“So what worries you about me?” asked Bean.

  “That you’re making the assumption that Petra wants to be rescued.”

  “She does,” said Bean.

  “Achilles seduces people,” said Peter. “I’ve read his files, his history. This kid has a golden voice, apparently. He makes people trust him—even people who know he’s a snake. They think, He won’t betray me, because we have such a special closeness.”

  “And then he kills them. I know that,” said Bean.

  “But does Petra? She hasn’t read his file. She didn’t know him on the streets of Rotterdam. She didn’t even know him in the brief time he was in Battle School.”

  “She knows him now,” said Bean.

  “You’re sure of that?” asked Peter.

  “But I’ll promise you—I won’t try to rescue her until I’ve been in communication with her.”

  Peter mulled this over for a moment. “She might betray you.”

  “No,” said Bean.

  “Trusting people will get you killed,” said Peter. “I don’t want you to bring me down with you.”

  “You have it backward,” said Bean. “I don’t trust anybody, except to do what they think is necessary. What they think they have to do. But I know Petra, and I know the kind of thing she’ll think she has to do. It’s me I’m trusting, not her.”

  “And he can’t bring you down,” said Sister Carlotta, “because you’re not up.”

  Peter looked at her, making little effort to conceal his contempt. “I am where I am,” he said. “And it’s not down.”

  “Locke is where Locke is,” said Carlotta. “And Demosthenes. But Peter Wiggin is nowhere. Peter Wiggin is nothing.”

  “What’s your problem?” Peter demanded. “Is it bothering you that your little puppet here might actually be cutting a few of the strings you pull?”

  “There are no strings,” said Carlotta. “And you’re too stupid, apparently, to realize that I’m the one who believes in what you’re doing, not Bean. He couldn’t care less who rules the world. But I do. Arrogant and condescending as you are, I’ve already made up my mind that if anybody’s going to stop Achilles, it’s you. But you’re fatally weakened by the fact that you are ripe to be blackmailed by the threat of exposure. Chamrajnagar knows who you are. He’s feeding information to India. Do you really think for one moment that Achilles won’t find out—and soon, if not already—exactly who is behind Locke? The one who got him booted out of Russia? Do you really think he isn’t already working on plans to kill you?”

  Peter blushed with shame. To have this nun tell him what he should have realized by himself was humiliating. But she was right—he wasn’t used to thinking of physical danger.

  “That’s why we wanted you to come with us,” said Bean.

  “Your cover is already blown,” said Sister Carlotta.

  “The moment I go public as a kid,” said Peter Wiggin, “most of my sources will dry up.”

  “No,” said Sister Carlotta. “It all depends on how you come out.”

  “Do you think I haven’t thought this through a thousand times?” said Peter. “Until I’m old enough . . .”

  “No,” said Sister Carlotta. “Think for a minute, Peter. National governments have just gone through a nasty little scuffle over ten children that they want to have command their armies. You’re the older brother of the greatest of them all. Your youth is an asset. And if you control the way the information comes out, instead of having somebody else expose you . . .”

  “It will be a momentary scandal,” said Peter. “No matter how my identity comes out, there’ll be a flurry of commentary on it, and then I’ll be old news—only I’ll have been fired from most of my writing gigs. People won’t return my calls or answer my mail. I really will be a college student then.”

  “That sounds like something you decided years ago,” said Sister Carlotta, “and haven’t looked at with fresh eyes since then.”

  “Since this seems to be tell-Peter-he’s-stupid day, let’s hear your plan.”

  Sister Carlotta grinned at Bean. “Well, I was wrong. He actually can listen to other people.”

  “I told you,” said Bean.

  Peter suspected that this little exchange was designed merely to make him think Bean was on his side. “Just tell me your plan and skip the sucking-up phase.”

  “The term of the current Hegemon will end in about eight months,” said Sister Carlotta. “Let’s get several influential people to start floating the name of Locke as the replacement.”

