Only when he bent down and lifted Ender up did he realize how badly he had damaged his own hands, so hard had been his blows.
What if he dies? What if he still dies, even though I don't want him dead now after all?
He bore Ender with studied haste along the ragged ground and Valentine had to jog to keep up. They reached the doctor's house long before he was due to leave for the clinic. He took one look at Ender and had him brought in at once for an emergency examination. 'I can see who lost,' said the doctor. 'But who won?'
'Nobody,' said. Achilles.
'There's not a mark on you,' said the doctor.
He held out his 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: ADelphiki%[email protected], PWiggin%[email protected]
From: EWiggin%[email protected]/voy
Subj: Arkanian Delphiki, behold your mother. Petra, behold your son.
Dear Petra, Dear Arkanian,
In so many ways too late, but in the ways that count, just in time. The last of your children, Petra; your real mother, Arkanian. I will let him tell you his story, and you can tell him yours. Graff did the genetic testing long ago, and there is no doubt. He never told you, because he could never bring you together and I think he believed it would only make you sad. He might be right, but I think you deserve to have the sadness, if that's what it is, because it belongs to you by right. This is what life has done to the two of you. Now let's see what YOU do for each other's lives.
Let me tell you this much, though, Petra. He's a good boy. Despite the madness of his upbringing, in the crisis, he was Bean's son, and yours. He will never know his father, except through you. But Petra, I have seen, in him, what Bean became. The giant in body. The gentle heart.
Meanwhile, I voyage on, my friends. It's what I already planned to do, Arkanian. I'm on another errand. You did not deflect me from my course. Except that they won't let me go into stasis on this ship until my wounds are healed — there's no healing in stasis.
With love,
Andrew Wiggin
In his little house overlooking the wild coast of Ireland, not far from Doonalt, a feeble old man knelt in his garden, pulling up weeds. O'Connor rode up on his skimmer to deliver groceries and mail, and the old man rose slowly to his feet to receive him. 'Come in,' he said. 'There's tea.'
