She did her best with a damp towel to wipe blood and body matter from her clothes. She had to keep wearing the dirty clothing but she could at least get rid of the visible chunks. The towel was so foul by the time she finished the job that she tossed it and got a fresh one to start in on her face and hands. She scrubbed until her face was red and raw, but she got it all off. She even soaped her hair and washed it as best she could in the tiny sink. It was hard to rinse, pouring one cup of water at a time over her head.

  The whole time, she kept thinking of the fact that the psychiatrist’s last minutes were spent listening to her tell him how stupid he was and point out the worthlessness of his life’s work. And yes, she was right, as his death proved, but that didn’t change the fact that however impure his motives might have been, he was trying to save her from Achilles. He had given his life in that effort, however badly planned it might have been. All the other rescues went off smoothly, and they were probably just as badly planned as hers. So much depended on chance. Everybody was stupid about some things. Petra was stupid about the things she said to people who had power over her. Goading them. Daring them to punish her. She did it even though she knew it was stupid. And wasn’t it even stupider to do something stupid that you know is stupid?

  What did he call her? An ungrateful little girl.

  He tagged me, all right.

  As bad as she felt about his death, as horrified over what she had seen, as frightened as she was to be in Achilles’ control, as lonely as she had been for these past weeks, she still couldn’t figure out a way to cry about it. Because deeper than all these feelings was something even stronger. Her mind kept thinking of ways to get word to someone about where she was. She had done it once, she could do it again, right? She might feel bad, she might be a miserable specimen of human life, she might be in the midst of a traumatic childhood experience, but she was not going to submit to Achilles for one moment longer than she had to.

  The plane lurched suddenly, throwing her against the toilet. She half-fell onto it—there wasn’t room to fall down all the way—but she couldn’t get up because the plane had gone into a steep dive, and for a few moments she found herself gasping as the oxygen-rich air was replaced by cold upper-level air that left her dizzy.

  The hull was breached. They’ve shot us down.

  And for all that she had an indomitable will to live, she couldn’t help but think: Good for them. Kill Achilles now, and no matter who else is on the plane, it’ll be a great day for humanity.

  But the plane soon leveled out, and the air was breathable before she blacked out. They must not have been very high when it happened.

  She opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the main cabin.

  The side door was partway open. And standing a couple of meters back from it was Achilles, the wind whipping at his hair and clothes. He was posing, as if he knew just how fine a figure he cut, standing there on the brink of death.

  She approached him, glancing at the door to make sure she stayed well back from it, and to see how high they were. Not very, compared to cruising altitude, but higher than any building or bridge or dam. Anyone who fell from this plane would die.

  Could she get behind him and push?

  He smiled broadly when she got near.

  “What happened?” she shouted over the noise of the wind.

  “It occurred to me,” he yelled back, “that I made a mistake bringing you with me.”

  He opened the door on purpose. He opened it for her.

  Just as she began to step back, his hand lashed out and seized her by the wrist.

  The intensity of his eyes was startling. He didn’t look crazy. He looked . . . fascinated. Almost as if he found her amazingly beautiful. But of course it wasn’t her. It was his power over her that fascinated him. It was himself that he loved so intensely.

  She didn’t try to pull away. Instead, she twisted her wrist so that she also gripped him.

  “Come on, let’s jump together,” she shouted. “That would be the most romantic thing we could do.”

  He leaned close. “And miss out on all the history we’re going to make together?” he said. Then he laughed. “Oh, I see, you thought I was going to throw you out of the plane. No, Pet, I took hold of you so that I could anchor you while you close the door. Wouldn’t want the wind to suck you out, would we?”

  “I have a better idea,” said Petra. “I’ll be the anchor, you close the door.”

  “But the anchor has to be the stronger, heavier one,” said Achilles. “And that’s me.”

  “Let’s just leave it open, then,” said Petra.

  “Can’t fly all the way to Kabul with the door open.”

  What did it mean, his telling her their destination? Did it mean that he trusted her a little? Or that it didn’t matter what she knew, since he had decided she was going to die?

  Then it occurred to her that if he wanted her dead, she would die. It was that simple. So why worry about it? If he wanted to kill her by pushing her out the door, how was that different from a bullet in the brain? Dead was dead. And if he didn’t plan to kill her, the door needed to be closed, and having him serve as anchor was the second-best plan.

  “Isn’t there somebody in the crew who can do this?” she asked.

  “There’s just the pilot,” said Achilles. “Can you land a plane?”

  She shook her head.

  “So he stays in the cockpit, and we close the door.”

  “I don’t mean to be a nag,” said Petra, “but opening the door was a really stupid thing to do.”

  He grinned at her.

  Holding tight to his wrist, she slid along the wall toward the door. It was only partially open, the kind of door that worked by sliding up. So she didn’t have to reach very far out of the plane. Still, the cold wind snatched at her arm and made it very hard to get a grip on the door handle to pull it down into place. And even when she got it down into position, she simply didn’t have the strength to overcome the wind resistance and pull it snug.

  Achilles saw this, and now that the door wasn’t open enough for anyone to fall out and the wind could no longer suck anybody out, he let go of her and of the bulkhead and joined her in pulling at the handle.

  If I push instead of pulling, thought Petra, the wind will help me, and maybe we’ll both get sucked right out.

  Do it, she told herself. Do it. Kill him. Even if you die doing it, it’s worth it. This is Hitler, Stalin, Genghis, Attila all rolled into one.

  But it might not work. He might not get sucked out. She might die alone, pointlessly. No, she would have to find a way to destroy him later, when she could be sure it would work.

  At another level, she knew that she simply wasn’t ready to die. No matter how convenient it might be for the rest of humanity, no matter how richly Achilles deserved to die, she would not be his executioner, not now, not if she had to give her own life to kill him. If that made her a selfish coward, so be it.

  They pulled and pulled and finally, with a whoosh, the door passed the threshold of wind resistance and locked nicely into place. Achilles pulled the lever that locked it.

  “Traveling with you is always such an adventure,” said Petra.

  “No need to shout,” said Achilles. “I can hear you just fine.”

  “Why can’t you just run with the bulls at Pamplona, like any normal self-destructive person?” asked Petra.

  He ignored her gibe. “I must value you more than I thought.” He said it as if it took him rather by surprise.

  “You mean you still have a spark of humility? You might actually need someone else?”

  Again he ignored her words. “You look better without blood all over your face.”

  “But I’ll never be as pretty as you.”

  “Here’s my rule about guns,” said Achilles. “When people are getting shot, always stand behind the shooter. It’s a lot less messy there.”

  “Unless people are shooting back.”

  Achilles laughed. “Pet, I never use a gun when someone might shoot back.”

  “And you’re so well-mannered, you always open a door for a lady.”

  His smile faded. “Sometimes I get these impulses,” he said. “But they’re not irresistible.”

  “Too bad. And here you had such a good insanity defense going.”

  His eyes blazed for a moment. Then he went back to his seat.

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

  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, refueled, 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.

  9

  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 fulfill 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 realize 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 centimeters. 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?”

  “Skeptical,” 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?”

  “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 neighborhoods. 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.”