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Ender 7
Shadow Puppets
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Orson Scott Card
CONTENTS
1. GROWN
2. SURIYAWONG'S KNIFE
3. MOMMIES AND DADDIES
4. CHOPIN
5. STONES IN THE ROAD
6. HOSPITALITY
7. THE HUMAN RACE
8. TARGETS
9. CONCEPTION
10. LEFTAND RIGHT
11. BABIES
12. PUTTING OUT FIRES
13. CALIPH
14. SPACE STATION
15, WAR PLANS
16. TRAPS
17. PROPHETS
18. THE WARONTHEGROUND
19. FAREWELLS
20. HOME
GROWN
From: NoAddress@Untraceable.com# 1 4hPccO/SIGN
UP NOW AND STAY ANONYMOUS!
To: Trireme%Solamis@Aftico-vs-Sporta.hst
Re: Find decision
Wiggin:
Subject not to be killed. Subject will be transported according to plan 2, route 1 Dep Tue. 0400, checkpoint #3 @ 0600, which is First light. Please be smart enough to remember the international dateline. He is yours if you want him.
Ii your intelligence is vice versa, you advice, but I have outweighs your ambition you will try to use him. You did seen him in action: Kill him.
True, without on antagonist to frighten the world you will never retrieve the power the office of Hegemon once had. It would be the end of your career. will kill him. not ask my Let him live, and it is the end of your life, and you will leave the world in his power when you die. Who is the monster? Or at least monster #2?
And I have told you how to get him. Am I monster #3? Or merely fool #1?
Your faithful servant in motley.
Bean kind of liked being tall, even though it was going to kill him.
And at the rate he was growing, it would be sooner rather than later. How long did he have? A year? Three? Five? The ends of his bones were still like a child's, blossoming, lengthening; even his head was growing, so that like a baby he had a soft patch of cartilage and new bone along the crest of his skull.
It meant constant adjustment, as week by week his arms reached farther when he flung them out, his feet were longer and caught on stairs and sills, his legs were longer so that as he walked he covered ground more quickly, and companions had to hurry to keep up. When he trained with his soldiers, the elite company of men that constituted the entire military force of the Hegemony, he could now run ahead of them, his stride longer than theirs.
He had long since earned the respect of his men. But now, thanks to his height, they finally, literally, looked up to him.
Bean stood on the grass where two assault choppers were waiting for his men to board. Today the mission was a dangerous one-to penetrate Chinese air space and intercept a small convoy transporting a prisoner from Beijing toward the interior. Everything depended on secrecy, surprise, and the extraordinarily accurate information the Hegemon, Peter Wiggin, had been receiving from inside China in the past few months.
Bean wished he knew the source of the intelligence, because his life and the lives of his men depended on it. The accuracy up to now could easily have been a setup. Even though "Hegemon" was essentially an empty title now, since most of the world's population resided in countries that had withdrawn their recognition of the authority of the office. Peter Wiggin had been using Bean's soldiers well. They were a constant irritant to the newly expansionist China, inserting themselves here and there at exactly the moment most calculated to disrupt the confidence of the Chinese leadership.
The patrol boat that suddenly disappears, the helicopter that goes down, the spy operation that is abruptly rolled up, blinding the Chinese intelligence service in yet another country-officially the Chinese hadn't even accused the Hegemon of any involvement in such incidents, but that only meant that they didn't want to give any publicity to the Hegemon, didn't want to boost his reputation or prestige among those who feared China in these years since the conquest of India and Indochina. They almost certainly knew who was the source of their woes.
Indeed, they probably gave Bean's little force the credit for problems that were actually the ordinary accidents of life. The death of the foreign minister of a heart attack in Washington, D.C. only minutes before meeting with the U.S. president-they might really think Peter Wiggin's reach was that long, or that he thought the Chinese foreign minister, a party hack, was worth assassinating.
And the fact that a devastating drought was in its second year in India, forcing the Chinese either to buy food on the open market or allow relief workers from Europe and the Americas into the newly captured and still rebellious subcontinent-maybe they even imagined that Peter Wiggin could control the monsoon rains.
Bean had no such illusions. Peter Wiggin had all kinds of contacts throughout the world, a collection of informants that was gradually turning into a serious network of spies, but as far as Bean could tell, Peter was still just playing a game. Oh, Peter thought it was real enough, but he had never seen what happened in the real world. He had never seen people die as a result of his orders.
Bean had, and it was not a game.
He heard his men approaching. He knew without looking that they were very close, for even here, in supposedly safe territory-an advance staging area in the mountains of Mindanao in the Philippines- they moved as silently as possible. But he also knew that he had heard them before they expected him to, for his senses had always been unusually keen. Not the physical sense organs-his ears were quite ordinary-but the ability of his brain to recognize even the slightest variation from the ambient sound. That's why he raised a hand in greeting to men who were only just emerging from the forest behind him.
He could hear the changes in their breathing-sighs, almost-silent chuckles-that told him they recognized that he had caught them again. As if it were a grown-up game of Mother-May-I, and Bean always seemed to have eyes in the back of his head.
Suriyawong came up beside him as the men filed by in two columns to board the choppers, heavily laden for the mission ahead.
"Sir," said Suriyawong.
That made Bean turn. Suriyawong never called him sir
His second-in-command, a Thai only a few years older than Bean, was now half a head shorter. He saluted Bean, and then turned toward the forest he had just come from.
When Bean turned to face the same direction, he saw Peter Wiggin, the Hegemon of Earth, the brother of Ender Wiggin who saved the world from the Formic invasion only a few years before-Peter Wiggin, the conniver and gamesman. What was he playing at now?
"I hope you aren't insane enough to be coming along on this mission," said Bean.
"What a cheery greeting," said Peter. "That is a gun in your pocket, so I guess you aren't happy to see me."
Bean hated Peter most when Peter tried to banter so he said nothing. Waited.
"Julian Delphiki, there's been a change of plans," said Peter
Calling him by his full name, as if he were Bean's father. Well, Bean had a father-even if he didn't know he had one until after the war was over, and they told him that Nikolai Delphiki wasn't just his friend, he was his brother. But having a father and mother show up when you're eleven isn't the same as growing up with them. No one had called Bean "Julian Delphiki" when he was little. No one had called him anything at all, until they tauntingly called him Bean on the streets of Rotterdam.
Peter never seemed to see the absurdity of it, talking down to Bean. I fought in the war against the Buggers. Bean wanted to say. I fought beside your brother Ender, while you were playing your little games with rabble-rousing on the nets. And while you've been filling your empty little role as Hegemon, I've been leading these men into combat that actually made a difference in the world. And you tell me there's been a change of plans?
"Let's scrub the mission." said Bean. "Last-minute changes in plan lead to unnecessary losses in battle."
"Actually, this one won't," said Peter "Because the only change is that you're not going."
"And you're going in my place?" Bean did not have to show scorn in his voice or on his face. Peter was bright enough to know that the idea was a joke. Peter was trained for nothing except writing essays, shmoozing with politicians, playing at geopolitics.
