espera..

BANGKOK



Posted on Military History Forum by HectorVictorious@firewall.net



Topic: Who Remembers Briseis?



When I read the Iliad, I see the same things everyone else does-the poetry, of course, and the information about heroic bronze-age warfare. But I see something else, too.
It might have been Helen whose face launched a thousand ships, but it was Briseis who almost wrecked them. She was a powerless captive, a slave, and yet Achilles almost tore the Greek alliance apart because he wanted her.



The mystery that intrigues me is: Was she extraordinarily beautiful? or was it her mind that Achilles coveted? No, seriously: Would she have been happy for long as Achilles' captive? Would she, perhaps, have gone to him willingly? or remained a surly, resistant slave?



Not that it would have mattered to Achilles-he would have used his captive the same way, regardless of her feelings. But one imagines Briseis taking note of the tale
about Achilles' heel and slipping that information to someone within the walls of
Troy .



Briseis, if only I could have heard from you!



-Hector Victorious



Bean amused himself by leaving messages for Petra scattered all over the forums that she might visit-if she was alive, if Achilles allowed her to browse the nets, if she realized that a topic heading like "Who Remembers Briseis?" was a reference to her, and if she was free to reply as his message covertly begged her to do. He wooed her under other names of women loved by military leaders: Guinevere, Josephine, Roxane-even Barsine, the Persian wife of Alexander that Roxane murdered soon after his death. And he signed himself with the name of a nemesis or chief rival or successor: Mordred, Hector, Wellington, Cassander.


He took the dangerous step of allowing these identities to continue to exist, each consisting only of a forwarding order to another anonymous net identity that held all mail it received as encrypted postings on an open board with notracks protocols. He could visit and read the postings without leaving a trace. But firewalls could be pierced, protocols broken.



He could afford to be a little more careless now about his online identities, if only because his real-world location was now known to people whose trustworthiness he could not assess. Do you worry about the fifth lock on the back door, when the front door is open?



They had welcomed him generously in Bangkok. General Naresuan promised him that no one would know his real identity, that he would be given soldiers to train and intelligence to analyze and his advice would be sought constantly as the Thai military prepared for all kinds of future contingencies. "We are taking seriously Locke's assessment that India will soon pose a threat to Thai security, and we will of course want your help in preparing contingency plans." All so warm and courteous. Bean and Carlotta were installed in a generalofficer-level apartment on a military base, given unlimited privileges concerning meals and purchases, and then ... ignored.



No one called. No one consulted. The promised intelligence did not flow. The promised soldiers were never assigned.



Bean knew better than to even inquire. The promises were not forgotten. If he asked about them, Naresuan would be embarrassed, would feel challenged. That would never do. Something had happened. Bean could only imagine what.



At first, of course, he feared that Achilles had gotten to the Thai government somehow, that his agents now knew exactly where Bean was, that his death was imminent.



That was when he sent Carlotta away.


It was not a pleasant scene. "You should come with me," she said. "They won't stop you. Walk away."



"I'm not leaving," said Bean. "Whatever has gone wrong is probably local politics. Somebody here doesn't like having me aroundmaybe Naresuan himself, maybe someone else."



"If you feel safe enough to stay," said Sister Carlotta, "then there's no reason for me to go."



"You can't pass yourself off as my grandmother here," said Bean. "The fact that I
have a guardian weakens me."



"Spare me the scene you're trying to play," said Carlotta. "I know there are reasons why you'd be better off without me, and I know there are ways that I could help you greatly."



"If Achilles knows where I am already, then his penetration of Bangkok is deep enough that I'll never get away," said Bean. "You might. The information that an older woman is with me might not have reached him yet. But it will soon, and he wants you dead as much as he wants to kill me. I don't want to have to worry about YOU here."



"I'll go," said Carlotta. "But how do I write to you, since you never keep the same address?"



He gave her the name of his folder on the no-tracks board he was using, and the encryption key. She memorized it.



"One more thing," said Bean. "In Greensboro, Peter said something about reading your memos."

"I think he was lying," said Carlotta.



"I think the way you reacted proved that whether he read them or not, there were memos, and you don't want me to read them."



"There were, and I don't," said Carlotta.



"And that's the other reason I want you to leave," said Bean.



The expression on her face turned fierce. "You can't trust me when I tell you that there is nothing in those memos that you need to know right now?"



"I need to know everything about myself My strengths, my weaknesses. You know things about me that you told Graff and you didn't tell me. You're still not telling me. You think of yourself as my master, able to decide things for me. That means we're not partners after all."



"Very well," said Carlotta. "I am acting in your best interest, but I understand that you don't see it that way." Her manner was cold, but Bean knew her well enough to recognize that it was not anger she was controlling, but grief and frustration. It was a cold thing to do, but for her own sake he had to send her away and keep her from being in close contact with him until he understood what was going on here in Bangkok. The contretemps about the memos made her willing to go. And he really was annoyed.



She was out the door in fifteen minutes and on her way to the airport. Nine hours later he found a posting from her on his encrypted board: She was in Manila, where she could disappear within the Catholic establishment there. Not a word about their quarrel, if that's what it had been. Only a brief reference to "Locke's confession," as the newspeople were calling it. "Poor Peter," wrote Carlotta. "He's been hiding for so long, it's going to be hard for him to get used to having to face the consequences of his words."



To her secure address at the Vatican, Bean replied, "I just hope Peter has the brains

to get out of Greensboro. What he needs right now is a small country to run, so he can get some administrative and political experience. Or at least a city water department."



And what I need, thought Bean, is soldiers to command. That's why I came here.



For weeks after Carlotta left, the silence continued. It became obvious, soon enough, that whatever was going on had nothing to do with Achilles, or Bean would be dead by now. Nor could it have had anything to do with Locke being revealed as Peter Wiggin-the freeze-out had already begun before Peter published his declaration.



Bean busied himself with whatever tasks seemed meaningful. Though he had no access to military-level maps, he could still access the publicly available satellite maps of the terrain between India and the heart of Thailand-the rough mountain country of northern and eastern Burma, the Indian Ocean coastal approaches. India had a substantial fleet, by Indian Ocean standards-might they attempt to run the Strait of Malacca and strike at the heart of Thailand from the gulp. All possibilities had to be prepared for.



Some basic intelligence about the makeup of the Indian and Thai military was available on the nets. Thailand had a powerful air force-there was a chance of achieving air dominance, if they could protect their bases. Therefore it would be essential to have the capability of laying down emergency airstrips in a thousand different places, an engineering feat well within the reach of the Thai military-if they trained for it now and dispersed crews and fuel and spare parts throughout the country. That, along with mines, would be the best protection against a coastal landing.



The other Indian vulnerability would be supply lines and lanes of advance. Since India's military strategy would inevitably depend on throwing vast, irresistible armies against the enemy, the defense was to keep those vast amties hungry and harry them constantly from the air and from raiding parties. And if, as was likely, the Indian Army reached the fertile plain of the Chao Phraya or the Aoray Plateau, they had to find the land utterly stripped, the food supplies dispersed and hidden- those that weren't destroyed.

It was a brutal strategy, because the Thai people would suffer along with the Indian Army-indeed, they would suffer more. So the destruction had to be set up so it would only take place at the last minute And, as much as possible, they had to be able to evacuate women and children to remote areas or even to camps in Laos and Cambodia. Not that borders would stop the Indian army, but terrain might. Having many isolated targets for the Indians would force them to divide their forces. Thenand only then-would it make sense for the Thai military to take on smaller portions of the Indian army in hitand-run engagements or, where possible, in pitched battles where the Thai side would have temporary numerical parity and superior air support.



Of course, for all Bean knew this was already the longstanding Thai military doctrine and if he made these suggestions he would only annoy them-or make them feel that he had contempt for them.



So he worded his memo very carefully. Lots of phrases like, "No doubt you already have this in place," and "as I'm sure you have long expected." Of course, even those phrases could backfire, if they hadn't thought of these things-it would sound patronizing. But he had to do something to break this stalemate of silence.



He read the memo over and over, revising each time. He waited days to send it, so he could see it in new perspectives. Finally, certain that it was as rhetorically
inoffensive as he could make it, he put it into an email and sent it to the Office of the Chakri-the supreme military commander. It was the most public and potentially embarrassing way he could deliver the memo, since mail to that address was inevitably sorted and read by aides. Even printing it out and carrying it by hand
would have been more subtle. But the idea was to stir things up; if Naresuan wanted him to be subtle, he would have given him a private email address to write to.



Fifteen minutes after he sent the memo, his door unceremoniously opened and four military police came in. "Come with us, sir," said the sergeant in charge.



Bean knew better than to delay or to ask questions. These men knew nothing but the instructions they had been given, and Bean would find out what those were by waiting to see what they did.

They did not take him to the office of the Chakri. Instead he was taken to one of the temporary buildings that had been set up on the old parade grounds-the Thai military had only recently given up marching as part of the training of soldiers and the
display of military might. Only three hundred years after the American Civil War
had proven that the days of marching in formation into battle were over. For military organizations, that was about the normal time lag. Sometimes Bean halfexpected to find some army somewhere that was still training its soldiers to fight with sabers from horseback.



There was no label, not even a number, on the door they led him to. And when he came inside, none of the soldier-clerks even looked up at him. His arrival was both expected and unimportant, their attitude said. Which meant, of course, that it was very important, or they would not be so studiously perfect about not noticing him.



He was led to an office door, which the sergeant opened for him. He went in; the military police did not. The door closed behind him.



Seated at the desk was a major. This was an awfully high rank to have manning a reception desk, but today, at least, that seemed to be the man's duty. He depressed the button on an intercom. "The package is here," he said.



"Send it in." The voice that came back sounded young. So young that Bean understood the situation at once.



Of course. Thailand had contributed its share of military geniuses to Battle School. And even though none of Ender's jeesh had been of Thai parentage, Thailand, like many east and south Asian countries, was overrepresented in the population of Battle School as a whole.



There had even been three Thai soldiers who served with Bean in Dragon Army. Bean remembered every kid in that army very well, along with his complete dossier, since he was the one who had drawn up the list of soldiers who should make up Ender's army. Since most countries seemed to value their returning Battle School graduates in proportion to their closeness to Ender Wiggin, it was most likely one of those three who had been given a position of such influence here that he would be

able to intercept a memo to the Chakri so quickly. And of the three, the one Bean would expect to see in the most prominent position, taking the most aggressive role, was ...



Surrey. Suriyawong. "Surly," as they called him behind his back, since he always seemed to be pissed off about something.



And there he was, standing behind a table covered with maps.



Bean saw, to his surprise, that he was actually almost as tall as Suriyawong. Surrey had not been very big, but everyone towered over Bean in Battle School. Bean was catching up. He might not spend his whole life hopelessly undersized. It was a promising thought.



There was nothing promising about Surrey's attitude, though. "So the colonial
powers have decided to use India and Thailand to fight their surrogate wars," he said.



Bean knew at once what had gotten under Suriyawong's skin. Achilles was a Belgian Walloon by birth, and Bean, of course, was Greek. "Yes, of course," said Bean. "Belgium and Greece are bound to fight out their ancient differences on bloody battlefields in Burma."



"Just because you were in Ender's jeesh," said Suriyawong, "does not mean that you have any understanding of the military situation of Thailand."



"My memo was designed to show how limited my knowledge was, because Chakri Naresuan has not provided me with the access to intelligence that he indicated I would receive when I arrived."



"If we ever need your advice, we'll provide you with intelligence."



"If you only provide me with the intelligence you think I need," said Bean, "then my advice will only consist of telling you what you already know, and I might as well go

home now."



"Yes," said Suriyawong. "That would be best." "Suriyawong," said Bean, "you don't really know me."
"I know you were always an emossin' little showoff who always had to be smarter than everybody else."



"I was smarter than everybody else," said Bean. "I've got the test scores to prove it. So what? That didn't mean they made me commander of Dragon Army. It didn't mean Ender made me a toon leader. I know just how worthless being smart is, compared with being good at command. I also know just how ignorant I am here in Thailand. I didn't come here because I thought Thailand would be prostrate without my brilliant mind to lead you into battle. I came here because the most dangerous human on this planet is running the show in India and by my best calculations, Thailand is going to be his primary target. I came here because if Achilles is going to be stopped from setting up his tyranny over the world, this is where it has to be
done. And I thought, like George Washington in the American revolution, you might actually welcome a Lafayette or a Steuben to help in the cause."



"If your foolish memo was an example of your 'help,' you can leave now."



"So you already have the capability of making temporary airstrips within the amount of time that a fighter is in the air? So they can land at an airstrip that didn't exist when they took off?"



"That is an interesting idea and we're having the engineers look at it and evaluate the feasibility."



Bean nodded. "Good. That tells me all I needed to know. I'll stay." "No, you will not!"


"I'll stay because, despite the fact that you're pissed off that I'm here, you still recognized a good idea when you heard it and put it into play. You're not an idiot, and therefore you're worth working with."



Suriyawong slapped the table and leaned over it, furious. "You condescending little oomay, I'm not your moose."



Bean answered him calmly. "Suriyawong, I don't want your job. I don't want to run things here. I just want to be useful. Why not use me the way Ender did? Give me a few soldiers to train. Let me think of weird things to do and figure out how to do them. Let me be ready so that when the war comes, and there's some impossible
thing you need done, you can call me in and say, Bean, I need you to do something to slow down this army for a day, and I've got no troops anywhere near there. And I'll say, Are they drawing water from a river? Good, then let's give their whole army dysentery for a week. That should slow them down. And I'll get in there, get a bioagent into the water, bypass their water purification system, and get out. Or do
you already have a waterdrugging diarrhea team?"



Suriyawong held his expression of cold anger for a few moments, and then it broke. He laughed. "Come on, Bean, did you make that up on the spot, or have you really planned an operation like that?"



"Made it up just now," said Bean. "But it's kind of a fun idea, don't you think? Dysentery has changed the course of history more than once."



"Everybody immunizes their soldiers against the known bioagents. And there's no way of stopping downstream collateral damage."

"But Thailand is bound to have some pretty hot and heavy bioresearch, right?"' "Purely defensive," said Suriyawong. Then he smiled and sat down. "Sit, sit. You
really are content to take a background position?"

"Not only content, but eager," said Bean. "If Achilles knew I was here, he'd find a way to kill me. The last thing I need is to be prominent-until we actually get into combat, at which time it might be a nice psychological blow to give Achilles the idea that I'm running things. It won't be true, but it might make him even crazier to think it's me he's facing. I've outmaneuvered him before. He's afraid of me."



"It's not my own position I was trying to protect," said Suriyawong. Bean understood this to mean that of course it was his position he was protecting. "But Thailand kept its independence when every other country in this area was ruled by Europeans. We're very proud of keeping foreigners out."



"And yet," said Bean, "Thailand also has a history of letting foreigners in-and using them effectively."



"As long as they know their place," said Suriyawong.



"Give me a place, and I'll remember to stay in it," said Bean. "What kind of contingent do you want to work with?"
What Bean asked for wasn't a large number of men, but he wanted to draw them from every branch of service. Only two fighterbombers, two patrol boats, a handful
of engineers, a couple of light armored vehicles to go along with a couple of hundred soldiers and enough choppers to carry everything but the boats and planes. "And the power to requisition odd things that we think of. Rowboats, for instance. High explosives so we can train in making cliffs fall and bridges collapse. Whatever I think of."



"But you don't actually commit to combat without permission." "Permission," said Bean, "from whom?"
"Me," said Suriyawong.


"But you're not Chakri," said Bean.



"The Chakri," said Suriyawong, "exists to provide me with everything I ask for. The planning is entirely in my hands."



"Glad to know who's aboon here." Bean stood up. "For what it's worth, I was most help to Ender when I had access to everything he knew."



"In your dreams," said Suriyawong.



Bean grinned. "I'm dreaming of good maps," said Bean. "And an accurate assessment of the current situation of the Thai military."



Suriyawong thought about that for a long moment.



"How many of your soldiers are you sending into battle blindfolded?" asked Bean. "I
hope I'm the only one."



