The shadow quintet, p.58
The Shadow Quintet, page 58
“Sometimes I miss Battle School.”
“That’s because in Battle School, you were one of the very richest in the only coin that mattered there.”
Bean thought about that. As soon as the other kids realized that, young and small as he was, he could outperform them in every class, it gave him a kind of power. Everyone knew who he was. Even those who mocked him had to give him a grudging respect. But . . . “I didn’t always get my way.”
“Graff told me some of the outrageous things you did,” said Carlotta. “Climbing through the air ducts to eavesdrop. Breaking into the computer system.”
“But they caught me.”
“Not as soon as they’d like to have caught you. And were you punished? No. Why? Because you were rich.”
“Money and talent aren’t the same thing.”
“That’s because you can inherit money that was earned by your ancestors,” said Sister Carlotta. “And everybody recognizes the value of money, while only select groups recognize the value of talent.”
“So where does Peter live?”
She had the addresses of all the Wiggin families. There weren’t many—the more common spelling had an s at the end. “But I don’t think this will help us,” said Carlotta. “We don’t want to meet him at home.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t know whether his parents are aware of what he’s doing or not. Graff was pretty sure they don’t know. If two foreigners come calling, they’re going to start to wonder what their son is doing on the nets.”
“Where, then?”
“He could be in secondary school. But given his intelligence, I’d bet on his being in college.” She was accessing more information as she spoke. “Colleges colleges colleges. Lots of them in town. The biggest first, the better for him to disappear in . . .”
“Why would he need to disappear? Nobody knows who he is.”
“But he doesn’t want anyone to realize that he spends no time on his schoolwork. He has to look like an ordinary kid his age. He should be spending all his free time with friends. Or with girls. Or with friends looking for girls. Or with friends trying to distract themselves from the fact that they can’t find any girls.”
“For a nun, you seem to know a lot about this.”
“I wasn’t born a nun.”
“But you were born a girl.”
“And no one is a better observer of the folkways of the adolescent male than the adolescent female.”
“What makes you think he doesn’t do all those things?”
“Being Locke and Demosthenes is a fulltime job.”
“So why do you think he’s in college at all?”
“Because his parents would be upset if he stayed home all day, reading and writing email.”
Bean wouldn’t know about what might make parents upset. He’d only known his parents since the end of the war, and they’d never found anything serious to criticize about him. Or maybe they never felt like he was really theirs. They didn’t criticize Nikolai much, either. But . . . more than they did Bean. There simply hadn’t been enough time together for them to feel as comfortable, as parental, with their new son Julian.
“I wonder how my parents are doing.”
“If anything was wrong, we would have heard,” said Carlotta.
“I know,” said Bean. “That doesn’t mean I can’t wonder.”
She didn’t answer, just kept working her desk, bringing new pages into the display. “Here he is,” she said. “A nonresident student. No address. Just email and a campus box.”
“What about his class schedule?” asked Bean.
“They don’t post that.”
Bean laughed. “And that’s supposed to be a problem?”
“No, Bean, you aren’t going to crack their system. I can’t think of a better way for you to attract attention than to trip some trap and get a mole to follow you home.”
“I don’t get followed by moles.”
“You never see the ones that follow you.”
“It’s just a college, not some intelligence service.”
“Sometimes people with the least that is worth stealing are the most concerned with giving the appearance of having great treasures hidden away.”
“Is that from the Bible?”
“No, it’s from observation.”
“So what do we do?”
“Your voice is too young,” said Sister Carlotta. “I’ll work the phone.”
She talked her way to the head registrar of the university. “He was a very nice boy to carry all my things after the wheel broke on my cart, and if these keys are his I want to get them back to him right away, before he worries. . . . No I will not drop them in the mail, how would that be ‘right away’? Nor will I leave them with you, they might not be his, and then what would I do? If they are his keys, he will be very glad you told me where his classes are, and if they aren’t his keys, then what harm will it cause? . . . All right, I’ll wait.”
Sister Carlotta lay back on the bed. Bean laughed at her. “How did a nun get so good at lying?”
She held down the MUTE button. “It isn’t lying to tell a bureaucrat whatever story it takes to get him to do his job properly.”
“But if he does his job properly, he won’t give you any information about Peter.”
“If he does his job properly, he’ll understand the purpose of the rules and therefore know when it is appropriate to make exceptions.”
“People who understand the purpose of the rules don’t become bureaucrats,” said Bean. “That’s something we learned really fast in Battle School.”
“Exactly,” said Carlotta. “So I have to tell him the story that will help him overcome his handicap.” Abruptly she refocused her attention on the phone. “Oh, how very nice. Well, that’s fine. I’ll see him there.”
She hung up the phone and laughed. “Well, after all that, the registrar emailed him. His desk was connected, he admitted that he had lost his keys, and he wants to meet the nice old lady at Yum-Yum.”
“What is that?” asked Bean.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, but the way she said it, I figured that if I were an old lady living near campus, I’d already know.” She was already deep in the city directory. “Oh, it’s a restaurant near campus. Well, this is it. Let’s go meet the boy who would be king.”