"Suriyawong will command this mission," said Peter
Suriyawong took the sealed envelope that Peter handed him, but then turned to Bean for confirmation.
Peter no doubt noticed that Suriyawong did not intend to follow Peter's orders unless Bean said he should. Being mostly human, Peter could not resist the temptation to jab back. "Unless," said Peter, "you don't think Suriyawong is ready to lead the mission. Bean looked at Suriyawong, who smiled back at him.
"Your Excellency, the troops are yours to command," said Bean. "Suriyawong always leads the men in battle, so nothing important will be different."
Which was not quite true-Bean and Suriyawong often had to change plans at the last minute, and Bean ended up commanding all or part of a mission as often as not, depending on which of them had to deal with the emergency. Still, difficult as this operation was, it was not too complicated. Either the convoy would be where it was supposed to be, or it would not. If it was there, the mission would probably succeed. If it was not there, or if it was an ambush, the mission would be aborted and they would return home. Suriyawong and the other officers and soldiers could deal with any minor changes routinely.
Unless, of course, the change in mission was because Peter Wiggin knew that it would fail and he didn't want to risk losing Bean. Or because Peter was betraying them for some arcane reason of his own.
"Please don't open that," said Peter, "until you're airborne."
Suriyawong saluted. "Time to leave," he said.
"This mission," said Peter, "will bring us significantly closer to breaking the back of Chinese expansionism."
Bean did not even sigh. But this tendency of Peter's to make laims about what would happen always made him a little tired.
"Godspeed," said Bean to Suriyawong. Sometimes when he said that, Bean remembered Sister Carlotta and wondered if she was actually with God now, and perhaps heard Bean say the closest thing to prayer that ever passed his lips.
Suriyawong jogged to the chopper. Unlike the men, he carried no equipment beyond a small daypack and his sidearm. He had no need heavy weaponry, because he expected to remain with the choppers along this operation. There were times when the commander had to be in combat, but not on a mission like this, where communication was everything and he had to be able to make instant decisions that would be communicated to everyone at once. So he would stay with the e-maps that monitored the positions of every soldier, and talk with them by scrambled satellite uplink.
He would not be safe, there in the chopper. Quite the contrary. If the Chinese were aware of what was coming, or if they were able to respond in time, Suriyawong would be sitting inside one of the two biggest and easiest targets to hit.
That's my place, thought Bean as he watched Suriyawong bound up into the chopper, helped by the outstretched hand of one of the men.
The door of the chopper closed. The two aircraft rose from the ground in a storm of wind and dust and leaves, flattening the grass below them.
Only then did another figure emerge from the forest. A young woman. Petra.
Bean saw her and immediately erupted with anger. “What are you thinking?" he shouted at Peter over the diminishing sound of the rising choppers. "Where are her bodyguards? Don't you know she's in danger whenever she leaves the safety of the compound?"
"Actually," said Peter-and now the choppers were high enough up that normal voices could be heard-"she's probably never been safer in her life."
"If you think that," said Bean, "you're an idiot."
"Actually, I do think that, and I'm not an idiot." Peter grinned. "You always underestimate me."
"You always overestimate yourself."
"Ho, Bean."
Bean turned to Petra. "Ho, Petra." He had seen her only three days ago, just before they left on this mission. She had helped him plan it; she knew it backward and forward as well as he did. "What's this eemo doing to our mission?" Bean asked her. Petra shrugged. "Haven't you figured it out?"
Bean thought for a moment. As usual, his unconscious mind had been processing information in the background, well behind what he was aware of. On the surface, he was thinking about Peter and Petra and the mission that had just left. But underneath, his mind had already noticed the anomalies and was ready to list them.
Peter had taken Bean off the mission and given sealed orders to Suriyawong. Obviously, then, there was some change in the mission that he didn't want Bean to know about. Peter had also brought Petra out of hiding and yet claimed she had never been safer. That must mean that for some reason he was sure Achilles was not able to reach her here.
Achilles was the only person on earth whose personal network rivaled Peter's for its ability to stretch across national boundaries. The only way Peter could be sure that Achilles could not reach Petra, even here, was if Achilles was not free to act. Achilles was a prisoner, and had been for some time.
Which meant that the Chinese, having used him to set up their conquest of India, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and to arrange their alliance with Russia and the Warsaw Pact, finally noticed that he was a psychopath and locked him up.
Achilles was a prisoner in China. The message contained in Suriyawong's envelope undoubtedly told him the identity of the prisoner that they were supposed to rescue from Chinese custody. That information could not have been communicated before the mission departed, because Bean would not have allowed the mission to go forward if he had known it would lead to Achilles's release.
Bean turned to Peter, "You're as stupid as the German politicians who conspired to bring Hitler to power, thinking they could use him."
"I knew you'd be upset," said Peter calmly.
"Unless the new orders you gave Suriyawong were to kill the prisoner after all."
"You realize that you're way too predictable when it comes to this guy. Just mentioning his name sets you off. It's your Achilles heel. Pardon the jest."
Bean ignored him. Instead he reached out and took Petra's hand. "If you already knew what he was doing, why did you come with him?"
"Because I wouldn't be safe in Brazil anymore," said Petra, "and so I'd rather be with you."
"Both of us together only gives Achilles twice the motivation," said Bean.
"But you're the one who survives no matter what Achilles throws at you," said Petra. "That's where I want to be."
Bean shook his head. "People close to me die."
"On the contrary," said Petra. "People only die when they aren't with you."
Well, that was true enough, but irrelevant. In the long run, Poke and Sister Carlotta both died because of Bean. Because they made the mistake of loving him and being loyal to him.
"I'm not leaving your side," said Petra.
"Ever?" asked Bean.
Before she could answer, Peter interrupted. "All this is very touching, but we need to go over what we're doing with Achilles after we get him back."
Petra looked at him as if he were an annoying child. "You really are dim," she said.
"I know he's dangerous,' said Peter. "That's why we have to be very careful how we handle this."
"Listen to him," said Petra. "Saying 'we.'"
"There's no 'we,' " said Bean. "Good luck." Still holding Petra's hand, Bean started for the forest. Petra had only a moment to wave cheerily at Peter and then she was beside Bean, jogging toward the trees.
"You're going to quit?" shouted Peter after them. "Just like that? When we're finally close to being able to get things moving our way?" They didn't stop to argue. Later, on the private plane Bean chartered to get them from Mmdanao to Celebes, Petra mocked Peter's words. " 'When we're finally close to being able to get things moving our way?' Bean laughed.
"When was it ever our way?" she went on, not laughing now. "It's all about increasing Peter's influence, boosting his power and prestige. Our way."
"I don't want him dead," said Bean.
"Who, Achilles?"
"No!" said Bean. "Him I want dead. It's Peter we have to keep alive. He's the only balance."
"He's lost his balance now," said Petra. "How long before Achilles arranges to have him killed?"
"What worries me is, how long before Achilles penetrates and co-opts his entire network?"
