Ender's Shadow

reminder that all obedience was voluntary and ultimately depended on the free choice of the person receiving the orders. And she would obey, in the end. She just wanted to make sure Bean was not going to suffer from the information. If they knew he had been so closely involved with both the perpetrator and the victim of a murder, they might drop him from the program. And even if she was sure it would be all right to talk about it, she might be able to get a quid pro quo.
      It took another hour before the secure conference was set up, and when Graff's head appeared in the display above her computer, he was not happy. "What game are you playing today, Sister Carlotta?”
      "You've been putting on weight, Colonel Graff. That's not healthy.”
      "Achilles," he said.
      "Man with a bad heel," she said. "Killed Hector and dragged his body around the gates of Troy. Also had a thing for a captive girl named Briseis.”
      "You know that's not the context.”
      "I know more than that. I know you must have got the name from something Bean wrote, because the name is not pronounced uh-KILL-eez, it's pronounced ah-SHEEL. French.”
      "Someone local there.”
      "Dutch is the native language here, though Fleet Common has just about driven it out as anything but a curiosity.”
      "Sister Carlotta, I don't appreciate your wasting the expense of this conference.”
      "And I'm not going to talk about it until I know why you need to know.”
      Graff took a few deep breaths. She wondered if his mother taught him to count to ten, or if, perhaps, he had learned to bite his tongue from dealing with nuns in Catholic school.
      "We are trying to make sense of something Bean wrote.”
      "Let me see it and I'll help you as I can.”
      "He's not your responsibility anymore, Sister Carlotta," said Graff.
      "Then why are you asking me about him? He's your responsibility, yes? So I can get back to work, yes?”
      Graff sighed and did something with his hands, out of sight in the display. Moments later the text of Bean's diary entry appeared on her display below and in front of Graff's face. She read it, smiling slightly.
      "Well?" asked Graff.
      "He's doing a number on you, Colonel.”
      "What do you mean?”
      "He knows you're going to read it. He's misleading you.”
      "You know this?”
      "Achilles might indeed be providing him with an example, but not a good one. Achilles once betrayed someone that Bean valued highly.”
      "Don't be vague, Sister Carlotta.”
      "I wasn't vague. I told you precisely what I wanted you to know. Just as Bean told you what he wanted you to hear. I can promise you that his diary entries will only make sense to you if you recognize that he is writing these things for you, with the intent to deceive.”
      "Why, because he didn't keep a diary down there?”
      "Because his memory is perfect," said Sister Carlotta. "He would never, never commit his real thoughts to a readable form. He keeps his own counsel. Always. You will never find a document written by him that is not meant to be read.”
      "Would it make a difference if he was writing it under another identity? Which he thinks we don't know about?”
      "But you do know about it, and so he knows you will know about it, so the other identity is there only to confuse you, and it's working.”
      "I forgot, you think this kid is smarter than God.”
      "I'm not worried that you don't accept my evaluation. The better you know him, the more you'll realize that I'm right. You'll even come to believe those test scores.”
      "What will it take to get you to help me with this?" asked Graff.
      "Try telling me the truth about what this information will mean to Bean.”
      "He's got his primary teacher worried. He disappeared for twenty-one minutes on the way back from lunch -- we have a witness who talked to him on a deck where he had no business, and that still doesn't account for that last seventeen minutes of his absence. He doesn't play with his desk --”
      "You think setting up false identities and writing phony diary entries isn't playing?”
      "There's a diagnostic / therapeutic game that all the children play -- he hasn't even signed on yet.”
      "He'll know that the game is psychological, and he won't play it until he knows what it will cost him.”
      "Did you teach him that attitude of default hostility?”
      "No, I learned it from him.”
      "Tell me straight. Based on this diary entry, it looks