Orson Scott Card - Ender 5 - Ender's Shadow

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ENDER'S SHADOW
by Orson Scott Card
(c) 1999 by Orson Scott Card
v1.0 (08 oct 2000)
If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and
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FOREWORD
This book is, strictly speaking, not a sequel, because it begins about where Ender's Game
begins, and also ends, very nearly, at the same place. In fact, it is another telling of the same
tale, with many of the same characters and settings, only from the perspective of another
character. It's hard to know what to call it. A companion novel? A parallel novel? Perhaps a
"parallax," if I can move that scientific term into literature.
Ideally, this novel should work as well for readers who have never read Ender's Game as for
those who have read it several times. Because it is not a sequel, there is nothing you need to
know from the novel Ender's Game that is not contained here. And yet, if I have achieved my
literary goal, these two books complement and fulfill each other. Whichever one you read first,
the other novel should still work on its own merits.
For many years, I have gratefully watched as Ender's Game has grown in popularity, especially
among school-age readers. Though it was never intended as a young-adult novel, it has been
embraced by many in that age group and by many teachers who find ways to use the book in their
classrooms.
I have never found it surprising that the existing sequels -- Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide,
and Children of the Mind -- never appealed as strongly to those younger readers. The obvious
reason is that Ender's Game is centered around a child, while the sequels are about adults;
perhaps more important, Ender's Game is, at least on the surface, a heroic, adventurous novel,
while the sequels are a completely different kind of fiction, slower paced, more contemplative and
idea-centered, and dealing with themes of less immediate import to younger readers.
Recently, however, I have come to realize that the 3,000-year gap between Ender's Game and its
sequels leaves plenty of room for other sequels that are more closely tied to the original. In
fact, in one sense Ender's Game has no sequels, for the other three books make one continuous
story in themselves, while Ender's Game stands alone.
For a brief time I flirted seriously with the idea of opening up the Ender's Game universe to
other writers, and went so far as to invite a writer whose work I greatly admire, Neal Shusterman,
to consider working with me to create novels about Ender Wiggin's companions in Battle School. As
we talked, it became clear that the most obvious character to begin with would be Bean, the child-
soldier whom Ender treated as he had been treated by his adult teachers.
And then something else happened. The more we talked, the more jealous I became that Neal might
be the one to write such a book, and not me. It finally dawned on me that, far from being finished
with writing about "kids in space," as I cynically described the project, I actually had more to
say, having actually learned something in the intervening dozen years since Ender's Game first
appeared in 1985. And so, while still hoping that Neal and I can work together on something, I
deftly swiped the project back.
I soon found that it's harder than it looks, to tell the same story twice, but differently. I
was hindered by the fact that even though the viewpoint characters were different, the author was
the same, with the same core beliefs about the world. I was helped by the fact that in the
intervening years, I have learned a few things, and was able to bring different concerns and a
deeper understanding to the project. Both books come from the same mind, but not the same; they
draw on the same memories of childhood, but from a different perspective. For the reader, the
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parallax is created by Ender and Bean, standing a little ways apart as they move through the same
events. For the writer, the parallax was created by a dozen years in which my older children grew
up, and younger ones were born, and the world changed around me, and I learned a few things about
human nature and about art that I had not known before.
Now you hold this book in your hands. Whether the literary experiment succeeds for you is
entirely up to you to judge. For me it was worth dipping again into the same well, for the water
was greatly changed this time, and if it has not been turned exactly into wine, at least it has a
different flavor because of the different vessel that it was carried in, and I hope that you will
enjoy it as much, or even more.
-- Greensboro, North Carolina, January 1999
PART ONE -- URCHIN
CHAPTER 1 -- POKE
"You think you've found somebody, so suddenly my program gets the ax?"
"It's not about this kid that Graff found. It's about the low quality of what you've been
finding."
"We knew it was long odds. But the kids I'm working with are actually fighting a war just to
stay alive."
"Your kids are so malnourished that they suffer serious mental degradation before you even begin
testing them. Most of them haven't formed any normal human bonds, they're so messed up they can't
get through a day without finding something they can steal, break, or disrupt."