"Maybe we're assigning Achilles supernatural powers," said Petra. "He isn't a god. Not even a hero. Just a sick kid."
"No," said Bean. "I'm a sick kid. He's the devil."
"Well, so," said Petra, "maybe the devil's a sick kid."
"So you're saying we should still try to help Peter."
"I'm saying that if Peter lives through his little brush with Achilles, he might be more prone to listen to us.
"Not likely," said Bean. "Because if he survives, he'll think it proves he's smarter than we are, so he'll be even less likely to hear us.
"Yeah," said Petra. "It's not like he's going to learn anything."
"First thing we need to do," said Bean, "is split up."
"No," said Petra.
"I've done this before, Petra. Going into hiding. Keeping from getting caught."
"And if we're together we're too identifiable, Ia Ia Ia," she said.
"Saying 'Ia la Ia' doesn't mean it isn't true."
"But I don't care," said Petra. "That's the part you're leaving out of your calculations."
"And I do care," said Bean, "which is the part you're leaving out of yours."
"Let me put it this way," said Petra. "If we separate, and Achilles finds me and kills me first, then you'll just have one more female you love deeply who is dead because you didn't protect her."
"You fight dirty."
"I fight like a girl."
"And if you stay with me, we'll probably end up dying together."
"No we won't," said Petra.
"I'm not immortal, as you well know."
"But you are smarter than Achilles. And luckier. And taller. And nicer."
"The new improved human."
She looked at him thoughtfully. "You know, now that you're tall, we could probably travel as man and wife."
Bean sighed. "I'm not going to marry you.
"Just as camouflage."
It had begun as hints but now it was quite open, her desire to marry him. "I'm not going to have children," he said. "My species ends with me."
"I think that's pretty selfish of you. What if the first homo sapiens had felt that way? We'd all still be Neanderthals, and when the Buggers came they would have blasted us all to bits and that would be that."
"We didn't evolve from Neanderthals," said Bean.
"Well, it's a good thing we have that little fact squared away," said Petra.
"And I didn't evolve at all. I was manufactured. Genetically created."
"Still in the image of God," said Petra.
"Sister Carlotta could say those things, but it's not funny coming from you."
"Yes it is," said Petra.
"Not to me."
"I don't think I want to have your babies, if they might inherit your sense of humor."
"That's a relief." Only it wasn't. Because he was attracted to her and she knew it. More than that. He truly cared about her, liked being with her. She was his friend. If he weren't going to die, if he wanted to have a family, if he had any interest in marrying, she was the only female human that he would even consider. But that was the trouble- she was human, and he was not.
After a few moments of silence, she leaned her head on his shoulder and held his hand. "Thank you," she murmured.
"For what I don't know."
"For letting me save your life."
"When did that happen?" asked Bean.
"As long as you have to look out for me," said Petra, "you won't die."
"So you're coming along with me, increasing our risk of being identified and allowing Achilles to get his two worst nemeses with one well-placed bomb, in order to save my life?"
"That's right, genius boy," said Petra.
"I don't even like you, you know." At this moment, he was annoyed enough that the statement was almost true.
"As long as you love me, I don't mind."
And he suspected that her lie, too, was almost true.
SURIYAWONG'S KNIFE
From: Salaom%Spaceboy@Inshallab.com
To: Watcber%GnDuty@International.net
Re: What you asked
My Dear Mr. Wiggin/Locke,
Philosophically speaking, all guests in a Muslim home are treated as sacred visitors sent by God and under his care. In practice, for two extremely talented, famous, and unpredictable persons who are hated by one powerful non-Muslim figure and aided by another, this is a very dangerous part of the world, particularly if they seek to remain both hidden and free. I do not believe they will be foolish enough to seek refuge in a Muslim county.
I regret to tell you, however, that your interest and mine do not coincide on this matter, so despite our occasional cooperation in the past, I most certainly will not tell you whether I encounter them or hear news of them.
Your accomplishments are many, and I have helped you in the past and will in the Future. But when Ender led us in Fighting the Formics these Friends were beside me. Where were you?
Respectfully yours,
Aloi
Suriyawong opened his orders and was not surprised. He had led missions inside China before, but always for the purpose of sabotage or intelligence gathering, or "involuntary high officer force reduction," Peter's mostly-ironic euphemism for assassination. The fact that this assignment had been to capture rather than kill suggested that it was a person who was not Chinese. Suriyawong had rather hoped it might be one of the leaders of a conquered country-the deposed prime minister of India, for instance, or the captive prime minister of Suriyawong’s native Thailand.
He had even entertained, briefly, the thought that it might be one of his own family.
But it made sense that Peter was taking this risk, not for someone of mere political or symbolic value, but for the enemy who had put the world into this strange and desperate situation.
Achilles. Erstwhile gimp-legged cripple, frequent murderer, fulltime psychotic, and warmonger extraordinaire, Achilles had a knack for finding out just what the leaders of nations aspired for and promising them a way to get it. So far he had convinced a faction in the Russian government, the heads of the Indian and Pakistani governments, and various leaders in other lands to do his bidding. When Russia found him a liability, he had fled to India where he already had friends waiting for him. When India and Pakistan were both doing exactly what he had arranged for them to do, he betrayed them using his connections inside China.
The next move, of course, would have been to betray his friends in China and jump ahead of them to a position of even greater power. But the ruling coterie in China was every bit as cynical as Achilles and recognized his pattern of behavior, so not all that long after he had made China the world's only effective superpower, they arrested him.
If the Chinese were so smart, why wasn't Peter? Hadn't Peter himself said, "When Achilles is most useful and loyal to you, that is when he has most certainly betrayed you?” So why was he thinking he could use this monstrous boy?
Or had Achilles managed to convince Peter, despite all the proof that Achilles kept no promises, that this time he would remain loyal to an ‘ally'?
I should kill him, thought Suriyawong. In fact, I will. I will report to Peter that Achilles died in the chaos of the rescue. Then the world will be a safer place.
It's not as if Suriyawong hadn't killed dangerous enemies before. And from what Bean and Petra had told him, Achilles was by definition a dangerous enemy, especially to anyone who had ever been kind to him.
"If you've ever seen him in a condition of weakness or helplessness or defeat," Bean had said, "he can't bear for you to stay alive. I don't think it's personal. He doesn't have to kill you with his own hands or watch you die or anything like that. He just has to know that you no longer live in the same world with him."
"So the most dangerous thing you can do," Petra had said, "is to save him, because the very fact that you saw that he needed saving is your death sentence in his mind."
Had they never explained this to Peter?
Of course they had. So in sending Suriyawong to rescue Achilles, Peter knew that he was, in effect, signing Suriyawong's death warrant.
No doubt Peter imagined that he was going to control Achilles, and therefore Suriyawong would be in no danger
But Achilles had killed the surgeon who repaired his gimp leg, and the girl who had once declined to kill him when he was at her mercy. He had killed the nun who found him on the streets of Rotterdam and got him an education and a chance at Battle School.
