There hadn't been a battle in days.
Floating, weightless, with no reference, it was all he could grab on to. He could only just remember his name. Ender...Ender...Ender echoed faintly across his mind, almost lost in the jumble of noise, as if he was alone in a great cathedral with a horde of whispering ghosts. He had lost all his handholds on reality, all his angles on life, and was floating in a sea, or a cloud. But he knew that there had been a battle, battles upon battles, games upon games, and then -- silence.
"Not a game," hissed the wind. "A trap. And you fell in, and took their bait, and never suspected that you were being used. A weapon. That's all you are: a gun, a thinking gun, that does what it's told and a little more, and wipes us out.... And even if you did not mean to kill us now, were you not preparing yourself for when you must wipe us out in the future?..."
He had very early put aside fears of monsters in his room, ogres and demons in the closets; he had had Peter to fear, a monster of a different order. There had been no other way to survive than to take his life in his hands every day, to be the one with control. With the initiative. He had become, at an early age, skilled in preemtive strategy.
And in the name of preemptive strategy, he had turned Stilson's face inside out. The sting of that kick hung on his toe, even as he hung suspended in his stupor; once again, and again, and again, Stilson's stomach contracted as Ender's foot smashed into it, his cheekbone gave way, his testicles imploded. He remembered not only the physical sensation: he relived the moment, he once more felt the terrible exhilaration of beating the life out of another person, and knowing he'd do it again if he had to. He had cried afterwards -- deep, gasping sobs from the bottom of his being -- but that was only after the deed was done. He was a machine for killing, a sword, a stunning, paralyzing blow personified.
He was a monster.
A monster with a million murders on his shoulders. A monster who had ordered men to their deaths in sport. Brave men. Dedicated men. Men who had trusted that he knew what he was doing. And if they could see the world from whatever vantage point they held that day, they would call their deaths worthwhile, and call their mission a success. He was the only one in the world monstrous enough to step inside the brain of a bugger and return unscathed, the only so-called member of the human race who could bear to see the buggers exterminated to the last, even after understanding their mind.
Guilt.
It lay upon him like a putrescent mass, his soul struggling to move from under its settling weight. He could not raise his head to see what was weighing him down, or move his hands to investigate it by touch. Could he fight this guilt? Did it really have him by the throat, or was that simply its natural weight finding its resting place?
Gone was the floating, gone the clouds, gone the lethe that had allowed his broken body to recover, while his broken mind waited, unconscious. An insufferable weight was falling on him from above, and he had no power to fend it off, even to roll his body into a ball, to form his own impotent cocoon away from the rest of the universe. A voice echoed in his ears. It was one he knew, but he could not place it. Only when the words became distinct did he know who was its owner, its master, its sole god.
"See that, Peter? That's blood. It's not mine."
The words echoed in his mind, each echo building on the last, until the cathedral walls threatened to fall like Jericho with the blast. And as the sound resided, there came another echo, again his voice, but now older:
"I didn't want to hurt him! Why couldn't he have left me alone?"
The words mixed and melded, the quiet threat of the first with the anguish of threat fulfilled in the second. And then his last memories came back, as he heard himself giving the order to fire the Little Doctor, setting himself as god and judge over a species that had existed for longer than he could imagine, and pronouncing it guilty of -- what? Of the wish to expand and colonize. Of misunderstanding. Of unwarranted assumption.
The charge was murder. He had no other choice but to hand down the verdict that each one was guilty, that all were collectively guilty, that none could be spared.
He sentenced them all to die.
And he would do it again.
Was life worth living, if its only prospect for him was to be deified as a savior, while all the time knowing himself to be a fiend?
Was being human reward enough that he could sacrifice his humanity for it?
Did he dare to simply let go, now? Peacefully? Quietly? Holding no rancor for all that he had done to himself in the interests of others?
To be, or not to be?
And then a hand shook him as he slept, and he could not shake off his humanity. He could not bear to let go, to allow that unknown to threaten.
And he fought for his survival again.