"They also represent possibility, as all children do."
"That's just the kind of sentimentality that discredits your whole project in the eyes of the
I.F."
***
Poke kept her eyes open all the time. The younger children were supposed to be on watch, too,
and sometimes they could be quite observant, but they just didn't notice all the things they
needed to notice, and that meant that Poke could only depend on herself to see danger.
There was plenty of danger to watch for. The cops, for instance. They didn't show up often, but
when they did, they seemed especially bent on clearing the streets of children. They would flail
about them with their magnetic whips, landing cruel stinging blows on even the smallest children,
haranguing them as vermin, thieves, pestilence, a plague on the fair city of Rotterdam. It was
Poke's job to notice when a disturbance in the distance suggested that the cops might be running a
sweep. Then she would give the alarm whistle and the little ones would rush to their hiding places
till the danger was past.
But the cops didn't come by that often. The real danger was much more immediate -- big kids.
Poke, at age nine, was the matriarch of her little crew (not that any of them knew for sure that
she was a girl), but that cut no ice with the eleven- and twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys and
girls who bullied their way around the streets. The adult-size beggars and thieves and whores of
the street paid no attention to the little kids except to kick them out of the way. But the older
children, who were among the kicked, turned around and preyed on the younger ones. Any time Poke's
crew found something to eat -- especially if they located a dependable source of garbage or an
easy mark for a coin or a bit of food -- they had to watch jealously and hide their winnings, for
the bullies liked nothing better than to take away whatever scraps of food the little ones might
have. Stealing from younger children was much safer than stealing from shops or passersby. And
they enjoyed it, Poke could see that. They liked how the little kids cowered and obeyed and
whimpered and gave them whatever they demanded.
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So when the scrawny little two-year-old took up a perch on a garbage can across the street,
Poke, being observant, saw him at once. The kid was on the edge of starvation. No, the kid was
starving. Thin arms and legs, joints that looked ridiculously oversized, a distended belly. And if
hunger didn't kill him soon, the onset of autumn would, because his clothing was thin and there
wasn't much of it even at that.
Normally she wouldn't have paid him more than passing attention. But this one had eyes. He was
still looking around with intelligence. None of that stupor of the walking dead, no longer
searching for food or even caring to find a comfortable place to lie while breathing their last
taste of the stinking air of Rotterdam. After all, death would not be such a change for them.
Everyone knew that Rotterdam was, if not the capital, then the main seaport of Hell. The only
difference between Rotterdam and death was that with Rotterdam, the damnation wasn't eternal.
This little boy -- what was he doing? Not looking for food. He wasn't eyeing the pedestrians.
Which was just as well -- there was no chance that anyone would leave anything for a child that
small. Anything he might get would be taken away by any other child, so why should he bother? If
he wanted to survive, he should be following older scavengers and licking food wrappers behind
them, getting the last sheen of sugar or dusting of flour clinging to the packaging, whatever the
first comer hadn't licked off.
There was nothing for this child out here on the street, not unless he got taken in by a crew,
and Poke wouldn't have him. He'd be nothing but a drain, and her kids were already having a hard
enough time without adding another useless mouth.
He's going to ask, she thought. He's going to whine and beg. But that only works on the rich
people. I've got my crew to think of. He's not one of them, so I don't care about him. Even if he
is small. He's nothing to me.
A couple of twelve-year-old hookers who didn't usually work this strip rounded a corner, heading
toward Poke's base. She gave a low whistle. The kids immediately drifted apart, staying on the
street but trying not to look like a crew.
It didn't help. The hookers knew already that Poke was a crew boss, and sure enough, they caught
her by the arms and slammed her against a wall and demanded their "permission" fee. Poke knew
better than to claim she had nothing to share -- she always tried to keep a reserve in order to
placate hungry bullies. These hookers, Poke could see why they were hungry. They didn't look like
what the pedophiles wanted, when they came cruising through. They were too gaunt, too old-looking.
