"'Bean find Wiggin Peter.' They're suggesting that I look for Ender's older brother. He didn't go off on the colony ship with Ender and Valentine. And he's been a player, under the net identity of Locke. And I suppose he's running Demosthenes, too, now that Valentine is gone."
"You knew about that?"
"I knew a lot of things," said Bean. "But the main thing is that they're right. Achilles is hunting for me and he's hunting for you, and he's got all the rest of Ender's jeesh, but he doesn't even know Ender's brother exists and he wouldn't care if he did. But you know and I know that Peter Wiggin would have been in Battle School except for a little character flaw. And for all we know, that character flaw may be exactly what he needs to be a good match against Achilles."
"Or it may be exactly the flaw that makes it so a victory for Peter is no better than a victory for Achilles, in terms of the amount of suffering in the world."
"Well, we won't know until we find him, will we?" said Bean.
"To find him, Bean, you'd have to reveal who you are."
"Yes," said Bean. "Isn't this exciting?" He did an exaggerated wriggle like a little kid being taken to the zoo.
"This is your life you're playing with."
"You're the one who wanted me to find a cause."
"Peter Wiggin isn't a cause, he's dangerous. You haven't heard what Graff had to say about him."
"On the contrary," said Bean. "How do you think I learned about him?"
"But he might be no better than Achilles!"
"I know of several ways already that he's better than Achilles. First, he's not trying to kill us. Second, he's already got a huge network of contacts with people all over the world, some of whom know he's as young as he is but most of whom have no idea. Third, he's ambitious just like Achilles is, only Achilles has already assembled almost all of the children who were tagged as the most brilliant military commanders in the world, while Peter Wiggin will have only one. Me. Do you think he's dumb enough not to use me?"
"Use you. That's the operative word here, Bean."
"Well, aren't you being used in your cause?"
"By God, not by Peter Wiggin."
"I'll bet Peter Wiggin sends a lot clearer messages than God does," said Bean. "And if I don't like what he's doing, I can always quit."
"With someone like Peter, you can't always quit."
"He can't make me think of what I don't want to think about. Unless he's a remarkably stupid genius, he'll know that."
"I wonder if Achilles knows that, as he's trying to squeeze brilliance out of the other children."
"Exactly. Between Peter Wiggin and Achilles, what are the odds that Wiggin could be worse?"
"Oh, it's hard to imagine how that could be."
"So let's start thinking of a way to contact Locke without giving away our identity and our location."
"I'm going to need more mexerica oranges before we leave Brasil," said Carlotta.
Only then did he notice that the two of them had already blown through the whole bagful. "Me too," he said.
As she left, the empty bag in hand, she paused at the door. "You did very well with that message, Julian Delphiki."
"Thanks, Grandma Carlotta."
She left smiling.
Bean held up the message and scanned it again. The only part of the message that he hadn't fully interpreted for her was the last word. He didn't think "ptr" meant Peter. That would have been redundant. "Wiggin" was enough to identify him. No, the "ptr" at the end was a signature. This message was from Petra. She could have tried to write directly to Peter Wiggin. But she had written to Bean, coding it in a way that Peter would never have understood.
She's relying on me.