Shadow Puppets Page 0,108

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 Ribeirao."

"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-withanybody. 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