Shadow Puppets Part 8

"You loved Ender and Valentine," said Peter. It slipped out before he realized what he was saying.

"And not you?" said Father. "Oh. My mistake. I guess there is no difference between your upbringing and Achilles's. Too bad, really. Have a nice day, son!"

Peter tried to call him back, but Father pretended not to have heard him and went on his way, whistling the Ma.r.s.eillaise, of all things.

All right, so his suspicions of Mother were absurd, though Father had a twisted way of saying so. What a clever family he had, everybody always making a puzzle or a drama out of everything. Or a comedy. That's what he'd just played out with his father, wasn't it? A farce. An absurdity.

If Achilles had a collaborator here, it was probably not Peter's parents. Who else, then? Should he make something of the way Achilles and Suriyawong consulted? But he'd watched the vids of their occasional lunches and they said nothing beyond ordinary chat about the things they were working on. If there was a code it was a very subtle one. It's not even like they were friends-the conversation was always rather stiff and formal, and if anything bothered Peter about them, it was the way Suriyawong always seemed to phrase things in a subservient way.

He certainly never acted subservient to Bean or to Peter That was something to think about, too. What had really pa.s.sed between Suri and Achilles during the rescue and the return to Brazil?

What silliness, Peter told himself. If Achilles has a confederate, they doubtless communicate through dead drops and coded messages in emails or something like that. Spy stuff.

Not dumb attempts to break into Achilles's room-Achilles surely would not stake his life on confederates as dumb as that. And Suriyawong-how could Achilles possibly hope to corrupt him? It's not as if Achilles had influence in the Chinese empire now, so he could use Suri's family as hostages.

No, Peter would have to keep looking, keep the electronic surveillance going, until he found out what Achilles was doing to subvert Peter's work-or take it over.

What was not possible was that Achilles had simply given up on his ambitions and was now trying to make a place for himself in the bright future of a world united under the rule of Peter Wiggin.

But wouldn't it be nice if he had.

Maybe it was time to give up on learning anything from Achilles, and start setting him up for destruction.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE HUMAN RACE

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] org Re: Ill help youSo, Mr. Wonderboy Hegemon, now that you're no longer Demosthenes of "freeamerica.org", is there any good reason why my telling you what I see from the sky wouldn't be treason?

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Re: Because ...

Because only the Hegemony is actually doing anything about China, or actively trying to get Russia and the Warsaw Pact out of bed with Beijing.

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] org Re: Bulls.h.i.t We saw your little army pull somebody out of a prisoner convoy on a highway in China. If that was who we think it was no way are you ever seeing anything from me again. My info doesn't go to psycho megalomaniacs. Except you, of course.From [email protected] To: [email protected] Re: Good callGood call. Not safe. Here's what. If there's something I should know because you can't act and I can, deaddrop it to my former cinc at a weblink that will come to you from IComeAnon. He'll know what to do with it. He isn't working for me any more for the same reason you're not helping. But he's still on our side-and, fyi,[?] I'm still on our side, too.Professor Anton had no laboratory and no library. There was no professional journal in his house, nothing to show he had ever been a scientist. Bean was not surprised. Back when the IDL was hunting down anyone doing research into altering the human genome, Anton was considered the most dangerous of men. He had been served with an order of inhibition, which meant that for many years he bore within his brain a device that, when he tried to concentrate on his area of study, he would have a panic attack. He had the strength, once, to hint to Sister Carlotta more than he should have about Bean's condition. But otherwise, he had been shut down in the prime of his career.

Now the order of inhibition had been lifted, but too late. His brain had been trained to avoid thinking deeply about his area of specialization. There was no going back for him.

"Not a problem," said Anton. "Science goes on without me. For instance, there's a new bacterium in my lung that undoes my cancer, bit by bit. I can't smoke any more, or the cancer grows faster than the bacteria can undo it. But I'm getting better, and they didn't have to take out my lungs to do it. Walk with me-I actually enjoy walking now.

They followed him through the garden to the front gate. In Brazil, the gardens were in the front of the house, so pa.s.sersby could see over the front wall and the greenery and flowers could decorate the street. In Catalunya, as in Italy. the gardens were hidden away in a central courtyard, and the street got no gift but plaster walls and heavy wooden doors. Bean had not realized how much he had come to regard Ribeirao Preto as his home, but he missed it now, walking down the charming yet unrelentingly lifeless street.

Soon they reached the rambla, the broad central avenue that in all the coastal towns led down the slope of the city toward the sea. It was nearing noon, and the rambla was busy with people on errands. Anton pointed out shops and other buildings, telling them about the people who owned them or who worked there or lived there.

"I see you've become quite involved in the life of this city," said Petra.

"Superficially," said Anton. "An old Russian, long exited in Romania, I'm a curiosity. They talk to me, but not about things that matter in their soul."

"So why not go back to Russia?" asked Bean.

"Ah, Russia. So many things about Russia. Just to remember them brings back the glorious days of my career, when I was gamboling about inside the nucleus of the human cell like a happy little lamb. But you see, those thoughts make me start to panic a little. So... I don't go where I get reminded."

"You're thinking about it now," said Bean.

"No, I'm saying words about it," said Anton. "And besides, if I didn't intend to think about it, I wouldn't have consented to see you.

"And yet," said Bean, "you seem unwilling to look at me."

"Ah, well," said Anton. "If I keep you in my peripheral vision, if I don't think about thinking about you... you are the one fruit that my tree of theory bore."

"There were more than a score of us," said Bean. "But the others were murdered."

"You survived," said Anton. "The others didn't. Why was that, do you think?"

"I hid in a toilet tank."

"Yes, yes," said Anton, "so I gleaned from Sister Carlotta, G.o.d rest her soul. But why did you, and you alone, sneak out of your bed and go into the bathroom and hide in such a dangerous and difficult place? Scarcely a year old, too. So precocious. So desperate to survive. Yet genetically identical to all your brothers, da?"

"Cloned," said Bean, "so ... yes.

"It is not all genetics, is it?" said Anton. "It is not all anything. So much left to learn. And you are the only teacher"

"I don't know anything about that. I'm a soldier."

"It is your body that would teach us. And every cell inside it."

"Sorry, but I'm still using them," said Bean.

"As I'm still using my mind," said Anton, "even though it won't go where I most want it to take me."

Bean turned to Petra. "Is that why you brought me here? So Professor Anton could see what a big boy I've become?"

"No," said Petra.

"She brought you here," said Anton, "so I can persuade you that you are human."

Bean sighed, though what he wanted to do was walk away, get a cab to the airport, fly to another country, and be alone. Be away from Petra and her demands on him.

"Professor Anton," said Bean, "I'm quite aware that the genetic alteration that produced my talents and my defects is well within the range of normal variation of the human species. I know that there is no reason to suppose that I could not produce viable offspring if I mated with a human woman. Nor is my trait necessarily dominant-I might have children with it, I might have children without. Now can we simply enjoy our walk down to the sea?"

"Ignorance is not a tragedy," said Anton, "merely an opportunity. But to know and refuse to know what you know, that is foolishness."

Bean looked at Petra. She was not meeting his gaze. Yes, she certainly knew how annoyed he was, and yet she refused to cooperate with him in exiting the situation.

I must love her, thought Bean. Otherwise I would have nothing to do with her, the way she thinks she knows better than I do what's good for me. We have it on record-I'm the smartest person in the world. So why are so many other people eager to give me advice?

"Your life is going to be short," said Anton. "And at the end, there will be pain, physical and emotional. You will grow too large for this world, too large for your heart. But you have always been too large of mind for an ordinary life, da? You have always been apart. A stranger. Human by name, but not truly a member of the species, excluded from all clubs."

Till now, Anton's words had been mere irritants, floating past him like falling leaves. Now they struck him hard, with a sudden rush of grief and regret that left him almost gasping. He could not help the hesitation, the change of stride that showed the others that these words had suddenly begun to affect him. What line had Anton crossed? Yet he had crossed it.

"You are lonely," said Anton. "And humans are not designed to be alone. It's in our genes. We're social beings. Even the most introverted person alive is constantly hungry for human a.s.sociation. You are no exception. Bean."

There were tears in his eyes, but Bean refused to acknowledge them. He hated emotions. They took control of him, weakened him.

"Let me tell you what I know," said Anton. "Not as a scientist- that road may not be utterly closed to me, but it's mostly washed out, and full of ruts, and I don't use it. But my life as a man, that door is still open."

"I'm listening," said Bean.

