Shadow Puppets Read online

  "If we wait long enough," said Bean, "they'll close the office."

  "No," said Petra. "Volescu will wait all night to see you. You're his experiment that succeeded despite his cowardice."

  "I thought it was my success, not his."

  She pressed herself against his arm. "It was my success," she said.

  "Yours? How?"

  "It must have been. I'm the one who ended up with all the prizes."

  "If you had ever said things like that in Battle School, you would have been the laughingstock of all the armies."

  "That's because the armies were all composed of prepubescent children. Grownups don't think such things are embarrassing."

  "Actually, they do," said Bean. "There's only this brief window of adolescence where extravagantly romantic remarks are taken for poetry."

  "Such is the power of hormones that we absolutely understand the biological causes of our feelings, and yet we still feel them."

  "Let's not go inside," said Bean. "Let's go back to the inn and have some more feelings."

  She kissed him. "Let's go inside and make a baby."

  "Try for a baby," said Bean. "Because I won't let you have one in which Anton's Key is turned."

  "I know," she said.

  "And I have your promise that embryos with Anton's Key will all be discarded."

  "Of course," she said. That satisfied him, though she was sure that he would notice that she had never actually said the words. Maybe he did, unconsciously, and that was why he kept asking.

  It was hypocritical and dishonest of her, of course, and she almost felt bad about it sometimes, but what happened after he died would be none of his business.

  "All right then," he said.

  "All right then," she answered. "Time to go meet the baby killer, ne?"

  "I don't suppose we should call him that to his face, though, right?"

  "Since when are you the one who worries about good manners?"

  Volescu was a weasel, just as Petra knew he would be. He was all business, playing the role of Mr. Scientist, but Petra knew well what lay behind the mask. She could see the way he couldn't keep his eyes off Bean, the mental measurements he was making. She wanted to make some snide remark about how prison seemed to have done him good, he was carrying some extra weight, needed to walk that off...but they were here to have the man choose them a baby, and it would serve no purpose to irritate him.

  "I couldn't believe I was going to meet you," said Volescu. "I knew from that nun who visited me that one of you had lived, and I was glad. I was already in prison by then, the very thing that destroying the evidence had been designed to prevent. So I didn't need to destroy it after all. I wished I hadn't. Then here she comes and tells me the lost one lived. It was the one ray of hope in a long night of despair. And here you are."

  Again he eyed Bean from head to toe.

  "Yes," said Bean, "here I am, and very tall for my age, too, as you seem to keep trying to verify."

  "I'm sorry," said Volescu. "I know that other business has brought you here. Very important business."

  "You're sure," said Bean, "that your test for Anton's Key is absolutely accurate and nondestructive?"

  "You exist, don't you? You are what you are, yes? We would not have kept any in which the gene did not take. We had a safe, reliable test."

  "Every one of the cloned embryos was brought to life," said Bean. "It worked in every one of them?"

  "I was very good with planter viruses in those days. A skill that even now isn't much called for in procedures with humans, since alterations are still illegal." He chuckled, because everyone knew that there was a lively business in tailored human babies in various places around the world, and that skill in gene alteration was in more demand than ever. That was almost certainly Volescu's real business, and the Netherlands was one of the safest places to practice it.

  But as Petra listened to him, she became more and more uneasy. Volescu was lying about something. The change in his manner had been slight, but after spending months observing every tiny nuance in Achilles's demeanor, simply as a matter of survival, she had turned herself into a very precise observer of other people. The signs of deception were there. Energized speech, overly rhythmic, too jovial. Eyes that kept darting away from theirs. Hands that wouldn't stop touching his coat, his pencil.

  What would he be lying about?

  It was obvious, once she thought about it.

  There was no test. Back when he created Bean, Volescu had simply introduced the planter virus that was supposed to alter all the cells of the embryos, and then waited to see if any embryos lived, and which of the survivors had been successfully altered. It happened that they all survived. But not all of them necessarily had Anton's Key.