"Until I'm sure you really are my soldier," said Suriyawong, "the blindfold stays on. But ... you can have the maps."



"Thank you," said Bean.



He knew what Suriyawong feared: that Bean would use any information he got to come up with alternate strategies and persuade the Chakri that he would do a better job as chief strategist than Suriyawong. For it was patently untrue that Suriyawong was the aboon here. Chakri Naresuan might trust him and had obviously delegated great responsibility to him. But the authority remained in Naresuan's hands, and Suriyawong served at his pleasure. That's why Suriyawong feared Bean-he could be replaced.

He'd find out soon enough that Bean was not interested in palace politics. If he remembered correctly, Suriyawong was of the royal family-though the last few polygynist kings of Siam had had so many children that it was hard to imagine that there were many Thais who were not royal to one degree or another. Chulalongkorn had established the principle, centuries ago, that princes had a duty to serve, but not a right to high office. Suriyawong's life belonged to Thailand as a matter of honor, but he would hold his position in the military only as long as his superiors considered him the best for the job.



Now that Bean knew who it was who had been keeping him down, it would be easy enough to destroy Surrey and take his place. After all, Suriyawong had been given the responsibility to carry out Naresuan's promises to Bean. He had deliberately
disobeyed the Chakri's orders. All Bean really needed to do was use a back doorsome
connection of Peter's, probably-to get word to Naresuan that Suriyawong had blocked Bean from getting what he needed, and there would be an inquiry and the first seeds of doubt about Suriyawong would be planted.



But Bean did not want Suriyawong's job.



He wanted a fighting force that he could train to work together so smoothly, so resourcefully, so brilliantly that when he made contact with Petra and found out where she was, he could go in and get her out alive. With or without Surly's permission. He'd help the Thai military as best he could, but Bean had his own objectives, and they had nothing to do with building a career in Bangkok.



"One last thing," said Bean. "I have to have a name here, something that won't alert anyone outside Thailand that I'm a child and a foreigner-that might be enough to tip off Achilles about who I am."



"What name do you have in mind? How about Sua--it means tiger." "I have a better name," said Bean. "Borommakot."
Suriyawong looked puzzled for a moment, till he remembered the name from the

history of Ayudhya, the ancient Tai city-state of which Siam was the successor. "That was the nickname of the uparat who stole the throne from Aphai, the rightful successor."



"I was just thinking of what the name means," said Bean. " 'In the urn. Awaiting cremation.' " He grinned. "As far as Achilles is concerned, I'm just a walking dead man."



Suriyawong relaxed. "Whatever. I thought as a foreigner you might appreciate having a shorter name."



"Why? I don't have to say it." "You have to sign it."
"I'm not issuing written orders, and the only person I'll be reporting to is you. Besides, Borommakot is fun to say."



"You know your Thai history," said Suriyawong.



"Back in Battle School," said Bean. "I got fascinated with Thailand. A nation of survivors. The ancient Tai people managed to take over vast reaches of the Cambodian Empire and spread throughout southeast Asia, all without anybody noticing. They were conquered by Burma and emerged stronger than ever. When other countries were falling under European domination, Thailand managed to expand its borders for a surprisingly long time, and even when it lost Cambodia and Laos, it held its core. I think Achilles is going to find what everybody else has
found-the Thai are not easily conquered, and, once conquered, not easily ruled."



"Then you have some idea of the soul of the Thai," said Suriyawong. "But no matter now long you study us, you will never be one of us."



"You're mistaken," said Bean. "I already am one of you. A survivor, a free man, no

matter what."



Suriyawong took this seriously. "Then as one free man to another, welcome to the service of Thailand."



They parted amicably, and by the end of the day, Bean saw that Suriyawong intended to keep his word. He was provided with a list of soldiers-four preexisting fifty-man companies with fair records, so they weren't giving him the dregs. And he would
have his helicopters, his jets, his patrol boats to train with.



He should have been nervous, preparing to face soldiers who were bound to be skeptical about having him as their commander. But he had been in that situation before, in Battle School. He would win over these soldiers by the simplest expedient of all. Not flattery, not favors, not folksy friendliness. He would win their loyalty by showing them that he knew what to do with an army, so they would have the confidence that when they went into battle, their lives would not be wasted in some doomed enterprise. He would tell them, from the start, "I will never lead you into an action unless I know we can win it. Your job is to become such a brilliant fighting force that there is no action I can't lead you into. We're not in this for glory. We're in this to destroy the enemies of Thailand any way we can."



They'd get used to being led by a little Greek boy soon enough. ISLAMABAD
TO: GuillaumeLeBon%Egalite@Haiti.gov

From: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov

Re: Terms for Consultation



M. LeBon, I appreciate how difficult it was for you to approach me. I believe that I could offer you worthwhile views and suggestions, and, more to the point, I believe you are committed to acting courageously on behalf of the people you govern and therefore any suggestions I made would have an excellent chance of being put into

effect.



But the terms you suggest are unacceptable to me. I will not come to Haiti by dark of night or masked as a tourist or student, lest anyone find out that you are consulting a teenage boy from America. I am still the author of every word written by Locke, and it is as that widely known figure, whose name is on the proposals that ended the League War, that I will come openly to consult with you. If my previous reputation were not reason enough for you to be able to invite me openly, then the fact that I am the brother of Ender Wiggin, on whose shoulders the fate of all humanity so recently was placed, should set a precedent you can follow without embarrassment. Not to mention the presence of children from Battle School in almost every military headquarters on Earth. The sum you offered is a princely one. But it will never be paid, for under the terms you suggested, I will not come, and if you invite me
openly, I will certainly come but will accept no paymentnot even for my expenses
while I am in your country. As a foreigner, I could not possibly match your deep and abiding love for the people of Haiti, but I care very much that every nation and people on Earth share in the prosperity and freedom that are their birthright, and I will accept no fee for helping in that cause.



By bringing me openly, you decrease your personal risk, for if my suggestions are unpopular, you can lay the blame on me. And the personal risk I take by coming openly is far greater, for if the world judges my proposals to be unsound or if, in implementing them, you discover them to be unworkable, I will publicly bear the discredit. I speak candidly, because these are realities we both must face: Such is my confidence that my suggestions will be excellent and that you will be able to implement them effectively. When we have finished our work, you can play Cincinnatus and retire to your farm, while I will play Solon and leave the shores of Haiti, both of us confident that we have given your people a fair chance to take their proper place in the world.



Sincerely, Peter Wiggin


Petra never forgot for an instant that she was a captive and a slave. But, like most captives, like most slaves, as she lived from day to day she became accustomed to her captivity and found ways to be herself within the tight boundaries around her.


She was guarded every moment, and her desk was crippled so she could send no outgoing messages. There would be no repetition of her message to Bean. And even when she saw that someonecould it be Bean, not killed after all?was trying to speak to her, leaving messages on every military, historical, and geographic forum that spoke about women held in bondage to some warrior or other, she did not let it fret her. She could not answer, so she would waste no time trying.



Eventually the work that was forced on her became a challenge that she found interesting for its own sake. How to mount a campaign against Burma and Thailand and, eventually, Vietnam that would sweep all resistance before it, yet never provoke China to intervene. She saw at once that the vast size of the Indian Army was its greatest weakness, for the supply lines would be impossible to defend. So, unlike the other strategists Achilles was usingmostly Indian Battle School graduates-Petra did not bother with the logistics of a sledgehammer campaign. Eventually the Indian forces would have to divide anyway, unless the Burmese and Thai armies simply lined up to be slaughtered. So she planned an unpredictable campaign--dazzling thrusts by small, mobile forces that could live off the land. The few pieces of mobile armor would race forward, supplied with petrol by air tankers.



She knew her plan was the only one that made sense, and not just because of the intrinsic problems it solved. Any plan that involved putting ten million soldiers so near to the border with China would provoke Chinese intervention. Her plan would never put enough soldiers near China to constitute a threat. Nor would her plan lead to a war of attrition that would leave both sides exhausted and weak. Most of India's strength would remain in reserve, ready to strike wherever the enemy showed weakness.



Achilles gave copies of her plan to the others, of course-he called it "cooperation," but it functioned as an exercise in one-upmanship. All the others had quickly climbed into Achilles' pocket, and now were eager to please him. They sensed, of course, that Achilles wanted Petra humiliated, and duly gave him what he wanted. They mocked her plan as if any fool could see it was hopeless, even though their
criticisms were specious and her main points were never even addressed. She bore it, because she was a slave, and because she knew that eventually, some of them were bound to catch on to the way Achilles manipulated them and used them. But she
knew that she had done a brilliant job, and it would be a delicious irony if the Indian

Army-no, be honest, if Achilles-did not use her plan, and marched head-on to destruction.



It did not bother her conscience to have come up with an effective strategy for Indian expansion in southeast Asia. She knew it would never be used. Even her strategy of small, quick strike forces did not change the fact that India could not afford a two-front war. Pakistan would not let the opportunity pass if India committed itself to an eastern war.



Achilles had simply chosen the wrong country to try to lead into war. Tikal Chapekar, the Indian prime minister, was an ambitious man with delusions of the nobility of his cause. He might very well believe in Achilles' persuasions and long to begin an attempt to "unify" southeast Asia. A war might even begin. But it would founder quickly as Pakistan prepared to attack in the west. Indian adventurism would evaporate as it always had.



She even said as much to Achilles when he visited her one morning after her plans had been so resoundingly rejected by her fellow strategists. "Follow whatever plan you like, nothing will ever work as you think it will."



Achilles simply changed the subject-when he visited her, he preferred to reminisce with her as if they were a couple of old people remembering their childhoods together. Remember this about Battle School? Remember that? She wanted to scream in his face that he had only been there for a few days before Bean had him chained up in an air shaft, confessing to his crimes. He had no right to be nostalgic for Battle School. All he was accomplishing was to poison her own memories of the
place, for now when Battle School came up, she just wanted to change the subject, to
forget it completely.



Who would have imagined that she would ever think of Battle School as her era of freedom and happiness? It certainly hadn't seemed that way at the time.



To be fair, her captivity was not painful. As long as Achilles was in Hyderabad, she had the run of the base, though she was never unobserved. She could go to the library and do research-though one of her guards had to thumb the ID pad, verifying that she

had logged on as herself, with all the restrictions that implied, before she could access the nets. She could run through the dusty countryside that was used for military maneuvers-and sometimes could almost forget the other footfalls keeping syncopated rhythm with her own. She could eat what she wanted, sleep when she wanted. There were times when she almost forgot she wasn't free. There were far more times when, knowing she was not free, she almost decided to stop hoping that her captivity would ever end.



It was Bean's messages that kept her hope alive. She could not answer him, and therefore stopped thinking of his messages as actual communications. Instead they were something deeper than mere attempts at making contact. They were proof that she had not been forgotten. They were proof that Petra Arkanian, Battle School brat, still had a friend who respected her and cared for her enough to refuse to give up. Each message was a cool kiss to her fevered brow.



And then one day Achilles came to her and told her he was going on a trip.



She assumed at once that this meant she would be confined to her room, locked down and under guard, until Achilles returned.



"No locks this time," said Achilles. "You're coming with me." "So it's someplace inside India?"
"In one sense yes," said Achilles. "In another, no."



"I'm not interested in your games," she said, yawning. "I'm not going."



"Oh, you won't want to miss this," said Achilles. "And even if you did, it wouldn't matter, because I need you, so you'll be there."



" What can you possibly need me for?"

"Oh, well, when you put it that way, I suppose I should be more precise. I need you to see what takes place at the meeting."



"Why? Unless there's a successful assassination attempt, there's nothing I want to see you do."



"The meeting," said Achilles, "is in Islamabad."



Petra had no smart reply to that. The capital of Pakistan. It was unthinkable. What possible business could Achilles have there? And why would he bring her?



They flew-which of course reminded her of the eventful flight that had brought her to India as Achilles' prisoner. The open doorshould I have pulled him out with me and brought him brutally down to earth?



During the flight Achilles showed her the letter he had sent to Ghaffar Wahabi, the "prime minister" of Pakistan-actually, of course, the military dictator ... or Sword of Islam, if you preferred it that way. The letter was a marvel of deft manipulation. It would never have attracted any attention in Islamabad, however, if it had not come from Hyderabad, the headquarters of the Indian Army. Even though Achilles' letter never actually said so, it would be assumed in Pakistan that Achilles came as an unofficial envoy of the Indian government.



How many times had an Indian military plane landed at this military airbase near Islamabad? How many times had Indian soldiers in uniform been allowed to set foot on Pakistani soil-bearing their sidearms, no less? And all to carry a Belgian boy and an Armenian girl to talk to whatever lower-level official the Pakistanis decided to fob off on them.



A bevy of stone-faced Pakistani officials led them to a building a short distance from where their plane was being refueled. Inside, on the second floor, the leading official said, "Your escort must remain outside."



"Of course," said Achilles. "But my assistant comes in with me. I must have a

witness to remind me in case my memory flags."



The Indian soldiers stood near the wall at full attention. Achilles and Petra walked through the open door.



There were only two people in the room, and she recognized one of them immediately from his pictures. With a gesture, he indicated where they should sit.



Petra walked to her chair in silence, never taking her eyes off Ghaffar Wahabi, the prime minister of Pakistan. She sat beside and slightly behind Achilles, as a lone Pakistani aide sat just at Wahabi's right hand. This was no lower-level official. Somehow, Achilles' letter had opened all the doors, right to the very top.



They needed no interpreter, for Common was, though not their birth language, a childhood acquisition for both of them, and they spoke without accent. Wahabi seemed skeptical and distant, but at least he did not play any humiliation games-he did not keep them waiting, he ushered them into the room himself, and he did not challenge Achilles in any way.



"I have invited you because I wish to hear what you have to say," said Wahabi. "So please begin."



Petra wanted so badly for Achilles to do something horribly wrong-to simper and beam, or to try to strut and show off his intelligence.



"Sir, I'm afraid that it may sound at first as if I am trying to teach Indian history to you, a scholar in that field. It is from your book that I learned everything I'm about to say."



"It is easy to read my book," said Wahabi. "What did you learn from it that I do not already know?"



"The next step," said Achilles. "The step so obvious that I was stunned when you did

not take it."



"So this is a book review?" asked Wahabi. But with those words he smiled faintly, to take away the edge of hostility.



"Over and over again, you show the great achievements of the Indian people, and how they are overshadowed, swallowed up, ignored, despised. The civilization of the Indus is treated as a poor also-ran to Mesopotamia and Egypt and even that
latecomer China. The Aryan invaders brought their language and religion and imposed it on the people of India. The Moguls, the British, each with their overlay of beliefs and institutions. I must tell you that your book is regarded with great respect in the highest circles of the Indian government, because of the impartial way you treated the religions brought to India by invaders."



Petra knew that this was not idle flattery. For a Pakistani scholar, especially one with political ambitions, to write a history of the subcontinent without praising the Muslim influence and condemning the Hindu religion as primitive and destructive was brave indeed.



Wahabi raised a hand. "I wrote then as a scholar. Now I am the voice of the people. I hope my book has not led you into a quixotic quest for reunification of India. Pakistan is determined to remain pure.



"Please do not leap to conclusions," said Achilles. "I agree with you that reunification is impossible. Indeed, it is a meaningless term. Hindu and Muslim were never united except under an oppressor, so how could they be reunited?"



Wahabi nodded, and waited for Achilles to go on.



"What I saw throughout your account," said Achilles, "was a profound sense of the greatness inherent in the Indian people. Great religions have been born here. Great thinkers have arisen who have changed the world. And yet for two hundred years, when people think of the great powers, India and Pakistan are never on the list. And they never have been. And this makes you angry, and it makes you sad."


"More sad than angry," said Wahabi, "but then, I'm an old man, and my temper has abated."



"China rattles its swords, and the world shivers, but India is barely glanced at. The Islamic world trembles when Iraq or Turkey or Iran or Egypt swings one way or another, and yet Pakistan, stalwart for its entire history, is never treated as a leader. Why?"



