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"And why would he do that? We alreads have student access. What do you tell him, I need citizen's access so I can take over the world?"
"No, Val. I won't tell him anything. You'll tell him how you're worried about me. How I'm trying so very hard to do well at school, but you know it's driving me crazy because I can never talk to anybody intelligent, everybody always talks down to me because I'm young, I never get to converse with my peers. You can prove that the stress is getting to me."
Valentine thought of the corpse of the squirrel in the woods and realized that even that discovery was part of Peter's plan. Or at least he had made it part of his plan, after it happened.
"So you get him to authorize us to share his citizen's access. To adopt our own identities there, to conceal who we are so people will give us the intellectual respect we deserve."
Valentine could challenge him on ideas, but never on things like this. She could not say, What makes you think you deserve respect? She had read about Adolf Hitler. She wondered what he was like at the age of twelve. Not this smart, not like Peter that way, but craving honor, probably that. And what would it have meant to the world if in childhood he had been caught in a thresher or trampled by a horse?
"Val," Peter said. "I know what you think of me. I'm not a nice person, you think."
Valentine threw a pine needle at him. "An arrow through your heart."
"I've been planning to come talk to you for a long time. But I kept being afraid."
She put a pine needle in her mouth and blew it at him. It dropped almost straight down. "Another failed launch." Why was he pretending to be weak?
"Val, I was afraid you wouldn't believe me. That you wouldn't believe I could do it."
"Peter, I believe you could do anything, and probably will."
"But I was even more afraid that you'd believe me and try to stop me."
"Come on, threaten to kill me again, Peter." Did he actually believe she could be fooled by his nice-and-humble-kid act?
"So I've got a sick sense of humor. I'm sorry. You know I was teasing. I need your help."
"You're just what the world needs. A twelve-year-old to solve all our problems."