预计阅读本页时间：-
“You’re a cold, cold woman,” said Bean.
广告：个人专属 VPN，独立 IP，无限流量，多机房切换，还可以屏蔽广告和恶意软件，每月最低仅 5 美元
“It’s one of my best features.”
A half hour later, they both agreed that the messages should work. Bean sent them. It was a few hours earlier in kibeirao Preto. Nothing would happen till the Wiggins woke up.
“We’ll have to be ready to leave immediately after the implantation,” said Petra. If Achilles had been in control of things from the start, then chances were good that his whole network was still in place and he knew exactly where they were and what they were doing.
“I won’t be with you,” said Bean. “I’ll be getting our tickets. Have the guards right in the room with you.”
“No,” said Petra. “But just outside.”
Petra showered first, and she was completely packed when Bean came out of the bathroom. “One thing,” said Petra.
“What?” asked Bean as he put his few belongings into the one bag he carried.
“Our tickets-should be to separate destinations.”
He stopped packing and looked at her. “I see,” he said. “You get what you want from me, and then you walk away.”
She laughed nervously. “Well, yes,” she said. “You’ve been telling me this whole time that it’s more dangerous for us to travel together.”
“And now that you’ll have my baby in you, you don’t need to be with me any more,” said Bean. He was still smiling, but she knew that beneath the jest there was true suspicion.
“Whatever the Wiggins do, all hell is going to break loose,” said Petra. “I’ve memorized all your dead drops and you’ve memorized all of mine.”
“I gave you all of yours,” said Bean.
“Let’s get back together in a week or so,” said Petra. “If I’m like my mother, I’ll be puking my guts out by then.”
“If the implantation is successful.”
“I’ll miss you every moment,” said Petra.
“God help me, but I’ll miss you too.”
She knew what a painful, frightening thing that was for Bean. To allow himself to love someone so much that he would actually miss her, that was no small matter for him. And the two other women he had allowed himself to love with all his heart had been murdered.
“I won’t let anybody hurt our baby,” she said.
He thought for a moment, and then his face softened. “That baby is probably the best protection you could have.”
She understood and smiled. “No, they won’t kill me till they see what our baby turns out like,” she said. “But that’s no protection from being kidnapped and held until the child is born.”
“As long as you and the baby are alive, I’ll come and get you.”
“That’s the thing that frightens me,” said Petra. “That we might be the bait they use to set a trap for you.”
“We’re looking too far ahead,” said Bean. “They aren’t going to catch us. You or me. And if they do, well, we’ll deal with that.”
They were packed. They both went over the room one more time to make sure they were leaving nothing behind, no sign they had ever been there. Then they left for Women’s Hospital and the child who waited for them there, a bundle of genes wrapped in a few undifferentiated cells, eager to implant themselves in a womb, to start to draw nutrients from a mother’s blood, to begin to divide and distinguish themselves into heart and bowel, hands and feet, eyes and ears, mouth and brain.
LEFT AND RIGHT
From: PW
To: TW, jPW
Re: Reconciliation of keyboard cogs
You’ll be happy to learn that we were able to sort out oil the cogs. We hove tracked every computer entry by the person in question. All his entries dealt with official business and assignments he was carrying out for me. Nothing that was in any way improper was done.
Personally, I find this disturbing. Either he found a way to fool both our programs (not likely), or he is actually doing nothing but what he should (even less likely), or he is playing a very deep game about which we have no idea extremely likely).
Let’s talk tomorrow.
Theresa woke up when John Paul got out of bed to pee at four AM. It worried her that he couldn’t make it through the night anymore. He was still a little young to be having prostate problems.
But it wasn’t her husband’s slackening bladder capacity that kept her awake. It was the memo from Peter informing them that Achilles had done absolutely nothing but what he was supposed to do.
This was impossible. Nobody does exactly what they’re supposed to and nothing else. Achilles should have had some friend, some ally, some contact whom he needed to notify that he was out of China and safe. He had a network of informants and agents, and as he showed when he hopped from Russia to India to China, he was always one step ahead of everybody. The Chinese finally wised up to his pattern and short-circuited it, but that didn’t mean Achilles didn’t have his next move planned. So why hadn’t he done anything to set it in motion?
There were more possibilities than the ones Peter listed, of course. Maybe Achilles had a means of bypassing the electromagnetic shield that surrounded the Ribeirào Preto compound. Of course, he couldn’t have brought such a device with him when he was rescued, or it would have shown up in the search that was conducted during his first bath in Ribeir?o. So someone would have to have brought it to him. And Peter was convinced that no such device could exist. Maybe he was right.
Maybe Achilles’s next move was something he planned to do entirely alone.
Maybe there was something he had that he was able to smuggle into Brazil inside his body. Did the surveillance cameras show him, perhaps, combing through his bowel movements? Peter must surely have checked for that.
While she lay there thinking. John Paul had come back from the bathroom. But now she noticed that he had not resumed snoring.
“You’re awake?” she asked.
“Sorry I woke you.”
“I can’t sleep anyway,” she said.
“The Beast?”
“We’re missing something,” said Theresa. “He hasn’t suddenly become a loyal servant of the Hegemony.”
“I’m not going to get back to sleep either,” said John Paul. He got up and padded in bare feet to his computer. She heard him typing and knew that he was checking his mail first.
Busy work, but it was better than lying here staring at the dark ceiling. She got up also, took her desk from the table, and brought it back to bed, where she began checking her own email.
One of the benefits of being the mother of the Hegemon was that she didn’t actually have to answer the tedious mail-she could forward it on to one of Peter’s secretaries to deal with, since it consisted mostly of tedious attempts of people trying to get her to use her supposed influence with Peter to get him to do something that was not within his power to do, was illegal even if he could do it, and which he would certainly not do even if it were legal.
It left her with very few pieces of mail that she needed to deal with personally.
Most of it could be answered with a few sentences and she dealt with it quickly, if a bit sleepily.
She was about to shut down her desk and try again to get back to sleep when a new piece of mail came in.
To: T%Hegmom@Hegemony.gov
From: Rock%HardPlace?IComeAnon.com
Re: And when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know
what thy right hand doeth.
What was this? Some religious fanatic? But the address was her most private one, used only by John Paul, Peter, and a handful of people she actually liked and knew well.
So who sent it?
She skipped to the bottom. No signature. The message was short. You’ll never guess. There I was at a party-the boring but dangerous kind, with fine china that you know you’re going to break, and a tablecloth you’re bound to spill India ink on-and do you know what happens? Along comes the very man with wham I wanted to tie the knot. He thinks he’s rescuing me from the party. But in fact, he was the very reason I came to the party in the first place. Not that I’ll ever tell him! He would BLOW UP if he knew. And then, of course, I’m so nervous I bump into the tureen and hot soup spills all aver everything. But . - - you know met just a big oaf.
That was the complete text of the message. It was really annoying, because it didn’t sound like anyone she knew. She didn’t have friends who sent letters as empty and pointless as this one. Gossip about a party. Somebody hoping to marry somebody else.
But before she could make any progress on figuring it out, another piece of mail came in.
To: T%Hegmom@Hegemony.gov
From: Sheep%NotGoats@lComeAnon .com
Re: Even as ye have done it unto the least of these - . -
Another biblical quote. Same person? Bound to be.
But the message was not chatty at all. In fact, it continued the scriptural motif from the subject line. It had nothing to do with the previous message.
Ye took me in, but I was not naked. I took you in, because you were foolish. Ye never knew me, but I knew you.
When does the judgment day come? Like a thief in the night. In an hour when ye look not for me. The fool says, He is not coming. Let us eat drink and be merry for he is not coming. Behold I stand at the door and knock In sorrow shall ye bear children, will have the power to crush your head but ye will have the power to bite my heel.
A time to sow, and a time to reap. A time to gather stones together, a time to run like hell.
She who has ears to hear. How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet. I come to bring not peace but a sword.
Theresa got out of bed. John Paul had to see these letters. They meant something, she knew that, especially arriving together like this. The number of people who knew this address was very, very small. And not one of them would write either of these letters.
Therefore either this address had been compromised-but who would bother? She was only the mother of the Hegemon-or these letters were meant to convey a message. And it was from someone who thought that even at this address, her mail might be intercepted by someone else.
Who was that paranoid, but Bean?
Big oaf, that’s who he said he was. Bean, definitely.
“John Paul,” she said as she padded up behind him.
“This is so strange,” he said.
She assumed he was going to tell her about a similar pair of messages, so she waited.
“The Chinese have imposed a completely absurd law in India. About rocks! People aren’t allowed to carry rocks without a permit! Anyone caught with rocks is subject to arrest-and they’re actually enforcing it. Have they lost their minds?”
She found it impossible to be interested in the idiocies of China’s policies in India. “John Paul, I have to show you something.”
“Sure,” he said, turning to look at the desk she set down on the table next to his computer
“Read these letters,” she said.
He glanced at one, and before she could imagine he had actually read the whole thing, he flipped to the next one. “Yeah, I got them too,” he said. “A dullbob and a crenchee. You shouldn’t let these things get to you.”
“No,” she said. “Look at them closer. They came to my private address. I think they’re from Bean.”
He looked up at her, then turned to his own computer and called up his own copies of the letters. “Me too,” he said. “I didn’t notice that. Just looked like junk mail, but nobody uses this address.”
“The subject lines-”
“Yes,” said John Paul. “Both scriptures, even though the first one-”
“Yes, and the first one is about left and right hands, and the second one is from the parable or whatever it is when Jesus speaks to the people on his right hand and the people on his left hand.”
“So they both have left and right hands.” said John Paul.
“Two parts to the same message.
“Could be,” he said.
“The scriptures are all twisted.” said Theresa.
“You Mormons learn your scriptures,” said John Paul. “We Catholics regard that as a really Protestant thing to do.”
“The real scripture says, I was naked, and you clothed me, I was homeless or something like that and you took me in.”
“I was a stranger and you took me in,” said John Paul.
“So you did read scripture.”
“I woke up once during the homily.”
“It’s word games.” said Theresa. “I think the second ‘took you in’ means ‘fooled you.’ not ‘provided shelter for you.’
By now John Paul was studying the other letter “This one’s geopolitical. Fine China. India ink. And it ends with ‘blow up’ in all caps.
‘Tie the knot,’ “ said Theresa, looking at the first letter “The ‘tie’ could mean somebody from Thailand.’”
“That’s stretching it a little,” said John Paul, chuckling.
“It’s all word games.” said Theresa. “ ‘Power to bite my heel’- that has to refer to the Beast, don’t you think? Achilles, who could only be hurt in the heel.”
“And Achilles was rescued by a Thai-Suriyawong.”
“So now you think ‘tie’ might be ‘Thai’?”
“Yes, you told me so.”
“The Thai thinks he’s rescuing this person from a party. Sun rescues Achilles, but Achilles is keeping a secret. He would blow up if he knew.”
Now John Paul was looking at the second letter “A time to run like hell. Is this a warning?”
“That’s what the last line has to be. She who has ears, let her hear. Use your feet. Because he comes to bring not peace but the sword.”
“Mine says ‘He who has ears to hear’”
“You’re right, they weren’t identical.”
“Who’s the ‘I’ in these scriptures?”
“Jesus.”
“No, no, I mean, what does the message mean by ‘I’? I think it’s Achilles. I think it’s written as if Achilles were talking. I took you in because you were foolish. Thief in the night, when we aren’t looking for him. We’re stupid because we think he’s not coming but he’s here at the door”
“A time to run like hell,” said Theresa.
John Paul leaned back and closed his eyes. “A warning from Bean, maybe. Sun thought he was rescuing Achilles but it was exactly what Achilles wanted him to do. And the other letter-that reference to stones, that has to be Petra. They sent us a pair of messages that fit together.”
And now it all fell into place. “This is what’s been bothering me, said Theresa. “This is why I couldn’t sleep.”
“You didn’t get these letters till just now,” said John Paul.
“No, the thing that was keeping me awake, it was how Achilles has done nothing since he got here except his official duties. I was thinking that even though he was short-circuited by the Chinese arresting him, it made no sense for him not to make contact with his network. But what if the Chinese didn’t arrest him at all? What if that was a setup? ‘You took me in but I was not naked.’”
John Paul nodded. “And I took you in, because you were foolish.” “So the whole point of this was to get Achilles inside the compound.”
“But so what?” said John Paul. “We’ve been suspicious of him anyway.
“But this is more than suspicion,” said Theresa. “Or they wouldn’t have sent it.”
“There’s no evidence here. Nothing that would persuade Peter.”
“Yes there is,” said Theresa. “Hot soup. He looked at her blankly.”
“From Ender’s jeesh. Han Tzu. Inside China. He would know. He’s the authority. He ‘spilled everything.’ Definitely a setup.”
“OK,” said John Paul, “so we have the evidence. We know Achilles wasn’t really a prisoner, he wanted to be taken.”
“Don’t you see? This means he really understands Peter. He knew that Peter couldn’t resist rescuing him. Maybe he even knew that Bean and Petra would leave. Think about it-we all knew how dangerous Achilles could be, so maybe he was counting on that.”
“Everybody closest to Peter left, except us-”
“And Peter tried to get us to go.”
“And Suriyawong.”
“And Achilles has co-opted him.”
“Or Sun has Achilles convinced he has.”
They’d been back and forth on that one before. “Whatever,” said Theresa. “Simply by arriving here, Achilles has succeeded in isolating Peter. Then he’s spent his whole time being Mr. Nice Guy, doing everything right-and making friends with everybody while he’s at it. Everything’s going smoothly. Except-”
“Except that he’s in a position to kill Peter.”
“If he can do it in a way that doesn’t implicate him.”
“Ready to step in, as Peter’s assistant, and say, ‘Everything’s going smoothly at the Hegemony, we’ll just keep things going till a new Hegemon is chosen,’ and long before they can choose one, he’s compromised all the codes, he’s neutralized the army, and China is completely rid of the Hegemony once and for all. They’ll get advance word of one of Sun’s missions and they wipe out our brave little army and-”
“Why wipe it out, if it already obeys you?” said Theresa.
“We don’t know that Sun-”
“What do you think would happen if Peter tried to leave?” she asked.
John Paul thought about that. “Achilles would take over while he was gone. There’s a long tradition of that maneuver.
“And just as long a tradition of declaring him sick and keeping anyone from having access to him.”
“Well, he can’t restrict access to Peter as long as we’re here,” said John Paul.
They looked at each other for a long moment.
“Get your passport,” said Theresa.
“We can’t pack anything.”
“Wipe the computers.”
“What do you think he’ll use? Poison? Some bio-agent?”
“Bio-agent is likeliest. He could have smuggled that in.”
“Does it matter?”
“Peter’s not going to believe us.
“He’s stubborn and self-willed and he thinks we’re idiots,” said John Paul. “But that doesn’t mean he’s stupid.”
“But he might think he can handle it.”
John Paul nodded. “You’re right. He is exactly that stupid.”
“Wipe all your files on the system and-”
“It doesn’t matter,” said John Paul. “There are backups.”
“Not of these letters, at least.”
John Paul printed them out and then destroyed them in the computer’s memory, while Theresa wiped them from her desk.
Carrying the paper copies of the letters, they headed for Peter’s room.
Peter was sleepy, surly, and impatient with them. He kept dismissing their concerns and insisting they wait until morning until finally John Paul lost his temper and dragged Peter out of bed like a teenager. He was so shocked at being treated in such a way that he actually fell silent.
“Stop thinking this is between you and your parents,” John Paul said. “These letters are from Bean and Petra, and they’re relaying a message from Han-Tzu in China. These are three of the smartest military minds alive, and all three of them have been proven to be smarter than you.”
Peter’s face reddened with anger.
“Have I got your attention now?” said John Paul. “Will you actually listen?”
“What does it matter if I listen?” said Peter. “Let one of them be Hegemon, they’re so much smarter than me.”
Theresa bent down and got right in his face. “You’re acting like a rebellious teenager while we’re trying to tell you the house is on fire.”
“Process this information,” said John Paul, “as if we were a couple of your informants. Pretend that you think we actually know something. And while you’re at it, take a quick poll and see how effectively Achilles has driven away everybody around you who was completely trustworthy-except us.”
“I know you mean well,” said Peter, but his voice betrayed his anger.
“Shut up,” said Theresa. “Just shut up with your patronizing tone. You saw the letters. We didn’t make that up. Hot Soup found a way to tell Bean and Petra that the whole rescue was a setup. You were had, smart boy. Achilles has this whole place sussed by now. Every move you make, somebody tells him.”
“For all we know,” said John Paul, “the Chinese have an operation ready to roll.”
“Or you’re going to be arrested by Sun’s soldiers,” said Theresa.
“In other words, you have no idea what I’m even supposed to be afraid of.”
“That’s right,” said Theresa. “That’s exactly right. Because you played into his hands as if he handed you a script and you read your lines like a robot.”
“You’re the puppet right now, Peter,” said John Paul. “You thought you held the strings, but you’re the puppet.”
“And you have to leave now,” said Theresa.
“What’s the emergency?” said Peter impatiently. “You don’t know what he’s going to do or when.”
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to go,” said Theresa. “Or do you plan to wait until he kills you? Or us? And when you do go, it has to be sudden, unexpected, unplanned. There’s no better opportunity than now. While the three of us are still alive. Can you guarantee that will still be true tomorrow? This afternoon? I didn’t think so.
“Before dawn,” said John Paul. “Out of the compound, into the city, onto a plane, out of Brazil.”
Peter just sat there, looking from one to the other. But the irritated look was gone from his face. Was it possible? Could he have actually heard something that they said?
“If I leave,” said Peter, “they’ll say I abdicated.”
“You can say that you didn’t.”
“I’ll look like a fool. I’ll be completely discredited.”
“You were a fool,” said Theresa. “If you say it first, nobody else gets any points for saying it. Cover up nothing. Get a press release out while you’re in the air. You’re Locke. You’re Demosthenes. You can spin anything.”
Peter stood up. started pulling clothes out of his dresser drawers. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I think your analysis is absolutely right.”
Theresa looked at John Paul.
John Paul looked at Theresa.
Was this Peter talking?
“Thank you for not giving up on me,” he said. “But this Hegemon thing is done. I’ve lost any chance of making it work. I had my chance, and I blew it. Everybody told me not to bring Achilles here. I had all these plans on how to lead him into a trap. But I was already caught in his.”
“I’ve already told you to shut up once this morning,” said Theresa. “Don’t make me do it again.”
Peter didn’t bother buttoning his shirt. “Let’s go,” he said.
Theresa was glad to see that he didn’t try to take anything with him. He only stopped at his computer and typed in a single command.
Then he headed for the door
“Aren’t you going to wipe out your files?” asked John Paul. “Alert your head of security?”
“I just did,” said Peter
So he had been prepared for such a day as this. He already had the program in place that would automatically destroy everything that needed destroying. And it would alert those who needed to be alerted.
“We have ten minutes before the people I used to trust get warned to evacuate,” said Peter. “Since we don’t know which of them we can still trust, we have to be out of here by then.”
His plan included looking after those who were still loyal to him, whose lives would be in danger when Achilles took over. Theresa had not imagined Peter would think of such a thing. It was a good thing to know about him.
They didn’t skulk or run, just walked through the grounds toward the nearest gate, engaged in animated conversation. It might be early in the morning, but who would imagine that the Hegemon and his parents were making a getaway? No luggage, no hurry, no stealth. Arguing. A perfectly normal scene.
And the argument was real enough. They spoke softly, because in the stillness of dawn they might be overheard even at a distance. But there was plenty of intensity in their hushed voices.
“Skip the melodrama,” said John Paul. “Your life isn’t over. You made a huge mistake, and there are people who are going to say that running out like this is an even bigger one. But your mother and I know that it isn’t. As long as you’re alive, there’s hope.”
“The hope is Bean,” said Peter “he hasn’t shot himself in the foot. I’ll throw my support behind Bean. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe my support would just be the kiss of death.”
“Peter,” said John Paul, “you’re the Hegemon. You were elected. You, not this compound. In fact, you’re the one who moved the Hegemony offices here. Now you’re going to move them somewhere else. Wherever you are, that’s the Hegemony. Don’t you ever say one thing to imply otherwise. Even if your entire power in the world consists of you and me and your mother, that’s not nothing. Because you are Peter Wiggin, and dammit, we’re John Paul Wiggin and Theresa Wiggin and underneath our charming and civilized exteriors, we’re some pretty tough bunducks.”
Peter said nothing.
“Well, actually,” said Theresa to John Paul, “we’re the bunducks. Peter’s the big sabeek.”
Peter shook his head.
“You are,” Theresa insisted. “And do you know how I know you are? Because you were smart enough to listen to us and get out in time.”
“I was just thinking,” said Peter quietly.
“What?” prompted Theresa, before John Paul could give his standard joking reply: It’s about time. It would be the wrong joke for this moment, but John Paul was never very good about knowing when it was the wrong time for his standard jokes. They came out by reflex, without being processed through his brain first.
“I’ve underestimated you two,” he said.
“Well, yes,” said Theresa.
“In fact, I’ve been a little shit to you for a long time.”
“Not so little,” said John Paul.
Theresa cocked a warning eyebrow at him.
“But I still never did anything as dumb as flying to get into his bedroom to kill him,” said Peter.
Theresa looked at him sharply. He was grinning at her.
John Paul laughed. She couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t help retaliating. After all, she had just given him the dreaded eyebrow.
“OK, well, you’re right,” said Theresa. “That was pretty stupid. But I didn’t know what else to do to save you.
“Maybe saving me isn’t such a great idea.”
“You’re the only copy of our DNA left on Earth,” said John Paul. “We really don’t want to have to start all over, making babies. That’s for younger people now.
“Besides,” said Theresa. “Saving you means saving the world.”
“Right,” said Peter derisively.
“You’re the only hope,” said Theresa.
“Then good luck, world.”
“1 do believe,” said John Paul, “that that was almost a prayer. Don’t you think so, Theresa? I think Peter said a prayer.”
Peter chuckled. “Yeah, why not. Good luck, world. Amen.”
They got to the gate well before the ten minutes were up. There was a cab driver asleep at a cab stand in front of the biggest hotel outside the compound. John Paul woke him and handed him a very large sum of money.
“Take us to the airport,” said Theresa.
“But not this one,” said John Paul. “I think we want to fly out of Araraquara.”
“That’s an hour away,” said Theresa.
“And we have an hour till the earliest flight anywhere,” said John Paul. “Do you want to spend that hour just sitting in an airport that’s fifteen minutes away from the compound?”
Peter laughed. “That is so paranoid,” he said. Just like Bean.”
“Bean’s alive,” said John Paul.
“I’m OK with that,” said Peter. “Being alive is good.”
Peter had his press release out from one of the computers in the Araraquara airport. But Achilles didn’t waste any time, either.
Peter’s story was all flue, though he left a few things out. He admitted that he had been fooled into thinking that he was rescuing Achilles when in fact he was bringing the Trojan Horse inside the walls of Troy. It was a terrible mistake because Achilles was serving the Chinese Empire all along, and Hegemony headquarters was completely compromised. Peter declared that he was moving Hegemony headquarters to another location and urged all Hegemony employees who were still loyal to him to wait for word about where to reassemble.
Achilles’s press release declared that he, General Suriyawong, and Ferreira, the head of Hegemony computer security, had discovered that Peter was embezzling Hegemony funds and hiding them in secret accounts-money that should have gone to paying Hegemony debts and feeding the poor and trying to achieve world peace. He declared that the office of the Hegemon would continue to function under the control of Suriyawong as the ranking military leader of Hegemony forces, and that he would help Suriyawong only if he was asked. Meanwhile, a warrant had been issued for Peter Wiggin’s arrest to answer charges of embezzlement, malfeasance in office, and high treason against the International Defense League.
In a press release later that day he announced that Hyrum Graff had been removed as Minister of Colonization and was to be arrested for complicity with Peter Wiggin in the conspiracy to defraud the Hegemony.
“The son of a bitch,” said John Paul.
“Graff won’t obey him,” said Theresa. “He’ll simply declare that you’re still Hegemon and that he answers only to you and Admiral Chamrajnagar.”
“But it’ll dry up a lot of his funds,” said Peter. “He’ll have a lot less freedom of movement. Because now there’s a price on his head, and in some countries they’d just love to arrest him and turn him over to the Chinese.”
“Do you really think Achilles is serving the Chinese interest?” asked Theresa.
“Every bit as loyally as he served mine,” said Peter.
Before the plane landed in Miami, Peter had his safe haven. In, of all places, the USA.
“I thought America was determined not to get involved,” said John Paul.
“It’s just temporary,” said Peter
“But it puts them clearly on our team,” said Theresa. ‘Them’?” said Peter. “You’re Americans. So am I. The U.S. isn’t
‘them,’ it’s us.”
“Wrong,” said Theresa. “You’re the Hegemon. You’re above nationality. And so, I might add, are we.”
BABIES
From: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov
To: Flandres7oA-Heg?idl.gav
Re: MinCol
Mr. Handres:
The position of Hegemon is not and never was vacant. Peter
Wiggin continues to hold that office. Therefore your dismissal
of the Han. Hyrum Graff as Minister of Colonization is void.
Graff continues to exercise all previous authority in regard to
MinCd affairs off the surface of Earth.
Furthermore, lFCom will regard any interference with his operations on Earth, or with his person as he carries out his duties, as obstruction of a vital operation of the International Meet, and we will take all appropriate steps.
From: Flandres%A-Heg@idl.gav
To: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcam.gav
Re: MinCa~
Admiral Chamrajnagar, sir:
I cannot imagine why you would write to me about this matter.
I am not acting Hegemon, I am Assistant Hegemon. I hove
forwarded your letter to Genera[ Suriyawong, and I hope all
future correspondence about such matters will be directed to
him.
Your humble servant,
Achilles Flandres
From: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov
To: Flandres%A-Heg@idl.gov
Re: MinCoJ
Forward my letters wherever you like. I know the game you are playing. I am playing a different one. In my game. I hold all the cards. Your game, on the other hand, will only last until people notice that you have no actual cards at all.
The events in Brazil were already all over the nets and the vids when the implantation procedure was complete and Petra was wheeled out into the waiting room of the fertility clinic at Women’s Hospital. Bean was waiting for her With balloons.
They wheeled her out into the reception area. At first she didn’t notice him, because she was busy talking with the doctor. Which was fine with him. He wanted to look at her, this woman who might be carrying his child now.
She looked so small.
He remembered looking up at her when they first met in Battle School. This girl-rare in a place that tested for aggressiveness and a certain degree of ruthlessness. To him, a newcomer, the youngest child ever admitted to the school, she seemed so cool, so tough, like the quintessential bullyboy, smart-mouthed and belligerent. It was all an act, but a necessary one.
Bean had seen at once that she noticed things. Noticed him, for starters, not with amusement or amazement like the other kids, who could only see how small he was. No, she clearly gave him some thought, found him intriguing. Realized, perhaps, that his presence at Battle School when he was clearly underage implied something interesting about him.
It was partly that trait of hers that led Bean to turn to her-that and the fact that as a girl she was almost as much of a misfit as he was bound to be.
She had grown since those days, of course, but Bean had grown far more, and was now quite a bit taller than her. It wasn’t just height, either. He had felt her rib cage under his hands, so small and brittle, or so it seemed. He felt as though he always had to be gentle with her, or he might inadvertently break her between his hands.
Did all men feel this way? Probably not. For one thing, most women were not as light-bodied as Petra, and for another thing, most men stopped growing when they reached a certain point. But Bean’s hands and feet were still disproportioned to his body, like an adolescent’s, so that even though he was a tallish man, it was clear his body meant to grow taller still. His hands felt like paws. Hers seemed as lost within his as a baby’s.
How, then, will the baby she carries inside her now seem to me when it is born? Will I be able to cradle the child in one hand? Will there be a genuine danger of my hurting the baby? I’m not so good with my hands these days.
And by the time the baby is big enough, robust enough for me to handle safely, I’ll be dead.
Why did I consent to do this?
Oh, yes. Because I love Petra. Because she wants my child so badly. Because Anton had some cock-and-bull story about how all men crave marriage and family even if they don’t care about sex.
Now she noticed him, and noticed the balloons, and laughed.
He laughed back and went to her, handed her the balloons.
“Husbands don’t usually give their wives balloons,” she said.
“I thought having a baby implanted was a special occasion.”
“I suppose so,” she said, “when it’s professionally done. Most babies are implanted at home by amateurs, and the wives don’t get balloons.”
“I’ll remember that and try always to have a few on hand.”
He walked beside her as an attendant pushed her wheelchair down the hallway toward the entrance.
“So where is my ticket to?” she asked.
“I got you two,” said Bean. “Different airlines, different destinations. Plus this train ticket. If either of the flights gives you a bad feeling, even if you can’t decide why you have misgivings, don’t get on it. Just go to the other airline. Or leave the airport and take the train. The train ticket is an EU pass so you can go anywhere.”
“You spoil me,” said Petra.
“What do you think?” asked Bean. “Did the baby hook itself onto the uterine wall?”
“I’m not equipped with an internal camera,” said Petra, “and I lack the pertinent nerves to be able to feel microscopically small fetuses implant and start to grow a placenta.”
“That’s a very poor design,” said Bean. “When I’m dead, I’ll have a few words with God about that.”
Petra winced. “Please don’t joke about death.”
“Please don’t ask me to be somber about it.”
“I’m pregnant. Or might be. I’m supposed to get my way about everything.”
The attendant pushing Petra’s wheelchair started to take her toward the front cab in a line of three. Bean stopped him.
“The driver’s smoking,” said Bean.
“He’ll put it out,” said the attendant.
“My wife will not get into a car with a driver whose clothing is giving off cigarette smoke residue.”
Petra looked at him oddly. He raised an eyebrow, hoping she’d realize that this was not about tobacco.
“He’s the first taxi in line,” said the attendant, as if it were an incontrovertible law of physics that the first cab in line had to be the one to get the next passengers.
Bean looked at the other two cabs. The second driver looked at him impassively. The third driver smiled. He looked Indonesian or Malay, and Bean knew that in their culture, a smile was pure reflex when facing someone bigger or richer than you.
Yet for some reason he did not feel the mistrust about the Indonesian driver that he felt about the two Dutch drivers ahead of him.
So he pushed her wheelchair toward the third cab. Bean asked, and the driver said yes, he was from Jakarta. The attendant, truly irritated at this breach of protocol, insisted on helping Petra into the cab. Bean had her bag and put it in the back seat beside her-he never put anything in the trunks of cabs, in case he had to run for it.
Then he had to stand there as she drove off. No time for elaborate good-byes. He had just put everything that mattered in his life into a cab driven by a smiling stranger, and he had to let it drive away.
Then he went to the first cab in line. The driver was showing his outrage at the way Bean had violated the line. The Netherlands was back to being a civilized place, now that it was self-governing again, and lines were respected. Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.
Bean handed the driver a twenty-five-dollar coin, which he looked at with disdain. “It’s stronger than the Euro right now,” said Bean. “And I’m paying you a fare, so you didn’t lose anything because I put my wife in another cab.”
“What is your destination?” said the driver curtly, his English laced with a prim BBC accent. The Dutch really needed to have better programming in their own language so their citizens didn’t have to watch English vids and listen to English radio all the time.
Bean did not answer him until he was inside the cab, the door closed.
“Drive me to Amsterdam,” said Bean.
“What?”
“You heard me,” said Bean.
“That’s eight hundred dollars,” said the driver.
Bean peeled a thousand-dollar bill off his roll and gave it to him. “Does the video unit in this car actually work?” he asked.
The driver made a show of scanning the bill to see if it was counterfeit. Bean wish he had used a Hegemony note. You don’t like dollars? Well see how you like this! But it was unlikely that anybody would take Hegemony money for any purpose these days. What with Achilles’s and Peter’s faces on every vid in the city and all the talk about how Peter had embezzled Hegemony funds.
Their faces were on the video in the cab, too, when the driver finally got it working. Poor Peter, thought Bean. Now he knows how the popes and anti-popes felt when there were two with a claim to St. Peter’s throne. What a lovely taste of history for him. What a mess for the world.
And to Bean’s surprise, he found that he didn’t actually care that much whether the world was in a mess-not when the messiness wasn’t going to affect his own little family.
I’m actually a civilian now, he realized. All I care about is how these world events will affect my family.
Then he remembered: I used to care about world events only insofar as they affected me. I used to laugh at Sister Carlotta because she was so concerned.
But he did care. He kept track. He paid attention. He told himself it was so he’d know where he’d be safe. Now, though, with far more reason to worry about safety, he found the whole business of Peter and Achilles fundamentally boring. Peter was a fool to think he could control Achilles, a fool to trust a Chinese source on such a matter. How well Achilles must understand Peter, to know that he would rescue Achilles instead of killing him. But why shouldn’t Achilles understand Peter? All he had to do was think of what he would do, if he were in Peter’s position, but dumber.