"If I knew the answer," said Wahabi, "I would have written a different book."



"There are many reasons in the distant past," said Achilles, "but they all come down to one thing. The Indian people could never act together."



"Again, the language of unity," said Wahabi.



"Not at all," said Achilles. "Pakistan cannot take his rightful place of leadership in the Muslim world, because whenever he looks to the west, Pakistan hears the heavy steps of India behind him. And India cannot take her rightful place as the leader of the east, because the threat of Pakistan looms behind her."



Petra admired the deft way Achilles made his choice of pronouns seem casual, uncalculated-India the woman, Pakistan the man.



"The spirit of God is more at home in India and Pakistan than any other place. It is
no accident that great religions have been born here, or have found their purest form. But Pakistan keeps India from being great in the east, and India keeps Pakistan from being great in the west."



"True, but insoluble," said Wahabi.



"Not so," said Achilles. "Let me remind you of another bit of history, from only a

few years before Pakistan's creation as a state. In Europe, two great nations faced each other-Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany. These two leaders were great monsters. But they saw that their enmity had chained them to each other. Neither could accomplish anything as long as the other threatened to take advantage of the slightest opening."



"You compare India and Pakistan to Hitler and Stalin?"



"Not at all," said Peter, "because so far, India and Pakistan have shown less sense and less self-control than either of those monsters."



Wahabi turned to his aide. "As usual, India has found a new way to insult us." The aide arose to help him to his feet.



"Sir, I thought you were a wise man," said Achilles. "There is no one here to see you posture. No one to quote what I have said. You have nothing to lose by hearing me out, and everything to lose by leaving."



Petra was stunned to hear Achilles speak so sharply. Wasn't this taking his non- flatterer approach a little far? Any normal person would have apologized for the unfortunate comparison with Hitler and Stalin. But not Achilles. Well, this time he had surely gone too far. If this meeting failed, his whole strategy would come to nothing, and the tension he was under had led to this misstep.

Wahabi did not sit back down. "Say what you have to say, and be quick," he said. "Hitler and Stalin sent their foreign ministers, Ribbentrop and Molotov, and despite
the hideous denunciations that each had made against the other, they signed a
nonaggression pact and divided Poland between them. It's true that a couple of years later, Hitler abrogated this pact, which led to millions of deaths and Hitler's eventual downfall, but that is irrelevant to your situation, because unlike Hitler and Stalin,
you and Chapekar are men of honor-you are of India, and you both serve God faithfully."

"To say that Chapekar and I both serve God is blasphemy to one or the other of us, or both," said Wahabi.



"God loves this land and has given the Indian people greatness," said Achillesso passionately that if Petra had not known better, she might have believed he had some kind of faith. "Do you really believe it is the will of God that both Pakistan and India remain in obscurity and weakness, solely because the people of India have not yet awakened to the will of Allah?"



"I do not care what atheists and madmen say about the will of Allah." Good for you, thought Petra.
"Nor do I," said Achilles. "But I can tell you this. If you and Chapekar signed an agreement, not of unity, but of nonaggression, you could divide Asia between you. And if the decades pass and there is peace between these two great Indian nations, then will the Hindu not be proud of the Muslim, and the Muslim proud of the Hindu? Will it not be possible then for Hindus to hear the teachings of the Quran, not as the book of their deadly enemy, but rather as the book of their fellow Indians, who share with India the leadership of Asia? If you don't like the example of Hitler and Stalin, then look at Portugal and Spain, ambitious colonizers who shared the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal, to the west, was smaller and weaker-but it was also the bold explorer that opened up the seas. Spain sent one explorer, and he was Italian-but he discovered a new world."



Petra again saw the subtle flattery at work. Without saying so directly, Achilles had linked Portugal-the weaker but braver nation-to Pakistan, and the nation that prevailed through dumb luck to India.



"They might have gone to war and destroyed each other, or weakened each other hopelessly. Instead they listened to the Pope, who drew a fine on the earth and gave everything east of it to Portugal and everything west of it to Spain. Draw your line across the Earth, Ghaffar Wahabi. Declare that you will not make war against the great Indian people who have not yet heard the word of Allah, but will instead show to all the world the shining example of the purity of Pakistan. While in the

meantime, Tikal Chapekar will unite eastern Asia under Indian leadership, which they have long hungered for. Then, in the happy day when the Hindu people heed the Book, Islam will spread in one breath from New Delhi to Hanoi."



Wahabi slowly sat back down. Achilles said nothing.
Petra knew then that his boldness had succeeded. "Hanoi," said Wahabi. "Why not Beijing?"
"On the day that the Indian Muslims of Pakistan are made guardians of the sacred city, on that day the Hindus may imagine entering the forbidden city."



Wahabi laughed. "You are outrageous."



"I am," said Achilles. "But I'm right. About everything. About the fact that this is what your book was pointing to. That this is the obvious conclusion, if only India and Pakistan are blessed to have, at the same time, leaders with such vision and courage."



"And why does this matter to you?" said Wahabi. "I dream of peace on Earth," said Achilles.
"And so you encourage Pakistan and India to go to war?"



"I encourage you to agree not to go to war with each other."

"Do you think Iran will peacefully accept Pakistan's leadership? Do you think the
Turks will embrace us? It will have to be by conquest that we create this unity."



"But you will create it," said Achilles. "And when Islam is united under Indian leadership, it will no longer be humiliated by other nations. One great Muslim nation, one great Hindu nation, at peace with each other and too powerful for any other nation to dare to attack. That is how peace comes to Earth. God willing."



"Inshallah," echoed Wahabi. "But now it is time for me to know by what authority you say these things. You hold no office in India. How do I know you have not been sent to lull me while Indian armies amass for yet another unprovoked assault?"



Petra wondered if Achilles had planned to get Wahabi to say something so precisely calculated to give him the perfect dramatic moment, or if it was just chance. For Achilles' only answer to Wahabi was to draw from his portfolio a single sheet of paper, bearing a small signature at the bottom in blue ink.



"What is that?" said Wahabi.



"My authority," said Achilles. He handed the paper to Petra. She arose and carried it to the middle of the room, where Wahabi's aide took it from her hand.



Wahabi perused it, shaking his head. "And this is what he signed?"



"He more than signed it," said Achilles. "Ask your satellite team to tell you what the
Indian Army is doing even as we speak."



"They are withdrawing from the border?"



"Someone has to be the first to offer trust. It's the opportunity you've been waiting for, you and all your predecessors. The Indian Army is withdrawing. You could send your troops forward. You could turn this gesture of peace into a bloodbath. Or you could give the orders to move your troops west and north. Iran is waiting for you to

show them the purity of Islam. The Caliphate of Istanbul is waiting for you to unshackle it from the chains of the secular government of Turkey. Behind you, you will have only your brother Indians, wishing you well as you show the greatness of this land that God has chosen, and that finally is ready to rise."



"Save the speech," said Wahabi. "You understand that I have to verify that this signature is genuine, and that the Indian troops are moving in the direction that you say."



"You will do what you have to do," said Achilles. "I will return to India now." "Without waiting for my answer?"
"I haven't asked you a question," said Achilles. "Tikal Chapekar has asked that question, and it is to him you must give your answer. I am only the messenger."



With that, Achilles rose to his feet. Petra did, too. Achilles strode boldly to Wahabi and offered his hand. "I hope you will forgive me, but I could not bear to return to India without being able to say that the hand of Ghaffar Wahabi touched mine."



Wahabi reached out and took Achilles' hand. "Foreign meddler," said Wahabi, but his eyes twinkled, and Achilles smiled in reply.



Could this possibly have worked? Petra wondered. Molotov and Ribbentrop had to negotiate for weeks, didn't they? Achilles did this in a single meeting.



What were the magic words?



But as they walked out of the room, escorted again by the four Indian soldiers who had come with them-her guards-Petra realized there had been no magic words. Achilles had simply studied both men and recognized their ambitions, their yearning for greatness. He had told them what they most wanted to hear. He gave them the peace that they had secretly longed for.


She had not been there for the meeting with Chapekar that led to Achilles' getting that signed nonaggression pact and the promise to withdraw, but she could imagine it. "You must make the first gesture," Achilles must have said. "It's true that the Muslims might take advantage of it, might attack. But you have the largest army in the world, and govern the greatest people. Let them attack, and you will absorb the blow and then return to roll over them like water bursting from a dam. And no one will criticize you for taking a chance on peace."



And now it finally struck home. The plans she had been drawing up for the invasion of Burma and Thailand were not mere foolery. They would be used. Hers or someone else's. The blood would begin to flow. Achilles would get his war.



I didn't sabotage my plans, she realized. I was so sure they could not be used that I
didn't bother to build weaknesses into them. They might actually work. What have I done?
And now she understood why Achilles had brought her along. He wanted to strut in front of her, of course-for some reason, he felt the need to have someone witness his triumphs. But it was more than that. He also wanted to rub her face in the fact that he was actually going to do what she had so often said could not be done.



Worst of all, she found herself hoping that her plan would be used, not because she wanted Achilles to win his war, but because she wanted to stick it to the other Battle School brats who had mocked her plan so mercilessly.



I have to get word to Bean somehow. I have to warn him, so he can get word to the governments of Burma and Thailand. I have to do something to subvert my own plan of attack, or their destruction will be on my shoulders.



She looked at Achilles, who was dozing in his seat, oblivious to the miles racing by beneath him, returning him to the place where his wars of conquest would begin. If she could only remove his murders from the equation, on balance he would be quite

a remarkable boy. He was a Battle School discard with the label "psychopath" attached to him, and yet somehow he had gotten not one but three major world governments to do his bidding.



I was a witness to this most recent triumph, and I'm still not sure how he brought it off.



She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said-to the consternation of her family-What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell.



Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it.



And it's delicious. WARNINGS
To: Carlotta%agape@vatican.net/orders/ sisters/ind From: Graff%bonpassage@colmin.gov  Re: Found?



I think we've found Petra. A good friend in Islamabad who is aware of my interest in finding her tells me that a strange envoy from New Delhi came for a brief meeting with Wahabi yesterday-a teenage boy who could only be Achilles; and a teenage girl of the right description who said nothing. Petra? I think it likely.



Bean needs to know what I've learned. First, my friend tells me that this meeting was almost immediately followed by orders to the Pakistani military to move back from the border with India. Couple that with the already-noted Indian removal from that frontier, and I think we're witnessing the impossible-after two centuries of intermittent but chronic warfare, a real attempt at peace. And it seems to have been done by or with the help of Achilles. (Since so many of our colonists are Indian,

there are those in my ministry who fear that an outbreak of peace on the subcontinent might jeopardize our work!)



Second, for Achilles to bring Petra along on this sensitive mission implies that she is not an unwilling participant in his projects. Given that in Russia Vlad also was seduced into working with Achilles, however briefly, it is not unthinkable that even as confirmed a skeptic as Petra might have become a true believer while in captivity. Bean must be made aware of this possibility, for he may be hoping to rescue
someone who does not wish to be rescued.



Third, tell Bean that I can make contacts in Hyderabad, among former Battle School students working in the Indian high command. I will not ask them to compromise their loyalty to their country, but I will ask about Petra and find out what, if anything, they have seen or heard. I think old school loyalty may trump patriotic secrecy on this point.



Bean's little strike force was all that he could have hoped for. These were not elite soldiers the way Battle School students had been-they were not selected for the ability to command. But in some ways this made them easier to train. They weren't constantly analyzing and second-guessing. In Battle School, too, many soldiers kept trying to show off to everyone, so they could enhance their reputation in the schoolcommanders constantly had to struggle to keep their soldiers focused on the overall goal of the army.



Bean knew from his studies that in real-world armies, the opposite was more usually the problem-that soldiers tried not to do brilliantly at anything, or learn too quickly, for fear of being thought a suckup or show-off by their fellow soldiers. But the cure for both problems was the same. Bean worked hard to earn a reputation for tough, fair judgment.



He played no favorites, made no friends, but always noticed excellence and commented on it. His praise, however, was not effusive. Usually he would simply make a note about it in front of others. "Sergeant, your team made no mistakes." Only when an accomplishment was exceptional did he praise it explicitly, and then only with a terse "Good."

As he expected, the rarity of his praise as well as its fairness soon made it the most valued coin in his strike force. Soldiers who did good work did not have special privileges and were given no special authority, so they were not resented by the others. The praise was not effusive, so it never embarrassed them. Instead, they were admired by the others, and emulated. And the focus of the soldiers became the earning of Bean's recognition.



That was true power. Frederick the Great's dictum that soldiers had to fear their officers more than they feared the enemy was stupid. Soldiers needed to believe they had the respect of their officers, and to value that respect more than they valued life itself. Moreover, they had to know that their officers' respect was justified-that they really were the good soldiers their officers believed them to be.



In Battle School, Bean had used his brief time in command of an army to teach himself-he led his men to defeat every time, because he was more interested in learning what he could learn than in racking up points. This was demoralizing to his soldiers, but he didn't carehe knew that he would not be with them long, and that the time of the Battle School was nearly over. Here in Thailand, though, he knew that the battles coming up were real, the stakes high, and his soldiers' lives would be on the line. Victory, not information, was the goal. And, behind that obvious motive, there lay an even deeper one. Sometime in the coming war-or even before, if he was lucky-he would be using a portion of this strike force to make a daring rescue attempt, probably deep inside India. There would be zero tolerance for error. He would bring Petra out. He would succeed.



He drove himself as hard as he drove any of his men. He made it a point to train alongside them-a child going through all the exercises the men went through. He ran with them, and if his pack was lighter it was only because he needed to carry fewer calories in order to survive. He had to carry smaller, lighter weapons, but no one begrudged him that-besides, they saw that his bullets went to the mark as often as theirs. There was nothing he asked them to do that he did not do himself And when he was not as good as his men, he had no qualms about going to one of the best of them and asking him for criticism and advice-which he then followed.



This was unheard of, for a commander to risk allowing himself to appear unskilled or weak in front of his men. And Bean would not have done it, either, because the benefits did not usually outweigh the risks. However, he was planning to go along

with them on difficult maneuvers, and his training had been theoretical and game- centered. He had to become a soldier, so he could be there to deal with problems and emergencies during operations, so he could keep up with them, and so that, in a pinch, he could join effectively in a fight.



At first, because of his youth and small stature, some of the soldiers had tried to make things easier for him. His refusal had been quiet but firm. "I have to learn this too," he would say, and that was the end of the discussion. Naturally, the soldiers watched him all the more intensely, to see how he measured up to the high standard he set for them. They saw him tax his body to the utmost. They saw that he shrank from nothing, that he came out of mudwork slimier than anyone, that he went over obstacles just as high as anyone's, that he ate no better food and slept on no better a patch of ground on maneuvers.



They did not see how much he modeled this strike force on the Battle School armies. With two hundred men, he divided them into five companies of forty. Each
company, like Ender's Battle School army, was divided into five toons of eight men each. Every toon was expected to be able to carry out operations entirely on its own; every company was expected to be able to deal with complete independence. At the same time, he made sure that they became skilled observers, and trained them to see the kinds of things he needed them to see.



"You are my eyes," he said. "You need to see what I would look for and what you would see. I will always tell you what I am planning and why, so you will know if you see a problem I didn't anticipate, which might change my plan. Then you will make sure I know. My best chance of keeping you all alive is to know everything that is in your heads during battle, just as your best chance of staying alive is to know everything that is in my head."



Of course, he knew that he could not tell them everything. No doubt they understood this as well. But he spent an inordinate amount of time, by standard military doctrine, telling his men the reasoning behind his orders, and he expected his company and toon commanders to do the same with their men. "That way, when we give you an order without any reasons, you will know that it's because there's no
time for explanation, that you must act now-but that there is a good reason, which we would tell you if we could."

Once when Suriyawong came to observe his training of his troops, he asked Bean if this was how he recommended training soldiers throughout the whole army.



"Not a chance," said Bean.



