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MOMMIES AND DADDIES
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To: Graff%
[email protected] From: Locke%
[email protected] Re: Unofficial request
I appreciate your warning, but I assure you that I do not underestimate the danger of having X in RP. In fact, that is a matter with which I could use your help, if you are inclined to give it. With JD and PA in hiding, and S compromised by having rescued X, persons close to them are in danger, either directly or through being used as hostages by X. We need to have them out of X's reach, and you are uniquely able to accomplish this. JD's parents are used to being in hiding, and have had some near misses; PA's parents, having already suffered one kidnapping, will also be inclined to cooperate.
The difficulty will come from my parents. There is no chance they will accept protective concealment if I propose it. If it comes from you, they might. I do not need to have my parents here, exposed to danger, where they might be used for leverage or to distract me from what must be accomplished.
Can you come yourself to RP to gather them up before I return with X? You would have about 30 hours to accomplish this. I apologize for the inconvenience, but you would once again have my gratitude and continue to have my support, both of which, I hope, will someday be more valuable than they are under present circumstances.
PW
Theresa Wiggin knew Graff was coming, since Elena Delphiki gave her a hurried call as soon as he had left her house. But she did not change her plans in the slightest. Not because she hoped to deceive him, but because there were papayas on the trees in the back yard that had to be harvested before they dropped to the ground. She had no intention of letting Graff interfere with something really important.
So when she heard Graff politely clapping his hands at the front gate, she was up on a ladder clipping off papayas and laying them into the bag at her side. Aparecida, the maid, had her instructions, and so Theresa soon heard Graff's footsteps coming across the tiles of the terrace.
"Mrs. Wiggin," he said.
"You've already taken two of my children," said Theresa without looking at him. "I suppose you want my firstborn, now."
"No," said Graff. "It's you and your husband I'm after this time."
"Taking us to join Ender and Valentine?" Even though she was being deliberately obtuse, the idea nevertheless had a momentary appeal. Ender and Valentine had left all this business behind.
"I'm afraid we can't spare a followup ship to visit their colony for several years yet," said Graff.
"Then I'm afraid you have nothing to offer us that we want," said Theresa.
"I'm sure that's true," said Graff. "It's what Peter needs. A free hand."
"We don't interfere in his work."
"He's bringing a dangerous person here," said Graff. "But I think you know that."
"Gossip flies around here, since there's nothing else for the parents of geniuses to do but twitter to each other about the doings of their brilliant boys and girls. The Arkanians and Delphikis have their children all but married off. And we get such fascinating visitors from outer space. Like you."
"My, but we're testy today," said Graff.
"I'm sure Bean's and Petra's families have agreed to leave Ribeirao Preto so that their children don't have to worry about Achilles taking them hostage. And someday Nikolai Delphiki and Stefan Arkanian will recover from having been mere bit players in their siblings' lives. But John Paul's and my situation is not at all the same. Our son is the idiot who decided to bring Achilles here."
"Yes, it must hurt you to have the one child who simply isn't at the same intellectual level as the others," said Graff.
Theresa looked at him, saw the twinkle in his eye, and laughed in spite of herself. "All right, he isn't stupid, he's so cocky he can't conceive of any of his plans failing. But the result is the same. And I have no intention of hearing about his death through some awful little email message. Or--worse--from a news report talking about how 'the brother of the great Ender Wiggin has failed in his bid to revive the office of Hegemon' and then watch how even in death Peter's obituary is accompanied by more footage of Ender after his victory over the Formics."
"You seem to have a very clear view of all the future possibilities," said Graff.
"No, just the unbearable ones. I'm staying, Mr. Colonization Minister. You'll have to find your completely inappropriate middle-aged recruits somewhere else."
"Actually, you're not inappropriate. You're still of childbearing age."
"Having children has brought me such joy," said Theresa, "that it's really marvelous to contemplate having more of them."
"I know perfectly well how much you've sacrificed for your children, and how much you love them. And I knew coming here that you wouldn't want to go."
"So you have soldiers waiting to take me with you by force? You already have my husband in custody?"
"No, no," said Graff. "I think you're right not to go."
"Oh."
"But Peter asked me to protect you, so I had to offer. No, I think it's a good thing for you to stay."
"And why is that?"
"Peter has many allies," said Graff. "But no friends."
"Not even you?"
"I'm afraid I studied him too closely in his childhood to take any of his present charisma at face value."
"He does have that, doesn't he. Charisma. Or at least charm."
"At least as much as Ender, when he chooses to use it."
Hearing Graff speak of Ender--of the kind of young man Ender had become before he was pitched out of the solar system in a colony ship after saving the human race--filled Theresa with familiar, but no less bitter, regrets. Graff knew Ender Wiggin at age seven and ten and twelve, years when Theresa's only links to her youngest, most vulnerable child were a few photographs and fading memories and the ache in her arms where she could remember holding him, and the last lingering sensation of his little arms flung around her neck.
"Even when you brought him back to Earth," said Theresa to Graff, "you didn't let us see him. You took Val to him, but not his father, not me."
