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might rescue them. To be excited, so we'll hurtle into a situation completely unprepared for the fact that he's waiting for us. That way he can see us fall from triumphant hope to utter despair. Before he kills us."
Bean was right, she knew it. "But how can you even pretend to love someone so evil?"
"No, you still don't understand," said Bean. "It's not our despair he wants. It's our hope. He has none. He doesn't understand it."
"Oh. please," said Petra. "An ambitious person lives on hope."
"He has no hope. No dream. He tries everything to find one. He goes through the motions of love and kindness, or anything else that might work, and still nothing means anything. Each new conquest only leaves him hungry for another. He's hungry to find something that really matters in life. He knows we have it. Both of us, before we even found each other, we had it."
"I thought you were famous for having no faith," said Petra.
"But you see," said Bean, "Achilles knew me better than I knew myself. He saw it in me. The same thing Sister Carlotta saw."
"Intelligence?" asked Petra.
"Hope," said Bean. "Relentless hope. It never crosses my mind that there's no solution, no chance of survival. Oh, I can conceive of that intellectually, but never are my actions based on despair, because I never really believe it. Achilles knows that I have a reason to live. That's why he wants me so badly. And you, Petra. You more than me."
"And our babies-they are our hope. A completely insane kind of hope, yes, but we made them, didn't we?"
"So," said Petra, grasping the picture now, "he doesn't just want us to die, the way he was perfectly content to let Sister Carlotta die in an airplane, when he was far away. He wants us to see him with our babies."
"And when we realize we can't have them back, that we're going to die after all, the hope that drains out of us, he thinks it'll become his own. He thinks that because he has our babies, he has our hope."
"And he does," said Petra.
"But the hope can never be his. He's incapable of it."
"This is all very interesting," said Petra, "but completely useless."
"But don't you see?" said Bean. "This is how we can destroy him."
"What do you mean?"
"He's going to fall into the pit he dug for us."
"We don't have his babies."
"He hopes we'll come and give him what he wants. But instead, we'll come prepared to destroy him."
"He's going to be laying an ambush for us. If we come in force, he'll either slip away or-as soon as it's clear he's doomed-he'll kill our babies."
"No, no, we'll let him spring his trap. We'll walk right into it. So that when we face him, we see him in his moment of triumph. Which is always the moment when somebody is at their stupidest."
"You don't have to be smart when you have all the guns."
"Relax, Petra," said Bean. "I'm going to get our babies back. And kill Achilles while I'm at it. And I'll do it soon, my love. Before I die."
"That's good," said Petra. "It will be so much harder for you to do it afterward."
And then she wept, because, contrary to what Bean had just said, she had no hope. She was going to lose her husband, her children were going to lose their father No victory over Achilles could change the fact that in the end, she was going to lose him.
He reached out for her again, held her close, kissed her brow, her cheek. "Have our baby," he said. "I'll bring home its brothers and sisters before it's born."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WAR PLANS
From: Demosthenes%[email protected]
To: DropBox%[email protected]
Re:
Encrypted using code ***********
Decrypted using code ********
I spend half my memory capacity just holding on to whatever online identity you're using from week to week. Why not rely on encryption? Nobody's broken hyperprime encryption yet.
Here it is, Bean: Those stones in india? Virlomi started it, of course. Got a message from her:
>Now you are not in cesspool, can communicate again. Have no email here. Stones are
>mine. Back on bridge soon. War in earnest. Post to me only, this site, pickup name
>BridgeGirl password not stepstool.
At least I think that's what "stones are mine" means. And what does "password not stepstool" mean? That the password is "not stepstool"? Or that the password is not "stepstool," in which case it's probably not 'aardvark" either, but how does that help?
Anyhow, I think she's offering to begin war in earnest inside