"If it works for you, why wouldn't it work everywhere?" "Usually you don't need it and can't afford the time," said Bean. "But you can?"
"These soldiers are going to be called on to do the impossible. They aren't going to be sent to hold a position or advance against an enemy posting. They're going to be sent to do difficult, complicated things right under the eyes of the enemy, under circumstances where they can't go back for new instructions but have to adapt and succeed. That is impossible if they don't understand the purpose behind all their orders. And they have to know exactly how their commanders think so that trust is perfect-and so they can compensate for their commanders' inevitable weaknesses."



"Your weaknesses?" asked Suriyawong.



"Hard to believe, Suriyawong, but yes, I have weaknesses."



That earned a faint smile from Surly-a rare prize. "Growing pains?" asked
Suriyawong.



Bean looked down at his ankles. He had already had new uniforms made twice, and it was time for a third go. He was almost as tall now as Suriyawong had been when Bean first arrived in Bangkok half a year before. Growing caused him no pain. But it worried him, since it seemed unconnected with any other sign of puberty. Why, after all these years of being undersized, was his body now so determined to catch up?

He experienced none of the problems of adolescence-not the clumsiness that comes from having limbs that swing farther than they used to, not the rush of hormones that clouded judgment and distracted attention. So if he grew enough to carry better weapons, that could only be a plus.



"Someday I hope to be as fine a man as you," said Bean.



Suriyawong grunted. He knew that Surly would take it as a joke. He also knew that, somewhere deeper than consciousness, Suriyawong would also take it at face value, for people always did. And it was important for Suriyawong to have the constant reassurance that Bean respected his position and would do nothing to undermine him.



That had been months ago, and Bean was able to report to Suriyawong a long list of possible missions that his men had been trained for and could perform at any time. It was his declaration of readiness.



Then came the letter from Graff. Carlotta forwarded it to him as soon as she got it. Petra was alive. She was probably with Achilles in Hyderabad.



Bean immediately notified Suriyawong that an intelligence source of a friend of his verified an apparent nonaggression pact between India and Pakistan, and a movement of troops away from the shared border-along with his opinion that this guaranteed an invasion of Burma within three weeks.



As to the other matters in the letter, Graff's assertion that Petra might have gone over to Achilles' cause was, of course, absurd-if Graff believed that, he didn't know Petra. What alarmed Bean was that she had been so thoroughly neutralized that she could seem to be on Achilles' side. This was the girl who always spoke her mind no matter how much abuse it caused to come down on her head. If she had fallen silent, it meant she was in despair.



Isn't she getting my messages? Has Achilles cut her off from information so thoroughly that she doesn't even roam the nets? That would explain her failure to

answer. But still, Petra was used to standing alone. That wouldn't explain her silence.



It had to be her own strategy for mastery. Silence, so that Achilles would forget how much she hated him. Though surely she knew him well enough by now to know that he never forgot anything. Silence, so that she could avoid even deeper isolation-that was possible. Even Petra could keep her mouth shut if every time she spoke up it cut her off from more and more information and opportunities.



Finally, though, Bean had to entertain the possibility that Graff was right. Petra was human. She feared death like anyone else. And if she had, in fact, witnessed the
death of her two guardians in Russia, and if Achilles had committed the killings with his own handswhich Bean believed likely-then Petra was facing something she had never faced before. She could speak up to idiotic commanders and teachers in Battle School because the worst that could happen was reprimands. With Achilles, what she had to fear was death.



And the fear of death changed the way a person saw the world, Bean knew that. He had lived his first years of life under the constant pressure of that fear. Moreover, he had spent a considerable time specifically under Achilles' power. Even though he never forgot the danger Achilles posed, even Bean had come to think Achilles wasn't such a bad guy, that in fact he was a good leader, doing brave and bold things for his "family" of street urchins. Bean had admired him and learned from him-right up to the moment when Achilles murdered Poke.



Petra, fearing Achilles, submitting to his power, had to watch him closely just to
stay alive. And, watching him, she would come to admire him. It's a common trait of primates to become submissive and even worshipful toward one who has the power
to kill them. Even if she fought off those feelings, they would still be there.



But she'll awaken from it, when she's out from under that power. I did. She will. So even if Graff is right, and Petra has become some thing of a disciple to Achilles, she will turn heretic once I get her out. Still, the fact remained-he had to be prepared to bring her out even if she resisted rescue or tried to betray them.



He added dartguns and will-bending drugs to his army's arsenal and training.


Naturally, he would need more hard data than he had if he was to mount an operation to rescue her. He wrote to Peter, asking him to use some of his old Demosthenes contacts in the U.S. to get what intelligence data they had on Hyderabad. Beyond
that, Bean really had no resources to tap without giving away his location. Because it was a sure thing that he couldn't ask Suriyawong for information about Hyderabad. Even if Suriyawong was feeling favorably disposed-and he had been sharing more information with Bean lately-there was no way to explain why he could possibly
need information about the Indian high command base at Hyderabad.



Only after days of waiting for Peter, while training his men and himself in the use of darts and drugs, did Bean realize another important implication of discovering that Petra might actually be cooperating with Achilles. Because none of their strategy
was geared to the kind of campaign Petra might design.



He requested a meeting with both Suriyawong and the Chakri. After all these months of never seeing the Chakri's face, he was surprised that the meeting was granted-and without delay. He sent his request when he got up at five in the morning. At seven,
he was in the Chakri's office, with Suriyawong beside him.



Suriyawong only had time to mouth, with annoyance, the words "What is this?" before the Chakri started the meeting.



"What is this?" said the Chakri. He smiled at Suriyawong; he knew he was echoing Suriyawong's question. But Bean also knew that it was a smile of mockery. You couldn't control this Greek boy after all.



"I just found out information that you both need to know," said Bean. Of course, this implied that Suriyawong; might not have recognized the importance of the information, so that Bean had to bring it to Chakri Naresuan directly. "I meant no lack of respect. Only that you must be aware of this immediately."



"What possible information can you have," said Chakri Naresuan, "that we don't already know?''


"Something that I learned from a well-connected friend," said Bean. "All our assumptions were based on the idea of the Indian Army using the obvious strategy-to overwhelm Burmese and Thai defenses with huge armies. But I just learned that
Petra Arkanian, one of Ender Wiggin's jeesh, may be working with the Indian Army.
I never thought she would collaborate with Achilles, but the possibility exists. And if she's directing the campaign, it won't be a flood of soldiers at all."



"Interesting," said the Chakri. "What strategy would she use?"



"She would still overwhelm you with numbers, but not with massed armies. Instead there would be probing raids, incursions by smaller forces, each one designed to strike, draw your attention, and then fade. They don't even have to retreat. They just live off the land until they can re-form later. Each one is easily beaten, except that there's nothing to beat. By the time we get there, they're gone. No supply lines. No vulnerabilities, just probe after probe until we can't respond to them all. Then the probes start getting bigger. When we get there, with our thinly stretched forces, the enemy is waiting. One of our groups destroyed, then another."



The Chakri looked at Suriyawong. "What Borommakot says is possible," said Suriyawong. "They can keep up such a strategy forever. We never damage them, because they have an infinite supply of troops, and they risk little on each attack. But every loss we suffer is irreplaceable, and every retreat gives them ground."



"So why wouldn't this Achilles think of such a strategy on his own?" asked the
Chakri. "He's a very bright boy, they say."



"It's a cautious strategy," said Bean. "One that is very frugal with the lives of the soldiers. And it's slow."



"And Achilles is never careful with the lives of his soldiers?"



Bean thought back to his days in Achilles' "family" on the streets of Rotterdam. Achilles was, in fact, careful of the lives of the other children. He took great pains to

make sure they were not exposed to risk. But that was because his power base absolutely depended on losing none of them. If any of the children had been hurt, the others would have melted away. That would not be the case with the Indian Army. Achilles would spend them like autumn leaves.



Except that Achilles' goal was not to rule India. It was to rule the world. So it did matter that he earn a reputation as a beneficent leader. That he seem to value the lives of his people.



"Sometimes he is, when it suits him," said Bean. "That's why he would follow such a plan if Petra outlined it for him."



"So what would it mean," said the Chakri, "if I told you that the attack on Burma has just been launched, and it is a massive frontal assault by huge Indian forces, just as you originally outlined in your first memo to us?"



Bean was stunned. Already? The apparent nonaggression pact between India and Pakistan was only a few days old. They could not possibly have amassed troops that quickly.



Bean was surprised to see that Suriyawong also had been unaware that war had begun.



"It was an extremely well-planned campaign," said the Chakri. "The Burmese only had a day's warning. The Indian troops moved like smoke. Whether it is your evil friend Achilles or your brilliant friend Petra or the mere simpletons of the Indian high command, they managed it superbly."



"What it means," said Bean, "is that Petra is not being listened to. Or that she is deliberately sabotaging the Indian Army's strategy. I'm relieved to know this, and I apologize for raising a warning that was not needed. May I ask, sir, if Thailand is coming into the war now?"



"Burma has not asked for help," said the Chakri.


"By the time Burma asks Thailand for help," said Bean, "the Indian Army will be at our borders."



"At that point," said the Chakri, "we will not wait for them to ask." "What about China?" asked Bean.
The Chakri blinked twice before answering. "What about China?" "Have they warned India? Have they responded in any way?"
"Matters with China are handled by a different branch of government," said the
Chakri.



"India may have twice the population of China," said Bean, "but the Chinese Army is better equipped. India would think twice before provoking Chinese intervention."



"Better equipped," said the Chakri. "But is it deployed in a usable way? Their troops are kept along the Russian border. It would take weeks to bring them down here. If India plans a lightning strike, they have nothing to fear from China."



"As long as the I.F. keeps missiles from flying," said Suriyawong. "And with
Chamrajnagar as Polemarch, you can be sure no missiles will attack India."



"Oh, that's another new development," said the Chakri. "ChamraJnagar submitted his resignation from the I.F. ten minutes after the attack on Burma was launched. He
will return to Earth-to India-to accept his new appointment as leader of a coalition government that will guide the newly enlarged Indian empire. For of course, by the time a ship can bring him back to Earth, the war will be over, one way or another."

"Who is the new Polemarch?" asked Bean.



"That is the dilemma," said the Chakri. "There are those who wonder whom the Hegemon can nominate, considering that no one can quite trust anyone now. Some are wondering why the Hegemon should name a Polemarch at all. We've done without a Strategos since the League War. Why do we need the I.F. at all?"



"To keep the missiles from flying," said Suriyawong.



"That is the only serious argument in favor of keeping the I.F.," said the Chakri. "But many governments believe that the I.F. should be reduced to the role of policing above the atmosphere. There is no reason for any but a tiny fraction of the I.F.'s strength to be retained. And as for the colonization program, many are saying it is a waste of money, when war is erupting here on Earth. Well, enough of this little school class. There is grown-up work to be done. You will be consulted if we find that you are needed."



The Chakri's dismissive air was surprising. It revealed a high level of hostility to both of these Battle School graduates, not just the foreign one.



It was Suriyawong who challenged the Chakri on this. "Under what circumstances would we be called upon?" he asked. "Either the plans I drew up will work or they won't. If they work, you won't can on me. If they don't, you'll regard that as proof that I didn't know what I was doing, and you still won't call on me."



The Chakri pondered this for a few moments. "Why, I'd never thought of it that way. I believe you're right."



"No, you're wrong," said Suriyawong. "Nothing ever goes as planned during a war. We have to be able to adapt. I and the other Battle School graduates are trained for that. We should be kept informed of every development. Instead, you have cut me off from the intelligence that is flowing in. I should have seen this information the moment I woke up and looked at my desk. Why are you cutting me off?"

For the same reason you cut me off, Bean thought. So that when victory comes, all the credit can flow to the Chakri. "The Battle School children advised in the planning stages, but of course during the actual war, we did not leave it up to the children." And if things went badly, "We faithfully executed the plans drawn up by the Battle School children, but apparently schoolwork did not prepare them for the real world." The Chakri was covering his ass.



Suriyawong seemed to understand this also, for he gave no more argument. He arose. "Permission to leave, sir," he said.



"Granted. To you, too, Borommakot. Oh, and we'll probably be taking back the soldiers Suriyawong gave you to play with. Restoring them to their original units. Please prepare them to leave at once."



Bean also rose to his feet. "So Thailand is entering the war?"



"You will be informed of anything you need to know, when you need to know it."



As soon as they were outside the Chakri's office, Suriyawong sped up his pace. Bean had to run to catch up.



"I don't want to talk to you," said Suriyawong.



"Don't be a big baby about it," said Bean scornfully. "He's only doing to you what you already did to me. Did I run off and pout?"



Suriyawong stopped and whirled on Bean. "You and your stupid meeting!" "He already cut you off," said Bean. "Already. Before I even asked to meet." Suriyawong knew that Bean was right. "So I'm stripped of influence."

"And I never had any," said Bean. "What are we going to do about it?"



"Do?" said Suriyawong. "If the Chakri forbids it, no one will obey my orders. Without authority, I'm just a boy, still too young to enlist in the army."



"What we'll do first," said Bean, "is figure out what this all means." "It means the Chakri is an oomay careerist," said Suriyawong. "Come, let's walk out of the building."
"They can draw our words out of the open air, too, if they want," said Suriyawong. "They have to try to do that. Here, anything we say is automatically recorded."
So Suriyawong walked with Bean out of the building that housed the highest of the Thai high command, and together they wandered toward the married officers' housing, to a park with playground equipment for the children of junior officers. When they sat on the swings, Bean realized that he was actually getting a little too big for them.



"Your strike force," said Suriyawong. "Just when it might have been most needed, it'll be dispersed."



"No it won't," said Bean. "And why not?"
"Because you drew it from the garrison protecting the capital. Those troops won't be sent away. So they'll remain in Bangkok. The important thing is to keep all our materiel together and within easy reach. Do you think you still have authority for

that?"
"As long as I call it routine cycling into storage," said Suriyawong, "I suppose so." "And you'll know where these men are assigned, so when we need to, we can call
them back to us."



"If I try that, I'll be cut off from the net," said Suriyawong.



"If we try that," said Bean, "it will be because the net doesn't matter." "Because the war is lost."
"Think about it," said Bean. "Only a stupid careerist would openly disdain you like this. He wanted to shame and discourage you. Have you given him some offense?"



"I always give offense," said Suriyawong. "That's why everyone called me Surly behind my back in Battle School. The only person I know who is more arrogant than I seem is you."



"Is Naresuan a fool?" asked Bean.



"I had not thought so," said Suriyawong.



"So this is a day for people who are not fools to act like fools." "Are you saying I am also a fool?"
"I was saying that Achilles is apparently a fool."

"Because he is attacking with massed forces? You told us that was what we should expect. Apparently Petra did not give him the better plan."



"Or he's not using it."



"But he'd have to be a fool not to use it," said Suriyawong.



"So if Petra gave him the better plan, and he declined to use it, then he and the Chakri are both fools today. As when the Chakri pretended that he has no influence over foreign policy."



"About China, you mean?" Suriyawong thought about this for a moment. "You're right, of course he has influence. But perhaps he simply didn't want us to know what the Chinese were doing. Perhaps that was why he was so sure he didn't need us, that he didn't need to enter Burma. Because he knows the Chinese are coming in."



"So," said Bean. "While we sit here, watching the war, we will learn much from the plain events as they unfold. If China intervenes to stop the Indians before Achilles ever gets to Thailand, then we know Chakri Naresuan is a smart careerist, not a stupid one. But if China does not intervene, then we have to wonder why Naresuan, who is not a foolish man, has chosen to act like one."



"What do you suspect him of?" asked Suriyawong.



"As for Achilles," said Bean, "no matter how we construe these events, he has been a fool."

"No, he's only a fool if Petra actually gave him the better plan and he's ignoring it." "On the contrary," said Bean. "He's a fool no matter what. To enter into this war with
even the possibility that China will intervene, that is foolish in the extreme."

"So perhaps he knows that China will not intervene, and then the Chakri would be the only fool," said Suriyawong.



"Let's watch and see."



"I'll watch and grind my teeth," said Suriyawong.



