He slipped away and ran up Posthoornstraat.
But he did not head back to their nest in the crawlspace, not yet. For even though he had all the answers, his heart was still jumping; something is wrong, it was saying to him, something is wrong.
And then he remembered that Poke wasn't the only one hiding something from him. Achilles had also been lying. Hiding something. Some plan. Was it just this meeting with Poke? Then why all this business about hiding from Ulysses? To take Poke as his girl, he didn't have to hide to do that. He could do that right out in the open. Some bullies did that, the older ones. They usually didn't take nine-year-olds, though. Was that what Achilles was hiding?
"You promised," Poke said to Achilles there on the dock.
What did Achilles promise? That was why Poke came to him – to pay him for his promise. But what could Achilles be promising her that he wasn't already giving her as part of his family? Achilles didn't have anything.
So he must have been promising not to do something. Not to kill her? Then that would be too stupid even for Poke, to go off alone with Achilles.
Not to kill me, thought Bean. That's the promise. Not to kill me.
Only I'm not the one in danger, or not the most danger. I might have said to kill him, but Poke was the one who knocked him down, who stood over him. That picture must still be in Achilles' mind, all the time he must remember it, must dream about it, him lying on the ground, a nine-year-old girl standing over him with a cinderblock, threatening to kill him. A cripple like him, somehow he had made it into the ranks of the bullies. So he was tough – but always mocked by the boys with two good legs, the lowest-status bully. And the lowest moment of his life had to be then, when a nine-year-old girl knocked him down and a bunch of little kids stood over him.
Poke, he blames you most. You're the one he has to smash in order to wipe out the agony of that memory.
Now it was clear. Everything Achilles had said today was a lie. He wasn't hiding from Ulysses. He would face Ulysses down – probably still would, tomorrow. But when he faced Ulysses, Achilles would have a much bigger grievance. You killed Poke! He would scream the accusation. Ulysses would look so stupid and weak, denying it after all the bragging he'd done about how he'd get even. He might even admit to killing her, just for the brag of it. And then Achilles would strike at Ulysses and nobody would blame him for killing the boy. It wouldn't be mere self-defense, it would be defense of his family.
Achilles was just too damn smart. And patient. Waiting to kill Poke until there was somebody else who could be blamed for it.
Bean ran back to warn her. As fast as his little legs would move, the longest strides he could take. He ran forever.
There was nobody there on the dock where Poke had met Achilles.
Bean looked around helplessly. He thought of calling out, but that would be stupid. Just because it was Poke that Achilles hated most didn't mean that he had forgiven Bean, even if he did let Bean give him bread.
Or maybe I've gone crazy over nothing. He was hugging her, wasn't he? She came willingly, didn't she? There are things between boys and girls that I just don't understand. Achilles is a provider, a protector, not a murderer. It's my mind that works that way, my mind that thinks of killing someone who is helpless, just because he might pose a danger later. Achilles is the good one. I'm the bad one, the criminal.
Achilles is the one who knows how to love. I'm the one who doesn't.
Bean walked to the edge of the dock and looked across the channel. The water was covered with a low-flowing mist. On the far bank, the lights of Boompjes Straat twinkled like Sinterklaas Day. The waves lapped like tiny kisses against the pilings.
He looked down into the river at his feet. Something was bobbing in the water, bumped up against the wharf.
Bean looked at it for a while, uncomprehending. But then he understood that he had known all along what it was, he just didn't want to believe it. It was Poke. She was dead. It was just as Bean had feared. Everybody on the street would believe that Ulysses was guilty of the murder, even if nothing could be proved. Bean had been right about everything. Whatever it was that passed between boys and girls, it didn't have the power to block hatred, vengeance for humiliation.
And as Bean stood there, looking down into the water, he realized: I either have to tell what happened, right now, this minute, to everybody, or I have to decide never to tell anybody, because if Achilles gets any hint that I saw what I saw tonight, he'll kill me and not give it a second thought. Achilles would simply say: Ulysses strikes again. Then he can pretend to be avenging two deaths, not one, when he kills Ulysses.
No, all Bean could do was keep silence. Pretend that he hadn't seen Poke's body floating in the river, her upturned face clearly recognizable in the moonlight.
She was stupid. Stupid not to see through Achilles' plans, stupid to trust him in any way, stupid not to listen to me. As stupid as I was, to walk away instead of calling out a warning, maybe saving her life by giving her a witness that Achilles could not hope to catch and therefore could not silence.
She was the reason Bean was alive. She was the one who gave him a name. She was the one who listened to his plan. And now she had died for it, and he could have saved her. Sure, he told her at the start to kill Achilles, but in the end she had been right to choose him – he was the only one of the bullies who could have figured it all out and brought it off with such style. But Bean had also been right. Achilles was a champion liar, and when he decided that Poke would die, he began building up the lies that would surround the murder – lies that would get Poke off by herself where he could kill her without witnesses; lies to alibi himself in the eyes of the younger kids.
I trusted him, thought Bean. I knew what he was from the start, and yet I trusted him.