So until they grew bodies and started attracting the slightly-less-perverted trade, they had to
resort to scavenging. It made Poke's blood boil, to have them steal from her and her crew, but it
was smarter to pay them off. If they beat her up, she couldn't look out for her crew now, could
she? So she took them to one of her stashes and came up with a little bakery bag that still had
half a pastry in it.
It was stale, since she'd been holding it for a couple of days for just such an occasion, but
the two hookers grabbed it, tore open the bag, and one of them bit off more than half before
offering the remainder to her friend. Or rather, her former friend, for of such predatory acts are
feuds born. The two of them started fighting, screaming at each other, slapping, raking at each
other with clawed hands. Poke watched closely, hoping that they'd drop the remaining fragment of
pastry, but no such luck. It went into the mouth of the same girl who had already eaten the first
bite -- and it was that first girl who won the fight too, sending the other one running for
refuge.
Poke turned around, and there was the little boy right behind her. She nearly tripped over him.
Angry as she was at having had to give up food to those street-whores, she gave him a knee and
knocked him to the ground. "Don't stand behind people if you don't want to land on your butt," she
snarled.
He simply got up and looked at her, expectant, demanding.
"No, you little bastard, you're not getting nothing from me," said Poke. "I'm not taking one
bean out of the mouths of my crew, you aren't *worth* a bean."
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Her crew was starting to reassemble, now that the bullies had passed.
"Why you give your food to them?" said the boy. "You need that food."
"Oh, excuse me!" said Poke. She raised her voice, so her crew could hear her. "I guess you ought
to be the crew boss here, is that it? You being so big, you got no trouble keeping the food."
"Not me," said the boy. "I'm not worth a bean, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember. Maybe *you* ought to remember and shut up."
Her crew laughed.
But the little boy didn't. "You got to get your own bully," he said.
"I don't *get* bullies, I get rid of them," Poke answered. She didn't like the way he kept
talking, standing up to her. In a minute she was going to have to hurt him.
"You give food to bullies every day. Give that to *one* bully and get him to keep the others
away from you."
"You think I never thought of that, stupid?" she said. "Only once he's bought, how I keep him?
He won't fight for us."
"If he won't, then kill him," said the boy.
That made Poke mad, the stupid impossibility of it, the power of the idea that she knew she
could never lay hands on. She gave him a knee again, and this time kicked him when he went down.
"Maybe I start by killing you."
"I'm not worth a bean, remember?" said the boy. "You kill one bully, get another to fight for
you, he want your food, he scared of you too."
She didn't know what to say to such a preposterous idea.
"They eating you up," said the boy. "Eating you up. So you got to kill one. Get him down,
everybody as small as me. Stones crack any size head."
"You make me sick," she said.
"Cause you didn't think of it," he said.
He was flirting with death, talking to her that way. If she injured him at all, he'd be
finished, he must know that.
But then, he had death living with him inside his flimsy little shirt already. Hard to see how
it would matter if death came any closer.
Poke looked around at her crew. She couldn't read their faces.
"I don't need no baby telling me to kill what we can't kill."
"Little kid come up behind him, you shove, he fall over," said the boy. "Already got you some
big stones, bricks. Hit him in the head. When you see brains you done."
"He no good to me dead," she said. "I want my own bully, he keep us safe, I don't want no dead
one."
The boy grinned. "So now you like my idea," he said.
"Can't trust no bully," she answered.
"He watch out for you at the charity kitchen," said the boy. "You get in at the kitchen." He
kept looking her in the eye, but he was talking for the others to hear. "He get you *all* in at
the kitchen."
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"Little kid get into the kitchen, the big kids, they beat him," said Sergeant. He was eight, and
mostly acted like he thought he was Poke's second-in-command, though truth was she didn't have a
second.
"You get you a bully, he make them go away."
"How he stop two bullies? Three bullies?" asked Sergeant.
"Like I said," the boy answered. "You push him down, he not so big. You get your rocks. You be
ready. Be not you a soldier? Don't they call you Sergeant?"
"Stop talking to him, Sarge," said Poke. "I don't know why any of us is talking to some two-year-
old."
"I'm four," said the boy.
"What your name?" asked Poke.