"I have always been as lonely as you," he said. "Never as intelligent, but not a fool, either. I followed my mind into my work, and let it be my life. I was content with that, partly because I was so successful that my work brought great satisfaction, and partly because I was of a disposition not to look upon women with desire." He smiled wanly. "In that era, of my youth, the governments of most countries were actively encouraging those of us whose mating instinct had been short-circuited to indulge those desires and take no mate, have no children. Part of the effort to funnel all of human endeavor into the great struggle with the alien enemy. So it was almost patriotic of me to indulge myself in fleeting affairs that meant nothing, that led nowhere. Where could they lead?"

This is more than I want to know about you, thought Bean. It has nothing to do with me.

"I tell you this," said Anton, "so you understand that I know something of loneliness, too. Because all of a sudden my work was taken away from me. From my mind, not just from my daily activities. I could not even think about it. And I quickly discovered that my friendships were not... transcendent. They were all tied to my work, and when my work went away, so did these friends. They were not unkind, they still inquired after me, they made overtures, but there was nothing to say, our minds and hearts did not really touch at any point. I discovered that I did not know anybody, and n.o.body knew me.

Again, that stab of anguish in Bean's heart. This time, though, he was not unprepared, and he breathed a little more deeply and took it in stride.

"I was angry, of course, as who would not be?" said Anton. "And do you know what I wanted?"

Bean did not want to say what he immediately thought of: death.

"Not suicide, never that. My life wish is too strong, and I was not depressed. I was furious. Well, no, I was depressed, but I knew that killing myself would only help my enemies-the government-accomplish their real purpose without having had to dirty their hands. No, I did not wish to die. What I wanted, with all my heart, was... to begin to live."

"Why do I feel a song coming on?" said Bean. The sarcastic words slipped out of him unbidden.

To his surprise, Anton laughed. "Yes, yes, it's such a cliche that it should be followed by a love song, shouldn't it? A sentimental tune that tells of how I was not alive until I met my beloved, and now the moon is new, the sea is blue, the month is June, our love is true."

Petra burst out laughing. "You missed your calling. The Russian Cole Porter"

"But my point was serious," said Anton. "When a man's life is bent so that his desire is not toward women, it does not change his longing for meaning in his life. A man searches for something that will outlast his life. For immortality of a kind. For a way to change the world, to have his life matter But it is all in vain. I was swept away until I existed only in footnotes in other men's articles. It all came down to this, as it always does. You can change the world-as you have, Bean, Julian Delphiki-you and Petra Arkanian, both of you, all those children who fought, and the ones who did not fight, all of you-you changed the world. You saved the world. All of humanity is your progeny. And yet... it is empty, isn't it? They didn't take it away from you the way they took my work from me. But time has taken it away. It's in the past, and yet you are still alive, so what is your life for?"

They were at the stone steps leading down into the water Bean wanted simply to keep going, to walk into the Mediterranean, down and down, until he found old Poseidon at the bottom of the sea, and deeper, to the throne of Hades. What is my life for?

"You found purpose in Thailand," said Anton. "And then saving Petra, that was a purpose. But what did you save her for? You have gone to the lair of the dragon and carried off the dragon's daughter- for that is what the myth always means, when it doesn't mean the dragon's wife-and now you have her, and... you refuse to see what you must do, not to her, but with her"

Bean turned to Petra with weary resignation. "Petra, how many letters did it take to make clear to Anton precisely what you wanted him to say to me?"

"Don't leap to conclusions, foolish boy," said Anton. "She only wanted to find out if there was any way to correct your genetic problem. She did not speak to me of your personal dilemma. Some of it I learned from my old friend Hyrum Graff. Some of it I knew from Sister Carlotta. And some of it I saw simply by looking at the two of you together. You both give off enough pheromones to fertilize the eggs of pa.s.sing birds."

"I really don't tell our business to others," said Petra.

"Listen to me, both of you. Here is the meaning of life: for a man to find a woman, for a woman to find a man, the creature most unlike you, and then to make babies with her, with him, or to find them some other way, but then to raise them up, and watch them do the same thing, generation after generation, so that when you die you know you are permanently a part of the great web of life. That you are not a loose thread, snipped off."

"That's not the only meaning of life," said Petra. sounding a little annoyed. Well, thought Bean, you brought us here, so take your medicine, too.

"Yes it is," said Anton. "Do you think I haven't had time to think about this? I am the same man, with the same mind, I am the man who found Anton's Key, I have found many other keys as well, but they took away my work, and I had to find another. Well, here it is. I give it to you, the result of all my... study. Shallow as it had to be, it is still the truest thing I ever found. Even men who do not desire women, even women who do not desire men, this does not exempt them from the deepest desire of all, the desire to be an inextricable part of the human race."