Aw, Poke, you poor, stupid, kind, decent girl. You saved me and I let you down.
It's not just my fault. She's the one who went off alone with him.
Alone with him, trying to save my life? What a mistake, Poke, to think of anyone but yourself!
Am I going to die from her mistakes, too?
No. I'll die from my own damn mistakes.
Not tonight, though. Achilles had not set any plan in motion to get Bean off by himself. But from now on, when he lay awake at night, unable to drift off, he would think about how Achilles was just waiting. Biding his time. Till the day when Bean, too, would find himself in the river.
***
Sister Carlotta tried to be sensitive to the pain these children were suffering, so soon after one of their own was strangled and thrown in the river. But Poke's death was all the more reason to push forward on the testing. Achilles had not been found yet – with this Ulysses boy having already struck once, it was unlikely that Achilles would come out of hiding for some time. So Sister Carlotta had no choice but to proceed with Bean.
At first the boy was distracted, and did poorly. Sister Carlotta could not understand how he could fail even the elementary parts of the test, when he was so bright he had taught himself to read on the street. It had to be the death of Poke. So she interrupted the test and talked to him about death, about how Poke was caught up in spirit into the presence of God and the saints, who would care for her and make her happier than she had ever been in life. He did not seem interested. If anything, he did worse as they began the next phase of the test.
Well, if compassion didn't work, sternness might.
"Don't you understand what this test is for, Bean?" she asked.
"No," he said. The tone of his voice added the unmistakable idea "and I don't care."
"All you know about is the life of the street. But the streets of Rotterdam are only a part of a great city, and Rotterdam is only one city in a world of thousands of such cities. The whole human race, Bean, that's what this test is about. Because the Formics —"
"The Buggers," said Bean. Like most street urchins, he sneered at euphemism.
"They will be back, scouring the Earth, killing every living so
ul. This test is to see if you are one of the children who will be taken to Battle School and trained to be a commander of the forces that will try to stop them. This test is about saving the world, Bean."
For the first time since the test began, Bean turned his full attention to her. "Where is Battle School?"
"In an orbiting platform in space," she said. "If you do well enough on this test, you get to be a spaceman!"
There was no childlike eagerness in his face. Only hard calculation.
"I've been doing real bad so far, haven't I," he said.
"The test results so far show that you're too stupid to walk and breathe at the same time."
"Can I start over?"
"I have another version of the tests, yes," said Sister Carlotta.
"Do it."
As she brought out the alternate set, she smiled at him, tried to relax him again. "So you want to be a spaceman, is that it? Or is it the idea of being part of the International Fleet?"
He ignored her.
This time through the test, he finished everything, even though the tests were designed not to be finished in the allotted time. His scores were not perfect, but they were close. So close that nobody would believe the results.
So she gave him yet another battery of tests, this one designed for older children – the standard tests, in fact, that six-year-olds took when being considered for Battle School at the normal age. He did not do as well on these; there were too many experiences he had not had yet, to be able to understand the content of some of the questions. But he still did remarkably well. Better than any student she had ever tested.
And to think she had thought it was Achilles who had the real potential. This little one, this infant, really – he was astonishing. No one would believe she had found him on the streets, living at the starvation level.
A suspicion crept into her mind, and when the second test ended and she recorded the scores and set them aside, she leaned back in her chair and smiled at bleary-eyed little Bean and asked him, "Whose idea was it, this family thing that the street children have come up with?"
"Achilles' idea," said Bean.
Sister Carlotta waited.
"His idea to call it a family, anyway," said Bean.
She still waited. Pride would bring more to the surface, if she gave him time.
"But having a bully protect the little ones, that was my plan," said Bean. "I told it to Poke and she thought about it and decided to try it and she only made one mistake."
"What mistake was that?"
"She chose the wrong bully to protect us."
"You mean because he couldn't protect her from Ulysses?"
Bean laughed bitterly as tears slid down his cheeks.
"Ulysses is off somewhere bragging about what he's going to do."
Sister Carlotta knew but did not want to know. "Do you know who killed her, then?"
"I told her to kill him. I told her he was the wrong one. I saw it in his face, lying there on the ground, that he would never forgive her. But he's cold. He waited so long. But he never took bread from her. That should have told her. She shouldn't have gone off alone with him." He began crying in earnest now. "I think she was protecting me. Because I told her to kill him that first day. I think she was trying to get him not to kill me."
Sister Carlotta tried to keep emotion out of her voice. "Do you believe you might be in danger from Achilles?"
"I am now that I told you," he said. And then, after a moment's thought. "I was already. He doesn't forgive. He pays back, always."
"You realize that this isn't the way Achilles seems to me, or to Hazie. Helga, that is. To us, he seems – civilized."
Bean looked at her like she was crazy. "Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?"
"You want to get out of Rotterdam and go to Battle School so you can get away from Achilles."
Bean nodded.
"What about the other children. Do you think they're in danger from him?"
"No," said Bean. "He's their papa."
"But not yours. Even though he took bread from you."
