Shadow of the Hegemon, the - Book 2 (Ender)

freighter along with two of the soldiers, who were now in civilian clothes, as if that could conceal the soldierly way they acted. Bean and Carlotta stayed behind. Neither group would know where the other was. There would be no effort to contact each other. That had been another hard realization for Mother. "Why can't we write?"
    "Nothing is easier to track than email," said Father. "Even if we use disguised online identities, if someone finds us, and we're writing regularly to Julian, then they'll see the pattern and track him down."
    Mother understood it then. With her head, if not her heart.
    Down inside the sub, Bean and Sister Carlotta sat down at a tiny table in the mess.
    "Well?" said Bean.
    "Well," said Sister Carlotta.
    "Where are we going?" asked Bean.
    "I have no idea," said Sister Carlotta. "They'll transfer us to another ship at another port, and we'll get off, and I have these false identities that we're supposed to use, but I really have no idea where we should go from there."
    "We have to keep moving. No more than a few weeks in any one place," said Bean. "And I have to get on the nets with new identities every time we move, so no one can track the pattern."
    "Do you seriously think someone will catalogue all the email in the entire world and follow up on all the ones that move around?" asked Sister Carlotta.
    "Yes," said Bean. "They probably already do, so it's just a matter of running a search."
    "But that's billions of emails a day."
    "That's why it takes so many clerks to check all the email addresses on the file cards in the central switchboard," said Bean. He grinned at Sister Carlotta.
    She did not grin back. "You really are a snotty and disrespectful little boy," she said.
    "You're really leaving it up to me to decide where we go?"
    "Not at all. I'm merely waiting to make a decision until we both agree."
    "Oh, now, that's a cheap excuse to stay down here in this sub with all these great-looking men."
    "Your level of banter has become even more crude than it was when you lived on the streets of Rotterdam," she said, coolly analytical.
    "It's the war," said Bean. "It ... it changes a man."
    She couldn't keep a straight face any longer. Even though her laugh was only a single bark, and her smile lasted only a moment longer, it was enough. She still liked him. And he, to his surprise, still liked her, even though it had been years since he lived with her while she educated him to a level where Battle School would take him. He was surprised because, at the time he lived with her, he had never let himself realize that he liked her. After Poke's death, he hadn't been willing to admit to himself that he liked anybody. But now he knew the truth. He liked Sister Carlotta just fine.
    Of course, she would probably get on his nerves after a while, too, just like his parents had. But at least when that happened, they could pick up and move. There wouldn't be soldiers keeping them indoors and away from the windows.
    And if it ever became truly annoying, Bean could leave and strike out on his own. He'd never say that to Sister Carlotta, because it would only worry her. Besides, she was bound to know it already. She had all the test data. And those tests had been designed to tell everything about a person. Why, she probably knew him better than he knew himself.
    Of course, he knew that back when he took the tests, there was hardly an honest answer on any of the psychological tests. He had already read enough psychology by the time he took them that he knew exactly what answers were needed to show the profile that would probably get him into Battle School. So in fact she didn't know him from those tests at all.
    But then, he didn't have any idea what his real answers would have been, then or now. So it isn't as if he knew himself any better.
    And because she had observed him, and she was wise in her own way, she probably did know him better than he knew himself.
    What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never knew why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody.
    And yet somehow we live together, mostly in peace, and get things done with a high enough success rate that people keep trying. Human beings get married and a lot of the marriages work, and they have children and most