The Ender Quintet (Omnibus)

by Card, Orson Scott

  Oh, no, she was in her bloody vengeance mood. Well, he had brought it on, hadn’t he? He knew better. Now he’d have to hear her out.

  On and on she went, about how great crimes could only be expunged by the shedding of blood. “Peter Wiggin outsmarted us by dying of his heart attack while we were on the voyage,” she said. “But now his brother and sister have come to us. How can you pass up what fate has brought into your hands?”

  “I’m not a murderer, Mother.”

  “Vengeance for your father’s death is not murder. Who do you think you are, Hamlet?”

  And on and on she went.

  Usually when she went off like this, Achilles only half-listened. But now the words dug at him. It really did feel like some kind of portentous fate that brought Wiggin to him at this very time. It was irrational—but only mathematics was rational, and not always at that. In the real world, irrational things happened, impossible coincidences happened, because probability required that coincidences rarely, but not never, occur.

  So instead of ignoring her, he found himself wondering: How could I arrange for Ender Wiggin to die without having to kill him myself?

  And from there, he went on to a more subtle plan: I have already half destroyed Ender Wiggin—how could I complete the process?

  To murder him would make a martyr of him. But if Wiggin could be provoked into killing again—killing another child—he would be destroyed forever. It was his pattern. He sensed a rival; he goaded him into making an attack; then he killed him in self-defense. Twice he had done it and been exonerated. But his protectors weren’t here—they were almost certainly all dead. Only the facts remained.

  Could I get him to follow the pattern again?

  He told his idea to his mother.

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “If he murders again—this time a sixteen-year-old, but still a child, no matter how tall—then his reputation will be destroyed forever. They’ll put him on trial, they’ll convict him this time—they can’t believe he just happened to kill in ‘self-defense’ three times!—and that will be a far more thorough destruction than a merely ending the life of his body. I’ll destroy his name forever.”

  “You’re talking about letting him kill you?”

  “Mother, people don’t have to let Ender Wiggin kill them. They just have to provide him with the pretext, and he does the rest quite nicely by himself.”

  “But—you? Die?”

  “As you said, Mother. To destroy Father’s enemies is worth any sacrifice.”

  She leapt to her feet. “I didn’t give birth to you just so you could throw your life away! You’re half a head taller than him—he’s a dwarf compared to you. How could he possibly kill you?”

  “He was trained as a soldier. And not that long ago, Mother. What have I been trained as? A farmer. A mechanic. Whatever odd jobs have been required of a teenager who happens to be preternaturally large and clever and strong. Not war. Not fighting. I haven’t fought anyone since I was so tiny and had to battle constantly to keep them from 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 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 you.”

  “So you’re trying to get me to attack you by goading me exactly the way Virlomi did,” said Achilles. “Well it won’t work.” Yet as he said it, it was working; and he was willing to have the wrath rise within him. Because he had to make it believable, that Ender goaded him into attacking, so that when Ender killed him everyone who saw the vids would know that it wasn’t really self-defense at all. They’d realize it had never been self-defense.

  “I knew your father best of all the kids in Battle School. He was better than I was—did you know that? All of the jeesh knew it—he was quicker and smarter. But he always was loyal to me. At the last moment, when it all looked so hopeless, he knew what to do. He virtually told me what to do. And yet he left it to me. He was generous. He was truly great. It broke my heart to learn how his body betrayed him. The way it’s betraying you.”

  “Suriyawong betrayed him,” said Achilles. “Julian Delphiki killed him.”

  “And your mother,” said Ender. “She was my protector. When I got put into an army whose commander hated me, she was the one who took me under her wing. I relied on her, I trusted her, and within the limitations of a human body, she never let me down. When I heard that she and your father had married, it made me so happy. But then your father died, and eventually she married my brother.”

  Comprehension almost blinded him with fury. “Petra Arkanian? You’re saying Petra Arkanian is my mother? Are you insane? She was the one that first set the traps for my father, luring him—”

  “Come now, Achilles,” said Ender. “Surely by the age of sixteen you’ve recognized that your surrogate mother is insane.”

  “She’s my mother!” cried Achilles. And then, only as an afterthought, and weakly, he said, “And she’s not insane.”

  This is not going right. What is he saying? What kind of game is this?

  “You look exactly like them. More like your father than like your mother. When I see you, I see my dear friend Bean.”

  “Julian Delphiki is not my father!” Achilles could hardly see for rage. His heart was pounding. This was exactly how it was supposed to go.

  Except for one thing. His feet were rooted to the ground. He wasn’t attacking Ender Wiggin. He was just standing there and taking it.

  It was in that moment that Valentine Wiggin jogged into the clearing behind the compost bins. “What are you doing? Are you insane?”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” said Ender.

  “Get away from here,” she said. “He’s not worth it.”

  “Valentine,” he said, “you don’t know what you’re doing. If you interfere in any way, you’ll destroy me. Do you understand me? Have I ever lied to you?”

  “Constantly.”

  “Neglecting to tell you things is not lying,” said Ender.

  “I’m not going to let this happen. I know what you’re planning.”

  “With all due respect, Val, you don’t know anything.”

  “I know you, Ender, better than you know yourself.”

  “But you don’t know this boy who calls himself by the name of a monster because he thinks the madman was his father.”

  For a few moments Achilles’ anger had dissipated, but now it was coming back. “My father was a genius.”

  “Not incompatible concepts,” said Valentine dismissively. To Ender, she said, “It won’t bring them back.”

  “Right now,” said Ender, “if you love me, you’ll stop talking.”

  His voice was like a lash—not loud, but sharp and with true aim. She recoiled as if he had struck her. Yet she opened her mouth to answer.

  “If you love me,” he said.

  “I think what your brother is trying to tell you,” said Achilles, “is that he has a plan.”

>   “My plan,” said Ender, “is to tell you who you are. Julian Delphiki and Petra Arkanian lived in hiding because Achilles Flandres had agents seeking them, wanting to kill them—especially because he had once desired Petra, after his sick fashion.”

  The rage was rising in Achilles again. And he welcomed it. Valentine’s coming had almost ruined everything.

  “They had nine fertilized eggs that they entrusted to a doctor who promised he could purge them of the genetic condition that you have—the giantism. But he was a fraud—as your present condition indicates. He was really working for Achilles, and he stole the embryos. Your mother gave birth to one; we found seven others that were implanted in surrogate mothers. But Hyrum Graff always suspected that they found those seven because Achilles meant them to be found, so that the searchers would think their methods were working. Knowing Achilles, Graff was sure the ninth baby would not be found by the same methods. Then your mother spat on Hyrum Graff and he began to look into her past and found out that her name wasn’t Nichelle Firth, it was Randi. And when he looked at the DNA records, he found that you had no genes in common with your supposed mother. You were not in any way her genetic child.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Achilles. “You’re saying it only to provoke me.”

  “I’m saying it because it’s true, in the hope that it will liberate you. The other children were found and returned to their parents. Five of them didn’t have your genetic disorder, your giantism, and all five of them are still alive on Earth. Bella, Andrew—named for me, I must point out—Julian the Third, Petra, and Ramon. Three of your siblings were giants, and of course they’re gone now—Ender, Cincinnatus, Carlotta. You’re the extra one, the missing one that they gave up looking for. The one they never got to name. But your last name is Delphiki. I knew your parents and I loved them dearly. You are not the child of a monster, you’re the child of two of the best people who ever lived.”

  “Julian Delphiki is the monster!” cried Achilles, and he lunged at Ender.