“Wait a minute,” said Bean. “We can’t go straight there.”
“Why not?”
“We have to get some keys.”
Sister Carlotta looked at him like he was crazy. “I made up the bit about the keys, Bean.”
“The registrar knows that you’re meeting Peter Wiggin to give him back his keys. What if he happens to be going to Yum-Yum right now for lunch? And he sees us meet Peter, and nobody gives anybody any keys?”
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
“OK, I have a better idea. Just act flustered and tell him that in your hurry to get there to meet him, you forgot to bring the keys, so he should come back to the house with you.”
“You have a talent for this, Bean.”
“Deception is second nature to me.”
The bus was on time and moved briskly, this being an off-peak time, and soon they were on campus. Bean was better at translating maps into real terrain, so he led the way to Yum-Yum.
The place looked like a dive. Or rather, it was trying to look like a dive from an earlier era. Only it really was rundown and under-maintained, so it was a dive trying to look like a nice restaurant decorated to look like a dive. Very complicated and ironic, Bean decided, remembering what Father used to say about a neighborhood restaurant near their house on Crete: Abandon lunch, all ye who enter here.
The food looked like common-people’s restaurant food everywhere—more about delivering fats and sweets than about flavor or nutrition. Bean wasn’t picky, though. There were foods he liked better than others, and he knew something of the difference between fine cuisine and plain fare, but after the streets of Rotterdam and years of dried and processed food in space, anything that delivered the calories and nutrients was fine with him. But he made the mistake of going for the ice cream. He had just come from Araraquara, where the sorvete was memorable, and the American stuff was too fatty, the flavors too syrupy. “Mmmm, deliciosa,” said Bean.
“Fecha a boquinha, menino,” she answered. “E não fala português aqui.”
“I didn’t want to critique the ice cream in a language they’d understand.”
“Doesn’t the memory of starvation make you more patient?”
“Does everything have to be a moral question?”
“I wrote my dissertation on Aquinas and Tillich,” said Sister Carlotta. “All questions are philosophical.”
“In which case, all answers are unintelligible.”
“And you’re not even in grad school yet.”
A tall young man slid onto the bench beside Bean. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “You got my keys?”
“I feel so foolish,” said Sister Carlotta. “I came all the way here and then I realized I left them back home. Let me buy you some ice cream and then you can walk home with me and get them.”
Bean looked up at Peter’s face in profile. The resemblance to Ender was plain, but not close enough that anyone could ever mistake one for the other.
So this is the kid who brokered the ceasefire that ended the League War. The kid who wants to be Hegemon. Good looking, but not movie-star handsome—people would like him, but still trust him. Bean had studied the vids of Hitler and Stalin. The difference was palpable—Stalin never had to get elected; Hitler did. Even with that stupid mustache, you could see it in Hitler’s eyes, that ability to see into you, that sense that whatever he said, wherever he looked, he was speaking to you, looking at you, that he cared about you. But Stalin, he looked like the liar that he was. Peter was definitely in the charismatic category. Like Hitler.
Perhaps an unfair comparison, but those who coveted power invited such thoughts. And the worst was seeing the way Sister Carlotta played to him. True, she was acting a part, but when she spoke to him, when that gaze was fixed on her, she preened a little, she warmed to him. Not so much that she’d behave foolishly, but she was aware of him with a heightened intensity that Bean didn’t like. Peter had the seducer’s gift. Dangerous.
“I’ll walk home with you,” said Peter. “I’m not hungry. Have you already paid?”
“Of course,” said Sister Carlotta. “This is my grandson, by the way. Delfino.”
Peter turned to notice Bean for the first time—though Bean was quite sure Peter had sized him up thoroughly before he sat down. “Cute kid,” he said. “How old is he? Does he go to school yet?”
“I’m little,” said Bean cheerfully, “but at least I’m not a yelda.”
“All those vids of Battle School life,” said Peter. “Even little kids are picking up that stupid polyglot slang.”
“Now, children, you must get along, I insist on it.” Sister Carlotta led the way to the door. “My grandson is visiting this country for the first time, young man, so he doesn’t understand American banter.”
“Yes I do,” said Bean, trying to sound like a petulant child and finding it quite easy, since he really was annoyed.
“He speaks English pretty well. But you better hold his hand crossing this street, the campus trams zoom through here like Daytona.”
Bean rolled his eyes and submitted to having Carlotta hold his hand across the street. Peter was obviously trying to provoke him, but why? Surely he wasn’t so shallow as to think humiliating Bean would give him some advantage. Maybe he took pleasure in making other people feel small.
Finally, though, they were away from campus and had taken enough twists and turns to make sure they weren’t being followed.
“So you’re the great Julian Delphiki,” said Peter.
“And you’re Locke. They’re touting you for Hegemon when Sakata’s term is over. Too bad you’re only virtual.”
“I’m thinking of going public soon,” said Peter.
“Ah, that’s why you got the plastic surgery to make you so pretty,” said Bean.
“This old face?” said Peter. “I only wear it when I don’t care how I look.”
“Boys,” said Sister Carlotta. “Must you display like baby chimps?”
