"You don't want to ride home on that chopper," said Bean. "I invite you to ride with us."
"But you're not going where I'm going," said the colonel.
"I know this boy you have just taken aboard," said Bean. "Even if he doesn't remember what you did when he wakes up, someone will tell him someday, and once he knows, you'll be marked. He never forgets. He will certainly kill you."
"Then I will have died obeying my orders and fulfilling my mission," said the colonel.
"Full asylum," said Bean, "and a life spent helping liberate China and all other nations from the kind of evil he represents."
"I know that you mean to be kind," said the colonel, "but it hurts my soul to be offered such rewards for betraying my country."
"Your country is led by men without honor," said Bean. "And yet they are sustained in power by the honor of men like you. Who, then, betrays his country? No, we have no time for arguments. I only plant the idea so it will fester in your soul." Bean smiled.
The colonel smiled back. "Then you are a devil, sir, as we Chinese always knew you Europeans to be."
Bean saluted him. He returned the salute and got on board.
The chopper door closed.
Bean and Petra ran out of the downdraft as the Chinese machine rose up into the air. There it hovered as Bean ordered everyone into the one chopper that remained on the ground. Less than two minutes later, his chopper, too, rose up, and the Thai and Chinese machines flew together over the building, where they were joined by the other helijets of Bean's strike force as they rose up from the ground or converged from their watching points at the perimeter.
They flew together toward the south, slowly, on blades. No Indian weapon was fired at them. For the Indian officers no doubt knew that their best young military minds were being taken to far more safety than they could possibly have in Hyderabad, or anywhere in India, once the Chinese came in force.
Then Bean gave the order, and all his choppers rose up, cut the blades, and dropped as the jets came on and the blades folded back for the quick ride back to Sri Lanka.
Inside the chopper, Petra sat glumly in her straps. Virlomi was beside her, but they did not speak to each other.
"Petra," said Bean.
She did not look up.
"Virlomi found us, we did not find her. Because of her, we were able to come for you."
Petra still did not look up, but she reached out a hand and laid it on Virlomi's hands, which were clasped in her lap. "You were brave and good," said Petra. "Thank you for having compassion for me."
Then she looked up to meet Bean's gaze. "But I don't thank you, Bean. I was ready to kill him. I would have done it. I would have found a way."
"He's going to kill himself in the end," said Bean. "He's going to overreach himself, like Robespierre, like Stalin. Others will see his pattern and when they realize he's finally about to put them to the guillotine, they'll decide they've had enough and he will, most certainly, die."
"But how many will he kill along the way? And now your hands are stained with all their blood, because you loaded him onto that chopper alive. Mine, too."
"You're wrong," said Bean. "He is the only one responsible for his killings. And you're wrong about what would have happened if we had let him take you along. You would not have lived through that ride."
"You don't know that."
"I know Achilles. When that chopper rose to about twenty stories up, you would have been pushed out the door. And do you know why?"
"So you could watch," she said.
"No, he would have waited till I was gone," said Bean. "He's not stupid. He regards his own survival as far more important than your death."
"Then why would he kill me now? Why are you so sure?"
"Because he had his arm around you like a lover," said Bean. "Standing there with the gun to your head, he held you with affection. I think he meant to kiss you before he took you on board. He'd want me to see that."
"She would never let him kiss her," said Virlomi with disgust.
But Petra met Bean's gaze, and the tears in her eyes were a truer answer than Virlomi's brave words. She had already let Achilles kiss her. Just like Poke.
"He marked you," said Bean. "He loved you. You had power over him. After he didn't need you anymore as the hostage to keep me from killing him, you could not go on living."
Suriyawong shuddered. "What made him that way?"
"Nothing made him that way," said Bean. "No matter what terrible things happened in his life, no matter what dreadful hungers rose up from his soul, he chose to act on those desires, he chose to do the things he did. He's responsible for his own actions, and no one else. Not even those who saved his life."
"Like you and me today," said Petra.
"Sister Carlotta saved his life today," said Bean. "The last thing she asked me was to leave vengeance up to God."
"Do you believe in God?" asked Suriyawong, surprised.
"More and more," said Bean. "And less and less."
Virlomi took Petra's hands between hers and said, "Enough of blame and enough of Achilles. You're free of him. You can have whole minutes and hours and days in which you don't have to think of what he'll do to you if he hears what you say, and how you have to act when he might be watching. The only way he can hurt you now is if you keep watching him in your own heart."
"Listen to her, Petra," said Suriyawong. "She's a goddess, you know."
Virlomi laughed. "I save bridges and summon choppers."
"And you blessed me," said Suriyawong.
"I never did," said Virlomi.
"When you walked on my back," said Suriyawong. "My whole body is now the path of a goddess."
"Only the back part," said Virlomi. "You'll have to find someone else to bless the front."
While they bantered, half-drunk with success and liberty and the overwhelming tragedy they were leaving behind them, Bean watched Petra, saw the tears drop from her eyes onto her lap, longed to be able to reach out and touch them away from her eyes. But what good would that do? Those tears had risen up from deep wells of pain, and his mere touch would do nothing to dry them at their source. It would take time to do that, and time was the one thing that he did not have. If Petra knew happiness in her lifehappiness, that precious thing that Mrs. Wiggin talked about-it would come when she shared her life with someone else. Bean had saved her, had freed her, not so he could have her or be part of her life, but so that he did not have to bear the guilt of her death as he bore the deaths of Poke and Carlotta. It was a selfish thing he did, in a way. But in another way, there would be nothing for himself at all from this day's work.
Except that when his death came, sooner rather than later, he might well look back on this day's work with more pride than anything else in his life. Because today he won. In the midst of all this terrible defeat, he had found a victory. He had cheated Achilles out of one of his favorite murders. He had saved the life of his dearest friend, even though she wasn't quite grateful yet. His army had done what he needed it to do, and not one life had been lost out of the two hundred men he had first been given. Always before he had been part of someone else's victory. But today, today he won.
To: Chamrajnagar%jawaharlal@ifcom.gov
From: PeterWiggin%freeworld@hegemon.gov
Re: Confirmation
Dear Polemarch Chamrajnagar,
Thank you for allowing me to reconfirm your appointment as Polemarch as my first official act. We both know that I was giving you only what you already had, while you, by accepting that reconfirmation as if it actually meant something, restored to the office of Hegemon some of the luster that has been torn from it by the events of recent months. There are many who feel that it is an empty gesture to appoint a Hegemon who leads only about a third of the human race and has no particular influence over the third that officially supports him. Many nations are racing to find some accommodation with the Chinese and their allies, and I live under the constant threat of having my office abolished as one of the first gestures they can make to win the favor of the new superpower. I am, in short, a Hegemon without hegemony.