"You helped save the world between then and now," said Anton. "I think the politics of the situation would be a little different now."
"What a relief," said Bean.
"So this non-murderer, this tamperer with evidence," said Petra, "I didn't know you knew him."
"I didn't--I don't," said Anton. "I've never met him, but he's written to me. Just a day before Petra did, as a matter of fact. I don't know where he is. But I can put you in touch with him. You'll have to take it from there."
"So I finally get to meet the legendary Uncle Constantine," said Bean. "Or, as Father calls him--when he wants to irritate Mother--'My bastard brother.'"
"How did he get out of jail, really?" asked Petra.
"I only know what he told me. But as Sister Carlotta said, the man's a liar to the core. He believes his own lies. In which case, Bean, he might think he's your father. He told her that he cloned you and your brothers from himself."
"And you think he should help us have children?" asked Petra.
"I think if you want to have children without Bean's little problem, he's the only one who can help you. Of course, many doctors can destroy the embryos and tell you whether they would have had your talents and your curse. But since my little key has never been turned by nature, there's no nondestructive test for it. And in order to get anyone to develop a test, you would have to subject yourself to examination by doctors who would regard you as a career-making opportunity. Volescu's biggest advantage is he already knows about you, and he's in no position to brag about finding you."
"Then give us his email," said Bean. "We'll go from there."
8
TARGETS
From: Betterman%[email protected] [FREE email! Sign up a friend!]
To: Humble%[email protected] [JESUS loves you! ChosenOnes.Org]
Re: Thanks for your help
Dear Anonymous Benefactor,
I may have been in prison but I wasn't hiding under a rock. I know who you are, and I know what you've done. So when you offer to help me continue the research that was interrupted by my life sentence, and imply that you are responsible for having my charges reduced and my sentence commuted, I must suspect an ulterior motive.
I think you plan to use my supposed rendezvous with these supposed people as a means of killing them. Sort of like Herod asking the Wise Men to tell him where the newborn king was, so he could go and worship him also.
From: Humble%[email protected] [Don't go home ALONE! LonelyHearts]
To: Betterman%[email protected] [Your ADS get seen! Free Email!]
Re: You have misjudged me
Dear Doctor,
You have misjudged me. I have no interest in anyone's death. I want you to help them make babies that don't have any of the father's gifts or problems. Make a dozen for them.
But along the way, if you happen to get any nice little embryos that do have the father's gifts, don't discard them, please. Keep them nice and safe. For me. For us. There are people who would very much like to raise a little garden full of beans.
John Paul Wiggin had noticed some years ago that the whole child-rearing thing wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. Supposedly somewhere there was such a thing as a normal child, but none of them had come anywhere near his house.
Not that he didn't love his kids. He did. More than they would ever know; more, he suspected, than he knew himself. After all, you never know how much you love somebody until the real test comes. Would you die for this person? Would you throw yourself on the grenade, step in front of the speeding car, keep a secret under torture, to save his life? Most people never know the answer to that question. And even those who do know are still not sure whether it was love or duty or self-respect or cultural conditioning or any number of other possible explanations.
John Paul Wiggin loved his kids. But either he didn't have enough of them, or he had too many. If he had more, then having two of them take off for some faraway colony from which they could never return in his lifetime, that might not have been so bad, because there'd still be several left at home for him to enjoy, to help, to admire as parents wanted to admire their children.
And if there had been one fewer. If the government had not requisitioned a third child from them. If Andrew had never been born, had never been accepted into a program for which Peter was rejected, then perhaps Peter's pathological ambition might have stayed within normal bounds. Perhaps his envy and resentment, his need to prove himself worthy after all, would not have tainted his life, darkening even his brightest moments.
Of course, if Andrew hadn't been born, the world might now be honeycombed with Formic hives, and the human race nothing but a few ragged bands surviving in some hostile environment like Tierra del Fuego or Greenland or the Moon.
It wasn't the government requisition, either. Little known fact: Andrew had almost certainly been conceived before the requisition came. John Paul Wiggin wasn't all that good a Catholic, until he realized that the population control laws forbade him to be. Then, because he was a stubborn Pole or a rebellious American or simply because he was that peculiar mix of genes and memory called John Paul Wiggin, there was nothing more important to him than being a good Catholic, particularly when it came to disobeying the population laws.