"Watch with me," said Bean. "Let's drop this stupid competition between us. You care about Thailand. I care about figuring out what Achilles is doing and stopping him. At this moment, those two concerns coincide almost perfectly. Let's share everything we know."



"But you know nothing."
"I know nothing that you know," said Bean. "And you know nothing that I know." "What can you possibly know?" said Suriyawong. "I'm the eemo who cut you off
from the intelligence net."



"I knew about the deal between India and Pakistan." "So did we."
"But you didn't tell me," said Bean. "And yet I knew."



Suriyawong nodded. "Even if the sharing is mostly one way, from me to you, it's long overdue, don't you think?"



"I'm not interested in what's early or late," said Bean. "Only what happens next."

They went to the officers' mess and had lunch, then walked back to Suriyawong's building, dismissed his staff for the rest of the day, and, with the building to themselves, sat in Suriyawong's office and watched the progress of the war on Worldnet. Burmese resistance was brave but futile.



"Poland in 1939," said Bean.



"And here in Thailand," said Suriyawong, "we're being as timid as France and
England."



"At least China isn't invading Burma from the north, the way Russia invaded Poland from the east," said Bean.



"Small mercies," said Suriyawong.



But Bean wondered. Why doesn't China step in? Beijing wasn't saying anything to the press. No comment, about a war on their doorstep? What does China have up its sleeve?



"Maybe Pakistan wasn't the only country to sign a nonaggression pact with India," said Bean.



"Why? What would China gain?" asked Suriyawong. "Vietnam?" said Bean.
"Worthless, compared to the menace of having India poised with a vast army at the underbelly of China."



Soon, to distract themselves from the news-and from their loss of any kind of influence-they stopped paying attention to the vids and reminisced about Battle School. Neither of them brought up the really bad experiences, only the funny

things, the ridiculous things, and they laughed their way into the evening, until it was dark outside.



This afternoon with Suriyawong, now that they were friends, reminded Bean of home-in Crete, with his parents, with Nikolai. He tried to keep from thinking about them most of the time, but now, laughing with Suriyawong, he was filled with a bittersweet longing. He had that one year of something like a normal life, and now it was over. Blown to bits like the house they had been vacationing in. Like the government-protected apartment Graff and Sister Carlotta had taken them away
from in the nick of time.



Suddenly a thrill of fear ran through Bean. He knew something, though he could not say how. His mind had made some connection and he didn't understand how, but he had no doubt that he was right.



"Is there any way out of this building that can't be seen from the outside?" asked
Bean, in a whisper so faint he could hardly hear himself.



Suriyawong, who had been in the middle of a story about Major Anderson's penchant for nose-picking when he thought nobody was watching, looked at him like he was crazy. "What, you want to play hide-and-seek?"



Bean continued to whisper. "A way out."



Suriyawong took the hint and whispered back. "I don't know. I always use the doors. Like most doors, they're visible from both sides."



"A sewer line? A heating duct?"



"This is Bangkok. We don't have heating ducts." "Any way out."

Suriyawong's whisper changed back to voice. "I'll look at the blueprints. But tomorrow, man, tomorrow. It's getting late and we talked right through dinner."



Bean grabbed his shoulder, forced him to look into his eyes.



"Suriyawong," he whispered, even more softly "I'm not joking. Right now, out of this building unobserved."



Finally Suriyawong got it: Bean was genuinely afraid. His whisper was quiet again. "Why, what's happening?"



"Just tell me how."



Suriyawong closed his eyes. "Flood drainage," he whispered. "Old ditches. They just laid these temporary buildings down on top of the old parade ground. There's a shallow ditch that runs right under the building. You can hardly tell it's there, but there's a gap."



"Where can we get under the building from inside?"



Suriyawang rolled his eyes. "These temporary buildings are made of lint." To prove his point, he pulled away the comer of the large rug in the middle of the room, rolled it back, and then, quite easily, pried up a floor section.



Underneath it was sod that had died from lack of sunlight. There were no gaps between floor and sod.



"Where's the ditch?" asked Bean.



Suriyawong thought again. "I think it crosses the hall. But the carpet is tacked down there."

Bean turned up the volume of the vid and went out the door of Suriyawong's office and through the anteroom to the hall. He pried up a corner of the carpet and ripped. Carpet fluff flew, and Bean kept pulling until Suriyawong stopped him. "I think about here," he said.



They pulled up another floor section. This time there was a depression in the yellowed sod.



"Can you get through that?" asked Bean.



"Hey, you're the one with the big head," said Suriyawong.



Bean threw himself down. The ground was damp-this was Bangkok-and he was clammy and filthy in moments as he wriggled along. Every floor joist was a challenge, and a couple of times he had to dig with his army-issue knife to make way for his head. But he made good progress anyway, and wriggled out into the darkness only a few minutes later. He stayed down, though, and saw that Suriyawong, despite not knowing what was going on, did not raise his head when he emerged from under the building, but continued to creep along just as Bean was doing. They kept going until they reached the next point where the old eroded ditch went under another temporary building.



"Please tell me we're not going under another building."



Bean looked at the pattern of lights from the moon, from nearby porches and area lights. He had to count on his enemies being at least a little careless. If they were using infrared, this escape was meaningless. But if they were just eyeballing the place, watching the doors, he and Surly were already where slow, easy movement wouldn't be seen.



Bean started to roll himself up the incline.



Suriyawong grabbed him by the boot. Bean looked at him. Suriyawong pantomimed rubbing his cheeks, his forehead, his ears.


Bean had forgotten. His Greek skin was lighter than Suriyawong's. He would catch more light.



He rubbed his face, his ears, his hands with damp soil from under the grass. Suriyawong nodded.



They rolled-at a deliberate pace-up out of the ditch and wriggled slowly along the base of the building until they were around the comer. Here there were bushes to offer some shelter. They stood in the shadows for a moment, then walked, casually, away from the building as if they had just emerged from the door. Bean hoped not to be visible to anyone watching Suriyawong's building, but even if they could be seen, they shouldn't attract any attention, as long as no one noticed that they seemed to be just a little undersized.



Not until they were a quarter mile away did Suriyawong finally speak. "Do you mind telling me the name of this game?"



"Staying alive," said Bean.



"I never knew paranoid schizophrenia could strike so fast."



"They've tried twice," said Bean. "And they had no qualms about killing my family along with me."



"But we were just talking," said Suriyawong. "What did you see?" "Nothing."
"Or hear?"

"Nothing," said Bean. "I had a feeling." "Please don't tell me that you're a psychic."
"No, I'm not. But something about the events of the past few hours must have made some unconscious connection. I listen to my fears. I act on them."



"And this works?"
"I'm still alive," said Bean. "I need a public computer. Can we get off the base?" "It depends on how all-pervasive this plot against you is," said Suriyawong. "You
need a bath, by the way."



"What about some place with ordinary public computer access?"



"Sure, there are visitor facilities near the tram station entrance. But would it be ironic if your assassins were using it?"



"My assassins aren't visitors," said Bean.



This bothered Suriyawong. "You don't even know if anybody's really out to kill you, but you're sure it's somebody in the Thai Army?"



"It's Achilles," said Bean. "And Achilles isn't in Russia. India doesn't have any intelligence service that could carry out an operation like this inside the high command. So it has to be somebody that Achilles has corrupted."



"Nobody here is in the pay of India," said Suriyawong.

"Probably not," said Bean. "But India isn't the only place Achilles has friends by now. He was in Russia for a while. He has to have made other connections."



"It's so hard to take this seriously, Bean," said Suriyawong. "If you suddenly start laughing and say Gotcha that time, I will kill you."



"I might be wrong," said Bean, "but I'm not joking."



They got to the visitor facility and found no one using any of the computers. Bean logged on using one of his many false identities and wrote a message to Graff and Sister Carlotta.



You know who this is. I believe an attempt is about to be made on my life. Would you send immediate messages to contacts within the Thai government, warning them that such an attempt is coming and tell them that it involves conspirators inside the Chakri's inner circle. No one else could have the access. And I believe the Chakri
had prior knowledge. Any Indians supposedly involved are fall guys.



"You can't write that," said Suriyawong. "You have no evidence to accuse Naresuan. I'm annoyed with him, but he's a loyal Thai."



"He's a loyal Thai," said Bean, "but you can be loyal and still want me dead." "But not me," said Suriyawong.
"If you want it to look like the evil action of outsiders," said Bean, "then a brave Thai has to die along with me. What if they make our deaths look as if an Indian strike force did it? That would be provocation for a declaration of war, wouldn't it?"



"The Chakri doesn't need a provocation."



"He does if he wants the Burmese to believe that Thailand isn't just grabbing for a

piece of Burma." Bean went back to his note.



Please tell them that Suriyawong and I are alive. We will come out of hiding when we see Sister Carlotta with at least one high government official who Suriyawong would recognize on sight. Please act immediately. If I am wrong, you will be embarrassed. If I am right, you will have saved my life.



"I'm sick to my stomach thinking of how humiliated I'm going to be. Who are these people you're writing to?"



"People I trust. Like you."



Then, before sending the message, he added Peter's "Locke" address to the destination box.



"You know Ender Wiggin's brother?" asked Suriyawong. "We've met."
Bean logged off.



"What now?" asked Suriyawong.



"We hide somewhere, I guess," said Bean.



Then they heard an explosion. Windows rattled. The floor trembled. The power flickered. The computers began to reboot.



"Got that done just in time," said Bean.

"Was that it?" asked Suriyawong. "E," said Bean. "I think we're dead." "Where do we hide?"
"If they did the deed, it's because they think we were still in there. So they won't be watching for us now. We can go to my barracks. My men will hide me."



"You're willing to bet my life on that?" asked Suriyawong.



"Yes," said Bean. "My track record of keeping you alive is pretty good so far."



As they walked out of the building, they saw military vehicles rushing toward where gray smoke was billowing up into the moonlit night. Others were heading for the entrances to the base. No one would be getting in or out.



By the time they reached the barracks where Bean's strike force was quartered, they could hear bursts of gunfire. "Now they're killing all the fake Indian spies this will be blamed on," said Bean. "The Chakri will regretfully inform the government that they all resisted capture and none were taken alive."



"Again you accuse him," said Suriyawong. "Why? How did you know this would happen?"



"I think I knew because there were too many smart people acting stupidly," said Bean. "Achilles and the Chakri. And he treated us angrily. Why? Because killing us bothered him. So he had to convince himself that we were disloyal children who had been corrupted by the I.F. We were a danger to Thailand. Once he hated us and feared us, killing us was justified."



"That's a long stretch from there to knowing they were about to kill us."


"They were probably set to do it at my quarters. But I stayed with you. It was quite possible they were planning for another opportunitythe Chakri would summon us to meet him somewhere, and we'd be killed instead. But when we stayed for hours and hours in your quarters, they realized this was the perfect opportunity. They had to check with the Chakri and get his consent to do it ahead of schedule. They probably had to rush to get the Indian stooges into place-they might even be genuine captured spies. Or they might be drugged Thai criminals who will have incriminating documents found on them."



"I don't care who they are," said Suriyawong. "I still don't understand how you knew."



"Neither do I." said Bean. "Most of the time, I analyze things very quickly and understand exactly why I know what I know. But sometimes my unconscious mind runs ahead of my conscious mind. It happened that way in the last battle, with Ender. We were doomed to defeat. I couldn't see a solution. And yet I said something, an ironic statement, a bitter joke-and it contained within it exactly the solution Ender needed. From then on, I've been trying to heed those unconscious processes that give me answers. I've thought back over my life and seen other times when I said things that were not really justified by my conscious analysis. Like the time when we stood over Achilles as he lay on the ground, and I told Poke to kill him. She wouldn't do it, and I couldn't persuade her, because I truly didn't understand why. Yet I understood what he was. I knew he had to die, or he would kill her."



"You know what I think?" said Suriyawong. "I think you heard something outside. Or noticed something subliminally on the way in. Somebody watching. And that's what triggered you."



Bean could only shrug. "You may well be right. As I said, I don't know."



It was after hours, but Bean could still palm his way through the locks to get in without setting off alarms. They hadn't bothered to deauthorize him. His entry into the building would show up on a computer somewhere, but it was a drone program and by the time any human looked at it, Bean's friends should have things well in

motion.



Bean was glad to see that even though his men were in their home barracks on the grounds of the Thai high command base, they had not slacked in their discipline. No sooner were they inside the door than both Bean and Suriyawong were seized and pressed against the wall while they were checked for weapons.



"Good work," said Bean.



"Sir!" said the surprised soldier. "And Suriyawong," said Bean. "Sir!" said both the sentries.
A few others had been wakened by the scuffle.



"No lights," Bean said quickly. "And no loud talking. Weapons loaded. Prepare to move out on a moment's notice."



"Move out?" said Suriyawong.



"If they realize we're in here and decide to finish the job," said Bean, "this place is indefensible."



While some soldiers quietly woke the sleepers and all were busy dressing and loading their weapons, Bean had one of the sentries lead them to a computer. "You sign on," he said to the soldier.



As soon as he had logged on, Bean took his place and wrote, using the soldier's identity, to Graff, Carlotta, and Peter.


Both packages safe and awaiting pickup. Please come right away before packages are returned to sender.



Bean sent out one toon, divided into four pairs, to reconnoiter. When each pair returned another pair from another toon replaced them. Bean wanted to have enough warning to get these men out of the barracks before any kind of assault could be mounted.



In the meanwhile, they turned on a vid and watched the news. Sure enough, here came the first report. Indian agents had apparently penetrated the Thai command base and blown up a temporary building, killing Suriyawong, Thailand's most
distinguished Battle School graduate, who had headed military doctrine and strategic planning for the past year and a half, since returning from space. It was a great national tragedy. There was no confirmation yet, but preliminary reports indicated that some of the Indian agents had been killed by the heroic soldiers defending Suriyawong. A visiting Battle School graduate had also been killed.



Some of Bean's soldiers chuckled, but. soon enough they were all grim-faced. The fact that the reporters had been told Bean and Suriyawong were dead meant that whoever made the report believed they were both inside the offices at an hour when the only way anyone could know that was if the bodies had been found, or the building had been under observation. Since the bodies had obviously not been found, whoever was writing the official reports from the Chakri's office must have been
part of the plot.



"I can understand someone wanting to kill Borommakot," said Suriyawong. "But why would anyone want to kill me?"



The soldiers laughed. Bean smiled.



Patrols returned and went out, again, again. No movement toward the barracks. The news carried the initial response from various commentators. India apparently wanted to cripple the Thai military by eliminating the nation's finest military mind.

This was intolerable. The government would have no choice now but to declare war and join Burma in the struggle against Indian aggression.



Then new information came. The Prime Minister had declared that he would take personal control of this disaster. Someone in the military had obviously slipped badly to allow a foreign penetration of the high command's own base. Therefore, to protect the Chakri's reputation and make sure there was no hint of a cover-up of military errors, Bangkok city police would be supervising the investigation, and Bangkok city fire officials would investigate the wreckage of the exploded building.



"Good job," said Suriyawong. "The Prime Minister's cover story is strong and the
Chakri won't resist letting police onto the base."



"If the fire investigators arrive soon enough," said Bean, "they might even prevent the Chakri's men from entering the building as soon as it cools enough from the fire. So they won't even know we weren't there."



Sirens moving through the base announced the arrival of the police and fire department. Bean kept waiting for the sound of gunfire. But it never came.



Instead, two of the patrols came rushing back.



"Someone is coming, but not soldiers. Bangkok police, sixteen of them, with a civilian."



"Just one?" asked Bean. "Is one of them a woman?"



"Not a woman, and just one. I believe, sir, that it is the Prime Minister himself" Bean sent out more patrols to see if any military forces were within range.
"How did they know we were here?" asked Suriyawong.


"Once they took control of the Chakri's office," said Bean, "they could use the military personnel files to find out that the soldier who sent that last email was in this barracks when he sent it."



