that
he was being led off on a tangent. He resolutely returned to the
subject.
    "I said I'm not afraid
to return to Earth," said Achilles. "Nor do I think you've been
pleading for me with Virlomi."
    "Believe what you
want," said Ender. "You've been surrounded by lies all your
life—who could expect you to notice when a true thing finally
came along?"
    Here it
came—the beginning of the taunts that would goad Achilles
into action. What Ender could not understand was that Achilles came
here
precisely so that he could be goaded, so that Ender could then kill him
in "self-defense."
    "Are you calling my
mother a liar?"
    "Haven't you wondered
why you're so tall? Your mother isn't tall. Achilles Flandres wasn't
tall."
    "We'll never know how
tall he might have grown," said Achilles.
    "I know why you're as
big as you are," said Ender. "It's a genetic condition. You grow at a
single, steady rate all your life. Small as a child, then about normal
size when suddenly all the other kids shoot up with the puberty growth
spurt and you fall behind again. But they stop growing; you don't. On
and on. Eventually you'll die of it. You're sixteen now; probably by
twenty-one or twenty-two your heart will give out from trying to supply
blood to a body that's far too large."
    Achilles didn't know
how to process this. What was he talking about? Telling him that he was
going to die in his twenties? Was this some kind of voodoo to unnerve
his opponent?
    But Ender wasn't
through. "Some of your brothers and sisters had the condition; some
didn't. We didn't know about you, not with certainty. Not until I saw
you and realized that you were becoming a giant, like your father."
    "Don't talk about my
father," said Achilles. Meanwhile, he thought: Why am I afraid of what
you're saying? Why am I so angry?
    "But I was so glad to
see you, anyway. Even though your life will be tragically short, I
looked at you—when you turned around like that, mocking
me—I saw your father, I saw your mother in you."
    "My mother? I don't
look anything like my mother."
    "I don't mean the
surrogate mother who raised