"I'm sorry," said Graff. "I didn't know he would never come home at war's end. Seeing you would have reminded him that there was someone in the world who was supposed to protect him and take care of him."
"And that would have been a bad thing?"
"The toughness we needed from Ender was not the person he wanted to be. We had to protect it. Letting him see Valentine was dangerous enough."
"Are you so sure that you were right?"
"Not sure at all. But Ender won the war, and we can never go back and try it another way to see if it would have worked as well."
"And I can never go back and try to find some way through all of this that doesn't end up filling me with resentment and grief whenever I see you or even think of you."
Graff said nothing for the longest time.
"If you're waiting for me to apologize," began Theresa.
"No, no," said Graff. "I was trying to think of any apology I could make that wouldn't be laughably inadequate. I never fired a gun in the war, but I still caused casualties, and if it's any consolation, whenever I think of you and your husband I am also filled with regret."
"Not enough."
"No, I'm sure not," said Graff. "But I'm afraid my deepest regrets are for the parents of Bonzo Madrid, who put their son into my hands and got him back in a box."
Theresa wanted to fling a papaya at him and smear it all over his face. "Reminding me that I'm the mother of a killer?"
"Bonzo was the killer, ma'am," said Graff. "Ender defended himself. You entirely mistook my meaning. I'm the one who allowed Bonzo to be alone with Ender. I, not Ender, am the one responsible for his death. That's why I feel more regret toward the Madrid family than toward you. I've made a lot of mistakes. And I can never be sure which ones were necessary or harmless or even left us better off than if I hadn't made them."
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"How do you know you're not making a mistake now, letting me and John Paul stay?"
"As I said, Peter needs friends."
"But does the world need Peter?" asked Theresa.
"We don't always get the leader that we want," said Graff. "But sometimes we get to choose among the leaders that we have."
"And how will the choice be made?" asked Theresa. "On the battlefield or the ballot box?"
"Maybe," said Graff, "by the poisoned fig or the sabotaged car."
Theresa took his meaning at once. "You may be sure we'll keep an eye on Peter's food and his transportation."
"What," said Graff, "you'll carry all his food on your person, buying it from different grocers every day, and your husband will live in his car, never sleeping?"
"We retired young. One has to fill the empty hours."
Graff laughed. "Good luck, then. I'm sure you'll do all that needs doing. Thanks for talking with me."
"Let's do it again in another ten or twenty years," said Theresa.
"I'll mark it on my calendar."
And with a salute--which was rather more solemn than she would have expected--he walked back into the house and, presumably, on out through the front garden and into the street.
Theresa seethed for a while at what Graff and the International Fleet and the Formics and fate and God had done to her and her family. And then she thought of Ender and Valentine and wept a few tears onto the papayas. And then she thought of herself and John Paul, waiting and watching, trying to protect Peter. Graff was right. They could never watch him perfectly.
They would sleep. They would miss something. Achilles would have an opportunity--many opportunities--and just when they were most complacent he would strike and Peter would be dead and the world would be at Achilles's mercy because who else was clever and ruthless enough to fight him? Bean? Petra? Suriyawong? Nikolai? One of the other Battle School children scattered over the surface of Earth? If there was any who was ambitious enough to stop Achilles, he would have surfaced by now.
She was carrying the heavy bag of papayas into the house--sidling through the door, trying not to bump and bruise the fruit--when it dawned on her what Graff's errand had really been about.
Peter needs a friend, he said. The issue between Peter and Achilles might be resolved by poison or sabotage, he said. But she and John Paul could not possibly watch over Peter well enough to protect him from assassination, he said. Therefore, in what way could she and John Paul possibly be the friends that Peter needed?
The contest between Achilles and Peter would be just as easily resolved by Achilles's death as by Peter's.
At once there flashed into her memory the stories of some of the great poisoners of history, by rumor if not by proof. Lucretia Borgia. Cleopatra. What's-her-name who poisoned everybody around the Emperor Claudius and probably got him in the end, as well.
In olden days, there were no chemical tests to determine conclusively whether poison had been used. Poisoners gathered their own herbs, leaving no trail of purchases, no co-conspirators who might confess or accuse. If anything happened to Achilles before Peter had decided the monster boy had to go, Peter would launch an investigation...and when the trail led to his parents, as it inevitably would, how would Peter respond? Make an example of them, letting them go on trial? Or would he protect them, trying to cover up the result of the investigation, leaving his reign as Hegemon to be tainted by the rumors about Achilles's untimely death. No doubt every opponent of Peter's would resurrect Achilles as a martyr, a much-slandered boy who offered the brightest hope to mankind, slain in his youth by the crawlingly vile Peter Wiggin, or his mother the witch or his father the snake.
It was not enough to kill Achilles. It had to be done properly, in a way that would not harm Peter in the long run.
Though it would be better for Peter to endure the rumors and legends about Achilles's death than for Peter himself to be the slain one. She dare not wait too long.
My assignment from Graff, thought Theresa, is to become an assassin in order to protect my son.