"Nobody ever said no name for me," he said.
"You mean you so stupid you can't remember your own name?"
"Nobody ever said no name," he said again. Still he looked her in the eye, lying there on the
ground, the crew around him.
"Ain't worth a bean," she said.
"Am so," he said.
"Yeah," said Sergeant. "One damn bean."
"So now you got a name," said Poke. "You go back and sit on that garbage can, I think about what
you said."
"I need something to eat," said Bean.
"If I get me a bully, if what you said works, then maybe I give you something."
"I need something now," said Bean.
She knew it was true.
She reached into her pocket and took out six peanuts she had been saving. He sat up and took
just one from her hand, put it in his mouth and slowly chewed.
"Take them all," she said impatiently.
He held out his little hand. It was weak. He couldn't make a fist. "Can't hold them all," he
said. "Don't hold so good."
Damn. She was wasting perfectly good peanuts on a kid who was going to die anyway.
But she was going to try his idea. It was audacious, but it was the first plan she'd ever heard
that offered any hope of making things better, of changing something about their miserable life
without her having to put on girl clothes and going into business. And since it was his idea, the
crew had to see that she treated him fair. That's how you stay crew boss, they always see you be
fair.
So she kept holding her hand out while he ate all six peanuts, one at a time.
After he swallowed the last one, he looked her in the eye for another long moment, and then
said, "You better be ready to kill him."
"I want him alive."
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"Be ready to kill him if he ain't the right one." With that, Bean toddled back across the street
to his garbage can and laboriously climbed on top again to watch.
"You ain't no four years old!" Sergeant shouted over to him.
"I'm four but I'm just little," he shouted back.
Poke hushed Sergeant up and they went looking for stones and bricks and cinderblocks. If they
were going to have a little war, they'd best be armed.
***
Bean didn't like his new name, but it was a name, and having a name meant that somebody else
knew who he was and needed something to call him, and that was a good thing. So were the six
peanuts. His mouth hardly knew what to do with them. Chewing hurt.
So did watching as Poke screwed up the plan he gave her. Bean didn't choose her because she was
the smartest crew boss in Rotterdam. Quite the opposite. Her crew barely survived because her
judgment wasn't that good. And she was too compassionate. Didn't have the brains to make sure she
got enough food herself to look well fed, so while her own crew knew she was nice and liked her,
to strangers she didn't look prosperous. Didn't look good at her job.
But if she really was good at her job, she would never have listened to him. He never would have
got close. Or if she did listen, and did like his idea, she would have got rid of him. That's the
way it worked on the street. Nice kids died. Poke was almost too nice to stay alive. That's what
Bean was counting on. But that's what he now feared.
All this time he invested in watching people while his body ate itself up, it would be wasted if
she couldn't bring it off. Not that Bean hadn't wasted a lot of time himself. At first when he
watched the way kids did things on the street, the way they were stealing from each other, at each
other's throats, in each other's pockets, selling every part of themselves that they could sell,
he saw how things could be better if somebody had any brains, but he didn't trust his own insight.
He was sure there must be something else that he just didn't get. He struggled to learn more -- of
everything. To learn to read so he'd know what the signs said on trucks and stores and wagons and
bins. To learn enough Dutch and enough I.F. Common to understand everything that was said around
him. It didn't help that hunger constantly distracted him. He probably could have found more to
eat if he hadn't spent so much time studying the people. But finally he realized: He already
understood it. He had understood it from the start. There was no secret that Bean just didn't get
yet because he was only little. The reason all these kids handled everything so stupidly was
because they were stupid.
They were stupid and he was smart. So why was he starving to death while these kids were still
alive? That was when he decided to act. That was when he picked Poke as his crew boss. And now he
sat on a garbage can watching her blow it.
She chose the wrong bully, that's the first thing she did. She needed a guy who made it on size
alone, intimidating people. She needed somebody big and dumb, brutal but controllable. Instead,
she thinks she needs somebody *small*. No, stupid! Stupid! Bean wanted to scream at her as she saw
her target coming, a bully who called himself Achilles after the comics hero. He was little and
mean and smart and quick, but he had a gimp leg. So she thought she could take him down more
easily. Stupid! The idea isn't just to take him down -- you can take *anybody* down the first time
because they won't expect it. You need somebody who will *stay* down.
