Petra showed this to Bean, who smiled. “Verlomi is very good. She’s pinned them down for three days. How long before the Chinese army inside India simply runs out of ammunition?”

  “You can’t really start a betting pool with just the two of us,” said Petra.

  “Stop watching the war and get back to work.”

  “Why wait for Achilles to send this signal that I still don’t think he’s going to send?” asked Petra. “Why not just accept Peter’s invitation and join him for the storming of the compound?

  “Because if Achilles thinks he’s luring us into a trap, he’ll let us get inside without firing a shot. Nobody dies.”

  “Except us.”

  “First, Petra, there’s no us. You’re a pregnant woman, and I don’t care how brilliant you are at military affairs, I can’t possibly deal with Achilles if the woman who’s carrying my baby is standing there in jeopardy.”

  “So I’m supposed to sit outside watching, not knowing what’s going on, whether you’re alive or dead?”

  “Do we have to have the argument about how I’m going to die in a few years anyway, and you’re not, and if I’m dead but we rescue the embryos you can still have babies, but if you’re dead, we can’t even have the baby you’ve already got inside you?”

  “No, we don’t have to have that argument,” said Petra angrily.

  “And second, you won’t be sitting outside watching, because you’ll be here in Damascus, following the war news and reading the Q’uran.”

  “Or clawing my own eyes out in the agony of not knowing. You’d really leave me here?”

  “Achilles himself may be trapped inside the Hegemony compound, but he has people to run his errands everywhere. I doubt that many of them were lost when the China connection dried up. If it dried up. I don’t want you leaving here because it would be just like Achilles to kill you long before you came anywhere near the compound.”

  “So why don’t you think he’ll kill you?”

  “Because he wants me to watch the babies die.”

  Petra couldn’t help it. She burst into tears and bowed over her desk.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bean. “I didn’t mean to make you—”

  “Of course you didn’t mean to make me cry,” said Petra. “I didn’t mean to cry, either. Just ignore this.”

  “I can’t ignore it,” said Bean. “I can barely understand what you’re saying, and you’re about to drip snot on your desk.”

  “It’s not snot!” Petra shouted at him, then touched her nose and discovered that it was. She sniffed and then laughed and ran into the bathroom and blew her nose and finished crying by herself.

  When she came out, Bean was lying on the bed, his eyes closed.

  “I’m sorry,” said Petra.

  “I’m sorrier,” said Bean softly.

  “I know you have to go alone. I know I have to stay here. I know all of that, but I hate it, that’s all.”

  Bean nodded.

  “So why aren’t you searching the nets?”

  “Because the message just came.”

  She walked over to his desk and looked into the display. Bean had connected to an auction site, and there it was:

  Wanted: A good womb.

  Five human embryos ready for implantation. Battle-School-graduate parents, died in tragic accident. Estate needs to dispose of them immediately. Likely to be extraordinarily brilliant children. Trust fund will be set up for each child successfully implanted and brought to term. Applicants must prove they do not need the money. Top five bidders will have their funds held in escrow by certified accounting firm, pending evaluation.

  “Did you reply?” asked Petra. “Or bid?”

  “I sent an inquiry in which I suggested that I’d like to have all five, and I’ll pick them up in person. I told him to reply to one of my dead drop sites.”

  “And you’re not checking your mail to see if your dead drop has forwarded anything yet?”

  “Petra, I’m scared.”

  “That’s a relief. It suggests you aren’t insane.”

  “He’s the best survivor I’ve ever known. He’ll have a way out of this.”

  “No,” said Petra. “You’re a survivor. He’s a killer.”

  “He’s not dead,” said Bean. “That makes him a survivor.”

  “Nobody’s been trying to kill him for half his life,” said Petra. “His survival is no big deal. You’ve had a pathological killer on your trail for years, and yet here you are.”

  “It’s not so much that I’m afraid of him killing me,” said Bean, “though I don’t find it an appealing way to go. I still plan to die by growing so tall I’m hit by a low-flying plane.”

  “I’m not playing your macabre little how-I’d-like-to-die game.”

  “But if he does kill me, and then gets out of there alive somehow, what will happen to you?”

  “He won’t get out of there alive.”

  “So maybe not. But what if I’m dead, and all the babies are dead?”

  “I’ll have this one.”

  “You’ll wish you hadn’t loved me. I still haven’t figured out why you do.”

  “I’ll never wish I hadn’t loved you, and I’ll always be glad that after I pestered you long enough, you finally decided you loved me too.”

  “Don’t let anybody call the kid by some stupid nickname based on how small she is.”

  “No legume names?”

  The incoming-mail icon flashed on his desk.

  “You’ve got mail,” said Petra.

  Bean sighed, sat up, slid over onto the chair, and opened the letter.

  My oldest friend. I have five little presents with your name written all over them, and not much time left in which to give them to you. I wish you trusted me more, because I’ve never meant you any harm, but I know you don’t, and so you are free to bring an armed escort with you. We’ll meet in the open air, the east garden. The east gate will be open. You and the first five with you can come in; any more than that try to come in and you’ll all be shot.