Peter laughed easily. “Come on, Mom, we was just playin’. Can’t we still go to the movies?”
“Off to bed without supper, the lot of you,” said Sister Carlotta.
Bean had had enough of this. “Where’s Petra?” he demanded.
Peter looked at him as if he were insane. “I don’t have her.”
“You have sources,” said Bean. “You know more than you’re telling me.”
“You know more than you’re telling me, too,” said Peter. “I thought we were working on trusting each other, and then we open the floodgates of wisdom.”
“Is she dead?” said Bean, not willing to be deflected.
Peter looked at his watch. “At this moment. I don’t know.”
Bean stopped walking. Disgusted, he turned to Sister Carlotta. “We wasted a trip,” he said. “And risked our lives for nothing.”
“Are you sure?” said Sister Carlotta.
Bean looked back at Peter, who seemed genuinely bemused. “He wants to be Hegemon,” said Bean, “but he’s nothing.” Bean walked away. He had memorized the route, of course, and knew how to get to the bus station without Sister Carlotta’s help. Ender had ridden these buses as a child younger than Bean. It was the only consolation for the bitter disappointment of finding out that Peter was a game-playing fool.
No one called after him, and he did not look back.
Bean took, not the bus to the hotel, but the one that passed nearest the school Ender had attended just before being taken into Battle School. The whole story of Ender’s life had come out in the inquiry into Graff’s conduct: Ender’s first killing had taken place here, a boy named Stilson who had set on Ender with his gang. Bean had been there for Ender’s second killing, which was pretty much the same situation as the first. Ender—alone, outnumbered, surrounded—talked his way into single combat and then fought to destroy his enemy so no will to fight would remain. But he had known it here, at the age of six.
I knew things at that age, thought Bean. And younger, too. Not how to kill—that was beyond me, I was too small. But how to live, that was hard.
For me it was hard, but not for Ender. Bean walked through the neighborhoods of modest old houses and even more modest new ones—but to him they were all miracles. Not that he hadn’t had plenty of chances, living with his family in Greece after the war, to see how most children grew up. But this was different. This was the place that had spawned Ender Wiggin.
I had more native talent for war than Ender had. But he was still the better commander. Was this the difference? He grew up where he never worried about finding another meal, where people praised him and protected him. I grew up where if I found a scrap of food I had to worry that another street kid might kill me for it. Shouldn’t that have made me the one who fought desperately, and Ender the one who held back?
It wasn’t the place. Two people in identical situations would never make exactly the same choices. Ender is who he is, and I am who I am. It was in him to destroy the Formics. It was in me to stay alive.
So what’s in me now? I’m a commander without an army. I have a mission to perform, but no knowledge of how to perform it. Petra, if she’s still alive, is in desperate peril, and she counts on me to free her. The others are all free. She alone remains hidden. What has Achilles done to her? I will not have Petra end like Poke.
There it was. The difference between Ender and Bean. Ender came out of his bitterest battle of childhood undefeated. He had done what was required. But Bean had not even realized the danger his friend Poke was in until too late. If he had seen in time how immediate her peril was, he could have warned her, helped her. Saved her. Instead, her body was tossed into the Rhine, to be found bobbing like so much garbage among the wharves.
And it was happening again.
Bean stood in front of the Wiggin house. Ender had never spoken of it, nor had pictures of it been shown at the court of inquiry. But it was exactly what Bean had expected. A tree in the front yard, with wooden slats nailed into the trunk to form a ladder to the platform in a high crotch of the tree. A tidy, well-tended garden. A place of peace and refuge. What did Ender ever know of fear?
Where is Petra’s garden? For that matter, where is mine?
Bean knew he was being unreasonable. If Ender had come back to Earth, he too would no doubt be in hiding, if Achilles hadn’t simply killed him straight off. And even as things stood, he couldn’t help but wonder if Ender might not prefer to be living as Bean was, on Earth, in hiding, than where he was now, in space, bound for another world and a life of permanent exile from the world of his birth.
A woman came out of the front door of the house. Mrs. Wiggin?
“Are you lost?” she asked.
Bean realized that in his disappointment—no, call it despair—he had forgotten his vigilance. This house might be watched. Even if it was not, Mrs. Wiggin herself might remember him, this young boy who appeared in front of her house during school hours.
“Is this where Ender Wiggin grew up?”
A cloud passed across her face, just momentarily, but Bean saw how her expression saddened before her smile could be put back. “Yes, it is,” she said. “But we don’t give tours.”
For reasons Bean could not understand, on impulse he said, “I was with him. In the last battle. I fought under him.”
Her smile changed again, away from mere courtesy and kindness, toward something like warmth and pain. “Ah,” she said. “A veteran.” And then the warmth faded and was replaced by worry. “I know all the faces of Ender’s companions in that last battle. You’re the one who’s dead. Julian Delphiki.”
Just like that, his cover was blown—and he had done it to himself, by telling her that he was in Ender’s jeesh. What was he thinking? There were only eleven of them. “Obviously, there’s someone who wants to kill me,” he said. “If you tell anyone I came here, it will help him do it.”