But he said nothing. Couldn't get her mad at him. See what happens. See what Achilles is like
when he's beat. She'll see -- it won't work and she'll have to kill him and hide the body and try
again with another bully before word gets out that there's a crew of little kids taking down
bullies.
So up comes Achilles, swaggering -- or maybe that was just the rolling gait that his bent leg
forced on him -- and Poke makes an exaggerated show of cowering and trying to get away. Bad job,
thought Bean. Achilles gets it already. Something's wrong. You were supposed to act like you
normally do! Stupid! So Achilles looks around a lot more. Wary. She tells him she's got something
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stashed -- that part's normal -- and she leads him into the trap in the alley. But look, he's
holding back. Being careful. It isn't going to work.
But it does work, because of the gimp leg. Achilles can see the trap being sprung but he can't
get away, a couple of little kids pile into the backs of his legs while Poke and Sergeant push him
from the front and down he goes. Then there's a couple of bricks hitting his body and his bad leg
and they're thrown hard -- the little kids get it, they do their job, even if Poke is stupid --
and yeah, that's good, Achilles *is* scared, he thinks he's going to die.
Bean was off his perch by now. Down the alley, watching, closer. Hard to see past the crowd. He
pushes his way in, and the little kids -- who are all bigger than he is -- recognize him, they
know he earned a view of this, they let him in. He stands right at Achilles' head. Poke stands
above him, holding a big cinderblock, and she's talking.
"You get us into the food line at the shelter."
"Sure, right, I will, I promise."
Don't believe him. Look at his eyes, checking for weakness.
"You get more food this way, too, Achilles. You get my crew. We get enough to eat, we have more
strength, we bring more to you. You need a crew. The other bullies shove you out of the way --
we've seen them! -- but with us, you don't got to take no shit. See how we do it? An army, that's
what we are."
OK, now he was getting it. It *was* a good idea, and he wasn't stupid, so it made sense to him.
"If this is so smart, Poke, how come you didn't do this before now?"
She had nothing to say to that. Instead, she glanced at Bean.
Just a momentary glance, but Achilles saw it. And Bean knew what he was thinking. It was so
obvious.
"Kill him," said Bean.
"Don't be stupid," said Poke. "He's *in*."
"That's right," said Achilles. "I'm in. It's a good idea."
"Kill him," said Bean. "If you don't kill him now, he's going to kill *you*."
"You let this little walking turd get away with talking shit like this?" said Achilles.
"It's your life or his," said Bean. "Kill him and take the next guy."
"The next guy won't have my bad leg," said Achilles. "The next guy won't think he needs you. I
know I do. I'm in. I'm the one you want. It makes sense."
Maybe Bean's warning made her more cautious. She didn't cave in quite yet. "You won't decide
later that you're embarrassed to have a bunch of little kids in your crew?"
"It's *your* crew, not mine," said Achilles.
Liar, thought Bean. Don't you see that he's lying to you?
"What this is to me," said Achilles, "this is my family. These are my kid brothers and sisters.
I got to look after my family, don't I?"
Bean saw at once that Achilles had won. Powerful bully, and he had called these kids his
sisters, his brothers. Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food,
but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging. They got a little of
that by being in Poke's crew. But Achilles was promising more. He had just beaten Poke's best
offer. Now it was too late to kill him.
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Too late, but for a moment it looked as if Poke was so stupid she was going to go ahead and kill
him after all. She raised the cinderblock higher, to crash it down.
"No," said Bean. "You can't. He's family now."
She lowered the cinderblock to her waist. Slowly she turned to look at Bean. "You get the hell
out of here," she said. "You no part of my crew. You get *nothing* here."
"No," said Achilles. "You better go ahead and kill me, you plan to treat him that way."