  I don’t know where you are, so I don’t know how long it will take for you to get here. When you come, I’ll have your property in a refrigerated container, good for six hours at the right temperature. If one of your escort is a specialist with a microscope, you are free to examine the specimens on the spot, and then have the specialist carry them out.

  But I hope you and I can chat for a while about old times. Reminisce about the good old days, when we brought civilization to the streets of Rotterdam. We’ve been down a good long road since then. Changed the world, both of us. Me more than you, kid. Eat your heart out.

  Of course, you married the only woman I ever loved, so maybe things balance out in the end.

  Naturally, our conversation will be more pleasant if it ends with you taking me out of the compound and giving me safe passage to a place of my own choosing. But I realize that may not be within your power. We really are limited creatures, we geniuses. We know what’s best for everybody, but we still don’t get our way until we can persuade the lesser creatures to do our bidding. They just don’t understand how much happier they’d be if they stopped thinking for themselves. They’re so unequipped for it.

  Relax, Bean. That was a joke. Or an indecorous truth. Often the same thing.

  Give Petra a kiss for me. Let me know when to open the gate.

  “Does he really expect you to believe that he’ll just let you take the babies?”

  “Well, he does imply a swap for his freedom,” said Bean.

  “The only swap he implies is your life for theirs,” said Petra.

  “Oh,” said Bean. “Is that how you read it?”

  “That’s what he’s saying and you know it. He expects the two of you to die together, right there.”

  “The real question,” said Bean, “is whether he’ll really have the embryos there.”

  “For all we know,” said Petra, “they’re in a lab in Moscow or Johannesburg or already in the garbage somewhere in Ribeirão.”

  “Now who’s the grim one?”

  “It’s obvious that he wasn’t able to place them out for implantation. So to him they represent failure. They have no value now. Why should he give them to you?”

  “I didn’t say I’d accept his terms,” said Bean.

  “But you will.”

  “The hardest thing about a kidnapping is always the swap, ransom for hostage. Somebody always has to trust somebody, and give up their piece before they’ve received what the other one has. But this case is really weird, because he’s not really asking for anything from me.”

  “Except your death.”

  “But he knows I’m dying anyway. It all seems so pointless.”

  “He’s insane, Julian. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Yes, but his thinking makes sense inside his own head. I mean, he’s not schizophrenic, he sees the same reality as the rest of us. He’s not delusional. He’s just pathologically conscience-free. So how does he see this playing out? Will he just shoot me as I come in? Or will he let me win, maybe even let me kill him, only the joke’s on me because the embryos he gives me aren’t ours, they’re from the tragic mating of two really dumb people. Perhaps two journalists.”

  “You’re joking about this, Bean, and I—”

  “I have to catch the next flight. If you think of anything else that I should know, email me, I’ll check in at least once before I go in and see the lad.”

  “He doesn’t have them,” said Petra. “He already gave them out to his cronies.”

  “Quite possible.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “Not possible.”

  “Bean, you’re smarter than he is, but his advantage is, he’s more brutal than you are.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said Bean.

  “Don’t you realize that I know both of you better than anyone else in the world?”

  “And no matter how well we think we know people, the fact is we’re all strangers in the end.”

  “Oh, Bean, tell me you don’t believe that.”

  “It’s self-evident truth.”

  “I know you!” she insisted.

  “No. You don’t. But that’s all right, because I don’t really know me either, let alone you. We never understand anybody, not even ourselves. But Petra, shh, listen. What we’ve done is, we’ve created something else. This marriage. It consists of the two of us, and we’ve become something else together. That’s what we know. Not me, not you, but what we are, who we are together. Sister Carlotta quoted somebody in the Bible about how a man and a woman marry and they become one flesh. Very mystical and borderline weird. But in a way it’s true. And when I die, you won’t have Bean, but you’ll still have Petra-with-Bean, Bean-with-Petra, whatever we call this new creature that we’ve made.”

  “So all those months I spent with Achilles, did we build some disgusting monstrous Petra-with-Achilles thing? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No,” said Bean. “Achilles doesn’t build things. He just finds them, admires them, and tears them apart. There is no Achilles-with-anybody. He’s just…empty.”

  “So what happened to that theory of Ender’s, that you have to know your enemy in order to beat him?”

  “Still true.”

  “But if you can’t know anybody…”

  “It’s imaginary,” said Bean. “Ender wasn’t crazy, so he knew it was just imaginary. You try to see the world through your enemy’s eyes, so you can see what it all means to him. The better you do at it, the more time you spend in the world as he sees it, the more you understand how he views things, how he explains to himself the things he does.”

  “And you’ve done that with Achilles.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you think you know what he’s going to do.”

  “I have a short list of things I expect.”

  “And what if you’re wrong? Because that’s the one certainty in all of this—that whatever you think Achilles is going to do, you’re wrong.”

  “That’s his specialty.”