Still, even though he was bored, the story from the news people began to make sense, when combined with the things Bean knew. The embezzling story was ludicrous, of course, obviously disinformation from Achilles, though all the predictable nations were in an uproar about it, demanding inquiries: China, Russia, France. What seemed to be true was that Peter and his parents slipped out of the Hegemon’s compound in Ribeirao Preto just before dawn this morning, drove to Araraquara, then flew to Montevideo, where they got official permission to fly to the United States as guests of the U.S. government.
It was possible, of course, that their sudden flight was precipitated by something Achilles did or some information they learned about Achilles’s immediate plans. But Bean was reasonably sure that these events were triggered by the emails he and Petra had sent early this morning when they got Han Tzu’s message.
Apparently the Wiggins had been up either very late or very early, because they must have got the letters almost as soon as they were sent. Got them, deciphered the message, realized the implication of Han Tzu’s tip, and then, incredibly enough, persuaded Peter to pay attention and get out without a moment’s delay.
Bean had assumed it would take days before Peter would realize the significance of what he had been told. Part of the problem would be his relationship with his parents. Bean and Petra knew how smart the Wiggins were, but most people in the Hegemony didn’t have a clue, least of all Peter. Bean tried to imagine the scene when they explained to him that he had been fooled by Achilles. Peter, believing his parents when they told him he had made a mistake? Unthinkable.
And yet he must have believed them right away.
Or they drugged him.
Bean laughed a little at the thought, and then looked up from the vid because the cab was turning sharply.
They were pulling off the main road into a side street. They shouldn’t be.
By reflex Bean had the door open and was flinging himself out the door by the time the cab driver could get his gun up from the seat and aim it at him. The bullet zipped over his head as Bean hit the ground and rolled. The cab came to a stop and the driver leapt out to finish the job. Abandoning his bag. Bean scrambled to get around the corner. But he’d never get far enough down the street-which had no pedestrians on it, here in the warehouse district-to get out of the range of a bullet once the cabbie followed him onto the main street.
Another shot came just as he made it past the edge of the building. He thought of pressing himself against the side of the building, in the hopes that the gunman was really stupid and would barrel around the corner without looking.
But that wouldn’t work, because the cab that had been second in line was pulling to the curb right in front of him, and the driver was raising his own gun to point it at Bean.
He dived for the ground and two bullets hit the wall where he had been standing. By sheer chance, his leap took him directly in front of the first driver, who was indeed stupid enough to be running around the corner at top speed. He fell over Bean and when he hit the ground, his gun flew out of his hand.
Bean might have gone for the gun, but the second driver was already partly out of his door and would be able to shoot Bean before he could get to it. So Bean scrambled back to the first cab, which was idling in the side street. Could he get the cab between him and either of the gunmen before they could shoot at him again?
He knew he couldn’t. But there was nothing to do but try, and hope that, like bad guys in the vids, these two would be terrible shots and miss him every time. And when he got in the cab to drive it away, it would be very nice if the upholstery of the driver’s seat were made of that miracle fabric that stops bullets fired through the back window.
Pop. Pop-pop. And then.., the ratatat of an automatic weapon.
The two cab drivers didn’t have automatic weapons.
Bean was around the front of the cab now, keeping low. To his surprise, neither driver was standing at the corner, pointing a gun at him. Perhaps they had been, a moment ago, but now they were lying there on the ground, filled with bullets and seeping copious amounts of blood all over the pavement.
And around the corner charged two Indonesian-looking men, one with a pistol and the other with a small plastic automatic weapon. Bean recognized the Israeli design, because that was the weapon his own little army had used on missions where they had to be able to conceal their weapons as long as possible.
“Come with us!” shouted one of the Indonesians.
Bean thought this was probably a good idea. Since the assassination attempt had included one backup, it might include more, and the sooner he got out of there the better.
Of course, he didn’t know anything about these Indonesians, or why they would have been there at this moment to save his life, but the fact that they had guns and weren’t firing them at him implied that for the moment, at least, they were his dearest friends.
He grabbed his suitcase and ran. The front right door of a nondescript German car was open, waiting for him. The moment he dived in, he said, “My wife-she’s in another cab.”
“She safe,” said the man in the back seat, the one with the automatic weapon. “Her driver is one of us. Very good choice of cab for her. Very bad choice for you.”
“Who are you?”
“Indonesian immigrant,” said the driver with a grin.
“Muslim,” said Bean. “Alai sent you?”
“No, not a lie. True,” said the man.
Bean didn’t bother correcting him. If the name Alai meant nothing to him, what was the point in pursuing the matter? “Where’s Petra? My wife?”
“Going to airport. She not using ticket you giving her.” The man in the back seat handed him an airline ticket. “She going here.”
Bean looked at his ticket. Damascus.
Apparently Ambul’s mission had gone well. Damascus was, for all intents and purposes, the capital of the Muslim world. Even though Alai had dropped out of sight, it was unlikely that he was anywhere else.
“Are we going there as guests?” asked Bean.
“Tourists,” said the man in the back.
“Good,” said Bean. “Because we left something in the hospital here that we might have to come back for.” Though it was obvious that Achilles’s people-or whoever it was-knew everything about what they were doing at Women’s Hospital. In fact. . . there was almost no chance that anything of theirs remained in Women’s Hospital.
He looked back at the man in the back seat. He was shaking his head. “Sorry, they telling me when we stop here and shoot guys for you, security guard in hospital stealing what you left there.”
Of course. You don’t fight your way past a security guard. You just hire him.
And now it was all clear to him. If Petra had gotten in the first cab, it wouldn’t have been an assassination, it would have been a kidnapping. This wasn’t about killing Bean-that was just a bonus. It was about getting Bean’s babies.
Bean knew they hadn’t been followed here. They had been betrayed since arriving. Volescu. And if Volescu was in on it, then the embryos that were stolen probably had Anton’s Key after all. There was no particular reason for anyone to want his babies if there wasn’t at least a chance that they would be prodigies of the kind Bean was.
Volescu’s screening test was probably a fraud. Volescu probably had no idea which of the embryos had Anton’s Key and which didn’t. They’d implant them in surrogates and then see what happened when they were born.
Bean had been taken in by Volescu as surely as Peter had been by Achilles. But it wasn’t as if they had trusted Volescu. They had simply trusted him not to be in league with Achilles.
Though it didn’t have to be him. Just because he had kidnapped Ender’s jeesh didn’t mean that he was the only would-be kidnapper in the world. Bean’s children, if they had his gifts, would be coveted by any ambitious nation or would-be military leader. Raise them up knowing nothing about their real parents, train them here on Earth as intensely as Bean and the other kids had been trained in Battle School, and by the age of nine or ten you can put them in command of strategy and tactics.