"So it's safe to come out?" "Not yet," said Bean.
A patrol returned. "The Prime Minister wishes to enter this barracks alone, sir." "Please," said Bean. "Invite him in."
"So you're sure he's not wired up with explosives to kill us all?" asked Suriyawong. "I mean, your paranoia has kept us alive so far."



As if in answer, the vid showed Chakri driving away from the main entrance to the base, under police escort. The reporter was explaining that Naresuan had resigned as Chakri, but the Prime Minister insisted that he merely take a leave of absence. In the meantime, the Minister of Defense was taking direct personal control of the Chakri's office, and generals from the field were being brought in to staff other positions of trust. Until then, the police had control of the command system. "Until we know how these Indian agents penetrated our most sensitive base," the Minister of Defense
said, "we cannot be sure of our security."



The Prime Minister entered the barracks. "Suriyawong," he said. He bowed deeply.
"Mr. Prime Minister," said Suriyawong, bowing noticeably less deeply. Ah, the vanity of a Battle School graduate, thought Bean.

"A certain nun is flying here as quickly as she can," said the Prime Minister, "but we hoped that you might trust me enough to come out without waiting for her arrival. She was on the opposite side of the world, you see."



Bean strode forward and spoke in his not-bad Thai. "Sir," he said, "I believe Suriyawong and I are safer here with these loyal troops than we would be anywhere else in Bangkok."



The Prime Minister looked at the soldiers standing, fully armed, at attention. "So someone has a private army right in the middle of this base," he said.



"I did not make my meaning clear," said Bean. "These soldiers are absolutely loyal to you. They are yours to command, because you are Thailand at this moment, sir."



The Prime Minister bowed, very slightly, and turned to the soldiers. "Then I order you to arrest this foreigner."



Immediately Bean's arms were gripped by the soldiers nearest to him, as another soldier patted him down for weapons.



Suriyawong's eyes widened, but he gave no other sign of surprise. The Prime Minister smiled. "You may release him now," he said. 'The Chakri warned me, before he took his voluntary leave of absence, that these soldiers had been corrupted and were no longer loyal to Thailand. I see now that he was misinformed. And since that is the case, I believe you are right. You are safer here, under their protection, until we explore the limits of the conspiracy. In fact, I would appreciate it if I could deputize a hundred of your men to serve with my police force as it takes control of this base."



"I urge you to take all but eight of them," said Bean. "Which eight?" asked the Prime Minister.

"Any of these toons of eight, sir, could stand for a day against the Indian Army."



This was, of course, absurd, but it had a fine ring to it, and the men loved hearing him say it.



"Then, Suriyawong," said the Prime Minister, "I would appreciate your taking command of all but eight of these men and leading them in taking control of this base in my name. I will assign one policeman to each group, so that they can clearly be identified as acting under my authority. And one group of eight will, of course, remain with you for your protection at all times."



"Yes sir," said Suriyawong.



"I remember saying in my last campaign," said the Prime Minister, "that the children of Thailand held the keys to our national survival. I had no idea at the time how literally and how quickly that would be fulfilled."



"When Sister Carlotta arrives," said Bean, "you can tell her that she is no longer needed, but I would be glad to see her if she has the time."



"I'll tell her that," said the Prime Minister. "Now let's get to work. We have a long night ahead of us."



Everyone was quite solemn as Suriyawong called out the toon leaders. Bean was impressed that he knew who they were by name and face. Suriyawong might not have sought out Bean's company very much, but he had done an excellent job of keeping track of what Bean was doing. Only when everyone had moved out on their assign merits each toon with its own cop like a battle flag, did Suriyawong and the Prime Minister allow themselves to smile. "Good work," said the Prime Minister.



"Thank you for believing our message," said Bean.



"I wasn't sure I could believe Locke," said the Prime Minister, "and the Hegemon's

Minister of Colonization is, after all, just a politician now. But when the Pope telephoned me personally, I had no choice but to believe. Now I must go out and tell the people the absolute truth about what happened here."



"That Indian agents did indeed attempt to kill me and an unnamed foreign visitor," asked Suriyawong, "but we survived because of quick action by heroic soldiers of the Thai Army? Or did the unnamed foreign visitor die?"



"I fear that he died," Bean suggested. "Blown to bits in the explosion."



"In any event," said Suriyawong, "you will assure the people, the enemies of Thailand have learned tonight that the Thai military may be challenged, but we cannot be defeated."



"I'm glad you were trained for the military, Suriyawong," said the Prime Minister. "I
would not want to face you as an opponent in a political campaign."



"It is unthinkable that we would be opponents," said Suriyawong, 66 since we could not possibly disagree on any subject."



Everyone got the irony, but no one laughed. Suriyawong left with the Prime Minister and eight soldiers. Bean remained in the barracks with the last toon, and together
they watched as the lies unfolded on the vid.



And as the news droned on, Bean thought of Achilles. Somehow he had found out Bean was alive-but that would be the Chakri, of course. But if the Chakri had turned to Achilles' side, why was he spinning the story of Suriyawong's death as a pretext
for war with India? It made no sense. Having Thailand in the war from the beginning could only work against India. Add that to India's use of the clunky, obvious, life- wasting strategy of mass attack, and it began to look as though Achilles were some kind of idiot.



He was not an idiot. Therefore he was playing some sort of deeper game, and despite the much-vaunted cleverness of his unconscious mind, Bean did not yet know what it

was. And Achilles would know soon enough, if he did not know already, that Bean was not dead. He's in a killing mood, thought Bean. Petra, thought Bean. Help me find a way to save you.



HYDERABAD



Posted on the International Politics Forum by EnsiRaknor@TurkMilNet.gov

Topic: Where is Locke when we need him?



Am I the only one who wishes we had Locke's take on the recent developments in India? With India across the Burmese border and Pakistani troops massing in Baluchistan, threatening Iran and the gulf, we need a new way of looking at south Asia. The old models clearly don't work.



What I want to know is, did IntPolFor drop Locke's column when Peter Wiggin came forward as the author, or did Wiggin resign? Because if it was IPF's decision, it was, to put it bluntly, a stupid one. We never knew who Locke was-we listened to him because he made sense, and time after time he was the only one who made sense out of problematical situations, or at least was the first to see clearly what was going on. What does it matter if he's a teenager, an embryo, or a talking pig?



For that matter, as the Hegemon's term is near expiration, I am more and more uneasy with the current Hegemon-designate. Whoever suggested Locke almost a year ago had the right idea. only now let's put him in office under his own name. What Ender Wiggin did in the Formic War, Peter Wiggin might be able to do in the conflagration that looms-put an end to it.



Reply 14, by Talleyrandophile@polnet.gov



I don't mean to be suspicious, but how do we know you're not Peter Wiggin, trying to put his name into play again?



Reply 14.1, by EnsiRaknor@TurkMilNet.gov


I don't mean to get personal, but Turkish Military Network IDs aren't given out to American teenagers doing consultation work in Haiti. I realize that international politics can make paranoids seem sane, but if Peter Wiggin could write under this
ID, he must already run the world. But perhaps who I am does make a difference. I'm in my twenties now, but I'm a Battle School grad. So maybe that's why the idea of putting a kid in charge of things doesn't sound so crazy to me.



Virlomi knew who Petra was the moment she first showed up in Hyderabadthey had met before. Even though she was considerably older, so her time in Battle School overlapped Petra's by only a year, in those days Virlomi took notice of every girl in the place. An easy task, since Petra's arrival brought the total number of girls to ninefive of whom graduated at the same time as Virlomi. It seemed as though having girls in the school were regarded as an experiment that had failed.



Back in Battle School, Petra had been a tough launchy with a smart mouth, who proudly refused all offers of advice. She seemed determined to make it as a girl among boys, meeting the same standards, taking their guff without help. Virlomi understood. She had had the same attitude herself, at first. She just hoped that Petra would not have to have such painful experiences as those Virlomi had had before finally realizing that the hostility of boys was, in most cases, insuperable, and a girl needed all the friends she could get.



Petra was memorable enough that of course Virlomi recognized her name when the stories of Ender's jeesh came out after the war. The one girl among them, the Armenian Joan of Arc. Virlomi read the articles and smiled. So Petra had been as tough as she thought she'd be. Good for her.



Then Ender's jeesh was kidnapped or killed, and when the kidnapped ones were returned from Russia, Virlomi was heartsick to see that the only one whose fate remained unknown was Petra Arkanian.



Only she didn't have long to grieve. For suddenly the team of Indian Battle School graduates had a new commander, whom they immediately recognized as the same Achilles that Locke had accused of being a psychopathic killer. And soon they found

that he was frequently shadowed by a silent, tiredlooking girl whose name was never spoken.



But Virlomi knew her. Petra Arkanian.



Whatever Achilles' motive in keeping her name to himself, Virlomi didn't like it and so she made sure that everyone on the strategy team knew that this was the missing member of Ender's jeesh. They said nothing about Petra to Achilles, of course- merely responded to his instructions and reported to him as required. And soon enough Petra's silent presence was treated as if it were ordinary. The others hadn't known her.



But Virlomi knew that if Petra was silent, it meant something quite dreadful. It meant Achilles had some hold over her. A hostagesome kidnapped family member? Threats? Or something else? Had Achilles somehow overmastered Petra's will, which had once seemed so indomitable?



Virlomi took great pains to make sure that Achilles did not notice her paying special attention to Petra. But she watched the younger girl, learning all she could. Petra used her desk as the others did, and took part in reading intelligence reports and everything else that was sent to all of them. But something was wrong, and it took a while for Virlomi to realize what it wasPetra never typed anything at all while she was logged on to the system. There were a lot of netsites that required passwords or at least registration to sign on. But after typing her password to simply log on in the morning, Petra never typed again.



She's been blocked, Virlomi realized. That's why she never emails any of us. She's a prisoner here. She can't pass messages outside. And she doesn't talk to any of us because she's been forbidden to.



When she wasn't logged on, though, she must have been working furiously, because now and then Achilles would send a message to all of them, detailing new directions their planning should go. The language in these messages was not Achilles'-it was easy to spot the shift in style. He was getting these strategic insights-and they were good ones-from Petra, who was one of the nine who were chosen to save humanity

from the Formics. One of the finest minds on Earth. And she was enslaved by this psychopathic Belgian.



So, while the others admired the brilliant strategies they were developing for aggressive war against Burma and Thailand, as Achilles' memos whipped up their enthusiasm for "India finally rising to take her rightful place among the nations," Virlomi grew more and more skeptical. Achilles cared nothing for India, no matter how good his rhetoric sounded. And when she found herself tempted to believe in him, she had only to look at Petra to remember what he was.



Because the others all seemed to buy into Achilles' version of India's future, Virlomi kept her opinions to herself And she watched and waited for Petra to look at her, so she could give her a wink or a smile.



The day came. Petra looked. Virlomi smiled.



Petra looked away as casually as if Virlomi had been a chair and not a person trying to make contact.



Virlomi was not discouraged. She kept trying for eye contact until finally one day Petra passed near her on the way to a water fountain and slipped and caught herself on Virlomi's chair. In the midst of the noise of Petra's scuffling feet, Virlomi clearly heard her words: "Stop it. He's watching."



And that was it. Confirmation of what Virlomi had suspected about Achilles, proof that Petra had noticed her, and a warning that her help was not needed.



Well, that was nothing new. Petra never needed help, did she?



Then came the day, only a month ago, when Achilles sent a memo around ordering that they needed to update the old plans-the original strategy of mass assault, throwing huge armies with their huge supply lines against the Burmese. They were
all stunned. Achilles gave no explanation, but he seemed unusually taciturn, and they all got the message. The brilliant strategy had been set aside by the adults. Some of

the finest military minds in the world had come up with the strategy, and the adults were going to ignore them.



Everyone was outraged, but they soon settled back into the routine of work, trying to get the old plans into shape for the coming war. Troops had moved, supplies had been replenished in one area or fallen short in another. But they worked out the logistics. And when they received Achilles'-or, as Virlomi assumed, Petra's-plan for moving the bulk of the army from the Pakistani border to face the Burmese, they
admired the brilliance of it, fitting the needs of the army into the existing rail and air traffic so that from satellites, no unusual movements would be visible until suddenly the armies were on the border, forming up. At most the enemy would have two days' notice; if they were careless, only a single day before it became obvious.



Achilles left on one of his frequent trips, only this time Petra disappeared too. Virlomi feared for her. Had she served her purpose, and now that he was done with her, would he kill her?



But no. She came back the same night, when Achilles did.



And the next morning, word came to begin the movement of troops. Following Petra's deft plan to get them to the Burmese border. And then, ignoring Petra's equally deft plan, they would launch their clumsy mass attack.



It makes no sense, thought Virlomi.



Then she got the email from the Hegemony Minister of Colonization--Colonel Graff, that old sabeek.



I'm sure you're aware that one of our Battle School graduates, Petra Arkanian, was not returned with the others who took part with Ender Wiggin in the final battle. I am very interested in locating her, and believe she may have been transported against her will to a place within the borders of India. If you know anything about her whereabouts and present condition, could you let someone know? I'm sure you'd want someone to do the same for you.


Almost immediately there came an email from Achilles.



I'm sure you understand that because this is wartime, any attempt to convey information to someone outside the Indian military will be regarded as espionage and treason, and you will be killed forthwith.



So Achilles was definitely keeping Petra incommunicado, and cared very much that she remain hidden to outsiders.



Virlomi did not even have to think about what she would do. This had nothing to do with Indian military security. So, while she took his death threat seriously, she did not believe there was anything morally wrong with attempting to circumvent it.



She could not write directly to Colonel Graff. Nor could she send any kind of message containing any reference, however oblique, to Petra. Any email going out from Hyderabad was going to be scrutinized. And, now that Virlomi thought about it, she and the other Battle School graduates ensconced here in the Planning and Doctrine Division were only slightly more free than Petra. She could not leave the grounds. She could not have contact with anyone who was not military with a high- level security clearance.



Spies have radio equipment or dead drops, thought Virlomi. But how do you go about becoming a spy when you have no way to reach outside but writing letters, yet there's no one you can write a letter to and no way to say what you need to say without getting caught?



She might have thought of a solution on her own. But Petra simplified the process
for her by coming up behind her at the drinking fountain. As Virlomi straightened up from drinking and Petra slipped in to take her place, Petra said, "I am Briseis."



And that was all.

The reference was obvious--everyone in Battle School knew the Iliad. And with Achilles being their overseer at the moment, the Briseis references was obvious. And yet it was not. Briseis had been held by someone else, and Achilles-the original one- had been furious because he felt slighted that he didn't have her. So what could she mean by saying she was Briseis?



It had to do with the letter from Graff and Achilles' warning. So it must be a key, a way to get word out about Petra. And to get word out required the net. So Briseis must mean something to someone out on the net. Perhaps there was some kind of coded electronic dead drop, keyed on the name Briseis. Perhaps Petra had already found someone to contact, but could not do it because she was cut off from the nets.



Virlomi didn't bother doing a general search. If someone out there was looking for Petra, the message would have to be at a site that Petra would be able to find without deviating from legitimate military research. Which meant that Virlomi probably already knew the site where the message was waiting.



The problem she was officially working on at the moment was to determine the most efficient way to minimize risk to supply helicopters while not consuming too much fuel. The problem was so technical that there was no way she could explain doing historical or theoretical research.



But Sayagi, a Battle School graduate five years her senior, was working on problems of pacifying and winning the allegiance of local populations in occupied countries. So Virlomi went to him. "I've gone greeyaz on my algorithms."



"You want my help?" he asked.



"No, no, I just need to set it aside for a couple of hours so I can come back to it fresh. Anything I can help you look for?"



Of course Sayagi had received the same messages as Virlomi, and he was sharp enough not to take Virlomi's offer at face value.

"I don't know, what kind of thing could you do?"



"Any historical research? Or theoretical? On the nets?" She was tipping him to what she needed. And he understood.



"Toguro. I hate that stuff. I need data on failed approaches to pacification and conciliation. Besides killing or deporting everybody and moving in a new population."



"What do you already have?"



