Is that what I've done, once again? By putting myself on this roster, I gave my future into this boy's hands. I counted on him seeing in me what I see. But of course he couldn't. I have to give him time.
If there was time. For the teachers were moving quickly now, and Bean might not have a year in this army to prove himself to Wiggin.
14
BROTHERS
"You have results for me?"
"Interesting ones. Volescu was lying. Somewhat."
"I hope you're going to be more precise than that."
"Bean's genetic alteration was not based on a clone of Volescu. But they are related. Volescu is definitely not Bean's father. But he is almost certainly Volescu's half-uncle or a double cousin. I hope Volescu has a half-brother or double first cousin, because such a man is the only possible father of the fertilized egg that Volescu altered."
"You have a list of Volescu's relatives, I assume?"
"We didn't need any family at the trial. And Volescu's mother was not married. He uses her name."
"So Volescu's father had another child somewhere only you don't even know his name. I thought you knew everything."
"We know everything that we knew was worth knowing. That's a crucial distinction. We simply haven't looked for Volescu's father. He's not guilty of anything important. We can't investigate everybody."
"Another matter. Since you know everything that you know is worth knowing, perhaps you can tell me why a certain crippled boy has been removed from the school where I placed him?"
"Oh. Him. When you suddenly stopped touting him, we got suspicious. So we checked him out. Tested him. He's no Bean, but he definitely belongs here."
"And it never crossed your mind that I had good reason for keeping him out of Battle School?"
"We assumed that you thought that we might choose Achilles over Bean, who was, after all, far too young, so you offered only your favorite."
"You assumed. I've been dealing with you as if you were intelligent, and you've been dealing with me as if I were an idiot. Now I see it should have been the exact reverse."
"I didn't know Christians got so angry."
"Is Achilles already in Battle School?"
"He's still recovering from his fourth surgery. We had to fix the leg on Earth."
"Let me give you a word of advice. Do not put him in Battle School while Bean is still there."
"Bean is only six. He's still too young to enter Battle School, let alone graduate."
"If you put Achilles in, take Bean out. Period."
"Why?"
"If you're too stupid to believe me after all my other judgments turned out to be correct, why should I give you the ammunition to let you second-guess me? Let me just say that putting them in school together is a probable death sentence for one of them."
"Which one?"
"That rather depends on which one sees the other first."
"Achilles says he owes everything to Bean. He loves Bean."
"Then by all means, believe him and not me. But don't send the body of the loser back to me to deal with. You bury your own mistakes."
"That sounds pretty heartless."
"I'm not going to weep over the grave of either boy. I tried to save both their lives. You apparently seem determined to let them find out which is fittest in the best Darwinian fashion."
"Calm down, Sister Carlotta. We'll consider what you've told us. We won't be foolish."
"You've already been foolish. I have no high expectations for you now."
As days became weeks, the shape of Wiggin's army began to unfold, and Bean was filled with both hope and despair. Hope, because Wiggin was setting up an army that was almost infinitely adaptable. Despair, because he was doing it without any reliance on Bean.
After only a few practices, Wiggin had chosen his toon leaders--every one of them a veteran from the transfer lists. In fact, every veteran was either a toon leader or a second. Not only that, instead of the normal organization--four toons of ten soldiers each--he had created five toons of eight, and then made them practice a lot in half-toons of four men each, one commanded by the toon leader, the other by the second.
No one had ever fragmented an army like that before. And it wasn't just an illusion. Wiggin worked hard to make sure the toon leaders and seconds had plenty of leeway. He'd tell them their objective and let the leader decide how to achieve it. Or he'd group three toons together under the operational command of one of the toon leaders to handle one operation, while Wiggin himself commanded the smaller remaining force. It was an extraordinary amount of delegation.
Some of the soldiers were critical at first. As they were milling around near the entrance to the barracks, the veterans talked about how they'd practiced that day--in ten groups of four. "Everybody knows it's loser strategy to divide your army," said Fly Molo, who commanded A toon.
Bean was a little disgusted that the soldier with the highest rank after Wiggin would say something disparaging about his commander's strategy. Sure, Fly was learning, too. But there's such a thing as insubordination.
"He hasn't divided the army," said Bean. "He's just organized it. And there's no such thing as a rule of strategy that you can't break. The idea is to have your army concentrated at the decisive point. Not to keep it huddled together all the time."
Fly glared at Bean. "Just cause you little guys can hear us doesn't mean you understand what we're talking about."
"If you don't want to believe me, think what you want. My talking isn't going to make you stupider than you already are."
Fly came at him, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to the edge of his bunk.
At once, Nikolai launched himself from the bunk opposite and landed on Fly's back, bumping his head into the front of Bean's bunk. In moments, the other toon leaders had pulled Fly and Nikolai apart--a ludicrous fight anyway, since Nikolai wasn't that much bigger than Bean.
"Forget it, Fly," said Hot Soup--Han Tzu, leader of D toon. "Nikolai thinks he's Bean's big brother."
"What's the kid doing mouthing off to a toon leader?" demanded Fly.