And the truly horrifying thing is that I'm not questioning whether to do it, but how. And when.
4
CHOPIN
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To: Pythian%
[email protected] From: Graff%
[email protected] Re: Aren't we cute
I suppose you can be allowed to indulge your adolescent humor by using obvious pseudonyms like pythian%legume, and I know this is a use-once identity, but really, it smacks of a careless insouciance that worries me. We can't afford to lose you or your traveling companion because you had to make a joke.
Enough of imagining I could possibly influence your decisions. The first few weeks since the Belgian arrived in RP have been eventless. Your and your companion's parents are in training and quarantine, preparatory to going up to one of the colony ships. I will not actually take them off planet without your approval unless some emergency comes up. However, the moment I keep them past their training group's embarkation date, they become unusual and rumors will start to travel. It's dangerous to keep them Earthside for too long. And yet once we get them offworld, it will be even more difficult to get them back. I don't wish to pressure you, but your families' futures are at stake, and so far you haven't even consulted with them directly.
As for the Belgian, PW has given him a job--Assistant to the Hegemon. He has his own letterhead and email identity, a sort of minister without portfolio, with no bureaucracy to command and no money to disburse. Yet he keeps busy all day long. I wonder what he does.
I should have said that the Belgian has no official staff. Unofficially, Suri seems to be at his beck and call. I've heard from several observers that the change in him is quite astonishing. He never showed such exaggerated respect to you or PW as he does to the Belgian. They dine together often, and while the Belgian has never actually visited the barracks and training ground or gone on assignments or maneuvers with your little army, the inference that the Belgian is cultivating some degree of influence or even control over the Hegemony's small fighting force is inescapable. Are you in contact with Suri? When I tried to broach the subject with him, he never so much as answered.
As for you, my brilliant young friend, I hope you realize that all of Sister Carlotta's false identities were provided by the Vatican, and your use of them blares like a trumpet within Vatican walls. They have asked me to assure you that Achilles has no support within their ranks, and never did have, even before he murdered Carlotta, but if they can track you so easily, perhaps someone else can as well. As they say, a word to the wise is sufficient. And here I've gone and written five paragraphs.
--Graff
Petra and Bean traveled together for a month before things came to a head. At first Petra was content to let Bean make all the decisions. After all, she had never gone underground like this, traveling with false identities. He seemed to have all sorts of papers, some of which had been with him in the Philippines, and the rest in various hiding places scattered throughout the world.
The trouble was, all her identities were designed for a sixty-year-old woman who spoke languages that Petra had never learned. "This is absurd," she told Bean when he handed her the fourth such identity. "No one will believe this for an instant."
"And yet they do," said Bean.
"And I'd like to know why," she retorted. "I think there's more to this than the paperwork. I think we're getting help every time we pass through an identity check."
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no," said Bean.
"But every time you use some connection of yours to get a security guard to ignore the fact that I do not look old enough to be this person--"
"Sometimes, when you haven't had enough sleep--"
"You're too tall to be cute. So give it up."
"Petra, I agree with you," said Bean at last. "These were all for Sister Carlotta, and you don't look like her, and we are leavin
g a trail of favors asked for and favors done. So we need to separate."
"Two reasons why that won't happen," said Petra.
"You mean besides the fact that traveling together was your idea from the beginning? Which you blackmailed me into because we both know you'd get killed without me?--which hasn't stopped you from criticizing the way I go about keeping you alive, I notice."
"The second reason," Petra said, ignoring his effort to pick a fight, "is that while we're on the run you can't do anything. And it drives you crazy not to do anything."
"I'm doing a lot of things," said Bean.
"Besides arranging for us to get past stupid security guards with bad ID?"
"Already I've started two wars, cured three diseases, and written an epic poem. If you weren't so self-centered you would have noticed."
"You're such a jack of all trades, Julian."
"Staying alive isn't doing nothing."
"But it isn't doing what you want to do with your life," said Petra.
"Staying alive is all I've ever wanted to do with my life, dear child."
"But in the end, you're going to fail at that," said Petra.
"Most of us do. All of us, actually, unless Sister Carlotta and the Christians turn out to be right."
"You want to accomplish something before you die."
Bean sighed. "Because you want that, you think everyone does."
"The human need to leave something of yourself behind is universal."
"But I'm not human."
"No, you're superhuman," she said in disgust. "There's no talking to you, Bean."
"And yet you persist."
But Petra knew perfectly well that Bean felt just as she did--that it wasn't enough to stay in hiding, going from place to place, taking a bus here, a train there, a plane to some far-off city, only to start over again in a few days.
The only reason it mattered that they stay alive was so they could keep their independence long enough to work against Achilles. Except Bean kept denying that he had any such motive, and so they did nothing.
Bean had been maddening ever since Petra first met him in Battle School. He was the most incredibly tiny little runt then, so precocious he seemed snotty even when he said good morning, and even after they had all worked with him for years and had got the true measure of him at Command School, Petra was still the only one of Ender's jeesh that actually liked Bean.