Achilles began the beating in earnest then. Another blow to the belly. Another blow to the face. Two more kicks to the body as he lay unmoving on the ground. "Is this what you did to the Stilson boy?" he asked. "Kicking him again and again — that's what the report said."

"Son," said Ender. "Of my friends."

"Please," begged Valentine. Yet she made no move to stop him. Nor did she summon help.

"Now it's time for you to die," said Achilles.

A kick to the head would do it. And if it didn't, two kicks. The human brain could not stand being rattled around inside the skull like that. Either dead or so brain-damaged he might as well be. That was how the life of Ender the Xenocide would end.

He approached Wiggin's supine body. The eyes were looking up at him through the blood still pouring from his broken nose.

But for some reason, despite the hot rage pounding in his own head, Achilles did not kick him.

Stood there unmoving.

"The son of Achilles would do it," whispered Ender.

Why am I not killing him? Am I a coward after all? Am I so unworthy of my father? Ender is right — my father would have killed him because it was necessary, without any qualms, without this hesitation.

In that moment, he saw what all of Ender's words really meant. Mother had been deceived. She had been told the child was Achilles Flandres's. She had lied to him as he grew up, telling him that he was her son, but she was only a surrogate. He knew her well enough by now to recognize that her stories were shaped more by what she needed the truth to be than by what it actually was. Why hadn't he reached the obvious conclusion — that everything she said was a lie? Because she never let up, not for an instant. She shaped his world and did not allow any contrary evidence to come to light.

The way the teachers manipulated the children who fought the war for them.

Achilles knew it, had always known it. Ender Wiggin won a war that he didn't know he was fighting; he slaughtered a species that he thought was just a computer simulation. The way that I believed that Achilles Flandres was my father, that I bore his name and had a duty to fulfil his destiny or avenge his murder.

Surround a child with lies, and he clings to them like a teddy bear, like his mother's hand. And the worse, the darker the lie, the more deeply he has to draw it inside himself in order to bear the lie at all.

Ender said he would rather die than raise his hand against the son of his friends. And he was not a lunatic like Achilles' mother was.

Achilles. He was not Achilles. That was his mother's fantasy. It was all his mother's fantasy. He knew she was crazy, and yet he lived inside her nightmare and shaped his life to make it come true.

"What is my name?" he whispered.

On the ground at his feet, Ender whispered back: "Don't know. Delphiki. Arkanian. Their faces. In yours."

Valentine was beside them now. "Please," she said. "Can this be over now?"

"I knew," whispered Ender. "Bean's son. Petra's. Could never."

"Could never what? He's broken your nose. He could have killed you."

"I was going to," said Achilles. And then the enormity of it washed over him. "I was going to kill him with a kick to the head."

"And the stupid fool would have let you," said Valentine.

"One chance," said Ender. "In five. Kill me. Good odds."

"Please," said Valentine. "I can't carry him. Bring him to the doctor. Please. You're strong enough."

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.