"He hugged her and kissed her," said Bean. "I saw them on the dock, and she let him kiss her and then she said something about how he promised, and so I left, but then I realized and I ran back and it couldn't have been long, just running for maybe six blocks, and she was dead with her eye stabbed out, floating in the water, bumping up against the dock. He can kiss you and kill you, if he hates you enough."
Sister Carlotta drummed her fingers on the desk. "What a quandary."
"What's a quandary?"
"I was going to test Achilles, too. I think he could get into Battle School."
Bean's whole body tightened. "Then don't send me. Him or me."
"Do you really think ..." Her voice trailed off. "You think he'd try to kill you there?"
"Try?" His voice was scornful. "Achilles doesn't just try."
Sister Carlotta knew that the trait Bean was speaking of, that ruthless determination, was one of the things that they looked for in Battle School. It might make Achilles more attractive to them than Bean. And they could channel such murderous violence up there. Put it to good use.
But civilizing the bullies of the street had not been Achilles' idea. It had been Bean who thought of it. Incredible, for a child so young to conceive of it and bring it about. This child was the prize, not the one who lived for cold vengeance. But one thing was certain. It would be wrong of her to take them both. Though she could certainly take the other one and get him into a school here on Earth, get him off the street. Surely Achilles would become truly civilized then, where the desperation of the street no longer drove children to do such hideous things to each other.
Then she realized what nonsense she had been thinking. It wasn't the desperation of the street that drove Achilles to murder Poke. It was pride. It was Cain, who thought that being shamed was reason enough to take his brother's life. It was Judas, who did not shrink to kiss before killing. What was she thinking, to treat evil as if it were a mere mechanical product of deprivation? All the children of the street suffered fear and hunger, helplessness and desperation. But they didn't all become cold-blooded, calculating murderers.
If, that is, Bean was right.
But she had no doubt that Bean was telling her the truth. If Bean was lying, she would give up on herself as a judge of children's character. Now that she thought about it, Achilles was slick. A flatterer. Everything he said was calculated to impress. But Bean said little, and spoke plainly when he did speak. And he was young, and his fear and grief here in this room were real.
Of course, he also had urged that a child be killed.
But only because he posed a danger to others. It wasn't pride.
How can I judge? Isn't Christ supposed to be the judge of quick and dead? Why is this in my hands, when I am not fit to do it?
"Would you like to stay here, Bean, while I transmit your test results to the people who make the decisions about Battle School? You'll be safe here."
He looked down at his hands, nodded, then laid his head on his anus and sobbed.
***
Achilles came back to the nest that morning. "I couldn't stay away," he said. "Too much could go wrong." He took them to breakfast, just like always. But Poke and Bean weren't there.
Then Sergeant did his rounds, listening here and there, talking to other kids, talking to an adult here and there, finding out what was happening, anything that might be useful. It was along the Wijnhaven dock that he heard some of the longshoremen talking about the body found in the river that morning. A little girl. Sergeant found out where her body was being held till the authorities arrived. He didn't shy away, he walked right up to the body under a tarpaulin, and without asking permission from any of the others standing there, he pulled it back and looked at her.
"What are you doing, boy!"
"Her name is Poke," he said.
"You know her? Do you know who might have k
illed her?"
"A boy named Ulysses, that's who killed her," said Sergeant. Then he dropped the tarp and his rounds were over. Achilles had to know that his fears had been justified, that Ulysses was taking out anybody he could from the family.
"We've got no choice but to kill him," said Sergeant.
"There's been enough bloodshed," said Achilles. "But I'm afraid you're right."
Some of the younger children were crying. One of them explained, "Poke fed me when I was going to die."
"Shut up," said Sergeant. "We're eating better now than we ever did when Poke was boss."
Achilles put a hand on Sergeant's arm, to still him. "Poke did the best a crew boss could do. And she's the one who got me into the family. So in a way, anything I get for you, she got for you."
Everyone nodded solemnly at that.
A kid asked, "You think Ulysses got Bean, too?"
"Big loss if he did," said Sergeant.
"Any loss to my family is a big loss," said Achilles. "But there'll be no more. Ulysses will either leave the city, now, or he's dead. Put the word out, Sergeant. Let it be known on the street that the challenge stands. Ulysses doesn't eat in any kitchen in town, until he faces me. That's what he decided for himself, when he chose to put a knife in Poke's eye."
Sergeant saluted him and took off at a run. The picture of businesslike obedience.
Except that as he ran, he, too, was crying. For he had not told anyone how Poke died, how her eye was a bloody wound. Maybe Achilles knew some other way, maybe he had already heard but didn't mention it till Sergeant came back with the news. Maybe maybe. Sergeant knew the truth. Ulysses didn't raise his hand against anybody. Achilles did it. Just as Bean warned in the beginning. Achilles would never forgive Poke for beating him. He killed her now because Ulysses would get blamed for it. And then sat there talking about how good she was and how they should all be grateful to her and everything Achilles got for them, it was really Poke who got it.
So Bean was right all along. About everything. Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives.
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