"You're wide open, I've been avoiding it." "Thanks. You want a report or just links?"
"Paste-ups are enough. No links, though. That's too much like doing the work myself."



A perfectly innocent exchange. Virlomi had her cover now.



She went back to her desk and began browsing the historical and theoretical sites. She never actually ran a search on the name "Briseis"-that would be too obvious, the monitoring software would pick that right up and Achilles, if he saw it, would make the connection. Instead, Virlomi browsed through the sites, looking at subject headings.



Briseis showed up on the second site she tried.



It was a posting from someone calling himself Hector Victorious. Hector was not exactly an auspicious name-he was a hero, and the only person who was any kind of match for Achilles, but in the end Hector was killed and Achilles dragged his corpse around the walls of Troy.


Still, the message was clear, if you knew to think of Briseis as a codename for Petra.



Virlomi worked her way through several other postings, pretending to read them while actually composing her reply to Hector Victorious. When she was ready, she went back and typed it in, knowing as she did it that it might well be the cause of her own immediate execution.



I vote for her remaining a resistant slave. Even if she was forced into silence, she would find a way to hold on to her soul. 'As for slipping a message to someone inside Troy, how do you know she didn't? And what good would it have done? It
wasn't that long afterward that everyone in Troy was dead. Or didn't you ever hear of the Trojan horse? I know-Briseis should have warned the Trojans to beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Or found a friendly native to do it for her.



She signed it with her own name and email address. After all, this was supposed to be a perfectly innocent posting. Indeed, she worried that it might be too innocent. What if the person who was looking for Petra didn't realize that her references to Briseis resisting and being forced into silence were actually eyewitness reports? Or that the "friendly native" reference was to Virlomi herself?



But her address inside the Indian military network should alert whoever this was to pay special attention.



Now, of course, with the message posted, Virlomi had to continue going through the motions of doing the useless research that Sayagi had "asked" her to do. It would be a couple of tedious hours-wasted time, if no one got the message.



Petra tried not to be obvious about watching what Virlomi was doing. After all, if Virlomi was as smart as she needed to be in order to bring this off, she wouldn't do anything that was worth watching. But Petra saw when Virlomi went over to Sayagi and talked for a while. And Petra noticed that Virlomi seemed to be browsing when she got back to her desk, mousing through online pages instead of writing or calculating. Was she going to spot those HectorVictorious postings?


Either she would or she wouldn't. Petra couldn't allow herself to think about it any more. Because in a way it would be better for everyone if Virlomi simply didn't get it. Who knew how subtle Achilles was? For all Petra knew, those postings might be traps designed to catch her getting someone else to help her. That could be fatal all the way around.



But Achilles couldn't be everywhere. He was bright, he was suspicious, he played a deep game. But he was only one person and he couldn't think of everything. Besides, how important was Petra to him, really? He hadn't even used her campaign strategy. Surely he kept her around as a vanity, nothing more.



The reports coming back from the front were just what one might expectBurmese resistance was only token, since they were massing their main forces in places where the terrain favored them. Canyons. River crossings.



All futile, of course. No matter where the Burmese made their stand, the Indian Army would simply flow around them. There weren't enough Burmese soldiers to make serious efforts at more than a handful of places, while there were so many Indians that they could press forward at every point, leaving only enough men at the Burmese strong points to keep them pinned down while the bulk of the Indian Army completed the takeover of Burma and moved on toward the mountain passes into Thailand.



That's where the challenge would begin, of course. For Indian supply lines would stretch all the way across Burma by then, and the Thai Air Force was formidable, especially since they had been observed testing a new temporary airfield system that could be built in many cases during the time a bomber was airborne. Not really
worth it, bombing airfields when they could be replaced in two or three hours.



So even though the intelligence reports from inside Thailand were very good-- detailed, accurate, and recent-on the most important points they didn't matter. There were few meaningful targets, given the strategy the Thai were using.

Petra knew Suriyawong, the Battle School grad who was running strategy and doctrine in Bangkok. He was good. But to Petra it looked a little suspicious that the new Thai strategy began, abruptly, only a few weeks after Petra and Achilles arrived in India from Russia. Suriyawong had already been in place in Bangkok for a year. Why the sudden change? It might be that someone had tipped them off about Achilles' presence in Hyderabad and what that might mean. Or it might be that someone else had joined Suriyawong and influenced his thinking.



Bean.



Petra refused to believe that he was dead. Those messages had to be from him. And even though Suriyawong was perfectly capable of thinking of the new Thai strategy himself, it was such a comprehensive set of changes, without any sign of gradual development, that it cried out for the obvious explanationit came from a fresh set of eyes. Who else but Bean?



The trouble was, if it was Bean, Achilles' intelligence sources inside Thailand were so good that it was quite possible Bean would be spotted. And if Achilles' earlier attempt to kill Bean had failed, there was no chance that Achilles would refrain from trying again.



She couldn't think about that. If he had saved himself once, he could do it again. After all, maybe someone had excellent intelligence sources inside India, too.



And it might not be Bean leaving those Briseis messages. It might be Dink Meeker, for instance. Only that really wasn't Dink's style. Bean had always been something of a sneak. Dink was confrontational. He would go on the nets proclaiming that he
knew Petra was in Hyderabad and demanding that she be released at once. Bean was the one who had figured out that the Battle School kept track of where students were by monitoring transmitters in their clothing. Take off all your clothes and go around buck naked, and the Battle School administrators wouldn't have a clue where you were. Not only had Bean thought of it, he had done it, climbing around in airshafts in the middle of the night. When he told her about it, as they waited around on Eros for the League War to settle down so they could go home, Petra hadn't really believed him at first. Not until he looked her coldly in the eye and said, "I don't joke, and if I did, this isn't particularly funny."


"I didn't think you were joking," said Petra. "I thought you were bragging."



"I was," said Bean. "But I wouldn't waste my time bragging about things I hadn't actually done."



That was Bean-admitting his faults right along with his virtues. No false modesty, and no vanity, either. If he bothered to talk to you at all, he never shaped his words to make himself look better or worse than he was.



She hadn't really known him in Battle School. How could she? She was older, and even though she noticed him and spoke to him a few times-she always made a point of speaking to new kids who were getting the pariah treatment, since she knew they needed friends, even if it was only a girl-she simply hadn't had much reason to talk to him.



And then there was the disastrous time when Petra had been suckered into trying to give Ender a warning-which turned out to be bogus, and in fact Ender's enemies were using Petra's attempt to warn Ender as the opportunity to jump him and beat him up. Bean was the one who saw through it and broke it up. And, quite naturally, he leapt
to the conclusion that Petra was part of the conspiracy against Ender. He had continued to suspect her for quite a while. Petra wasn't really sure when he finally believed in her innocence. But it had been a barrier between them for a long time on Eros. So it wasn't until after the war ended that they even had a chance to get to know each other.



That was when Petra realized what Bean really was. It was hard to see past his small size and think of him as anything other than a preschooler or launchy or something. Even though everyone knew that he was the one that would have been chosen to take Ender's place, if Ender had broken under the strain of battle. A lot of them resented the fact. But Petra didn't. She knew Bean was the best of Ender's jeesh. It didn't bother her.



What was Bean, really? A dwarf. That's what she had to realize. With adult dwarfs,

you could see in their faces that they were older than their size would indicate. But because Bean was still a child, and had none of the short-limbed deformations of dwarfism, he looked like the age his size implied. If you talked to him like a child, though, he tuned you out. Petra never had done that, so except when he thought she was a traitor to Ender, Bean always treated her with respect.



The funny thing was, it was all based on a misunderstanding. Bean thought Petra talked to him like a regular human being because she was so mature and wise that she didn't treat him like a little kid. But the truth was, she did treat him exactly the way she treated little kids. It's just that she always treated little kids like adults. So she got credit for being understanding, when in fact she was just lucky.



By the time the war was over, though, it didn't matter. They knew they were going home-all of them, it turned out, but Ender-and once they got back to Earth, they expected they wouldn't see each other again. So there was a kind of freedom, caution tossed to the wind. You could say what you wanted. You didn't have to take offense at anything because it wouldn't matter in a few months. It was the first time they could actually have fun.



And the person Petra enjoyed the most was Bean.



Dink, who had been close to Petra for a while in Battle School, was a little miffed by the way Petra was always with Bean. He even accused herobliquely, because he
didn't want to get frozen out completely-of having something romantic going on with Bean. Well, of course he thought that waypuberty had already struck Dink Meeker, and like all boys that age, he thought everybody's mental processes were infused with testosterone.



It was something else, though, between Petra and Bean. Not brother and sister, either. Not mother-son or any other weird psychofake analogy she could think of. She just.. . liked him. She had spent so long having to prove to prickly, envious, and
frightened boys that she was, in fact, smarter and better at everything than they were, that it took her quite by surprise to be with someone so arrogant, so absolutely sure
of his own brilliance, that he didn't feel at all threatened by her. If she knew something that he didn't know, he listened, he watched, he learned. The only other person she'd known who was like that with her was Ender.


Ender. She missed him terribly sometimes. She had tutored him-and taken a lot of heat from Bonzo Madrid, their commander at the time, for doing it. And as it became clear what Ender was, and she joined gladly with those who followed him, obeyed him, gave themselves to him, she nevertheless had a secret place in her memory where she kept the knowledge that she had been Ender's friend at a time when no one else had the courage. She had made a difference in his life, and even when others thought she had betrayed him, Ender never thought that.



She loved Ender with a helpless mixture of worship and longing that led to foolish dreams of impossible futures, tying her life with his until they died. She fantasized about raising children together, the most brilliant children in the world. About being able to stand beside the greatest human being in the worldfor so she thought he wasand having everybody recognize that he had chosen her to stand with him forever.



Dreams. After the war, Ender was beaten down. Broken. Finding out that he had actually caused the extermination of the Formics was more than he could bear. And because she, too, had broken during the war, her shame kept her away from him until it was too late, until they had divided Ender from the rest of them.



Which is why she knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather the way a left hand belonged with the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on. She imagined that, of all the Battle School kids, of all the members of Ender's jeesh, it would be Bean that she would remain close to.



Then they got off the shuttle and were dispersed throughout the world. And even though Armenia and Greece were relatively close together----compared to, say, Shen in Japan or Hot Soup in China-they never saw each other, they never even wrote. She knew that Bean was going home to meet a family that he had never known, and she was busy trying to get involved with her own family again. She didn't exactly pine
for him, or he for her. And besides, they didn't need to hang out together or chat all the time for her to know that, left hand with right hand, they were still friends, still

belonged together. That when she needed someone, the first person she should call on was Bean.



In a world that didn't have Ender Wiggin in it, that meant he was the person she loved most. That she would miss most if anything happened to him.



Which is why she could pretend that she wasn't going to worry about Bean getting folded by Achilles, but it wasn't true. She worried all the time. Of course, she worried about herself, too-and maybe a little more about herself than about him. But she'd already lost one love in her life, and even though she told herself that these childhood friendships wouldn't matter in twenty years, she didn't want to lose the other.



Her desk beeped at her.



There was a message in the display.



When did I designate this as naptime? Come see me.



Only Achilles wrote with such peremptory rudeness. She hadn't been napping. She had been thinking. But it wasn't worth arguing with him about it.



She logged off and got up from her desk.



It was evening, getting dark outside. Her mind really had wandered. Most of the others on the day shift in Planning and Doctrine had already left, and the night response team was coming in. A couple of the day shift were still at their desks, though.



She caught a glance from Virlomi one of the late ones. The girl looked worried. That meant she probably had done something in response to the Briseis posting, and now feared repercussions. Well, she was right to worry. Who knew how Achilles would speak or write or act if he was planning to kill somebody? Petra's personal opinion

was that he was always planning to kill someone, so there was no difference in his behavior to warn. you if you were next. Go home and try to get some sleep, Virlomi. Even if Achilles has caught you trying to help me and has decided to have you
killed, you won't be able to do anything about it, so you might as well sleep the sleep of a child. Petra left the big barn of a room they all worked in and moved through the corridors as if in a trance. Had she been asleep when Achilles wrote to her? Who cared.



As far as Petra knew, she was the only one in Planning and Doctrine who even knew where Achilles' office was. She had been in it often, but was not impressed by the privilege. She had the freedom of a slave or a captive. Achilles let her intrude on his privacy because he didn't think of her as a person.



One wall of his office was a 2D computer display, now showing a detailed map of the India-Burma border region. As reports came in from troops in the field and from satellites, it was updated by clerks, so Achilles could glance at it any time and see the best available intelligence on placement. Apart from that, the room was spartan. Two chairs-not comfortable ones-a table, a bookcase, and a cot. Petra suspected that somewhere on the base there was a comfortable suite of rooms with a soft bed that was never used. Whatever else Achilles was, he wasn't a hedonist. He never cared much about personal comfort, not that she had seen, anyway.



He didn't take his eyes off the map when she came in-but she was used to that. When he made a point of ignoring her, she took it as his perverse way of paying attention
to her. It was when he looked right at her without seeing her that she felt truly invisible.



"The campaign's going very well," said Achilles.



"It's a stupid plan, and the Thai are going to cut it to shreds."



"They had a sort of coup a few minutes ago," said Achilles. "The commander of the Thai military blew up young Suriyawong. Terrible case of professional jealousy, apparently."

Petra tried to keep from showing her sadness at Suriyawong's death and her disgust
at Achilles. "You're not seriously expecting me to believe you had nothing to do with it?"



"Well, they're blaming it on Indian spies, of course. But there were no Indian spies involved."



"Not even the Chakri?"



"Definitely not spying for India," said Achilles. "For whom, then?"
Achilles laughed. "You're so untrusting. My Briseis."



She had to work at staying relaxed, at not betraying anything when he called her that. "Ah, Pet, you are my Briseis, don't you realize?"
"Not really," said Petra. "Briseis was in somebody else's tent."



"Oh, I have your body with me, and I get the product of your brain, but your heart still belongs to someone else."



"It belongs to me," said Petra.



"It belongs to Hector," said Achilles. "But ... how can I bear to tell you this? Suriyawong was not alone in his office when the building was blown to bits. Another person contributed scraps of flesh and bone and a fine aerosol of blood to the general gore. Unfortunately, this means I can't drag his body around the walls of Troy."

Petra was sick inside. Had he heard her tell Virlomi, "I am Briseis"? And whom was he talking about, saying those things about Hector?



"Just tell me what you're talking about or don't," said Petra.



"Oh, don't tell me you haven't seen those little messages all over the forums," said Achilles. "About Briseis, and Guinevere, and every other tragic romantic heroine who got trapped with some overbearing bunduck."



"What about them?"



"You know who wrote them," said Achilles. "Do IT'
"I forgot. You refuse to play guessing games. All right, it was Bean, and you knew that."



Petra felt unwanted emotions welling up-she suppressed them. If those messages were posted by Bean, then he had lived through the previous assassination attempt. But that would mean Bean was "HectorVictorious," and Achilles' little allegory meant that Bean was indeed in Bangkok, and Achilles had spotted him and tried again to kill him. He had died along with Suriyawong.



"I'm glad to have you to tell me what I know. It saves my having to actually use my own memory."



"I know it's tearing you up, my poor Pet. The funny thing is, dear Briseis, Bean was just a bonus. It was Suriyawong that we targeted from the start."



"Fine. Congratulations. You're a genius. Whatever it is you want me to say so you'll shut up and let me get some dinner."


Talking rudely to Achilles was the only illusion of freedom Petra was able to retain. She figured it amused him. And she wasn't dumb enough to talk to him that way in front of anyone else.



"You had your heart set on Bean saving you, didn't you?" said Achilles. "That's why when old Graff sent that stupid request for information, you tipped that Virlomi kid to try responding to Bean."



Petra tasted despair. Achilles really did monitor everything.



"Come on, the water fountain's the most obvious place to bug," said Achilles. "I thought you had important things to do."
"Nothing's more important in my life than you, Pet," said Achilles. "If I could just get you to come into my tent."



"You've kidnapped me twice. You watch me wherever I go. I don't know how I could be farther in your tent than I am."