  “That’s your plan? The office of Hegemon is worthless.”

  “Wrong,” said Sister Carlotta, “and wrong. The office is not worthless—eventually you’ll have to have it in order to make you the legitimate leader of the world against the threat posed by Achilles. But that’s later. Right now, we float the name of Locke, not so you’ll get the office, but so that you can have an excuse to publically announce, as Locke, that you can’t be considered for such an office because you are, after all, merely a teenager. You tell people that you’re Ender Wiggin’s older brother, that you and Valentine worked for years to try to hold the League together and to prepare for the League War so that your little brother’s victory didn’t lead to the self-destruction of humanity. But you are still too young to take an actual office of public trust. See how it works? Now your announcement won’t be a confession or a scandal. It will be one more example of how nobly you place the interest of world peace and good order ahead of your own personal ambition.”

  “I’ll still lose some of my contacts,” said Peter.

  “But not many. The news will be positive. It will have the right spin. All these years, Locke has been the brother of the genius Ender Wiggin. A prodigy.”

  “And there’s no time to waste,” said Bean. “You have to do it before Achilles can strike. Because you will be exposed within a few months.”

  “Weeks,” said Sister Carlotta.

  Peter was furious with himself. “Why didn’t I see this? It’s obvious.”

  “You’ve been doing this for years,” said Bean. “You had a pattern that worked. But Achilles has changed everything. You’ve never had anybody gunning for you before. What matters to me is not that you failed to see it on your own. What matters is that when we pointed it out to you, you were willing to hear it.”

  “So I’ve passed your little test?” said Peter nastily.

  “Just as I hope I’ll pass yours,” said Bean. “If we’re going to work together, we have to be able to tell each other the truth. Now I know you’ll listen to me. You just have to take my word for it that I’ll listen to you. But I listen to her, don’t I?”

  Peter was churning with dread. They were right, the time had come, the old pattern was over. And it was frightening. Because now he had to put everything on the line, and he might fail.

  But if he didn’t act now, if he didn’t risk everything, he would certainly fail. Achilles’ presence in the equation made it inevitable.

  “So how,” said Peter, “will we get this groundswell started so I can decline the honor of being a candidate for the Hegemony?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” said Carlotta. “If you give the OK, then by tomorrow there can be news stories about how a highly placed source at the Vatican confirms that Locke’s name is being floated as a possible successor when the current Hegemon’s term expires.”

  “And then,” said Bean, “a highly placed officer in the Hegemony—the Minister of Colonization, to be exact, though no one will say that—will be quoted as saying that Locke is not just a good candidate, he’s the best candidate, and may be the only candidate, and with the support of the Vatican he thinks Locke is the frontrunner.”

  “You’ve planned this all out,” said Peter.

  “No,” said Sister Carlotta. “It’s just that the only two people we know are my highly placed friend in the Vatican and our good friend ex-Colonel Graff.”

  “We’re committing all our assets,” said Bean, “but they’ll be enough. The moment those stories run—tomorrow—you be ready to reply for the next morning’s nets. At the same time that everybody’s giving their first reactions to your brand-new frontrunner status, the world will be reading your announcement that you refuse to be considered for such an office because your youth would make it too difficult for you to wield the authority that the office of Hegemon requires.”

  “And that,” said Sister Carlotta, “is the very thing that gives you the moral authority to be accepted as Hegemon when the time comes.”

  “By declining the office,” said Peter, “I make it more likely that I’ll get it.”

  “Not in peacetime,” said Carlotta. “Declining an office in peacetime takes you out of the running. But there’s going to be war. And then the fellow who sacrificed his own ambition for the good of the world will look better and better. Especially when his last name is Wiggin.”

  Do they have to keep bringing up the fact that my relationship to Ender is more important than my years of work?

  “You aren’t against using that family connection, are you?” asked Bean.