Oh, that sounded brave. But Bean knew Achilles wasn't brave. Just smart. He had already won. It
meant nothing that he was lying there on the ground and Poke still had the cinderblock. It was his
crew now. Poke was finished. It would be a while before anybody but Bean and Achilles understood
that, but the test of authority was here and now, and Achilles was going to win it.
"This little kid," said Achilles, "he may not be part of your crew, but he's part of my family.
You don't go telling my brother to get lost."
Poke hesitated. A moment. A moment longer.
Long enough.
Achilles sat up. He rubbed his bruises, he checked out his contusions. He looked in joking
admiration to the little kids who had bricked him. "Damn, you bad!" They laughed -- nervously, at
first. Would he hurt them because they hurt him? "Don't worry," he said. "You showed me what you
can do. We have to do this to more than a couple of bullies, you'll see. I had to know you could
do it right. Good job. What's your name?"
One by one he learned their names. Learned them and remembered them, or when he missed one he'd
make a big deal about it, apologize, visibly work at remembering. Fifteen minutes later, they
loved him.
If he could do this, thought Bean, if he's this good at making people love him, why didn't he do
it before?
Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power
with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you
give them respect, *they* give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind
giving it up.
Achilles got to his feet, a little shaky, his bad leg more sore than usual. Everybody stood
back, gave him some space. He could leave now, if he wanted. Get away, never come back. Or go get
some more bullies, come back and punish the crew. But he stood there, then smiled, reached into
his pocket, took out the most incredible thing. A bunch of raisins. A whole handful of them. They
looked at his hand as if it bore the mark of a nail in the palm.
"Little brothers and sisters first," he said. "Littlest first." He looked at Bean. "You."
"Not him!" said the next littlest. "We don't even know him."
"Bean was the one wanted us to kill you," said another.
"Bean," said Achilles. "Bean, you were just looking out for my family, weren't you?"
"Yes," said Bean.
"You want a raisin?"
Bean nodded.
"You first. You the one brought us all together, OK?"
Either Achilles would kill him or he wouldn't. At this moment, all that mattered was the raisin.
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Bean took it. Put it in his mouth. Did not even bite down on it. Just let his saliva soak it,
bringing out the flavor of it.
"You know," said Achilles, "no matter how long you hold it in your mouth, it never turns back
into a grape."
"What's a grape?"
Achilles laughed at him, still not chewing. Then he gave out raisins to the other kids. Poke had
never shared out so many raisins, because she had never had so many to share. But the little kids
wouldn't understand that. They'd think, Poke gave us garbage, and Achilles gave us raisins. That's
because they were stupid.
CHAPTER 2 -- KITCHEN
"I know you've already looked through this area, and you're probably almost done with Rotterdam,
but something's been happening lately, since you visited, that ... oh, I don't know if it's really
anything, I shouldn't have called."
"Tell me, I'm listening."
"There's always been fighting in the line. We try to stop them, but we only have a few
volunteers, and they're needed to keep order inside the dining room, that and serve the food. So
we know that a lot of kids who should get a turn can't even get in the line, because they're
pushed out. And if we do manage to stop the bullies and let one of the little ones in, then they
get beaten up afterward. We never see them again. It's ugly."
"Survival of the fittest."
"Of the cruelest. Civilization is supposed to be the opposite of that."
"You're civilized. They're not."
"Anyway, it's changed. All of a sudden. just in the past few days. I don't know why. But I just -
- you said that anything unusual -- and whoever's behind it -- I mean, can civilization suddenly
evolve all over again, in the middle of a jungle of children?"
"That's the only place it ever evolves. I'm through in Delft. There was nothing for us here. I
already have enough blue plates."
***
Bean kept to the background during the weeks that followed. He had nothing to offer now -- they
already had his best idea. And he knew that gratitude wouldn't last long. He wasn't big and he
didn't eat much, but if he was constantly underfoot, annoying people and chattering at them, it
would soon become not only fun but popular to deny him food in hopes that he'd die or go away.