It might even be an entrepreneurial scheme. Maybe Volescu did this alone, hiring gunmen, bribing the security guard, so that he could sell the babies later to the highest bidder.
“Bad news, sorry,” said the man in the back seat. “But you still got one baby, yes? In wife, yes?”
“Still the one,” said Bean. If they had the ordinary amount of good luck.
Which didn’t seem to be the trend at the moment.
Still, going to Damascus If Alai was really taking them into his protection, Petra would be safe there. Petra and perhaps one child-who might have Anton’s Key after all, might be doomed to die without ever seeing the age of twenty. At least those two would be safe.
But the others were out there, children of Bean’s and Petra’s who would be raised by strangers, as tools, as slaves.
There had been nine embryos. One had been implanted, and three were discarded. That would leave five in the possession of Volescu or Achilles or whoever it was who took them.
Unless Volescu had actually found a way to switch the three that were supposedly discarded, switching containers somehow. There might be eight embryos unaccounted for but probably not, probably only the five they knew about. Bean and Petra had both been watching Volescu too carefully for him to get away with the first three, hadn’t they?
By force of will, Bean turned his thoughts away from worries he could do nothing about at this moment, and took stock of his situation.
“Thank you,” said Bean to the men in the car. “I was careless. Without you, I’d be dead.”
“Not careless,” said the man in the back. “Young man in love. Wife has baby in her Time of hope.”
Followed immediately, Bean realized, by a time of near despair. He should never have agreed to father children, no matter how much Petra wanted to, no matter how much he loved Petra, no matter how much he too yearned for offspring, for a family. He should have stood firm, because then this would not have been possible. There would have been nothing for his enemies to steal from him. He and Petra would still have been in hiding, undetected, because they would never have had to go to a snake like Volescu.
“Babies good,” said the man in the back. “Make you scared, make you crazy. Somebody take away babies, somebody hurt babies, make you crazy. But good anyway. Babies good.”
Yeah. Well. Maybe Bean would live long enough to know about that, and maybe he wouldn’t.
Because now he knew his life’s work, for whatever time he had left before he died of giantism.
He had to get his babies back. Whether they should ever have existed or not, they existed now, each with its own separate genetic identity, each very much alive. Until they were taken, they had been nothing to him but cells in a solution-all that mattered was the one that would be implanted in Petra, the one that would grow and become part of their family. But now they all mattered. Now they were all alive to him, because someone else had them, meant to use them.
He even regretted the ones that had been disposed of. Even if the test had been real, even if they had had Anton’s Key, what right did he have to snuff out their genetic identity, just because he oh-so-altruistically wanted to spare them the sorrow of a life as short as his?
Suddenly he realized what he was thinking. What it meant.
Sister Carlotta, you always wanted me to turn Christian-and not just Christian, Catholic. Well, here I am, thinking that as soon as sperm and egg combine, they’re a human life, and it’s wrong to harm them.
Well, I’m not Catholic, and it wasn’t wrong to want children to grow up to have a full life instead of this fifth-of-a-life that I’m headed for.
But how was I different, flushing three of those embryos, from Volescu? He flushed twenty-two of them, I flushed three. He waited till they were nearly two years further along in development-gestation plus a year-but in the end, is it really all that different?
Would Sister Carlotta condemn him for that? Had he committed a mortal sin? Was he only getting what he deserved now, losing five because he willingly threw away three?
No, he could not imagine her saying that to him. Or even thinking it to herself. She would rejoice that he had decided to have a child at all. She would be glad if Petra really was pregnant.
But she would also agree with him that the five that were now in someone else’s hands, the five that might be implanted in someone else and turned into babies, he couldn’t just let them go. He had to find them and save them and bring them home.
PUTTING OUT FIRES
From: Han Tzu
To: Snow Tiger
Re: stones
I am pleased and honored to have the chance once again to offer my poor counsel to your bright magnificence. My previous advice to ignore the piles of stones in the road was obviously foolish, and you saw that a much wiser course was to declare stone-carrying to be illegal.
Now I once again have the glorious privilege of giving bad advice to him who does not need counsel.
Here is the problem as I see it:
1. Having declared a law against stone-carrying, you cannot back down and repeal the law without showing weakness.
2. The law against stone-carrying puts you in the position of arresting and punishing women and small children,
which is filmed and smuggled out of India to the great embarrassment of the Universal Peoples State.
3. The coastline of India being so extensive and our navy so small, we cannot stop the smuggling of these vids.
4. The stones block the roads, making transportation of troops and supplies unpredictable and dangerous, disrupting schedules.
5. The stone piles are being called “The Great Wall of India” and other names which make them a symbol of revolutionary defiance of the Universal People’s State.
You tested me by suggesting that there were only two possibilities, which in your wisdom you knew would lead to disastrous consequences. Repealing the law or ceasing to enforce it would encourage further lawlessness. Stricter enforcement will only make martyrs, inflame the opposition, shame us among the ignorant barbarian nations, and encourage further lawlessness.
Through unbelievable luck, I have not failed your clever test. I have found the third alternative that you already saw:
I see now that your plan is to fill trucks with fine gravel and huge stones. Your soldiers will go to villages which have built these new, higher barricades. They will back the trucks up to the barricades and dump the gravel and the boulders in front of their pile, but not on top of it.
1 . The rebellious, ungrateful Indian people will reflect upon the difference in size between the Great Wall of India and the Gravel and Boulders of China.
2. Because you will have blocked all roads into and out of each village, they will not get any trucks or buses into or out of their village until they have moved not only the Great Wall of India but also the Gravel and Boulders of China.
3. They will find that the gravel is too small and the boulders are too large to be moved easily. The great exertion that they must use to clear the roads will be a sufficient teacher without any further punishment of any person.
4. Any vids smuggled out of India will show that we have only done to their roads what they voluntarily did themselves, only more. And the only punishment foreigners will see is Indians picking up rocks and moving them, which is the very thing they chose to do themselves in the first place.
5. Because there are not enough trucks in India to pile gravel and boulders in more than a small fraction of the villages which have built a Great Wall of India, the villages which receive this treatment should be chosen with care to make sure that the maximum number of roads are blocked, disrupting trade and food supplies throughout India.
6. You will also make sure sufficient roads are kept open for our supplies, but checkpoints will be set up far from villages and in places that cannot be filmed from a distance. No civilian trucks will be allowed to pass.
7. Certain villages that are starving will be supplied with small amounts of food airlifted by the Chinese military, who will come as saviors bringing food to those who innocently suffer because of the actions of the rebellious and disobedient blockers of roads. We will provide film of these humanitarian operations by our military to all foreign news media.