To have Achilles's gratitude was clearly a terminal disease. Peter had no power to make Suriyawong immune. Achilles never left a good deed unpunished, however long it might take, however convoluted the path to vengeance might be.
I should kill him, thought Suriyawong, or he will surely kill me.
He's not a soldier, he's a prisoner. To kill him would be murder, even in a war.
But if I don't kill him, he's bound to kill me. May a man not defend himself?
Besides, he's the one who masterminded the plan that put my people into subjugation to the Chinese, destroying a nation that had never been conquered, not by the Burmese, not by colonizing Europeans, not by the Japanese in the Second World War, not by the Communists in their day. For Thailand alone he deserves to die, not to mention all his other murders and betrayals.
But if a soldier does not obey orders, killing only as he is ordered to kill, then what is he worth to his commander? What cause does he serve? Not even his own survival, for in such an army no officer would be able to count on his men, no soldier on his companions.
Maybe I'll be lucky, and his vehicle will blow up with him inside.
Those were the thoughts he wrestled with as they flew below radar, brushing the crests of the waves of the China Sea.
They skimmed over the beach so quickly there was barely time to register the fact, as the onboard computers made the assault craft jog left and right, jerk upward and then drift down again, avoiding obstacles on the ground while trying to stay below radar. Their choppers were thoroughly masked, and the onboard dis-info pretended to all watching satellites that they were anything other than what they actually were. Before long they reached a certain road and turned north, then west, zipping over what Peter's intelligence sources had tagged as checkpoint number three. The men at that checkpoint would radio a warning to the convoy transporting Achilles, of course, but they wouldn't have finished the first sentence before Suriyawong's pilot spotted the convoy.
"Armor and troop transport fore and aft," he said. "Take out all support vehicles."
"What if the prisoner has been put in one of the support vehicles?"
"Then there will be a tragic death by friendly fire," said Suriyawong.
The soldiers understood, or at least thought they understood- Suriyawong was going through the motions of rescuing the prisoner, but if the prisoner died he would not mind.
This was not, strictly speaking, true, or at least not at this moment. Suriyawong simply trusted the Chinese soldiers to go absolutely by the book. The convoy was merely a show of force to keep any local crowds or rebels or rogue military groups from attempting to interfere. They had not contemplated the possibility of-or even a motive for- a rescue from some outside force. Certainly not from the tiny commando force of the Hegemon.
Only a half dozen Chinese soldiers were able to get out of the vehicles before the Hegemony missiles blew them up. Suriyawong's soldiers were already firing before they leapt from the settling choppers, and he knew that in moments all resistance would be over.
But the prison van carrying Achilles was undisturbed. No one had emerged from it, not even the drivers.
Violating protocol, Suriyawong jumped down from the command chopper and walked toward the back of the prison van. He stood close as the soldier assigned to blow the door slapped on the unlocking charge and detonated it. There was a loud pop, but no back blast at all as the explosive tore open the latch.
The door jogged open a couple of centimeters.
Suriyawong extended an arm to stop the other soldiers from going into the van to rescue the prisoner, Instead he opened the door only far enough to toss his own combat knife onto the floor of the van. Then he pushed the door back into place and stood back, waving his men back also.
The van rocked and lurched from some violent activity inside it. Two guns went off. The door flew open as a body collapsed backward into the dirt at their feet.
Be Achilles, thought Suriyawong, looking down at the Chinese officer who was trying to gather his entrails with his hands. Suriyawong had the irrational thought that the man ought really to wash his organs before jamming them back into his abdomen. It was so unsanitary.
A tall young man in prison pajamas appeared in the van door, holding a bloody combat knife in his hand.
You don't look like much, Achilles, thought Suriyawong. But then, you don't have to look all that impressive when you've just killed your guards with a knife you didn't expect someone to throw on the floor at your feet.
"All dead inside?" asked Suriyawong.
A soldier would have answered yes or no, along with a count of the living and dead. But Achilles hadn't been a soldier in Battle School for more than a few days. He didn't have the reflexes of military discipline.
"Very nearly." said Achilles. "Whose stupid idea was it to throw me a knife instead of opening the mossin' door and blasting the hell out of those guys?"
"Check to see if they're dead," Suriyawong said to his nearby men. Moments later they reported that all convoy personnel had been killed. That was essential if the Hegemon was to be able to preserve the fiction that it was not a Hegemony force that had carried out this raid.
"Choppers, in twenty," said Suriyawong.
At once his men scrambled to the choppers.
Suriyawong turned to Achilles. "My commander respectfully invites you to allow us to transport you out of China."
"And if I refuse?"
"If you have your own resources in country, then I will bid you good-bye with my commander's compliments."
This was not at all what Peter's orders said, but Suriyawong knew what he was doing.
"Very well," said Achilles ."Go away and leave me here."
Suriyawong immediately jogged toward his command chopper.
"Wait," called Achilles.
"Ten seconds," Suriyawong called over his shoulder. He jumped inside and turned around. Sure enough, Achilles was close behind, reaching out a hand to be taken up into the bird.
"I'm glad you chose to come with us," said Suriyawong.
Achilles found a seat and strapped himself into it. "I assume your commander is Bean and you're Suriyawong," said Achilles.
The chopper lifted off and began to fly by a different route toward the coast.
"My commander is the Hegemon," said Suriyawong. "You are his guest."
Achilles smiled placidly and silently looked around at the soldiers who had just carried out his rescue.
"What if I had been in one of the other vehicles?" said Achilles. "If I had been in charge of this convoy, there's no chance the prisoner would have been in the obvious place."
"But you were not commanding the convoy," said Suriyawong.
Achilles's smile broadened a little. "So what was that business with tossing in a knife? How did you know my hands would even be free to get the thing?"
"I assumed that you would have arranged to have free hands," said Suriyawong.
"Why? I didn't know you were coming."
"Begging your pardon, sir," said Suriyawong. "But whatever was or wasn't coming, you would have had your hands free,"
"Those were your orders from Peter Wiggin?"
"No sir, that was my judgment in battle," said Suriyawong. It galled him to address Achilles as "sir," but if this little play was to have a happy ending, this was Suriyawong's role for the moment.
"What kind of rescue is this, where you toss the prisoner a knife and stand and wait to see what happens?"
"There were too many variables if we flung open the door," said Suriyawong. "Too great a danger of your being killed in the crossfire."
Achilles said nothing, just looked at the opposite wall of the chopper.
"Besides," said Suriyawong. "This was not a rescue operation."
"What was it, target practice? Chinese skeet?"
"An offer of transportation to an invited guest of the Hegemon," said Suriyawong. "And the loan of a knife."
Achilles held up the bloody thing, dangling it from the point. "Yours?" he asked.
"Unless you want to clean it," said Suriyawong.
Achilles handed it to him. Suriyawong took out his cleaning kit and wiped down the blade, then began to polish it.
"You wanted me to die," said Achilles quietly.