Even so, he often felt Achilles' eyes on him. He noticed this without fear. If Achilles killed
him, so be it. He had been a few days from death anyway. It would just mean his plan didn't work
so well after all, but since it was his only plan, it didn't matter if it turned out not to have
been good. If Achilles remembered how Bean urged Poke to kill him -- and of course he did remember
-- and if Achilles was planning how and when he would die, there was nothing Bean could do to
prevent it.
Sucking up wouldn't help. That would just look like weakness, and Bean had seen for a long time
how bullies -- and Achilles was still a bully at heart -- thrived on the terror of other children,
how they treated people even worse when they showed their weakness. Nor would offering more clever
ideas, first because Bean didn't have any, and second because Achilles would think it was an
affront to his authority. And the other kids would resent it if Bean kept acting like he thought
he was the only one with a brain. They already resented him for having thought of this plan that
had changed their lives.
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For the change was immediate. The very first morning, Achilles had Sergeant go stand in the line
at Helga's Kitchen on Aert Van Nes Straat, because, he said, as long as we're going to get the
crap beaten out of us anyway, we might as well try for the best free food in Rotterdam in case we
get to eat before we die. He talked like that, but he had made them practice their moves till the
last light of day the night before, so they worked together better and they didn't give themselves
away so soon, the way they did when they were going after him. The practice gave them confidence.
Achilles kept saying, "They'll expect this," and "They'll try that," and because he was a bully
himself, they trusted him in a way they had never trusted Poke.
Poke, being stupid, kept trying to act as if she was in charge, as if she had only delegated
their training to Achilles. Bean admired the way that Achilles did not argue with her, and did not
change his plans or instructions in any way because of what she said. If she urged him to do what
he was already doing, he'd keep doing it. There was no show of defiance. No struggle for power.
Achilles acted as if he had already won, and because the other kids followed him, he had.
The line formed in front of Helga's early, and Achilles watched carefully as bullies who arrived
later inserted themselves in line in a kind of hierarchy -- the bullies knew which ones got pride
of place. Bean tried to understand the principle Achilles used to pick which bully Sergeant should
pick a fight with. It wasn't the weakest, but that was smart, since beating the weakest bully
would only set them up for more fights every day. Nor was it the strongest. As Sergeant walked
across the street, Bean tried to see what it was about the target bully that made Achilles pick
him. And then Bean realized -- this was the strongest bully who had no friends with him.
The target was big and he looked mean, so beating him would look like an important victory. But
he talked to no one, greeted no one. He was out of his territory, and several of the other bullies
were casting resentful glances at him, sizing him up. There might have been a fight here today
even if Achilles hadn't picked this soup line, this stranger.
Sergeant was cool as you please, slipping into place directly in front of the target. For a
moment, the target just stood there looking at him, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Surely this little kid would realize his deadly mistake and run away. But Sergeant didn't even act
as if he noticed the target was there.
"Hey!" said the target. He shoved Sergeant hard, and from the angle of the push, Sergeant should
have been propelled away from the line. But, as Achilles had told him, he planted a foot right
away and launched himself forward, hitting the bully in front of the target in line, even though
that was not the direction in which the target had pushed him.
The bully in front turned around and snarled at Sergeant, who pleaded, "He pushed me."
"He hit you himself," said the target.
"Do I look that stupid?" said Sergeant.
The bully-in-front sized up the target. A stranger. Tough, but not unbeatable. "Watch yourself,
skinny boy."
That was a dire insult among bullies, since it implied incompetence and weakness.
"Watch your own self."
During this exchange, Achilles led a picked group of younger kids toward Sergeant, who was
risking life and limb by staying right up between the two bullies. Just before reaching them, two
of the younger kids darted through the line to the other side, taking up posts against the wall
just beyond the target's range of vision. Then Achilles started screaming.
"What the bell do you think you're doing, you turd-stained piece of toilet paper! I send my boy
to hold my place in line and you *shove* him? You shove him into my *friend* here?"
Of course they weren't friends at all -- Achilles was the lowest-status bully in this part of
Rotterdam and he always took his place as the last of the bullies in line. But the target didn't
know that, and he wouldn't have time to find out. For by the time the target was turned to face
Achilles, the boys behind him were already leaping against his calves. There was no waiting for
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