  Maybe that was why, of all the nearly two dozen babies, only Bean escaped.

  Maybe Bean was the only one in whom the alteration was successful. The only one with Anton's Key. The only one who was so preternaturally intelligent that he was able, at one year of age, to realize there was danger, climb out of his bassinet, get himself inside a toilet tank, and actually stay alive there until the danger passed.

  That had to be Volescu's lie. Maybe he had developed a test since then, but that was unlikely. Why would he imagine he'd need it? But he said that he had such a test so he could...could do what?

  Start his experiment again. Take their leftover embryos, and instead of discarding the ones with Anton's Key, he'd keep them all and raise them and study them. This time it wouldn't be just one out of two dozen who had the enhanced intelligence and the shortened life-span. This time, the genetic odds suggested a fifty-fifty distribution of Anton's Key among the embryos.

  So now Petra had a decision to make. If she said out loud what she was so certain of in her mind, Bean would probably realize she was right and the entire deal would be off. If Volescu had no way to test, it was certain nobody else did. Bean would refuse to have children at all.

  So if she was to have Bean's child, Volescu had to be the one to do it, not because he had a test for Anton's Key, but because Bean believed he did.

  But what about the other embryos? They would be her children, too, growing up as the slaves, the experimental subjects of a man like this, completely without morals.

  "Of course you know," said Petra, "that you won't do the actual implantation."

  Since Bean had never heard this wrinkle in their plans, he was no doubt surprised--but, being Bean, he showed nothing, merely smiled a bit to show that she was speaking for both of them. Such trust. She didn't even feel guilty that he trusted her so much at a moment when she was working so hard to deceive him. She may not be doing what he thought that he wanted, but she knew she was doing what he really desired, deep down in his genes.

  Volescu showed surprise, however. "But...what do you mean?"

  "Forgive me," said Petra, "but we will stay with you through the entire fertilization process, and we will watch as every fertilized embryo is taken to the Women's Hospital, where they will be under hospital security until the implantation takes place."

  Volescu's face reddened. "What do you accuse me of?"

  "Of being the man you have already proven yourself to be."

  "Many years ago, and I paid my debt."

  Bean understood now--enough, at least, to join in, his tone of voice as light and cheerful as Petra's. "We have no doubt of that, but of course we want to make sure we don't have any of our little embryos with Anton's Key waking up to some unpleasant surprises in a room full of children, as I did once."

  Volescu rose to his feet. "This interview is over."

  Petra's heart sank. She shouldn't have said anything at all. Now there would be no implantation and Bean would discover...

  "So we proceed to extract the eggs?" asked Bean. "The time is right, I believe. That's why we made the appointment for this day."

  Volescu looked at him sharply. "After you insulted me?"

  "Come now, Doctor," said Bean. "You take the eggs from her,
and then I make my donation. That's how salmon do it. It's really quite natural. Though I'd like to skip the swim upstream, if I can."

  Volescu eyed him for a long moment, then smiled his tight little smile. "My little half-nephew Julian has such a sense of humor."

  Petra waited, hardly wanting to breathe, definitely not wishing to speak, though a thousand words raced through her head.

  "All right, yes, of course you can protect the fertilized embryos however you want. I understand your...lack of trust. Even though I know it is misplaced."

  "Then while you and Petra do whatever it is you're going to do," said Bean, "I'll call for a couple of couriers from the fertility center at Women's Hospital to come and await the embryos and take them to be frozen."

  "It will be hours before we reach that stage," said Volescu.

  "We can afford to pay for their time," said Petra. "And we don't want any chance of slipups or delays."

  "I will have to have access to the embryos again for several hours, of course," said Volescu. "In order to separate them and test them."

  "In our presence," said Petra. "And the fertility specialist who is going to implant the first one."