  “I’ll do what it takes,” said Peter, “and I’ll use whatever works. But . . . tomorrow?”

  “Achilles got to India yesterday, right?” said Bean. “Every day we delay this is a day that he has a chance to expose you. Do you think he’ll wait? You exposed him—he’ll crave the turnabout, and Chamrajnagar won’t be shy about telling him, will he?”

  “No,” said Peter. “Chamrajnagar has already shown me how he feels about me. He’ll do nothing to protect me.”

  “So here we are once again,” said Bean. “We’re giving you something, and you’re going to use it. Are you going to help me? How can I get into a position where I have troops to train and command? Besides going back to Greece, I mean.”

  “No, not Greece,” said Peter. “They’re useless to you, and they’ll end up doing only what Russia permits. No freedom of action.”

  “Where, then?” said Sister Carlotta. “Where do you have influence?”

  “In all modesty,” said Peter, “at this moment, I have influence everywhere. Day after tomorrow, I may have influence nowhere.”

  “So let’s act now,” said Bean. “Where?”

  “Thailand,” said Peter. “Burma has no hope of resisting an Indian attack, or of putting together an alliance that might have a chance. But Thailand is historically the leader of southeast Asia. The one nation that was never colonized. The natural leader of the Tai-speaking peoples in the surrounding nations. And they have a strong military.”

  “But I don’t speak the language,” said Bean.

  “Not a problem,” said Peter. “The Thai have been multilingual for centuries, and they have a long history of allowing foreigners to take positions of power and influence in their government, as long as they’re loyal to Thailand’s interests. You have to throw in your lot with them. They have to trust you. But it seems plain enough that you know how to be loyal.”

  “Not at all,” said Bean. “I’m completely selfish. I survive. That’s all I do.”

  “But you survive,” said Peter, “by being absolutely loyal to the few people you depend on. I read just as much about you as I did about Achilles.”

  “What was written about me reflects the fantasies of the newspeople,” said Bean.

  “I’m not talking about the news,” said Peter. “I read Carlotta’s memos to the I.F. about your childhood in Rotterdam.”

  They both stopped walking. Ah, have I surprised you? Peter couldn’t help but take pleasure in knowing that he had shown that he, too, knew some things about them.

  “Those memos were eyes only,” said Carlotta. “There should have been no copies.”

  “Ah, but whose eyes?” said Peter. “There are no secrets to people with the right friends.”

  “I haven’t read those memos,” said Bean.

  Carlotta looked searchingly at Peter. “Some information is worthless except to destroy,” she said.

  And now Peter wondered what secrets she had about Bean. Because when he spoke of “memos,” he in fact was thinking of a report that had been in Achilles’ file, which had drawn on a couple of those memos as a source about life on the streets of Rotterdam. The comments about Bean had been merely ancillary matters. He really hadn’t read the actual memos. But now he wanted to, because there was clearly something that she didn’t want Bean to know.

  And Bean knew it, too.

  “What’s in those memos that you don’t want Peter to tell me?” Bean demanded.

  “I had to convince the Battle School people that I was being impartial about you,” said Sister Carlotta. “So I had to make negative statements about you in order to get them to believe the positive ones.”

  “Do you think that would hurt my feelings?” said Bean.

  “Yes, I do,” said Carlotta. “Because even if you understand the reason why I said some of those things, you’ll never forget that I said them.”

  “They can’t be worse than what I imagine,” said Bean.

  “It’s not a matter of being bad or worse. They can’t be too bad or you wouldn’t have got into Battle School, would you? You were too young and they didn’t believe your test scores and they knew there wouldn’t be time to train you unless you really were . . . what I said. I just don’t want you to have my words in your memory. And if you have any sense, Bean, you’ll never read them.”

  “Toguro,” said Bean. “I’ve been gossiped about by the person I trust most, and it’s so bad she begs me not to try to find out.”