"I expected you to solve your own problems," said Suriyawong, "without getting any of my men killed. And since you accomplished it, I believe my decision has proven to be, if not the best course of action, at least a valid one."
"I never thought I'd be rescued by Thais," said Achilles. "Killed by them, yes, but not saved."
"You saved yourself," said Suriyawong coldly. "No one here saved you. We opened the door for you and I lent you my knife. I assumed you might not have a knife, and the loan of mine might speed up your victory so you would not delay our return flight."
"You're a strange kind of boy," said Achilles.
"I was not tested for normality before I was entrusted with this mission," said Suriyawong. "But I have no doubt that I would fail such a test."
Achilles laughed. Suriyawong allowed himself a slight smile.
He tried not to guess what thoughts the inscrutable faces of his soldiers might be hiding. Their families, too, had been caught up in the Chinese conquest of Thailand. They, too, had cause to hate Achilles, and it had to gall them to watch Suriyawong sucking up to him.
For a good cause, men-I'm saving our lives as best I can by keeping Achilles from thinking of us as his rescuers, by making sure he believes that none of us ever saw him or even thought of him as helpless.
"Well?" said Achilles. "Don't you have any questions?"
"Yes," said Suriyawong. "Did you already have breakfast or are you hungry?"
"I never eat breakfast," said Achilles.
"Killing people makes me hungry," said Suriyawong. "I thought you might want a snack of some kind."
Now he caught a couple of the men glancing at him, only their eyes barely moving, but it was enough that Suriyawong knew they were reacting to what he said. Killing makes him hungry? Absurd. Now they must know that he was lying to Achilles. It was important to Suriyawong that his men know he was lying without him having to tell them. Otherwise he might lose their trust. They might believe he had really given himself to the service of this monster.
Achilles did eat, after a while. Then he slept.
Suriyawong did not trust his sleep. Achilles no doubt had mastered the art of seeming to be asleep so he could hear the conversations of others. So Suriyawong talked no more than was necessary to debrief his men and get a full count of the personnel from the convoy that they had killed.
Only when Achilles got off the chopper to pee at the airfield on Guam did Suriyawong risk sending a quick message to Ribeiro Preto.
There was one person who had to know that Achilles was coming to stay with the Hegemon: Virlomi, the lndian Battle-Schooler who had escaped from Achilles in Hyderabad and had become the goddess guarding a bridge in eastern India until Suriyawong had rescued her. If she was in Ribeirao Preto when Achilles got there, her life would be in danger.
And that was very sad for Suriyawong, because it would mean he would not see Virlomi for a long time, and he had recently decided that he loved her and wanted to marry her when they both grew up.
MOMMIES AND DADDIES
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To: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov
From Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov
Re: Unofficial request
I appreciate your warning, but I assure you that I do not underestimate the danger of having X in RP. In fact, that is a matter with which I could use your help, if you are inclined to give it. With 3D and PA in hiding, and S compromised by having rescued X, persons close to them ore in danger, either directly or through being used as hostages by X. We need to have them out of X's reach, and you are uniquely able to accomplish this. 3D's parents are used to being in hiding, and have had some near misses; PA's parents, having already suffered one kidnapping, will also be inclined to cooperate.
The difficulty will come from my parents. There is no chance they will accept protective concealment if I propose it. If it comes from you, they might. I do not need to have my parents here, exposed to danger, where they might be used for leverage or to distract me from what must be accomplished.
Can you come yourself to RP to gather them up before I return with X? You would have about 30 hours to accomplish this. I apologize for the inconvenience, but you would once again have my gratitude and continue to have my support, both of which, I hope, will someday be more valuable than they are under present circumstances. There’s a Wiggin knew Graff was coming, since Elena Delphiki gave her a hurried call as soon as he had left her house. But she did not change her plans in the slightest. Not because she hoped to deceive him, but because there were papayas on the trees in the back yard that had to be harvested before they dropped to the ground. She had no intention of letting Graff interfere with something really important.
So when she heard Graff politely clapping his hands at the front gate, she was up on a ladder clipping off papayas and laying them into the bag at her side. Aparecida, the maid, had her instructions, and so Theresa soon heard Graff's footsteps coming across the tiles of the terrace.
"Mrs. Wiggin," he said.
"You've already taken two of my children," said Theresa without looking at him. "I suppose you want my firstborn, now?”
"No," said Graff. "It's you and your husband I'm after this time."
"Taking us to join Ender and Valentine?" Even though she was being deliberately obtuse, the idea nevertheless had a momentary appeal. Ender and Valentine had left all this business behind.
"I'm afraid we can't spare a follow-up ship to visit their colony for several years yet," said Graff.
"Then I'm afraid you have nothing to offer us that we want," said Theresa.
"I'm sure that's true," said Graff. "It's what Peter needs. A free hand."
"We don't interfere in his work."
"He's bringing a dangerous person here," said Graff. "But I think you know that."
"Gossip flies around here, since there's nothing else for the parents of geniuses to do but twitter to each other about the doings of their brilliant boys and girls. The Arkanians and Delphikis have their children all but married off. And we get such fascinating visitors from outer space. Like you."
"My, but we're testy today," said Graff.
"I'm sure Bean's and Petra's families have agreed to leave Ribeiro Preto so that their children don't have to worry about Achilles taking them hostage. And someday Nikolai Delphiki and Stefan Arkanian will recover from having been mere bit players in their siblings' lives. But John Paul's and my situation is not at all the same. Our son is the idiot who decided to bring Achilles here."
"Yes, it must hurt you to have the one child who simply isn't at the same intellectual level as the others," said Graff.
Theresa looked at him, saw the twinkle in his eye, and laughed in spite of herself. "All right, he isn't stupid, he's so cocky he can't conceive of any of his plans failing. But the result is the same. And I have no intention of hearing about his death through some awful little email message. Or-worse-from a news report talking about how 'the brother of the great Ender Wiggin has failed in his bid to revive the office of Hegemon' and then watch how even in death Peter's obituary is accompanied by more footage of Ender after his victory over the Formics."
"You seem to have a very clear view of all the future possibilities," said Graff.
"No, just the unbearable ones. I'm staying, Mr. Colonization Minister You'll have to find your completely inappropriate middle-aged recruits somewhere else."
"Actually, you're not inappropriate. You're still of childbearing age."
"Having children has brought me such joy," said Theresa, "that it's really marvelous to contemplate having more of them."
"I know perfectly well how much you've sacrificed for your children, and how much you love them. And I knew coming here that you wouldn't want to go."
"So you have soldiers waiting to take me with you by force? You already have my husband in custody?"
"No, no," said Graft. "I think you're right not to go."
"Eh."
"But Peter asked me to protect you, so I had to offer. No, I think it's a good thing for you to stay."
"And why is that?"
"Peter has many allies," said Graft. "But no friends."
"Not even you?"
"I'm afraid I studied him too closely in his childhood to take any of his present charisma at face value."
"He does have that, doesn't he. Charisma. Or at least charm."
"At least as much as Ender, when he chooses to use it."