  "Of course," said Volescu with a tight smile. "I will sort them out for you, and discard the--"

  "We will discard and destroy any that have Anton's Key," said Bean.

  "That goes without saying," said Volescu stiffly.

  He hates these rules we've sprung on him, thought Petra. She could see it in his eyes, despite the calm demeanor. He's furious. He's even...embarrassed, yes. Well, since that's probably as close as he's ever come to feeling shame, it's good for him.

  While Petra was examined by the staff doctor who would do the implantation, Bean saw to hiring a security service. A guard would be on duty at the embryo "nursery," as the hospital staff charmingly called it, all day, every day. "Since you're the one who first started being paranoid," Bean told Petra, "I have no choice but to out-paranoid you."

  It was a relief, actually. During the days before the embryos were ready for implantation, while Volescu was no doubt trying frantically to devise some nondestructive procedure that he could pretend was a genetic test, Petra was glad not to have to stay in the hospital personally watching over the embryos the whole time.

  It gave her a chance to explore the city of Bean's childhood. Bean, however, seemed determined to visit only the tourist sites and then get back to his computer. She knew that it made him nervous to stay in one city for so long, especially because for the first time, their whereabouts were known to another person whom they did not trust. It was doubtful Volescu knew any of their enemies. But Bean insisted on changing hotels every day, and walking blocks from their hotel in order to hail a taxi, so that no enemy could set an easy trap for them.

  He was evading more than his enemies, though. He was also evading his past in this city. She scanned a city map and found the area that Bean was clearly avoiding. And the next morning, after Bean had chosen the first cab of the day, she leaned forward and gave the taxi driver directions.

  It took Bean only a few moments to realize where the cab was going. She saw him tense up. But he did not refuse to go or even complain about her having compelled him. How could he? It would be an admission that he was avoiding the places he had known as a child. A confession of pain and fear.

  She was not going to let him pass the day in silence, however. "I remember the stories you've told me," she said to him, gently. "There aren't many of them, but still I wanted to see for myself. I hope it's not too painful for you. But even if it is, I hope you'll bear it. Because someday I'll want to tell our children about their father. And how can I tell the stories if I don't know where they took place?"

  After the briefest pause, Bean nodded.

  They left the cab and he took her through the streets of his childhood, which had been old and shabby even then. "It's changed very little," said Bean. "Really just the one difference. There aren't thousands of abandoned children everywhere. Apparently somebody found the budget to deal with the orphans."

  She kept asking questions, paying close attention to the answers, and finally he understood how serious she was, how much it meant to her. Bean began taking her off the main streets. "I lived in the alleys," he explained. "In the shadows. Like a vulture, waiting for things to die. I had to watch for scraps that other children didn't see. Things discarded at night. Spills from garbage bins. Anything that might have a few calories in it."

  He walked up to one dumpster and laid his hand against it. "This one," he said. "This one saved my life. There was a restaurant then, where that music shop is. I think the restaurant employee who dumped their garbage knew I was lurking. He always took out most of the cooking garbage in the late afternoon, in daylight. The older kids took everything. And then the scraps from the night's meals, those got dumped in the morning, in daylight again, and the other kids got that, too. But he usually came outside once in the darkness. To smoke right here by the garbage bin. And after his smoke, in the darkness, there'd be a scrap of something, right here."

  Bean put his hand on a narrow shelf formed by the frame that allowed the garbage truck to lift the bin.

  "Such a tiny dinner table," said Petra.

  "I think he must have been a survivor of the street himself," said Bean, "because it was never something so large as to attract attention. It was always something I could slip into my mouth all at once, so no one ever saw me holding food in my hand. I would have died without him. It was only a couple of months and then he stopped--probably lost his job or moved on to something else--and I have no idea who he was. But it kept me alive."

  "What a lovely thing, to think such a person could have come out of the streets," said Petra.