"You were being insubordinate toward our commander," said Bean. "And you were also completely wrong. By your view, Lee and Jackson were idiots at Chancellorsville."
"He keeps doing it!"
"Are you so stupid you can't recognize the truth just because the person telling it to you is short?" All of Bean's frustration at not being one of the officers was spilling out. He knew it, but he didn't feel like controlling it. They needed to hear the truth. And Wiggin needed to have the support when he was being taken down behind his back.
Nikolai was standing on the lower bunk, so he was as close to Bean as possible, affirming the bond between them. "Come on, Fly," said Nikolai. "This is Bean, remember?"
And, to Bean's surprise, that silenced Fly. Until this moment, Bean had not realized the power that his reputation had. He might be just a regular soldier in Dragon Army, but he was still the finest student of strategy and military history in the school, and apparently everybody--or at least everybody but Wiggin--knew it.
"I should have spoken with more respect," said Bean.
"Damn right," said Fly.
"But so should you."
Fly lunged against the grip of the boys holding him.
"Talking about Wiggin," said Bean. "You spoke without respect. 'Everybody knows it's loser strategy to divide your army.' " He got Fly's intonation almost exactly right. Several kids laughed. And, grudgingly, so did Fly.
"OK, right," said Fly. "I was out of line." He turned to Nikolai. "But I'm still an officer."
"Not when you're dragging a little kid off his bunk you're not," said Nikolai. "You're a bully when you do that."
Fly blinked. Wisely, no one else said a thing until Fly had decided how he was going to respond. "You're right, Nikolai. To defend your friend against a bully." He looked from Nikolai to Bean and back again. "Pusha, you guys even look like brothers." He walked past them, heading for his bunk. The othe
r toon leaders followed him. Crisis over.
Nikolai looked at Bean then. "I was never as squished up and ugly as you," he said.
"And if I'm going to grow up to look like you, I'm going to kill myself now," said Bean.
"Do you have to talk to really big guys like that?"
"I didn't expect you to attack him like a one-man swarm of bee."
"I guess I wanted to jump on somebody," said Nikolai.
"You? Mr. Nice Guy?"
"I don't feel so nice lately." He climbed up on the bunk beside Bean, so they could talk more softly. "I'm out of my depth here, Bean. I don't belong in this army."
"What do you mean?"
"I wasn't ready to get promoted. I'm just average. Maybe not that good. And even though this army wasn't a bunch of heroes in the standings, these guys are good. Everybody learns faster than me. Everybody gets it and I'm still standing there thinking about it."
"So you work harder."
"I am working harder. You--you just get it, right away, everything, you see it all. And it's not that I'm stupid. I always get it, too. Just . . . a step behind."
"Sorry," said Bean.
"What are you sorry about? It's not your fault."
Yes it is, Nikolai. "Come on, you telling me you wish you weren't part of Ender Wiggin's army?"
Nikolai laughed a little. "He's really something, isn't he?"
"You'll do your part. You're a good soldier. You'll see. When we get into the battles, you'll do as well as anybody."
"Eh, probably. They can always freeze me and throw me around. A big lumpy projectile weapon."
"You're not so lumpy."
"Everybody's lumpy compared to you. I've watched you--you give away half your food."
"They feed me too much."
"I've got to study." Nikolai jumped across to his bunk.
Bean felt bad sometimes about having put Nikolai in this situation. But when they started winning, a lot of kids outside of Dragon Army would be wishing they could trade places with him. In fact, it was kind of surprising Nikolai realized he wasn't as qualified as the others. After all, the differences weren't that pronounced. Probably there were a lot of kids who felt just like Nikolai. But Bean hadn't really reassured him. In fact, he had probably reaffirmed Nikolai's feelings of inferiority.
What a sensitive friend I am.
There was no point in interviewing Volescu again, not after getting such lies from him the first time. All that talk of copies, and him the original--there was no mitigation now. He was a murderer, a servant of the Father of Lies. He would do nothing to help Sister Carlotta. And the need to find out what might be expected of the one child who evaded Volescu's little holocaust was too great to rely again on the word of such a man.
Besides, Volescu had made contact with his half-brother or double cousin--how else could he have obtained a fertilized egg containing his DNA? So Sister Carlotta should be able either to follow Volescu's trail or duplicate his research.
She learned quickly that Volescu was the illegitimate child of a Romanian woman in Budapest, Hungary. A little checking--and the judicious use of her security clearance--got her the name of the father, a Greek-born official in the League who had recently been promoted to service on the Hegemon's staff. That might have been a roadblock, but Sister Carlotta did not need to speak to the grandfather. She only needed to know who he was in order to find out the names of his three legitimate children. The daughter was eliminated because the shared parent was a male. And in checking the two sons, she decided to go first to visit the married one.
They lived on the island of Crete, where Julian ran a software company whose only client was the International Defense League. Obviously this was not a coincidence, but nepotism was almost honorable compared to some of the outright graft and favor-trading that was endemic in the League. In the long run such corruption was basically harmless, since the International Fleet had seized control of its own budget early on and never let the League touch it again. Thus the Polemarch and the Strategos had far more money at their disposal than the Hegemon, which made him, though first in title, weakest in actual power and independence of movement.
