Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 7 - Shadow Puppets Page 14

  “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 realise 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 cinder block 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 cinder block. 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 harbour 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 romanticised 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 bad 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.”

  “Or he might have killed you, too.”

  “He couldn’t kill us both at once. Not with that gimp leg. Whichever one he went for, the other would scream bloody murder and go for help.”

  “Or hit him over the head with a cinder block.”

  “Yes, well, Poke could have done that, but I couldn’t have lifted it higher than his head. And I don’t think dropping a stone on his toe would have done the job.”

  They stayed by the dock for a little longer, and then made the walk back to the hospital.

  The security guard was on duty. All was right with the world.

  Bean had gone back to his childhood range and he hadn’t cried much, hadn’t turned away, hadn’t fled back to some safe place.

  Or so she thought, until they left the hospital, returned to their hotel, and he lay in the bed, gasping for breath until she realised that he was sobbing. Great dry wracking sobs that shook his whole body. She lay beside him and held him until he slept.

  Volescu’s fakery was so good that for a few moments Petra wondered if he might really have the ability to test the embryos. But no, it was flimflam-he was simply smart enough, scientist enough, to find convincing flimflam that was realistic enough to fool extremely intelligent laypeople like them, and even the fertility doctor they brought with them. He must have made it look like the tests these doctors performed to test for a child’s sex or for major genetic defects.

  Or else the doctor knew perfectly well it was a scam, but said nothing because all the baby-fixers played the same game, pretending to check for defects that couldn’t actually be checked for, knowing that by the time the fakery was discovered, the parents would already have bonded with the child-and even if they hadn’t, how could they sue for failing to perform an illegal procedure like sorting for athletic prowess or intellect? Maybe all these baby boutiques were fakers.

  The only reason Petra wasn’t fooled is that she didn’t watch the procedure, she watched Volescu, and by the end of the procedure she knew that he was way too relaxed. He knew that nothing he was doing would make the slightest difference. There was nothing at stake. The test meant nothing.

  There were nine embryos. He pretended to identify three of them as having Anton’s Key. He tried to hand the containers to one of his assistants to dispose of, but Bean insisted that he give them to their doctor for disposal.

  “I don’t want any of these embryos to accidentally become a baby,” said Bean with a smile.

  But to Petra, they already were babies, and it hurt her to watch as Bean supervised the pouring out of the three embryos into a sink, the scouring of the containers to make sure an embryo hadn’t managed to thrive in some remaining droplet.

  I’m imagining this, thought Petra. For all she knew, the containers he flushed had never contained embryos at all. Why would Volescu sacrifice any of them, when all he had to do was lie and merely say that these three had contained embryos with Anton’s Key?

  So, self persuaded that no actual harm to a child of hers was being done, she thanked Volescu for his help and they waited for him to leave before anything else was done. Volescu carried nothing from the room that he hadn’t come in with.

  Then Bean and Petra both watched as the six remaining embryos were frozen, their containers tagged, and all of them secured against tampering.

  The morning of the implantation, they both awoke almost at first light, too excited, too nervous to sleep. She lay in bed reading, trying to calm herself; he sat at the table in the hotel room, working on email, scanning the nets.

  But his mind was obviously on the morning’s procedure. “It’s going to be expensive,” he said. “Keeping guard over the ones we don’t implant.”

  She knew what he was driving at. “You know we’ve got to keep them frozen until we know if the first implant works. They don’t always take.”

  Bean nodded. “But I’m not an idiot, you know. I’m perfectly aware that you intend to keep all the embryos and implant them one by one until you have as many of my children as possible.”

  “Well of course,” said Petra. “What if our first-born is as nasty as Peter Wiggin?”

  “Impossible,” said Bean. “How could a child of mine have any but the sweetest disposition?”

  “Unthinkable, I know,” said Petra. “And yet somehow I thought of it.”

  “So this security, it has to continue for years.

  “Why?” said Petra. “No one wants the babies that are left. We destroyed the ones with Anton’s Key.”

  “We know that,” said Bean. “But they’re still the children of two members of Ender’s jeesh. Even without my particular curse, they’ll still be worth stealing.”

  “But they won’t be old enough to be of any value for years and years,” said Petra. />
  “Not all that many years,” said Bean. “How old were we? How old are we even now? There are plenty of people willing to take the children and invest not that many years of training and then put them to work. Playing games and winning wars.”

  “I’ll never let any of them anywhere near military training,” said Petra.