"We're all part of it no matter what we do," said Bean. "Even those of us who aren't actually human."

"It's hardwired into all of us. Not just s.e.xual desire-that can be twisted any which way, and it often is. And not just a desire to have children, because many people never get that, and yet they can still he woven into the fabric. No, it's a deep hunger to find a person from that strange, terrifyingly other s.e.x and make a life together Even old people beyond mating, even people who know they can't have children, there's still a hunger for this. For actual marriage, two unlike creatures becoming, as best they can, one."

"I know a few exceptions," said Petra wryly. "I've known a few people of the 'never-again' persuasion."

"I'm not talking about politics or hurt feelings," said Anton. "I'm talking about a trait that the human race absolutely needed to succeed. The thing that makes us neither herd animals nor solitaries, but something in between. The thing that makes us civilized or at least civilizable. And those who are cut off from it by their own desires, by those twists and bends that turn them in another way-like you, Bean, so determined are you that no more children will be born with your defect, and that there will be no children orphaned by your death- those who are cut off because they think they want to be cut off, they are still hungry for it, hungrier than ever, especially if they deny it. It makes them angry, bitter, sad, and they don't know why, or if they know, they can't bear to face the knowledge."

Bean did not know or care whether Anton was right, that this desire was inescapable for all human beings, though he suspected that he was-that this life wish had to be present in all living things for any species to continue as they all desperately struggled to do. It isn't a will to survive-that is selfish, and such selfishness would be meaningless, would lead to nothing. It is a will for the species to survive with the self inside it, part of it, tied to it, forever one of the strands in the web-Bean could see that now.

"Even if you're right," Bean said, "that only makes me more determined to overcome that desire and never have a child. For the reasons you just named. I grew up among orphans. I'm not going to leave any behind me.

"They wouldn't be orphans," said Petra. "They'd still have me.

"And when Achilles finds you and kills you?" said Bean harshly. "Are you counting on him being merciful enough to do what Volescu did for my brothers? What I cheated myself out of by being so d.a.m.ned smart?"

Tears leapt to Petra's eyes and she turned away.

"You're a liar when you speak like that," said Anton softly. "And a cruel one, to say such things to her."

"I told the truth," said Bean.

"You're a liar," said Anton, "but you think you need the lie so you won't let go of it. I know what these lies are-I kept my sanity by fencing myself about with lies, and believing them. But you know the truth. If you leave this world without your children in it, without having made that bond with such an alien creature as a woman, then your life will have meant nothing to you, and you'll die in bitterness and alone."

"Like you," said Bean.

"No," said Anton. "Not like me."

"What, you're not going to die? Just because they reversed the cancer doesn't mean something else won't get you in the end."

"No, you mistake me," he said. "I'm getting married."

Bean laughed. "Oh, I see. You're so happy that you want everyone to share your happiness."

"The woman I'm going to marry is a good woman, a kind one. With small children who have no father I have a pension now-a generous one-and with my help these children will have a home. My proclivities have not changed, but she is still young enough, and perhaps we will find a way for her to bear a child that is truly my own. But if not, then I will adopt her children into my heart. I will rejoin the web. My loose thread will he woven in, knotted to the human race. I will not die alone."

"I'm happy for you," said Bean, surprised at how bitter and insincere he sounded.

"Yes" said Anton, "I'm happy for myself. This will make me miserable, of course. I will be worried about the children all the time-I already am. And getting along with a woman is hard even for men who desire them. Or perhaps especially for them. But you see, it will all mean something."

"I have work of my own to do," said Bean. "The human race faces an enemy almost as terrible, in his own way, as the Formics ever were. And I don't think Peter Wiggin is up to stopping him. In fact it looks to me as if Peter Wiggin is on the verge of losing everything to him, and then who will be left to oppose him? That's my work. And if I were selfish and stupid enough to marry my widow and father orphans on her, it would only distract me from that work. If I fail, well, how many millions of humans have already been born and died as loose threads with their lives snipped off? Given the historical rates of infant mortality, it might be as many as halt certainly at least a quarter of all humans born. Alt those meaningless lives. I'll be one of them. I'll just be one who did his best to save the world before he died."

To Bean's surprise-and horror-Anton flung his arms around him in one of those terrifying Russian hugs from which the unsuspecting westerner thinks he may never emerge alive. "My boy, you are so n.o.ble!" Anton let go of him, taughing. "Listen to yourself! So full of the romance of youth! You will save the world!"