  "Well, yes, now I see that," said Bean. "But at the time I didn't think of that sort of thing at all. I was...focused. I knew he was doing it deliberately, but I didn't bother to imagine why, except to eliminate the possibility that it was a trap, or that he had drugged it or poisoned it somehow."

  "How did you eliminate that possibility?"

  "I ate the first thing he put there and I didn't die, and I didn't keel over and then wake up in a child whorehouse somewhere."

  "They had such places?"

  "There were rumors that that's what happened to children who disappeared from the street. Along with the rumors that they were cooked into spicy stews in the immigrants' section of town. Those I don't believe."

  She wrapped her arms around his chest. "Oh, Bean, what a hellish place."

  "Achilles came from here, too," he said.

  "He was never as small as you were."

  "But he was crippled. That bad leg. He had to be smart to stay alive. He had to keep everyone else from crushing him for no better reason than because they could. Maybe his thing about having to eliminate anyone who sees his helplessness--maybe that was a survival mechanism for him, under these circumstances."

  "You're such a Christian," said Petra. "So full of charity."

  "Speaking of which," said Bean. "I assume you're going to raise our child Armenian Catholic, right?"

  "It would make Sister Carlotta happy, don't you think?"

  "She was happy no matter what I did," said Bean. "God made her happy. She's happy now, if she's anything at all. She was a happy person."

  "You make her sound--what?--mentally deficient?"

  "Yes. She was incapable of holding on to malice. A serious defect."

  "I wonder if there's a genetic test for it," said Petra. Then she regretted it immediately. The last thing she wanted was for Bean to think too much about genetic tests, and realize what seemed so obvious to her, that Volescu had no test.

  They visited many other places, and more and more of them made him tell her little stories. Here's where Poke used to hide a stash of food to reward kids who did well. Here's where Sister Carlotta first sat down with us to teach us to read. This was our best sleeping place during the winter, until some bigger kids found us and drove us out.


  "Here's where Poke stood over Achilles with a cinderblock in her hands," said Bean, "ready to dash his brains out."

  "If only she had," said Petra.

  "She was too good a person," said Bean. "She couldn't imagine the evil that might be in him. I didn't, either, until I saw him lying there, what was in his eyes when he looked up at that cinderblock. I've never seen so much hate. That was all--no fear. I saw her death in his eyes right then. I told her she had to do it. Had to kill him. She couldn't. But it happened just the way I warned her. If you let him live, he'll kill you, I said, and he did."

  "Where was it?" asked Petra. "The place where Achilles killed her? Can you take me there?"

  He thought about it for a few moments, then walked her to the waterfront among the docks. They found a clear place where they could see between the boats and ships and barges out to where the great Rhine swept past on its way to the North Sea.

  "What a powerful place," said Petra.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It just--the river, so strong. And yet human beings were able to build this along its banks. This harbor. Nature is strong but the human mind is stronger."

  "Except when it isn't," said Bean.

  "He gave her body to the river, didn't he?"

  "He dumped her into the water, yes."

  "But the way Achilles saw what he did. Giving her to the water. Maybe he romanticized it."

  "He strangled her," said Bean. "I don't care what he thought while he did it, or afterward. He kissed her and then he strangled her."

  "You didn't see the murder, I hope!" said Petra. It would be too terrible if Bean had been carrying such an image in his mind all these years.

  "I saw the kiss," said Bean. "I was too selfish and stupid to see what it meant."

  Petra remembered her own kiss from Achilles, and shuddered. "You thought what anyone would have thought," said Petra. "You thought his kiss meant what mine does."

  And she kissed him.

  He kissed her back. Hungrily.

  But when the kiss ended, his face grew wistful again. "I would undo everything, all that I've done with my life since then," said Bean, "if I could only go back and undo that one moment."

  "What, you think you could have fought him? Have you forgotten how small you were then?"

  "If I'd been there, if he'd known I was watching, he wouldn't have done it. Achilles never risks discovery if he can help it."