Hearing Graff speak of Ender-of the kind of young man Ender had become before he was pitched out of the solar system in a colony ship after saving the human race-filled Theresa with familiar, but no less bitter, regrets. Graft knew Ender Wiggin at age seven and ten and twelve, years when Theresa's only links to her youngest, most vulnerable child were a few photographs and fading memories and the ache in her arms where she could remember holding him, and the last lingering sensation of his little arms flung around her neck.
"Even when you brought him back to Earth," said Theresa to Graft, "you didn't let us see him. You took Val to him, but not his father, not me.
"I'm sorry," said Graft. "I didn't know he would never come home at war's end. Seeing you would have reminded him that there was someone in the world who was supposed to protect him and take care of him."
"And that would have been a bad thing?"
"The toughness we needed from Ender was not the person he wanted to be. We had to protect it. Letting him see Valentine was dangerous enough."
"Are you so sure that you were right?"
"Not sure at all. But Ender won the war, and we can never go back and try it another way to see if it would have worked as well."
"And I can never go back and try to find some way through all of this that doesn't end up filling me with resentment and grief whenever I see you or even think of you."
Graff said nothing for the longest time.
"If you're waiting for me to apologize," began Theresa.
"No, no," said Graft. "I was trying to think of any apology I could make that wouldn't be laughably inadequate. I never fired a gun in the war, but I still caused casualties, and if it's any consolation, whenever I think of you and your husband I am also filled with regret."
"Not enough."
"No, I'm sure not," said Graff. "But I'm afraid my deepest regrets are for the parents of Bonzo Madrid, who put their son into my hands and got him back in a box."
Theresa wanted to fling a papaya at him and smear it all over his face. "Reminding me that I'm the mother of a killer?"
"Bonzo was the killer, ma'am," said Graft. "Ender defended himself. You entirely mistook my meaning. I'm the one who allowed Bonzo to be alone with Ender. I, not Ender, am the one responsible for his death. That's why I feel more regret toward the Madrid family than toward you. I've made a lot of mistakes. And I can never be sure which ones were necessary or harmless or even left us better off than if I hadn't made them."
"How do you know you're not making a mistake now, letting me and John Paul stay?"
"As I said, Peter needs friends."
"But does the world need Peter?" asked Theresa.
"We don't always get the leader that we want," said Graff. "But sometimes we get to choose among the leaders that we have."
"And how will the choice be made?" asked Theresa. "On the battlefield or the ballot box?"
"Maybe," said Graft, "by the poisoned fig or the sabotaged car."
Theresa took his meaning at once. "You may be sure we'll keep an eye on Peter's food and his transportation."
"What," said Graff, "you'll carry all his food on your person, buying it from different grocers every day, and your husband will live in his car, never sleeping?"
"We retired young. One has to fill the empty hours."
Graft laughed. "Good luck, then. I'm sure you'll do all that needs doing. Thanks for talking with me."
"Let's do it again in another ten or twenty years," said Theresa.
"I'll mark it on my calendar."
And with a salute-which was rather more solemn than she would have expected-he walked back into the house and, presumably, on out through the front garden and into the street.
Theresa seethed for a while at what Graft and the International fleet and the Formics and fate and God had done to her and her family. And then she thought of Ender and Valentine and wept a few tears onto the papayas. And then she thought of herself and John Paul, waiting and watching, trying to protect Peter. Graft was right. They could never watch him perfectly.
They would sleep. They would miss something. Achilles would have an opportunity-many opportunities-and just when they were most complacent he would strike and Peter would be dead and the world would be at Achilles's mercy because who else was clever and ruthless enough to fight him? Bean? Petra? Suriyawong? Nikolai? One of the other Battle School children scattered over the surface of Earth? If there was any who was ambitious enough to stop Achilles, he would have surfaced by now.
She was carrying the heavy bag of papayas into the house-sidling through the door, trying not to bump and bruise the fruit when it dawned on her what Graft's errand had really been about.
Peter needs a friend, he said. The issue between Peter and Achilles might be resolved by poison or sabotage, he said. But she and John Paul could not possibly watch over Peter well enough to protect him from assassination, he said. Therefore, in what way could she and John Paul possibly be the friends that Peter needed?
The contest between Achilles and Peter would be just as easily resolved by Achilles's death as by Peter's.
At once there flashed into her memory the stories of some of the great poisoners of history, by rumor if not by proof. Lucretia Borgia. Cleopatra. What's-her-name who poisoned everybody around the Emperor Claudius and probably got him in the end, as well.
In olden days, there were no chemical tests to determine conclusively whether poison had been used. Poisoners gathered their own herbs, leaving no trail of purchases, no co-conspirators who might confess or accuse. If anything happened to Achilles before Peter had decided the monster boy had to go, Peter would launch an investigation.., and when the trail led to his parents, as it inevitably would, how would Peter respond? Make an example of them, letting them go on trial? Or would he protect them, trying to cover up the result of the investigation, leaving his reign as Hegemon to be tainted by the rumors about Achilles's untimely death. No doubt every opponent of Peter's would resurrect Achilles as a martyr, a much-slandered boy who offered the brightest hope to mankind, slain in his youth by the crawlingly vile Peter Wiggin, or his mother the witch or his father the snake.
It was not enough to kill Achilles. It had to be done properly, in a way that would not harm Peter in the long run.
Though it would be better for Peter to endure the rumors and legends about Achilles's death than for Peter himself to be the slain one. She dare not wait too long.
My assignment from Graff, thought Theresa, is to become an assassin in order to protect my son.
And the truly horrifying thing is that I'm not questioning whether to do it, but how. And when.
CHOPIN
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To: Rythian%Iegume@nowyouseeitnovtyou.com
From: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov
Re: Aren't we cute
I suppose you can be allowed to indulge your adolescent humor by using obvious pseudonyms like pythian%Iegume, and I know this is a use-once identify, but really, it smocks of a careless insouciance that worries me. We can't afford to lose you or your traveling companion because you had to make a joke.
Enough of imagining could possibly influence your decisions. The first few weeks since the Belgian arrived in RP have been eventless. Your and your companion's parents are in training and quarantine, preparatory to going up to one of the colony ships. I will not actually take them off planet without your approval unless some emergency comes up. However, the moment I keep them past their training group's embarkation date, they become unusual and rumors will start to travel, it's dangerous to keep them Earthside for too long. And yet once we get them off world, it will be even more difficult to get them back. I don't wish to pressure you, but your families' futures are at stoke, and so far you haven't even consulted with them directly.
As for the Belgian, PW has given him a job-Assistant to the Hegemon. He has his own letterhead and email identity, a sort of minister without portfolio, with no bureaucracy to command and no money to disburse. Yet he keeps busy all day long. I wonder what be does.
I should have said that the Belgian has no official staff. Unofficially, Sun seems to be at his beck and call. I've heard from several observers that the change in him is quite astonishing. He never showed such exaggerated respect to you or PW as he does to the Belgian. They dine together often, and while the Belgian has never actually visited the barracks and training ground or gone on assignments or maneuvers with your little army, the inference that the Belgian is cultivating some degree of influence or even control over the Hegemony’s small fighting force is inescapable. Are you in contact with Sun? When I tried to broach the subject with him, he never so much as answered.
