So this is the kid who brokered the ceasefire that ended the League War. The kid who wants to be Hegemon. Good looking, but not movie-star handsomepeople would like him, but still trust him. Bean had studied the vids of Hitler and Stalin. The difference was palpable-Stalin never had to get elected; Hitler did. Even with that stupid mustache, you could see it in Hitler's eyes, that ability to see into you, that sense that whatever he said, wherever he looked, he was speaking to you, looking at you, that he cared about you. But Stalin, he looked like the liar that he was. Peter was definitely in the charismatic category. Like Hitler.
Perhaps an unfair comparison, but those who coveted power invited such thoughts. And the worst was seeing the way Sister Carlotta played to him. True, she was acting a part, but when she spoke to him, when that gaze was fixed on her, she preened a little, she warmed to him. Not so much that she'd behave foolishly, but she was aware of him with a heightened intensity that Bean didn't like. Peter had the seducer's gift. Dangerous.
"I'll walk home with you," said Peter. "I'm not hungry. Have you already paid?"
"Of course," said Sister Carlotta. "This is my grandson, by the way. Delfino."
Peter turned to notice Bean for the first time-though Bean was quite sure Peter had sized him up thoroughly before he sat down. "Cute kid," he said. "How old is he? Does he go to school yet?"
"I'm little," said Bean cheerfully, "but at least I'm not a yelda."
"All those vids of Battle School life," said Peter. "Even little kids are picking up that stupid polyglot slang."
"Now, children, you must get along, I insist on it." Sister Carlotta led the way to the door. "My grandson is visiting this country for the first time, young man, so he doesn't understand American banter."
"Yes I do," said Bean, trying to sound like a petulant child and finding it quite easy, since he really was annoyed.
"He speaks English pretty well. But you better hold his hand crossing this street, the campus trams zoom through here like Daytona."
Bean rolled his eyes and submitted to having Carlotta hold his hand across the street. Peter was obviously trying to provoke him, but why? Surely he wasn't so shallow as to think humiliating Bean would give him some advantage. Maybe he took pleasure in making other people feel small.
Finally, though, they were away from campus and had taken enough twists and turns to make sure they weren't being followed.
"So you're the great Julian Delphiki," said Peter.
"And you're Locke. They're touting you for Hegemon when Sakata's term is over. Too bad you're only virtual."
"I'm thinking of going public soon," said Peter.
"Ah, that's why you got the plastic surgery to make you so pretty," said Bean.
"This old face?" said Peter. "I only wear it when I don't care how I look."
"Boys," said Sister Carlotta. "Must you display like baby chimps?"
Peter laughed easily. "Come on, Mom, we was just playin'. Can't we still go to the movies?"
"Off to bed without supper, the lot of you," said Sister Carlotta.
Bean had had enough of this. "Where's Petra?" he demanded.
Peter looked at him as if he were insane. "I don't have her."
"You have sources," said Bean. "You know more than you're telling me."
"You know more than you're telling me, too," said Peter. "I thought we were working on trusting each other, and then we open the floodgates of wisdom."
"Is she dead?" said Bean, not willing to be deflected.
Peter looked at his watch. "At this moment. I don't know."
Bean stopped walking. Disgusted, he turned to Sister Carlotta. "We wasted a trip," he said. "And risked our lives for nothing."
"Are you sure?" said Sister Carlotta.
Bean looked back at Peter, who seemed genuinely bemused. "He wants to be Hegemon," said Bean, "but he's nothing." Bean walked away. He had memorized the route, of course, and knew how to get to the bus station without Sister Carlotta's help. Ender had ridden these buses as a child younger than Bean. It was the only consolation for the bitter disappointment of finding out that Peter was a gameplaying fool.
No one called after him, and he did not look back.
Bean took, not the bus to the hotel, but the one that passed nearest the school Ender had attended just before being taken into Battle School. The whole story of Ender's life had come out in the inquiry into Graff's conduct: Ender's first killing had taken place here, a boy named Stilson who had set on Ender with his gang. Bean had been there for Ender's second killing, which was pretty much the same situation as the first. Ender-alone, outnumbered, surroundedtalked his way into single combat and then fought to destroy his enemy so no will to fight would remain. But he had known it here, at the age of six.
I knew things at that age, thought Bean. And younger, too. Not how to killthat was beyond me, I was too small. But how to live, that was hard.
For me it was hard, but not for Ender. Bean walked through the neighborhoods of modest old houses and even more modest new ones-but to him they were all miracles. Not that he hadn't had plenty of chances, living with his family in Greece after the war, to see how most children grew up. But this was different. This was the place that had spawned Ender Wiggin.
I had more native talent for war than Ender had. But he was still the better commander. Was this the difference? He grew up where he never worried about finding another meal, where people praised him and protected him. I grew up where if I found a scrap of food I had to worry that another street kid might kill me for it. Shouldn't that have made me the one who fought desperately, and Ender the one who held back?
It wasn't the place. Two people in identical situations would
never make exactly the same choices. Ender is who he is, and I am who I am. It was in him to destroy the Formics. It was in me to stay alive.
So what's in me now? I'm a commander without an army. I have a mission to perform, but no knowledge of how to perform it. Petra, if she's still alive, is in desperate peril, and she counts on me to free her. The others are all free. She alone remains hidden. What has Achilles done to her? I will not have Petra end like Poke.
There it was. The difference between Ender and Bean. Ender came out of his bitterest battle of childhood undefeated. He had done what was required. But Bean had not even realized the danger his friend Poke was in until too late. If he had seen in time how immediate her peril was, he could have warned her, helped her. Saved her. Instead, her body was tossed into the Rhine, to be found bobbing like so much garbage among the wharves.
And it was happening again.
Bean stood in front of the Wiggin house. Ender had never spoken of it, nor had pictures of it been shown at the court of inquiry. But it was exactly what Bean had expected. A tree in the front yard, with wooden slats nailed into the trunk to form a ladder to the platform in a high crotch of the tree. A tidy, welltended garden. A place of peace and refuge. What did Ender ever know of fear?
Where is Petra's garden? For that matter, where is mine?
Bean knew he was being unreasonable. If Ender had come back to Earth, he too would no doubt be in hiding, if Achilles hadn't simply killed him straight off. And even as things stood, he couldn't help but wonder if Ender might not prefer to be living as Bean was, on Earth, in hiding, than where he was now, in space, bound for another world and a life of permanent exile from the world of his birth.
A woman came out of the front door of the house. Mrs. Wiggin?
"Are you lost?" she asked.
Bean realized that in his disappointment-no, call it despair-he had forgotten his vigilance. This house might be watched. Even if it was not, Mrs. Wiggin herself might remember him, this young boy who appeared in front of her house during school hours.