Enders In Exile

hands.
"Here are the marks," he said. "I did this."
    "He never landed a blow
on you."
    "He never tried."
    "And you kept on
beating him? Like this? What kind of . . ." But then the doctor turned
back to his work, stripping the clothes off Ender's body, cursing
softly at the huge bruises on his ribs and belly, feeling for the
breaks. "Four ribs. And multiple breaks." He looked up at Achilles
again, this time with loathing on his face. "Get out of my house," he
said.
    Achilles started to go.
    "No," said Valentine.
"This was all according to his plan."
    The doctor snorted.
"Oh, yes, he plotted his own beating."
    "Or his own death,"
said Valentine. "Whatever happened, he was content."
    "
I
planned this," said Achilles.
    "You only thought you
did," said Valentine. "He manipulated you from the start. It's the
family talent."
    "My mother
manipulated," said Achilles. "But I didn't have to believe her. I did
this."
    "No, Achilles," said
Valentine. "Your mother's training did this. The lies Achilles told
her
did this. What
you
did was . . . stop."
    Achilles felt his body
convulse with a sob and he sank to his knees. "I don't know what to
call myself now," he said. "I hate the name she taught me."
    "Randall?" asked the
doctor.
    "Not . . . no."
    "He calls himself
Achilles.
She
calls him that."
    "How can I . . . undo
this?" he asked her.
    "Poor boy," said
Valentine. "That's what Ender's spent the past few years trying to
figure out for himself. I think he just used you to get a partial
answer. I think he just got you to give him the beating that Stilson
and Bonzo Madrid both intended. The only difference is, you're the son
of Julian Delphiki and Petra Arkanian, and so there's something deep
inside you that cannot do murder—cold or hot. Or maybe it has
nothing to do with your parents. It has to do with being raised by a
mother who you know was mentally ill, and feeling compassion for
her—such deep compassion that you could
never challenge her fantasy world. Maybe that's it. Or maybe it's your
soul. The thing that God wrapped in a body and turned into a man.
Whatever it was,
you
stopped."
    "Arkanian Delphiki," he
said.
    "That would be a good
name," said Valentine. "Doctor, will my brother live?"
    "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: