The Shadow of the Hegemon - Orson Scott Card

by Orson Scott Card

  She cursed herself. Goading him like this, how is it different from jumping out of the air plane?

  Then again, maybe it was the fact that she spoke to him without cringing that made him value her.

  Fool, she said to herself. You are not equipped to understand this boy—you're not insane enough. Don't try to guess why he does what he does, or how he feels about you or anybody or anything. Study him so you can learn how he makes his plans, what he's likely to do, so that someday you can defeat him. But don't ever try to understand. If you can't even understand yourself, what hope do you have of comprehending somebody as deformed as Achilles?

  They did not land in Kabul. They landed in Tashkent, refuelled, and then went over the Himalayas to New Delhi.

  So he lied to her about their destination. He hadn't trusted her after all. But as long as he refrained from killing her, she could endure a little mistrust.

  CHAPTER 8 — COMMUNING WITH THE DEAD

  To: Carlotta%agape@vatican.net/orders/sisters/ind

  From: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov

  Re: An answer for your dead friend

  If you know who I really am, and you have contact with a certain person purported to be dead, please inform that person that I have done my best to fulfil expectations. I believe further collaboration is possible, but not through intermediaries. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then please inform me of that, as well, so I can begin my search again.

  Bean came home to find that Sister Carlotta had packed their bags.

  "Moving day?" he asked.

  They had agreed that either one of them could decide that it was time to move on, without having to defend the decision. It was the only way to be sure of acting on any unconscious cues that someone was closing in on them. They didn't want to spend their last moments of life listening to each other say, "I knew we should have left three days ago!"

  "Well why didn't you say so?"

  "Because I didn't have a reason."

  "We have two hours till the flight."

  "Wait a minute," said Bean. "You decide we're going, I decide the destination." That was how they'd decided to keep their movements random.

  She handed him the printout of an email. It was from Locke. "Greensboro, North Carolina, in the U.S.," she said.

  "Perhaps I'm not decoding this right," said Bean, "but I don't see an invitation to visit him."

  "He doesn't want intermediaries," said Carlotta. "We can't trust his email to be untraced."

  Bean took a match and burned the email in the sink. Then he crumbled the ashes and washed them down the drain. "What about Petra?"

  "Still no word. Seven of Ender's jeesh released. The Russians are simply saying that Petra's place of captivity has not yet been discovered."

  "Kuso," said Bean.

  "I know," said Carlotta, "but what can we do if they won't tell us? I'm afraid she's dead, Bean. You've got to realise that's the likeliest reason for them to stonewall."

  Bean knew it, but didn't believe it. "You don't know Petra," he said.

  "You don't know Russia," said Carlotta.

  "Most people are decent in every country," said Bean.

  "Achilles is enough to tip the balance wherever he goes."

  Bean nodded. "Rationally, I have to agree with you. Irrationally I expect to see her again someday."

  "If I didn't know you so well, I might interpret that as a sign of your faith in the resurrection." Bean picked up his suitcase. "Am I bigger, or is this smaller?"

  "The case is the same size," said Carlotta.

  "I think I'm growing."

  "Of course you're growing. Look at your pants."

  "I'm still wearing them," said Bean.

  "More to the point, look at your ankles."

  "Oh." There was more ankle showing than when he bought them.

  Bean had never seen a child grow up, but it bothered him that in the weeks they had been in Araraquara, he had grown at least five centimetres. If this was puberty, where were the other changes that were supposed to go along with it?

  "We'll buy you new clothes in Greensboro," said Sister Carlotta.

  Greensboro. "The place where Ender grew up."

  "And where he killed for the first time," said Sister Carlotta.

  "You just won't let go of that, will you?" said Bean.

  "When you had Achilles in your power, you didn't kill him."

  Bean didn't like hearing himself compared to Ender that way. Not when it showed Ender at a disadvantage. "Sister Carlotta, we'd have a whole lot less difficulty right now if I had killed him."

  "You showed mercy. You turned the other cheek. You gave him a chance to make something worthwhile out of his life."

  "I made sure he'd get committed to a mental institution."

  "Are you so determined to believe in your own lack of virtue?"

  "Yes," said Bean. "I prefer truth to lies."

  "There," said Carlotta. "Yet another virtue to add to my list."

  Bean laughed in spite of himself. "I'm glad you like me," he said.

  "Are you afraid to meet him?"

  "Who?"

  "Ender's brother."

  "Not afraid," said Bean.

  "How do you feel, then?"

  "Sceptical," said Bean.

  "He showed humility in that email," said Sister Carlotta. "He wasn't sure that he'd figured things out exactly right."

  "Oh, there's a thought. The humble Hegemon."

  "He's not Hegemon yet," said Carlotta.

  "He got seven of Ender's jeesh released, just by publishing a column. He has influence. He has ambition. And now to learn he has humility—well, it's just too much for me."

  "Laugh all you want. Let's go out and find a cab."

  There was no last-minute business to take care of. They had paid cash for everything, owed nothing. They could walk away.

  They lived on money drawn from accounts Graff had set up for them. There was nothing about the account Bean was using now to tag it as belonging to Julian Delphiki. It held his military salary, including his combat and retirement bonuses. The I.F. had given all of Ender's jeesh very large trust funds that they couldn't touch till they came of age. The saved-up pay and bonuses were just to tide them over during their childhood. Graff had assured him that he would not run out of money while he was in hiding.

  Sister Carlotta's money came from the Vatican. One person there knew what she was doing. She, too, would have money enough for her needs. Neither of them had the temperament to exploit the situation. They spent little, Sister Carlotta because she wanted nothing more, Bean because he knew that any kind of flamboyance or excess would mark him in people's memories. He always had to seem to be a child running errands for his grandmother, not an undersized war hero cashing in on his back pay.

  Their passports caused them no problems, either. Again, Graff had been able to pull strings for them. Given the way they looked—both of Mediterranean ancestry—they carried passports from Catalonia. Carlotta knew Barcelona well, and Catalan was her childhood language. She barely spoke it now, but no matter—hardly anyone did. And no one would be surprised that her grandson couldn't speak the language at all. Besides, how many Catalans would they meet in their travels? Who would try to test their story? If someone got too nosy, they'd simply move on to some other city, some other country.

  They landed in Miami, then Atlanta, then Greensboro. They were exhausted and slept the night at an airport hotel. The next day, they logged in and printed out guides to the county bus system. It was a fairly modern system, enclosed and electric, but the map made no sense to Bean.

  "Why don't any of the buses go through here?" he asked.

  "That's where the rich people live," said Sister Carlotta.

  "They make them all live together in one place?"

  "They feel safer," said Carlotta. "And by living close together, they have a better chance of their children marrying into other rich families."

  "But why don't they want buses?"

&nb
sp; "They ride in individual vehicles. They can afford the fees. It gives them more freedom to choose their own schedule. And it shows everyone just how rich they are."

  "It's still stupid," said Bean. "Look how far the buses have to go out of their way."

  "The rich people didn't want their streets to be enclosed in order to hold a bus system."

  "So what?" asked Bean.

  Sister Carlotta laughed. "Bean, isn't there plenty of stupidity in the military, too?"

  "But in the long run, the guy who wins battles gets to make the decisions."

  "Well, these rich people won the economic battles. Or their grandparents did. So now they get their way most of the time."

  "Sometimes I feel like I don't know anything."

  "You've lived half your life in a tube in space, and before that you lived on the streets of Rotterdam."

  "I've lived in Greece with my family and in Araraquara, too. I should have figured this out."

  "That was Greece. And Brazil. This is America."

  "So money rules in America, but not those other places?"

  "No, Bean. Money rules almost everywhere. But different cultures have different ways of displaying it. In Araraquara, for instance, they made sure that the tram lines ran out to the rich neighbourhoods. Why? So the servants could come to work. In America, they're more afraid of criminals coming to steal, so the sign of wealth is to make sure that the only way to reach them is by private car or on foot."

  "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 realised 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 recognises the value of money, while only select groups recognise 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 realise that he spends no time on his school work. 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 folk-ways 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 full-time 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 criticise about him. Or maybe they never felt like he was really theirs. They didn't criticise 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 non-resident 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 run-down 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 neighbourhood 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 flavour 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 flavours too syrupy. "Mmmm, deliciosa," said Bean.

  "Fecha a boquinha, menino," she answered. "E nao fala portugues 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 realised 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.