"You study everybody else, but your mother and I are like air to you: you just breathe us without noticing we're there. But that's all right, that's how parents are supposed to be in their children's lives. Unconditional love, right? Don't you suppose that's the difference between Achilles and you? That you had parents who loved you, and he didn't?"
"You loved Ender and Valentine," said Peter. It slipped out before he realized what he was saying.
"And not you?" said Father. "Oh. My mistake. I guess there is no difference between your upbringing and Achilles's. Too bad, really. Have a nice day, son!"
Peter tried to call him back, but Father pretended not to have heard him and went on his way, whistling the Marseillaise, of all things.
All right, so his suspicions of Mother were absurd, though Father had a twisted way of saying so. What a clever family he had, everybody always making a puzzle or a drama out of everything. Or a comedy. That's what he'd just played out with his father, wasn't it? A farce. An absurdity.
If Achilles had a collaborator here, it was probably not Peter's parents. Who else, then? Should he make something of the way Achilles and Suriyawong consulted? But he'd watched the vids of their occasional lunches and they said nothing beyond ordinary chat about the things they were working on. If there was a code it was a very subtle one. It's not even like they were friends--the conversation was always rather stiff and formal, and if anything bothered Peter about them, it was the way Suriyawong always seemed to phrase things in a subservient way.
He certainly never acted subservient to Bean or to Peter.
That was something to think about, too. What had really passed between Suri and Achilles during the rescue and the return to Brazil?
What silliness, Peter told himself. If Achilles has a confederate, they doubtless communicate through dead drops and coded messages in emails or something like that. Spy stuff.
Not dumb attempts to break into Achilles's room--Achilles surely would not stake his life on confederates as dumb as that. And Suriyawong--how could Achilles possibly hope to corrupt him? It's not as if Achilles had influence in the Chinese empire now, so he could use Suri's family as hostages.
No, Peter would have to keep looking, keep the electronic surveillance going, until he found out what Achilles was doing to subvert Peter's work--or take it over.
What was not possible was that Achilles had simply given up on his ambitions and was now trying to make a place for himself in the bright future of a world united under the rule of Peter Wiggin.
But wouldn't it be nice if he had.
Maybe it was time to give up on learning anything from Achilles, and start setting him up for destruction.
7
THE HUMAN RACE
From: unready%[email protected]
To: Demosthenes%[email protected]
Re: If I help you
So, Mr. Wonderboy Hegemon, now that you're no longer Demosthenes of "freeamerica.org", is there any good reason why my telling you what I see from the sky wouldn't be treason?
From: Demosthenes%[email protected]
To: unready%[email protected]
Re: Because...
Because only the Hegemony is actually doing anything about China, or actively trying to get Russia and the Warsaw Pact out of bed with Beijing.
From: unready%[email protected]
To: Demosthenes%[email protected]
Re: Bullshit
We saw your little army pull somebody out of a prisoner convoy on a highway in China. If that was who we think it was, no way are you ever seeing anything from me again. My info doesn't go to psycho megalomaniacs. Except you, of course.
From: Demosth
enes%[email protected]