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"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."