  “Enough of this nonsense,” said Peter. “We’ve all faced some nasty blows today. But we’ve got an alliance started here, haven’t we? You’re acting in my interest tonight, getting that groundswell started so I can reveal myself on the world’s stage. And I’ve got to get you into Thailand, in a position of trust and influence, before I expose myself as a teenager. Which of us gets to sleep first, do you think?”

  “Me,” said Sister Carlotta. “Because I don’t have any sins on my conscience.”

  “Kuso,” said Bean. “You have all the sins of the world on your mind.”

  “You’re confusing me with somebody else,” said Sister Carlotta.

  To Peter their banter sounded like family chatter—old jokes, repeated because they’re comfortable.

  Why didn’t his own family have any of that? Peter had bantered with Valentine, but she had never really opened up to him and played that way. She always resented him, even feared him. And their parents were hopeless. There was no clever banter there, there were no shared jokes and memories.

  Maybe I really was raised by robots, Peter thought.

  “Tell your parents we really appreciated the dinner,” said Bean.

  “Home to bed,” said Sister Carlotta.

  “You won’t be sleeping in your hotel tonight, will you?” said Peter. “You’ll be leaving.”

  “We’ll email you how to contact us,” said Bean.

  “You’ll have to leave Greensboro yourself, you know,” said Sister Carlotta. “Once you reveal your identity, Achilles will know where you are. And even though India has no reason to kill you, Achilles does. He kills anyone who has even seen him in a position of helplessness. You actually put him in that position. You’re a dead man, as soon as he can reach you.”

  Peter thought of the attempt that had been made on Bean’s life. “He was perfectly happy to kill your parents right along with you, wasn’t he?” Peter asked.

  “Maybe,” said Bean, “you should tell your mom and dad who you are before they read about it on the nets. And then help them get out of town.”

  “At some point we have to stop hiding from Achilles and face him openly.”

  “Not until you have a government committed to keeping you alive,” said Bean. “Until then, you stay in hiding. And your parents, too.”

  “I don’t think they’ll even believe me,” said Peter. “My parents, I mean. When I tell them that I’m really Locke. What parents would? They’ll probably try to commit me as delusional.”

  “Trust them,” said Bean. “I think you think they’re stupid. But I can assure you that they’re not. Or at least your mother isn’t. You got your brains from somebody. They’ll deal with this.”

  So it was that when Peter got home at ten o’clock, he went to his parents’ room and knocked on their door.

  “What is it?” asked Father.

  “Are you awake?” Peter asked.

  “Come in,” said Mother.

  They chatted mindlessly for a few minutes about dinner and Sister Carlotta and that delightful little Julian Delphiki, so hard to believe that a child that young could possibly have done all that he had done in his short life. And on and on, until Peter interrupted them.

  “I have something to tell you,” said Peter. “Tomorrow, some friends of Bean’s and Carlotta’s will be starting a phony movement to get Locke nominated as Hegemon. You know who Locke is? The political commentator?”

  They nodded.

  “And the next morning,” Peter went on, “Locke is going to come out with a statement that he has to decline such an honor because he’s just a teenage boy living in Greensboro, North Carolina.”

  “Yes?” said Father.

  Did they really not get it? “It’s me, Dad,” said Peter. “I’m Locke.”

  They looked at each other. Peter waited for them to say something stupid.

  “Are you going to tell them that Valentine was Demosthenes, too?” asked Mother.

  For a moment he thought she was saying that as a joke, that she thought that the only thing more absurd than Peter being Locke would be Valentine being Demosthenes.

  Then he realized that there was no irony in her question at all. It was an important point, and one he needed to address—the contradiction between Locke and Demosthenes had to be resolved, or there would still be something for Chamrajnagar and Achilles to expose. And blaming Valentine for Demosthenes right from the start was an important thing to do.

  But not as important to him as the fact that Mother knew it. “How long have you known?” he asked.

  “We’ve been very proud of what you’ve accomplished,” said Father.