As far you, my brilliant young friend, I hope you realize that all of Sister Carlotta's false identities were provided by the Vatican, and your use of them blares like a trumpet within Vatican walls. They have asked me to assure you that Achilles has no support within their ranks, and never did have, even before he murdered Carlotta, but if they can track you so easily, perhaps someone else can as well. As they say, a word to the wise is sufficient. And here I've gone and written five paragraphs.
-Graff
Petra and Bean traveled together for a month before things came to a head. At first Petra was content to let Bean make all the decisions. After all, she had never gone underground like this, traveling with false identities. He seemed to have all sorts of papers, some of which had been with him in the Philippines, and the rest in various hiding places scattered throughout the world.
The trouble was, all her identities were designed for a sixty-year old woman who spoke languages that Petra had never learned. "This is absurd," she told Bean when he handed her the fourth such identity. "No one will believe this for an instant."
"And yet they do," said Bean.
"And I'd like to know why," she retorted. "I think there's more to this than the paperwork. I think we're getting help every time we pass through an identity check."
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no," said Bean.
"But every time you use some connection of yours to get a security guard to ignore the fact that I do not look old enough to be this person- "Sometimes, when you haven't had enough sleep-" "You're too tall to be cute. So give it up."
"Petra. I agree with you," said Bean at last. "These were all for Sister Carlotta, and you don't look like her, and we are leaving a trail of favors asked for and favors done. So we need to separate."
"Two reasons why that won't happen," said Petra.
"You mean besides the fact that traveling together was your idea from the beginning? Which you blackmailed me into because we both know you'd get killed without me?-which hasn't stopped you from criticizing the way I go about keeping you alive, I notice."
"The second reason," Petra said, ignoring his effort to pick a fight, "is that while we're on the run you can't do anything. And it drives you crazy not to do anything."
"I'm doing a lot of things," said Bean.
"Besides arranging for us to get past stupid security guards with bad ID?"
"Already I've started two wars, cured three diseases, and written an epic poem. If you weren't so self-centered you would have noticed."
"You're such a jack of all trades, Julian."
"Staying alive isn't doing nothing."
"But it isn't doing what you want to do with your life," said Petra.
"Staying alive is all I've ever wanted to do with my life, dear child."
"But in the end, you're going to fail at that," said Petra.
"Most of us do. All of us, actually, unless Sister Carlotta and the Christians turn out to be right."
"You want to accomplish something before you die."
Bean sighed. "Because you want that, you think everyone does."
"The human need to leave something of yourself behind is universal."
"But I'm not human."
"No, you're superhuman," she said in disgust. "There's no talking to you, Bean."
"And yet you persist."
But Petra knew perfectly well that Bean felt just as she did-that it wasn't enough to stay in hiding, going from place to place, taking a bus here, a train there, a plane to some far-off city, only to start over again in a few days.
The only reason it mattered that they stay alive was so they could keep their independence long enough to work against Achilles. Except Bean kept denying that he had any such motive, and so they did nothing.
Bean had been maddening ever since Petra first met him in Battle School. He was the most incredibly tiny little runt then, so precocious he seemed snotty even when he said good morning, and even after they had all worked with him for years and had got the true measure of him at Command School, Petra was still the only one of Ender's jeesh that actually liked Bean.
She did like him, and not in the patronizing way that older kids take younger ones under their wing. There was never any illusion that Bean needed protection anyway. He arrived at Battle School as a consummate survivor, and within days-perhaps within hours-he knew more about the inner workings of the school than anyone else. The same was true at Tactical School and Command School, and during those crucial weeks before Ender joined them on Eros, when Bean commanded the jeesh in their practice maneuvers.
The others resented Bean then, for the fact that the youngest of them had been chosen to lead in Ender's place and because they feared that he would be their commander always. They were so relieved when Ender arrived, and didn't try to hide it. It had to hurt Bean, but Petra seemed to be the only one who even thought about his feelings. Much good that it did him. The person who seemed to think about Bean's feelings least of them all was Bean himself.
Yet he did value her friendship, though he only rarely showed it. And when she was overtaken by exhaustion during a battle, he was the one who covered for her, and he was the only one who showed that he still believed in her as firmly as ever. Even Ender never quite trusted her with the same level of assignment that she had had before. But Bean remained her friend, even as he obeyed Ender's orders and watched over her in all the remaining battles, ready to cover for her if she collapsed again.
Bean was the one she counted on when the Russians kidnapped her, the one she knew would get the message she hid in an email graphic. And when she was in Achilles's power, it was Bean who was her only hope of rescue. And he got her message, and he saved her from the beast.
Bean might pretend, even to himself, that all he cared about was his own survival, but in fact he was the most perfectly loyal of friends. Far from acting selfishly, he was reckless with his own life when he had a cause he believed in. But he didn't understand this about himself. Since he thought himself completely unworthy of love, it took him the longest time to know that someone loved him. He had finally caught on about Sister Carlotta, long before she died. But he gave little sign that he recognized Petra's feelings toward him. Indeed, now that he was taller than her, he acted as though he thought of her as an annoying little sister
And that really pissed her off.
Yet she was determined not to leave him-and not because she depended on him for her own survival, either. She feared that the moment he was completely on his own, he would embark on some reckless plan to sacrifice his own life to put an end to Achilles's, and that would be an unbearable outcome, at least to Petra.
Because she had already decided that Bean was wrong in his belief that he should never have children, that the genetic alterations that had made him such a genius should die with him when his uncontrolled growth finally killed him.
On the contrary, Petra had every intention of bearing his children herself.
Being in a holding pattern like this, watching him drive himself crazy with his constant busyness that accomplished nothing important while making him irritable and irritating, Petra was not so self-controlled as not to snap back at him. They genuinely liked each other, and so far they had kept their sniping at a level that both could pretend was only joking, but something had to change, and soon, or they really would have a fight that made it impossible to stay together and what would happen to her plans for making Bean's babies then? What finally got Bean to make a change was when Petra brought up Ender Wiggin.
"What did he save the human race for?" she said in exasperation one day in the airport at Darwin. "So he could stop playing the stupid game.
"It wasn't so Achilles could rule."
"Someday Achilles will die. Caligula did."
"With help from his friends," Petra pointed out.
"And when he dies, maybe somebody better will succeed him. After Stalin, there was Khrushchev. After Caligula, there was Marcus Aurelius."
"Not right after. And thirty million died while Stalin ruled."
"So that made thirty million he didn't rule over any more," said Bean.
Sometimes he could say the most terrible things. But she knew him well enough by now to know that he spoke with such callousness only when he was feeling depressed. At times like that he brooded about how he was not a member of the human species and the difference was killing him. It was not how he truly felt. "You're not that cold," she said.