And just because Julian Delphiki owed his career to his father's political connections did not necessarily mean that his company's product was not adequate and that he himself was not an honest man. By the standards of honesty that prevailed in the world of business, anyway.
Sister Carlotta found that she did not need her security clearance to get a meeting with Julian and his wife, Elena. She called and said she would like to see them on a matter concerning the I.F., and they immediately opened their calendar to her. She arrived in Knossos and was immediately driven to their home on a bluff overlooking the Aegean. They looked nervous--indeed, Elena was almost frantic, wringing a handkerchief.
"Please," she said, after accepting their offer of fruit and cheese. "Please tell me why you are so upset. There's nothing about my business that should alarm you."
The two of them glanced at each other, and Elena became flustered. "Then there's nothing wrong with our boy?"
For a moment, Sister Carlotta wondered if they already knew about Bean--but how could they?
"Your son?"
"Then he's all right!" Elena burst into tears of relief and when her husband knelt beside her, she clung to him and sobbed.
"You see, it was very hard for us to let him go into service," said Julian. "So when a religious person calls to tell us she needs to see us on business pertaining to the I.F., we thought--we leapt to the conclusion--"
"Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know you had a son in the military, or I would have been careful to assure you from the start that . . . but now I fear I am here under false pretenses. The matter I need to speak to you about is personal, so personal you may be reluctant to answer. Yet it is about a matter that is of some importance to the I.F. Truthful answers cannot possibly expose you to any personal risk, I promise."
Elena got control of herself. Julian seated himself again, and now they looked at Sister Carlotta almost with cheerfulness. "Oh, ask whatever you want," said Julian. "We're just happy that--whatever you want to ask."
"We'll answer if we can," said Elena.
"You say you have a son. This raises the possibility that--there is reason to wonder if you might not at some point have . . . was your son conceived under circumstances that would have allowed a clone of his fertilized egg to be made?"
"Oh yes," said Elena. "That is no secret. A defect in one fallopian tube and an ectopic pregnancy in the other made it impossible for me to conceive in utero. We wanted a child, so they drew out several of my eggs, fertilized them with my husband's sperm, and then cloned the ones we chose. There were four that we cloned, six copies of each. Two girls and two boys. So far, we have implanted only the one. He was such a--such a special boy, we did not want to dilute our attention. Now that his education is out of our hands, however, we have been thinking of bearing one of the girls. It's time." She reached over and took Julian's hand and smiled. He smiled back.
Such a contrast to Volescu. Hard to believe there was any genetic material in common.
"You said six copies of each of the four fertilized eggs," said Sister Carlotta.
"Six including the original," said Julian. "That way we have the best chance of implanting each of the four and carrying them through a full pregnancy."
"A total of twenty-four fertilized eggs. And only one of them was implanted?"
"Yes, we were very fortunate, the first one worked perfectly."
"Leaving twenty-three."
"Yes. Exactly."
"Mr. Delphiki, all twenty-three of those fertilized eggs remain in storage, waiting for implantation?"
"Of course."
Sister Carlotta thought for a moment. "How recently have you checked?"
"Just last week," said Julian. "As we began talking about having another child. The doctor assured us that nothing has happened to the eggs and they can be implanted with only a fe
w hours' notice."
"But did the doctor actually check?"
"I don't know," said Julian.
Elena was starting to tense up a little. "What have you heard?" she asked.
"Nothing," said Sister Carlotta. "What I am looking for is the source of a particular child's genetic material. I simply need to make sure that your fertilized eggs were not the source."
"But of course they were not. Except for our son."
"Please don't be alarmed. But I would like to know the name of your doctor and the facility where the eggs are stored. And then I would be glad if you would call your doctor and have him go, in person, to the facility and insist upon seeing the eggs himself."
"They can't be seen without a microscope," said Julian.
"See that they have not been disturbed," said Sister Carlotta.
They had both become hyperalert again, especially since they had no idea what this was all about--nor could they be told. As soon as Julian gave her the name of doctor and hospital, Sister Carlotta stepped onto the porch and, as she gazed at the sail-specked Aegean, she used her global and got herself put through to the I.F. headquarters in Athens.
It would take several hours, perhaps, for either her call or Julian's to bring in the answer, so she and Julian and Elena made a heroic effort to appear unconcerned. They took her on a walking tour of their neighborhood, which offered views both ancient and modern, and of nature verdant, desert, and marine. The dry air was refreshing as long as the breeze from the sea did not lag, and Sister Carlotta enjoyed hearing Julian talk about his company and Elena talk about her work as a teacher. All thought of their having risen in the world through government corruption faded as she realized that however he got his contract, Julian was a serious, dedicated creator of software, while Elena was a fervent teacher who treated her profession as a crusade. "I knew as soon as I started teaching our son how remarkable he was," Elena told her. "But it wasn't until his pre-tests for school placement that we first learned that his gifts were particularly suited for the I.F."