  “So your short list…”

  “Well, see, the way I made my list, I thought of all the things I thought he might do, and then I didn’t put any of those on my list, I only put on the things I didn’t think he’d do.”

  “That’ll work,” said Petra.

  “Might,” said Bean.

  “Hold me before you go,” she said.

  He did.

  “Petra, you think you aren’t going to see me again. But I’m pretty sure you are.”

  “Do you realize how it scares me that you’re only pretty sure?”

  “I could die of appendicitis in the plane on the way to Ribeirão. I’m never more than pretty sure of anything.”

  “Except that I love you.”

  “Except that we love each other.”

  Bean’s flight was the normal misery of hours in a confined space. But at least he was flying west, so the jet lag wasn’t as debilitating. He thought he might just go directly in as soon as he arrived, but thought better of it. He needed to think clearly. To be able to improvise and act quickly on impulse. He needed to sleep.

  Peter was waiting for him at the doorway of the airplane. Being Hegemon gives you a few privileges denied to other people in airports.

  Peter led him down the stairs instead of out the jetway, and they got in a car that drove them directly to the hotel that had been set up as the IF command post. IF soldiers were at every entrance, and Peter assured him there were sharpshooters in every surrounding building, and in this one, too.

  “So,” said Peter, when they were alone in Bean’s room, “what’s the plan?”

  “You sound as if you think I have one,” said Bean.

  “Not even a goal?”

  “Oh, I have two goals,” said Bean. “I promised Petra right after he stole our embryos that I’d get them back for her, and that I’d kill Achilles in the process.”

  “And you have no idea how you’ll do that.”

  “Some. But nothing I plan will work anyway, so I don’t let myself get too attached to any of them.”

  “Achilles really isn’t that important now,” said Peter. “I mean, he’s important because in essence everyone inside that compound is his hostage, but on the world stage—he’s lost all his influence. Went up in smoke when he shot down that shuttle and the Chinese disavowed him.”

  Bean shook his head. “Do you really think, if he gets out of this alive, he won’t be back at his old games? You think he won’t have any takers for his medicine show?”

  “I suppose there’s no shortage of government people with dreams of power he can seduce them with, or fears that he can exploit.”

  “Peter, I’m here so he can torment me and then kill me. That’s why I’m here. His purpose. His goal.”

  “Well, if his is the only plan, then…”

  “That’s right, Peter. He’s the one with the plan this time. And I’m the one who can surprise him by not doing what he expects.”

  “All right,” said Peter. “I’m in.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve convinced me. I’m in.”

  “You’re in what?”

  “I’m going in the gate with you.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I’m Hegemon. I’m not standing outside while you go in and save my people.”

  “He’ll be very happy to kill you along with me.”

  “You first.”

  “No, you first.”

  “Whatever,” said Peter. “You’re not getting through that gate unless I’m one of your five.”

  “Look, Peter,” said Bean. “The reason we’re in this predicament is that you think you’re smarter than everybody else, so no matter what advice you get, you go off half-cocked and do something astonishingly dumb.”

  “But I stay around to pick up the pieces.”

  “I give you credit for that.”

  “I won’t do anything you don’t tell me to,” said Peter. “It’s your show.”

  “I need to have all five of my escort be highly trained soldiers.”

  “No you don’t,” said Peter. “Because if there’s any shooting, five won’t be enough anyway. So you have to count on there being no shooting. So I might as well be one of the five.”

  “But I don’t want to die with you beside me,” said Bean.

  “Fine with me, I don’t want to die beside you, either.”

  “You have another seventy or eighty years ahead of you. You’re going to gamble with that? Me, I’m just playing with house money.”

  “You’re the best, Bean,” said Peter.

  “That was in school. What armies have I commanded since then? Other people are doing all the fighting now. I’m not the best, I’m retired.”

  “You don’t retire from your own mind.”

  “People retire from their minds all the time. What won’t let you alone is your reputation.”

  “Well, I love arguing philosophy with you,” said Peter abruptly, “but you need your sleep and I need mine. See you at the east gate in the morning.”

  In a moment he was out the door.

  So what was that sudden departure about?

  Bean had the sneaking suspicion that maybe Peter finally believed him that he didn’t have a plan and had no guarantee of winning. Not even, in fact, a decent chance of winning, if by winning he meant an outcome in which Bean was alive, Achilles was dead, and Bean had the babies. No doubt Peter had to run and get a life insurance policy. Or drum up some last minute emergency that would absolutely prevent him from going through the gate with Bean after all. “So sorry, I wish I were going with you, but you’ll do fine, I know it.”

  Bean thought he’d have trouble getting to sleep, what with the catnaps he got on the plane and the tension of tomorrow’s events preying on his mind.

  So naturally he fell asleep so fast he didn’t even remember turning off the light.

  In the morning, Bean got up and posted a message to Achilles, naming a time about an hour later for their meeting. Then he wrote a brief note to Petra, just so she’d know he was thinking of her in case this was the last day of his life. Then another note to his parents, and one to Nikolai. At least if he managed to bring Achilles down with him, they’d be safe. That was something.