He used to argue when she tried to reassure him about his humanity. She liked to think maybe she was accomplishing something, but she feared that he had stopped answering because he no longer cared what she thought.
"If I settle into one place," he said, "my chance of staying alive is nil.”
It irked her that he still spoke of "my chance" instead of "ours.”
"You hate Achilles and you don't want him to rule the world and if you're going to have any chance of stopping him, you have to settle in one place and get to work."
"All right, you're so smart, tell me where I'd be safe."
"The Vatican," said Petra.
"How many acres in that particular kingdom? How eager are all those cardinals to listen to an altar boy?"
"All right then, somewhere within the borders of the Muslim League."
"We're infidels," said Bean.
"And they're people who are determined not to fall under the domination of the Chinese or the Hegemon or anybody else."
"My point is that they won't want us.”
"My point is that whether they want us or not, we're the enemy of their enemy."
"We're two children, with no army and no information to sell, no leverage at all."
That was so laughable that Petra didn't bother answering. Besides, she had finally won-he was finally talking about where, not whether, he'd settle down and get to work.
They found themselves in Poland, and after taking the train from Katowice to Warsaw, they walked together through the Lazienki, one of the great parks of Europe, with centuries-old paths winding among giant trees and the saplings already planted to someday replace them.
"Did you come here with Sister Carlotta?" Petra asked him.
"Once," said Bean. "Ender is part Polish, did you know that?"
"Must be on his mother's side," said Petra. "Wiggin isn't a Polish name.
"It is when you change it from Wieczorek," said Bean. "Don't you think Mr. Wiggin looks Polish? Wouldn't he fit in here? Not that nationality means that much any more."
Petra laughed at that. "Nationality? The thing people die for and kill for and have for centuries?"
"No, I meant ancestry, I suppose. So many people are part this and part that. Supposedly I'm Greek, but my mother's mother was an Ibo diplomat, so... when I go to Africa I look quite Greek, and when I go to Greece 1 look rather African. In my heart I couldn't care less about either."
"You're a special case, Bean," said Petra. "You never had a homeland."
"Or a childhood. I suppose," said Bean.
"None of us in Battle School actually had much experience of either," said Petra.
"Which is, perhaps, why so many Battle School kids are so desperate to prove their loyalty to their birth nation."
That made sense. "Since we have few roots, the ones we have, we cling to." She thought of Vlad, who was so fanatically Russian. and Hot Soup-Han Tzu-so fanatically Chinese, that both of them had willingly helped Achilles when he seemed to be working for their nation's cause.
"And no one completely trusts us," said Bean, "because they know our real nationality is up in space. Our strongest loyalties are to our fellow soldiers."
"Or to ourselves," said Petra, thinking of Achilles.
"But I've never pretended otherwise," said Bean. Apparently he thought she had meant him.
"You're so proud of being completely self-centered," said Petra. "And it isn't even true."
He just laughed at her and walked on.
Families and businessmen and old people and young couples in love all strolled through the park on this unusually sunny autumn afternoon, and in the concert stand a pianist played a work of Chopin. as had been going on every day for centuries. As they walked, Petra boldly reached out and took hold of Bean's hand as if they, too, were lovers, or at least friends who liked to stay close enough to touch. To her surprise, he did not pull his hand away. Indeed, he gripped her hand in return, but if she harbored any notion that Bean was capable of romance, he instantly dispelled it. "Race you around the pond," he said, and so they did.
But what kind of race is it, when the racers never let go of each other's hands, and the winner pulls the loser laughing over the finish line?
No, Bean was being childish because he had no idea how to go about being manly, and so it was Petra's job to help him figure it out. She reached out and caught his other hand and pulled his arms around her, then stood on tiptoe and kissed him. Mostly on the chin, because he recoiled a little, but it was a kiss nonetheless, and after a moment of consternation, Bean's arms pulled her a little closer and his lips managed to find hers while suffering only a few minor nose collisions.
Neither of them being particularly experienced at this, it wasn't as though Petra could say whether they kissed particularly well. The only other kiss she'd known was with Achilles, and that kiss had taken place with a gun pressed into her abdomen. All she could say with certainty was that any kiss from Bean was better than any kiss from Achilles.
"So you love me," said Petra softly when the kiss ended.
"I'm a raging mass of hormones that I'm too young to understand," said Bean. "You're a female of a closely related species. According to all the best primatologists, I really have no choice."
"That's nice," she said, reaching her arms around his back.
"It's not nice at all," said Bean. "I have no business kissing anybody."
"I asked for it," she said.
"I'm not having children."
"That's the best plan," she said. "I'll have them for you."
"You know what I meant," said Bean.
"It isn't done by kissing, so you're safe so far."
He groaned impatiently and pulled away from her, paced irritably in a circle, and then came right back to her and kissed her again. "I've wanted to do that practically the whole time we've been traveling together"
"I could tell," she said. "From the way you never gave even the tiniest sign that you knew I existed, except as an annoyance."
"I've always had a problem with being too emotionally demonstrative." He held her again. An elderly couple passed by. The man looked disapproving, as if he thought these foolish young people should find a more private place for their kissing and hugging. But the old woman, her white hair held severely by a head scarf gave him a wink, as if to say, Good for you, young fellow, young girls should be kissed thoroughly and often.
In fact, he was so sure that was what she meant to say that he quoted the words to Petra.
"So you're actually performing a public service," said Petra.
"To the great amusement of the public," said Bean.
A voice came from behind them. "And I assure you the public is amused."
Petra and Bean both turned to see who it was.
A young man, but most definitely not Polish. From the look of him, he should be Burmese or perhaps Thai, certainly from somewhere around the South China Sea. He had to be younger than Petra, even taking into account the way that people from Southeast Asia seemed always to look far younger than their years. Yet he wore the suit and tie of an old-fashioned businessman.
There was something about him-something in the cockiness of his stance, the amused way that he took for granted that he had a ringlet to stand within the circle of their companionship and tease them about something as private as a public kiss-that told Petra that he had to be from Battle School.
But Bean knew more about him than that. "Ambul," he said.
Ambul saluted in that half-sloppy, half-exaggerated style of a Battle School brat, and answered, "Sir."
"I gave you an assignment once," said Bean. "To take a certain launchie and help him figure out how to use his flash suit."
"Which I carried out perfectly," said Ambul. "He was so funny the first time I froze him in the battle room, I had to laugh."
"I can't believe he hasn't killed you by now," said Bean.
"My uselessness to the Thai government saved me.”
"My fault, I fear," said Bean.
"Saved my life, I think," said Ambul.
"Hi, I'm Petra," said Petra irritably.
Ambul laughed and shook her hand. "Sorry," he said. "Ambul. I know who you are, and I assumed Bean would have told you who I was.
"I didn't think you were coming," said Bean.
"I don't answer emails," said Ambul. "Except by showing up and seeing if the email was really from the person it's supposed to be from."
"Oh," said Petra, putting things together. "You must be the soldier in Bean's army who was assigned to show Achilles around."