And lived.
Floating, weightless, with no reference, it was all he could grab on to. He could only just remember his name. Ender...Ender...Ender echoed faintly across his mind, almost lost in the jumble of noise, as if he was alone in a great cathedral with a horde of whispering ghosts. He had lost all his handholds on reality, all his angles on life, and was floating in a sea, or a cloud. But he knew that there had been a battle, battles upon battles, games upon games, and then -- silence.
"Not a game," hissed the wind. "A trap. And you fell in, and took their bait, and never suspected that you were being used. A weapon. That's all you are: a gun, a thinking gun, that does what it's told and a little more, and wipes us out.... And even if you did not mean to kill us now, were you not preparing yourself for when you must wipe us out in the future?..."
He had very early put aside fears of monsters in his room, ogres and demons in the closets; he had had Peter to fear, a monster of a different order. There had been no other way to survive than to take his life in his hands every day, to be the one with control. With the initiative. He had become, at an early age, skilled in preemtive strategy.
And in the name of preemptive strategy, he had turned Stilson's face inside out. The sting of that kick hung on his toe, even as he hung suspended in his stupor; once again, and again, and again, Stilson's stomach contracted as Ender's foot smashed into it, his cheekbone gave way, his testicles imploded. He remembered not only the physical sensation: he relived the moment, he once more felt the terrible exhilaration of beating the life out of another person, and knowing he'd do it again if he had to. He had cried afterwards -- deep, gasping sobs from the bottom of his being -- but that was only after the deed was done. He was a machine for killing, a sword, a stunning, paralyzing blow personified.
He was a monster.
A monster with a million murders on his shoulders. A monster who had ordered men to their deaths in sport. Brave men. Dedicated men. Men who had trusted that he knew what he was doing. And if they could see the world from whatever vantage point they held that day, they would call their deaths worthwhile, and call their mission a success. He was the only one in the world monstrous enough to step inside the brain of a bugger and return unscathed, the only so-called member of the human race who could bear to see the buggers exterminated to the last, even after understanding their mind.
Guilt.
It lay upon him like a putrescent mass, his soul struggling to move from under its settling weight. He could not raise his head to see what was weighing him down, or move his hands to investigate it by touch. Could he fight this guilt? Did it really have him by the throat, or was that simply its natural weight finding its resting place?
Gone was the floating, gone the clouds, gone the lethe that had allowed his broken body to recover, while his broken mind waited, unconscious. An insufferable weight was falling on him from above, and he had no power to fend it off, even to roll his body into a ball, to form his own impotent cocoon away from the rest of the universe. A voice echoed in his ears. It was one he knew, but he could not place it. Only when the words became distinct did he know who was its owner, its master, its sole god.
"See that, Peter? That's blood. It's not mine."
The words echoed in his mind, each echo building on the last, until the cathedral walls threatened to fall like Jericho with the blast. And as the sound resided, there came another echo, again his voice, but now older:
"I didn't want to hurt him! Why couldn't he have left me alone?"
The words mixed and melded, the quiet threat of the first with the anguish of threat fulfilled in the second. And then his last memories came back, as he heard himself giving the order to fire the Little Doctor, setting himself as god and judge over a species that had existed for longer than he could imagine, and pronouncing it guilty of -- what? Of the wish to expand and colonize. Of misunderstanding. Of unwarranted assumption.
The charge was murder. He had no other choice but to hand down the verdict that each one was guilty, that all were collectively guilty, that none could be spared.
He sentenced them all to die.
And he would do it again.
Was life worth living, if its only prospect for him was to be deified as a savior, while all the time knowing himself to be a fiend?
Was being human reward enough that he could sacrifice his humanity for it?
Did he dare to simply let go, now? Peacefully? Quietly? Holding no rancor for all that he had done to himself in the interests of others?
To be, or not to be?
And then a hand shook him as he slept, and he could not shake off his humanity. He could not bear to let go, to allow that unknown to threaten.
And he fought for his survival again.
And lived.