  “You won’t be able to stop them,” said Bean.

  “We have plenty of money, thanks to the pensions Graff got for us,” said Petra. “I’ll make sure the security is intense.”

  “No, I mean you’ll never be able to stop the children. From seeking out military service.

  He was right, of course. The testing for Battle School included a child’s predilection for military command, for the contest of battle. For war. Bean and Petra had proven how strong that passion was in them. It would be unlikely that any child of theirs would be happy without ever having a taste of the military life.

  “At least,” said Petra, “they won’t have to destroy an alien invader before they turn fifteen.”

  But Bean wasn’t listening. His body had suddenly grown alert as he scanned a message on his desk.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I think it’s from Hot Soup,” said Bean.

  She got up and came over to look.

  It was an email through one of the anonymous services, this one an Asian-based company called Mysterious East. The subject line was “definitely not vichyssoise.” Not cold soup, then. Hot Soup. The Battle school nickname of Han Thu. who had been in Ender’s jeesh and was now assumed to be deeply involved in the highest levels of strategy in China.

  A message from him to Bean, until recently the military commander of the Hegemon’s forces, would be high treason. This message had been handed to a stranger on a street in China. Probably a European- or African-looking tourist. And the message wasn’t hard to understand:

  He thinks I told him where Caligula would be but I did not.

  “Caligula” could only refer to Achilles. “He” had to refer to Peter.

  Han Thu was saying that Peter thought he was the source of the information about where the prison convoy would be on the day Suriyawong liberated Achilles.

  No wonder Peter was sure his source was reliable-Han Tzu himself! Since Han Tzu had been one of the group Achilles kidnapped, he would have plenty of reason to hate him. Motive enough for Peter to believe that Han Tzu would tell him where Achilles would be.

  But it wasn’t Han Tzu.

  And if it wasn’t Han Tzu, then who else would send such a message, pretending that it came from him? A message that turned out to be correct?

  “We should have known it wasn’t from Han Thu all along,” said Bean.

  “We didn’t know Han Tzu was supposed to be the source,” said Petra reasonably.

  “Han Tzu would never give information that would lead to innocent Chinese soldiers getting killed. Peter should have known that.”

  “We would have known it,” said Petra, “but Peter doesn’t know Hot Soup. And he didn’t tell us Hot Soup was his source.”

  “So of course we know who the source was,” said Bean.

  “We’ve got to get word to him at once,” said Petra.

  Bean was already typing.

  “Only this has to mean that Achilles went in there completely prepared,” said Petra. “I’d be surprised if he hasn’t found a way to read Peter’s mail.”

  “I’m not writing to Peter,” said Bean.

  “Who, then?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Wiggin,” said Bean. “Two separate messages. Pieces of a puzzle. Chances are that Achilles won’t be watching their mail, or at least not closely enough to realise he should put these together.”

  “No,” said Petra. “No puzzles. Whether he’s watching or not, there’s no time to lose. He’s been there for months now.

  “If he sees an open message it might precipitate action on his part. It might be Peter’s death warrant.”

  “Then notify Graff, send him in.”

  “Achilles undoubtedly knows Graff already came once to get our parents out,” said Bean. “Again, his arrival might trigger things.”

  “OK,” said Petra, thinking. “OK. Here’s what. Suriyawong.”

  “No,” said Bean.

  “He’ll get a coded message instantly. He thinks that way.”

  “But I don’t know if he can be trusted,” said Bean.

  “Of course he can,” said Petra. “He’s only pretending to be Achilles’s man.”

  “Of course he is,” said Bean. “But what if he isn’t just pretending?”

  “But he’s Suriyawong!”

  “I know,” said Bean. “But I can’t be sure.

  “All right,” said Petra. “Peter’s parents, then. Only don’t be too subtle.”

  “They’re not stupid,” said Bean. “I don’t know Mr. Wiggin that well, but Mrs. Wiggin is-well, she’s very subtle. She knows more than she lets on.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s wary. That doesn’t mean she’ll get the code or talk it over with her husband right away so they can put the messages together.”

  “Trust me,” said Bean.

  “No, I’ll proofread before you send it,” said Petra. “First rule of survival, right? Just because you trust someone’s motives doesn’t mean you can trust them to do it right.”

  “You’re a cold, cold woman,” said Bean.

  “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 Ribeirdo 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 memorised all your dead drops and you’ve memorised all of mine.”