Orson Card - Shadow Puppets

She wrapped her arms around his chest. "Oh, Bean, what a hellish place."

"Achilles came from here, too," he said.

"He was never as small as you were."

"But he was crippled. That bad leg. He had to be smart to stay alive. He had to keep everyone else from crushing him for no better reason than because they could. Maybe his thing about having to eliminate anyone who sees his helplessness-maybe that was a survival mechanism for him, under these circumstances."

"You're such a Christian," said Petra. "So full of charity."

"Speaking of which," said Bean. "I assume you're going to raise our child Armenian Catholic, right?"

"It would make Sister Carlotta happy, don't you think?"

"She was happy no matter what I did," said Bean. "God made her happy. She's happy now, if she's anything at all. She was a happy person.

"You make her sound-what?-mentally deficient?"

"Yes. She was incapable of holding on to malice. A serious defect."

"I wonder if there's a genetic test for it," said Petra. Then she regretted it immediately. The last thing she wanted was for Bean to think too much about genetic tests, and realize what seemed so obvious to her, that Volescu had no test.

They visited many other places, and more and more of them made him tell her little stories. Here's where Poke used to hide a stash of food to reward kids who did well. Here's where Sister Carlotta first sat down with us to teach us to read. This was our best sleeping place during the winter, until some bigger kids found us and drove us out.

"Here's where Poke stood over Achilles with a cinderblock in her hands," said Bean, "ready to dash his brains out."

"If only she had," said Petra.

"She was too good a person," said Bean. "She couldn't imagine the evil that might be in him. I didn't, either, until I saw him lying there, what was in his eyes when he looked up at that cinderblock. I've never seen so much hate. That was all-no fear. I saw her death in his eyes right then. I told her she had to do it. Had to kill him. She couldn't. But it happened just the way I warned her. If you let him live, he'll kill you, I said, and he did."

"Where was it?" asked Petra. "The place where Achilles killed her? Can you take me there?"

He thought about it for a few moments, then walked her to the waterfront among the docks. They found a clear place where they could see between the boats and ships and barges out to where the great Rhine swept past on its way to the North Sea.

"What a powerful place," said Petra.

"What do you mean?"

"It just-the river, so strong. And yet human beings were able to build this along its banks. This harbor Nature is strong but the human mind is stronger"

"Except when it isn't," said Bean.

"He gave her body to the river, didn't he?"

"He dumped her into the water, yes.

"But the way Achilles saw what he did. Giving her to the water Maybe he romanticized it."

"He strangled her," said Bean. "I don't care what he thought while he did it, or afterward. He kissed her and then he strangled her."

"You didn't see the murder, I hope!" said Petra. It would be too terrible if Bean bad been carrying such an image in his mind all these years.

"I saw the kiss," said Bean. "I was too selfish and stupid to see what it meant."

Petra remembered her own kiss from Achilles, and shuddered. "You thought what anyone would have thought," said Petra. "You thought his kiss meant what mine does." And she kissed him.

He kissed her back. Hungrily.

But when the kiss ended, his face grew wistful again. "I would undo everything, all that I've done with my life since then," said Bean, "if I could only go back and undo that one moment."

"What, you think you could have fought him? Have you forgotten how small you were then?"

"If I'd been there, if he'd known I was watching, he wouldn't have done it. Achilles never risks discovery if he can help it."

"Or he might have killed you, too."

"He couldn't kill us both at once. Not with that limp leg. Whichever one he went for, the other would scream bloody murder and go for help."

"Or hit him over the head with a cinderblock."

"Yes, well, Poke could have done that, but I couldn't have lifted it higher than his head. And I don't think dropping a stone on his toe would have done the job."

They stayed by the dock for a little longer, and then made the walk back to the hospital.

The security guard was on duty. All was right with the world.

Bean had gone back to his childhood range and he hadn't cried much, hadn't turned away, hadn't fled back to some safe place.

Or so she thought, until they left the hospital, returned to their hotel, and he lay in the bed, gasping for breath until she realized that he was sobbing. Great dry wracking sobs that shook his whole body. She lay beside him and held him until he slept.

Volescu's fakery was so good that for a few moments Petra wondered if he might really have the ability to test the embryos. But no, it was flimflam-he was simply smart enough, scientist enough, to find convincing flimflam that was realistic enough to fool extremely intelligent laypeople like them, and even the fertility doctor they brought with them. He must have made it look like the tests these doctors performed to test for a child's sex or for major genetic defects.

Or else the doctor knew perfectly well it was a scam, but said nothing because all the baby-fixers played the same game, pretending to check for defects that couldn't actually be checked for, knowing that by the time the fakery was discovered, the parents would already have bonded with the child-and even if they hadn't, how could they sue for failing to perform an illegal procedure like sorting for athletic prowess or intellect? Maybe all these baby boutiques were fakers.

The only reason Petra wasn't fooled is that she didn't watch the procedure, she watched Volescu, and by the end of the procedure she knew that he was way too relaxed. He knew that nothing he was doing would make the slightest difference. There was nothing at stake. The test meant nothing.

There were nine embryos. He pretended to identify three of them as having Anton's Key. He tried to hand the containers to one of his assistants to dispose of, but Bean insisted that he give them to their doctor for disposal.

"I don't want any of these embryos to accidentally become a baby," said Bean with a smile.

But to Petra, they already were babies, and it hurt her to watch as Bean supervised the pouring out of the three embryos into a sink, the scouring of the containers to make sure an embryo hadn't managed to thrive in some remaining droplet.

I'm imagining this, thought Petra. For all she knew, the containers he flushed had never contained embryos at all. Why would Volescu sacrifice any of them, when all he had to do was lie and merely say that these three had contained embryos with Anton's Key?

So, self persuaded that no actual harm to a child of hers was being done, she thanked Volescu for his help and they waited for him to leave before anything else was done. Volescu carried nothing from the room that he hadn't come in with.

Then Bean and Petra both watched as the six remaining embryos were frozen, their containers tagged, and all of them secured against tampering.

The morning of the implantation, they both awoke almost at first light, too excited, too nervous to sleep. She lay in bed reading, trying to calm herself; he sat at the table in the hotel room, working on email, scanning the nets.

But his mind was obviously on the morning's procedure. "It's going to be expensive," he said. "Keeping guard over the ones we don't implant."

She knew what he was driving at. "You know we've got to keep them frozen until we know if the first implant works. They don't always take."