Ender in Exile Page 0,9

"I can think of only two things I've done that they'd put a man on trial for letting me do them. One was a fight I was in at Battle School. A bigger kid cornered me in a bathroom. He'd been bragging that he was going to beat me till I wasn't so smart anymore, and he brought his gang with him. I shamed him into fighting me alone, and then I put him down in a single move."

"Really," said Mazer.

"Bonzo Madrid. Bonito de Madrid. I think he's dead."

"Think?"

"They took me out of Battle School the next day. They never spoke of him. I assumed that meant I had really hurt him. I think he's dead. That's the kind of thing they'd hold a court martial for, isn't it? They have to account to Bonzo's parents for why their son is dead."

"Interesting line of thought," said Mazer. Mazer said that whether his guesses were right or wrong, so Ender didn't try to interpret it. "Is that all?" asked Mazer.

"There are governments and politicians that would like to discredit me. There's a move to keep me from coming back to Earth. I read the nets, I know what they're saying, that I'll just be a political football, a target for assassins, or an asset that my country will use to conquer the world or some such nonsense. So I think there are those who intend to use Graff's court martial as a way to publish things about me that would ordinarily be kept under seal. Things that will make me look like some kind of monster."

"You do know that it sounds suspiciously like paranoia, to think that Graff's trial is about you."

"Which makes it all the more appropriate that I'm in this loony bin," said Ender.

"You understand that I can't tell you anything," said Mazer.

"You don't have to," said Ender. "I'm also thinking that there was another boy. Years ago. When I was just little. He was hardly that much bigger than me. But he had a gang with him. I talked him out of using them - made it personal, one-on-one. Just like Bonzo. I wasn't a good fighter then. I didn't know how. All I could do was go crazy on him. Hurt him so bad he'd never dare to come after me again. Hurt him so bad that his gang would leave me alone, too. I had to be crazy in order to scare them with how crazy I was. So I think that incident is going to be part of the trial, too."

"Your self-absorption is really quite sweet - you really are convinced you're the center of the universe."

"Center of the court martial," said Ender. "It's about me, or people wouldn't be so anxious to keep me from knowing about it. The absence of information is information."

"You kids are so smart," said Mazer, with just enough sarcasm to make Ender smile.

"Stilson's dead, too, isn't he," said Ender. It wasn't really a question.

"Ender, not everyone you fight with dies." But there was just a titch of hesitation after he said it. And so Ender knew. Everyone he had fought with - really fought - was dead. Bonzo. Stilson. And all the formics, every hive queen, every bugger, every larva, every egg, however they reproduced, it was over.

"You know," said Ender quietly, "I think about them all the time. How they'll never have any more children. That's what being alive is, isn't it? The ability to replicate. Even people without children, their bodies are still making new cells all the time. Replicating. Only that's over for Bonzo and Stilson. They never lived long enough to reproduce. Their line is cut off. I was nature, red in tooth and claw, for them. I determined their unfitness."

Ender knew even as he said it that this was unfair. Mazer was under orders not to discuss these matters with him and even if he guessed right, not to confirm them. But ending the conversation would confirm it, and even denying the truth had confirmed it. Now Ender was practically forcing him to speak, to reassure him, to answer his perceived need. "You don't have to respond," said Ender. "I'm not really as depressed as I sound. I don't blame myself, you know."

Mazer's eyes flickered.

"No, I'm not insane," said Ender. "I regret their deaths. I know that I'm responsible for killing Stilson and Bonzo and all the formics in the universe. But I'm not to blame.