I applaud your wisdom in thinking of this plan, and thank you for allowing one so foolish as myself to have this chance to examine your way of thinking and see how you will turn embarrassment to a great lesson for the ungrateful Indian people. Unless, like last time, you have a plan that is even more subtle and wise, which I have been unable to anticipate.
From this child who prostrates himself at your feet to learn wisdom,
Han Tzu
Peter did not want to get out of bed.
This had never happened to him before in his life.
No, not strictly true. He had often wanted not to get out of bed, but he had always gone ahead and gotten out of bed anyway. What was different today was that he was still in bed at nine-thirty in the morning, even though he had a press conference scheduled for less than half an hour from now in a conference room in the 0. Henry Hotel in his home town of Greensboro, North Carolina.
He could not plead jet lag. There was only an hour’s time difference between Ribeirao Preto and Greensboro. It would be a great embarrassment if he did not get up. So he would get up. Very soon now.
Not that it would make any difference. He might, for the moment, still have the title of Hegemon, but there were people in many countries with tides like “king” and “duke” and “marquis,” who nevertheless cooked or took pictures or fixed automobiles for a living. Perhaps he could go back to college under another name and train himself for a career like his father’s, a quiet one working for a company somewhere.
Or he could go into the bathroom and fill the tub with water and lie down in it and breathe the water in. A few moments of panic and flailing around, and then the whole problem would go away. In fact, if he hit himself very hard in various places on his body, it might look as though he struggled with an assailant and was murdered. He might even be considered a martyr. At least people might think that he was important enough to have an enemy who thought he was worth killing.
Any minute now, thought Peter, I will get up and shower so I don’t look so bedraggled to the media.
I ought to prepare a statement, he thought. Something to the effect of, “Why I am not as pathetic and stupid as my recent actions prove me to be.” Or perhaps the direct approach: “Why I am even more pathetic and stupid than my recent actions might indicate.”
Given his recent track record, he would probably be saved from the bathtub, given CPR, and then someone would notice the bruises on his body and the lack of an assailant and the story would get out about his pathetic effort to make his suicide attempt look like a brutal murder, thus making his life even more worthless than it already was.
Another knock on the door. Couldn’t the maid read the do-not-disturb sign? It was written in four languages. Could she possibly be illiterate in all four of them? No doubt she was also illiterate in a fifth.
Twenty-five minutes until the press conference. Did I doze off? That would be nice. Just. . . doze. . . off. Sorry, I overslept. I’ve been so very busy. It’s exhausting work to turn over-to a megalomaniac killer-everything I built up through my entire life.
Knock knock knock. It’s a good thing I didn’t kill myself. All this knocking would have ruined my concentration and entirely spoiled my death scene. I should die like Seneca, with fine last speeches. Or Socrates, though that would be harder, since I don’t have hemlock but I do have a bathtub. No razor blades, though. I don’t grow enough of a beard to need any. Just another sign that I’m only a stupid kid who should never have been permitted to take a role in the grownup world.
The door to his room opened and jammed against the locking bar.
How outrageous. Who dare to use a passkey on his room?
And not just a passkey! Someone had the tool that opened the locking bar and now his door was wide open.
Assassins! Well, let them kill me here in the bed, facing them, not cowering in a corner begging them not to shoot.
“Poor baby,” said Mother
“He’s depressed,” said Father “Don’t make fun of him.”
“I can’t help but think of what Ender went through, fighting the Formics almost every day for weeks, completely exhausted, and yet he always got up and fought again.”
Peter wanted to scream at her. How dare she compare what he had just gone through with Ender’s legendary “suffering.” Ender never lost a battle, did she think of that? And he had just lost the war! He was entitled to sleep.
“Ready? One, two, three.”
Peter felt the whole mattress slide down the bed until he was awkwardly dumped onto the floor, banging his head against the frame of the bedsprings.
“Ow!” he cried.
Wouldn’t that make a noble last word to be recorded by posterity?
How did the great Peter Wiggin, Hegemon of Earth (and, of course, brother of Ender Wiggin, sainted savior), meet his end?
He sustained a terrible head injury when his parents dragged him out of a hotel bed the morning after his ignominious escape from his own compound where not one person had threatened him in any way and he had no evidence of any impending threat against his person.
And what were his last words?
A one-word sentence, fit to be engraved on his monument. Ow.
“I don’t think we can get him into the shower without actually touching his sacred person,” said Mother
“I think you’re right,” said Father
“And if we touch him,” said Mother, “there’s a real possibility that we will be struck dead on the spot.”
Other people had mothers who were compassionate, tender, comforting, understanding. His mother was a sarcastic hag who clearly hated him and always had.
“Ice bucket,” said Father.
“No ice.”
“But it holds water.”
This was too stupid. The old throw-water-on-the-sleeping-teenager trick.
“Just go away, I’m getting up in a couple of minutes.”
“No,” said Mother. “You’re getting up now. Your father is filling the ice bucket. You can hear the water running.”
“OK, OK, leave the room so I can take my clothes off and get in the shower. Or is this just a subterfuge so you can see me naked again? You’ve never let me forget how you used to change my diapers, so apparently that was a very important stage in your life.”
He was answered by having water dashed in his face. Not a whole bucketful, but enough to soak his head and shoulders.
“Sorry I didn’t have time to fill it,” said Father. “Hut when you started making crude sexual innuendos to my wife, I had to use whatever amount of water was at hand to shut you up before you said enough that I would have to beat your bratty little face in.”
Peter got up from the mattress on the floor and pulled off the shorts he slept in. “Is this what you came in to see?”
“Absolutely,” said Father. “You were wrong, Theresa: he does have balls.”
“Not enough of them, apparently.”
Peter stalked between them and slammed the bathroom door behind him.
Half an hour later, after keeping the press waiting only ten minutes past the appointed time, Peter walked alone onto the platform at one end of a packed conference room. All the reporters were holding up their little steadycams, the lenses peering out between the fingers of their clenched fists. It was the best turnout he had ever had at a press conference-though to be fair he had never actually held one in the United States. Maybe here they would all have been like this.
“I’m as surprised as you are to find myself here today,” said Peter with a smile. “But I must say I’m grateful to the source that provided me with information that allowed me to make my exit, along with my family, from a place that had once been a safe haven, but which had become the most dangerous place in the world to me.
“I am also grateful to the government of the United States, which not only invited me to bring the office of Hegemon here, on a temporary basis, of course, but also provided me with a generous contingent of the Secret Service to secure the area. I don’t believe they’re necessary, at least not in such numbers, but then, until recently I didn’t think I needed any protection inside the Hegemony compound in Ribeirao Preto.”
His smile invited a laugh, and he got one. More of a release of tension than real amusement, but it would do. Father had stressed that-make them laugh now and then, so everybody feels relaxed. That will make them think you’re relaxed and confident, too.