"In ... my ... tent," said Achilles. "You're still my enemy."



"Oh, I forgot, I'm supposed to be so eager to please my captor that I surrender my volition to you."



"If I wanted that, I'd have you tortured, Pet," said Achilles. "But I don't want you that way."



"How kind of you."

"No, if I can't have you freely with me, as my friend and ally, then I'll just kill you. I'm not into torture."



"After you've used my work."



"But I'm not using your work," said Achilles.



"Oh, that's right. Because Suriyawong is dead, so you don't need to worry now about having any real opposition."



Achilles laughed. "Sure. That's it."



Which meant, of course, that she hadn't understood at all.
"It's easy to fool a person you keep living in a box. I only know what you tell me." "But I tell you everything," said Achilles, "if only you were bright enough to get it." Petra closed her eyes. She kept thinking of poor Suriyawong. So serious all the time.
He had done his best for his country, and then it was his own commander-in-chief who killed him. Did he know? I hope not.



If she kept thinking of poor Suriyawong, she wouldn't have to think of Bean at all. "You're not listening," said Achilles.
"Oh, thanks for telling me that," said Petra. "I thought I was."



Achilles was about to say something else, but then he cocked his head. The hearing aid he wore was a radio receiver tied to his desk. Somebody had just started talking

to him.



Achilles turned from her to his desk. He typed a few things, read a few things. His face showed no emotion-but that was a real change, since he had been smiling and pleasant until the voice came. Something had gone wrong. Indeed, Petra knew him well enough now that she thought she recognized the signs of anger. Or maybe-she wondered, she hoped-fear.



"They aren't dead," Petra said. "I'm busy," he said.
She laughed. "That's the message, isn't it? Once again, your assassins have piffed it. If you want a job done right, Achilles, you've got to do it yourself."



He turned away from the desk display and looked her in the eye. "He sent out a message from the barracks of his strike force there in Thailand. Of course the Chakri saw it."



"Not dead," said Petra. "He just keeps beating you."



"Narrowly escaping with his life while my plans are never interfered with at all . . ." "Come on, you know he got you booted out of Russia."
Achilles raised his eyebrows. "So you admit you sent a coded message."



"Bean doesn't need coded messages to beat you," she said.



Achilles rose from his chair and walked over to her. She braced herself for a slap. But he planted a hand in her chest and shoved the chair over backward.


Her head hit the floor. It left her dazed, lights flashing through her peripheral vision. And then a wave of pain and nausea.



"He sent for dear old Sister Carlotta," said Achilles. His voice betrayed no emotion. "She's flying around the world to help him. Isn't that nice of her?"



Petra could barely comprehend what he was saying. The only thought she could hold on to was: Don't let there be any permanent brain damage. That was her whole self. She'd rather die than lose the brilliance that made her who she was.



"But that gives me time to set up a little surprise," said Achilles. "I think I'll make
Bean very sorry that he's alive."



Petra wanted to say something to that, but she couldn't remember what. Then she couldn't remember what he had said. "What?"



"Oh, is your poor little head swimming, my Pet? You should be more careful with the way you lean back on that chair."



Now she remembered what he had said. A surprise. For Sister Carlotta. To make
Bean sorry he's alive.



"Sister Carlotta is the one who got you off the streets of Rotterdam," said Petra. "You owe her everything. Your leg operation. Going to Battle School."



"I owe her nothing," said Achilles. "You see, she chose Bean. She sent him. Me, she passed over. I'm the one who brought civilization to the streets. I'm the one who kept her precious little Bean alive. But him she sends up into space, and me she leaves in the dirt."



"Poor baby," said Petra.


He kicked her, hard, in the ribs. She gasped.



"And as for Virlomi," he said, "I think I can use her to teach you a lesson about disloyalty to me."



"That's the way to bring me into your tent," said Petra.



Again he kicked her. She tried not to groan, but it came out anyway. This passive resistance strategy was not working.



He acted as if he hadn't done it. "Come on, why are you lying there? Get up."



"Just kill me and have done with it," she said. "Virlomi was just trying to be a decent human being."



"Virlomi was warned what would happen." "Virlomi is nothing to you but a way to hurt me."
"You're not that important. And if I want to hurt you, I know how." He made as if to kick her again. She stiffened, curled away from the blow. But it didn't come. Instead he reached down a hand to her. "Get up, my Pet. The floor is no place to nap."



She reached up and took his hand. She let him bear most of her weight as she rose up, so he was pulling hard.



Fool, she thought. I was trained for personal combat. You weren't in Battle School long enough to get that training.

As soon as her legs were under her, she shoved upward. Since that was the direction he had been pulling, he lost his balance and went over backward, falling over the legs of her chair.



He did not hit his head. He immediately tried to scramble to his feet. But she knew how to respond to his movements, kicking sharply at him with her heavy army-issue shoes, shifting her weight so that her kicks never came at the place he was protecting. Every kick hurt him. He tried to scramble backward, but she pressed on, relentless, and because he was using his arms to help him scuttle across the floor,
she was able to kick him in the head, a solid blow that rocked him back and laid him out.



Not unconscious, but a little dizzy. Well, see how you like it.



He tried to do some kind of street-fighting move, kicking out with his legs while his eyes were looking elsewhere, but it was pathetic. She easily jumped over his legs and landed a scuffing kick right up between his legs.



He cried out in pain.



"Come on, get up," she said. "You're going to kill Virlomi, so kill me first. Do it. You're the killer. Get your gun. Come on."



And then, without her quite seeing how he did it, there was indeed a gun in his hand. "Kick me again," he said through gritted teeth. "Kick me faster than this bullet."
She didn't move.



"I thought you wanted to die," he said.



She could see it now. He wouldn't shoot her. Not till he had shot Virlomi in front of

her.



She had missed her chance. While he was down, before he got the gun-from the back of his waistband? from under the furniture?-she should have snapped his neck. This wasn't a wrestling match, this was her chance to put an end to him. But her instinct had taken over, and her instinct was not to kill, only to disable her opponent, because that's what she had practiced in Battle School.



Of all the things I could have learned from Ender, the killer instinct, going for the final blow from the start, why was that the one I overlooked?



Something Bean had explained about Achilles. Something Graff had told him, after Bean had gotten him shipped back to Earth. That Achilles had to kill anyone who had ever seen him helpless. Even the doctor who had repaired his gimp leg, because she'd seen him laid out under anaesthetic and taken a knife to him.



Petra had just destroyed whatever feeling it was that had made him keep her alive. Whatever he had wanted from her, he wouldn't want it now. He wouldn't be able to bear having her around. She was dead.



Yet, no matter what else was going on, she was still a tactician. Thick headed as she was, her mind could still do this dance. The enemy saw things this way; so change it so he sees them another way.



Petra laughed. "I never thought you'd let me do that," she said.



He slowly, painfully, was getting to his feet, the gun trained on her.



She went on. "You always had to be el supremo, like the bunducks in Battle School. I
never thought you had the guts to be like Ender or Bean, till now."



Still he said nothing. But he was standing there. He was listening.

"Crazy, isn't it? But Bean and Ender, they were so little. And they didn't care. Everybody looking down at them, me towering over them, they were the only guys in Battle School who weren't terrified of having somebody see a girl be better than
them, bigger than them." Keep it going, keep spinning it. "They put Ender in Bonzo's army too early, he hadn't been trained. Didn't know how to do anything. And Bonzo gave orders, nobody was to work with him. So here I had this little kid, helpless, didn't know anything. That's what I like, Achilles. Smarter than me, but smaller. So I taught him. Chisel Bonzo, I didn't care. He was like you've always been, constantly showing me who's boss. But Ender knew how to let me run it. I taught him everything. I would have died for him."



"You're sick," said Achilles.



"Oh, you're going to tell me you didn't know that? You had the gun the whole time, why did you let me do that, if it wasn't-if you weren't trying to . . ."



"Trying to what?" he said. He was keeping his voice steady, but the craziness was plainly visible, and his voice trembled just a little. She had pushed him past the borders of sanity, deep into his madness. It was Caligula she was seeing now. But he was listening. If she found the right story to put on what just happened, maybe he would settle for ... something else. Making his horse consul. Making Petra ...



"Weren't you trying to seduce me?" she said. "You don't even have your tits yet," he said.
"I don't think it's tits you're looking for," she said. "Or you would never have dragged me around with you in the first place. What was all that talk about wanting me in your tent? Loyal? You wanted me to belong to you. And all the time you did that sabeek stuff, pushing me around-that just made me feel contempt for you. I was looking down on you the whole time. You were nothing, just another sack of testosterone, another chimp hooting and beating his chest. But then you let me-you did let me, didn't you? You don't expect me to believe I really could have done
that?"

A faint smile touched the comers of his lips.



"Doesn't that spoil it, if you think I did it on purpose?" he said.



She strode to him, right to the barrel of the gun, and, letting it press into her abdomen, she reached up, grabbed him by the neck, and pulled his head down to where she could kiss him.



She had no idea how to do it, except what she'd seen in movies. But she was apparently doing it well enough. The gun stayed in her belly, but his other arm wrapped around her, pulled her closer.



In the back of her mind, she remembered what Bean told herthat the last thing he had seen Achilles do before killing Bean's friend Poke was kiss her. Bean had had nightmares about it. Achilles kissing her, and then in the middle of the kiss, strangling her. Not that Bean actually saw that part. Maybe it didn't happen that way at all.



But no matter how you cut it, Achilles was a dangerous boy to kiss. And there, was that gun in her belly. Maybe this was the moment he longed for. Maybe his dreams were about this-kissing a girl, and blowing a hole in her body while he did.



Well, blow away, she thought. Before I watch you kill Virlomi for the crime of having compassion for me and courage enough to act, I'd rather be dead myself. I'd rather kiss you than watch you kill her, and there's nothing in the world that could disgust me more than having to pretend that you're the ... thing ... I love.



The kiss ended. But she did not let go of him. She would not step back, she would not break this embrace. He had to believe that she wanted him. That she was in his emossin' tent.



He was breathing lightly, quickly. His heartbeat was rapid. Prelude to a kill? Or just the aftermath of a kiss.

"I said I'd kill anyone who tried to answer Graff," he said. "I have to."



"She didn't answer Graff, did she?" said Petra. "I know you have to keep control of things, but you don't have to be a strutting yelda about it. She doesn't know you know what she did."



"She'll think she got away with it."
"But I'll know," said Petra, "that you weren't afraid to give me what I want." "What, you think you've found some way to make me do what you want?" he said. Now she could back away from him. "I thought I'd found a man who didn't have to
prove he was big by pushing people around. I guess I was wrong. Do what you want. Men like you disgust me." She put as much contempt into her voice, onto her face,
as she could. "Here, prove you're a man. Shoot me. Shoot everybody. I've known real men. I thought you were one of them."



He lowered the gun. She did not show her relief. Just kept her eyes looking into his. "Don't ever think you've got me figured out," he said.
"I don't care whether I figure you out or not," she said. "All I care about is, you're the first man since Ender and Bean who had guts enough to let me stand over him."



"Is that what you're going to say?" he asked.



"Say? Who to? I don't have any friends out there. The only person worth talking to in this whole place is you."



He stood there, breathing heavily again, a bit of the craziness back in his eyes.


What am I saying wrong?



"You're going to bring this off," she said. "I don't know how you're going to do it, but I can taste it. You're going to run the whole show. They're all going to be under you, Achilles. Governments, universities, corporations, all eager to please you. But when we're alone, where nobody else can see, we'll both know that you're strong enough to keep a strong woman with you."



"You?" said Achilles. "A woman?"



"If I'm not a woman, what were you doing with me in here?" "Take off your clothes," he said.
The craziness was still there. He was testing her somehow. Waiting for her to show
...



To show that she was faking. That she was really afraid of him, after all. That her story was all a lie, designed to trick him.



"No," she said. "You take off yours." And the craziness faded.
He smiled.



He tucked the gun into the back of his pants.



"Get out of here," he said. "I've got a war to run."


"It's night," she said. "Nobody's moving."



"There's a lot more to this war than the armies," said Achilles.



"When do I get to stay in your tent?" she asked. "What do I have to do?" She could hardly believe she was saying this, when all she wanted was to get out.



"You have to be the thing I need," he said. "And right now, you're not." . He walked to his desk, sat down.
"And pick up your chair on the way out."



He started typing. Orders? For what? To kill whom?



She didn't ask. She picked up the chair. She walked out.



And kept walking, through the corridors to the room where she slept alone. Knowing, with every step, that she was monitored. There would be vids. He would check them, to see how she acted. To see if she meant what she'd said. So she couldn't stop and press her face against the wall and cry. She had to be ... what? How would this play in a movie or a vid if she were a woman who was frustrated because she wanted to be with her man?



I don't know! she screamed inside. I'm not an actress!



And then, a much quieter voice in her head answered. Yes you are. And a pretty good one. Because for another few minutes, maybe another hour, maybe another night, you're alive.

No triumph, either. She couldn't seem to gloat, couldn't show relief. Frustration, annoyance-and some pain where he kicked her, where her head hit the floor-that's all she could show.



Even alone in her bed, the lights off, she lay there, pretending, lying. Hoping that whatever she did in her sleep would not provoke him. Would not bring that crazy frightened searching look into his eyes.



Not that it would be any guarantee, of course. There was no sign of craziness when he shot those men in the bread van back in Russia. Don't ever think you've got me figured out, he said.



You win, Achilles. I don't think I've got you figured out. But I've learned how to play one lousy string. That's something.



I also knocked you onto the floor, beat the goffno out of you, kicked you in your little kintamas, and made you think you liked it. Kill me tomorrow or whenever you want-my shoe going into your face, you can't take that away from me.



In the morning, Petra was pleased to find that she was still alive, considering what she had done the night before. Her head ached, her ribs were sore, but nothing was broken.



And she was starving. She had missed dinner the night before, and perhaps there was something about beating up her jailer that made her especially hungry. She didn't usually eat breakfast, so she had no accustomed place to sit. At other meals, she sat by herself, and others, respecting her solitude or fearing Achilles' displeasure, did
not sit with her.



But today, on impulse, she took her tray to a table that had only a couple of empty spots. The conversation grew quiet when she first sat down, and a few people greeted her. She smiled back at them, but then concentrated on her food. Their conversation resumed.

"There's no way she got off the base." "So she's still here."
"Unless someone took her."



"Maybe it's a special assignment or something." "Sayagi says he thinks she's dead."
A chill ran through Petra's body. "Who?" she asked.
The others glanced at her, but then glanced away. Finally one of them said, "Virlomi."



Virlomi was gone. And no one knew where she was.



He killed her. He said he would, and he did. The only thing I gained by what I did last night was that he didn't do it in front of me.



I can't stand this. I'm done. My life is not worth living. To be his captive, to have him kill anyone who tries to help me in any way . . .



No one was looking at her. Nor were they talking.



They know Virlomi tried to answer Graff, because she must have said something to
Sayagi when she walked over to him yesterday. And now she's gone.

Petra knew she had to eat, no matter how sick at heart she felt, no matter how much she wanted to cry, to run screaming from the room, to fall on the floor and beg their forgiveness for ... for what? For being alive when Virlomi was dead.



She finished all she could bear to eat, and left the mess hall.



But as she walked through the corridors to the room where they all worked, she realized: Achilles would not have killed her like this. There was no point in killing her if the others didn't get to see her arrested and taken away. It wouldn't do what he needed it to do, if she just disappeared in the night.



At the same time, if she had escaped, he couldn't announce it. That would be even worse. So he would simply remain silent, and leave the impression with everyone that she was probably dead.



Petra imagined Virlomi walking boldly out of the building, her sheer bravado carrying the day. Or perhaps, dressed as one of the women who cleaned floors and windows, she had slipped out unnoticed. Or had she climbed a wall, or run a minefield? Petra didn't even know what the perimeter looked like, or how closely guarded it might be. She had never been given a tour. Wishful thinking, that's all this is, she told herself as she sat down to the day's work. Virlomi is dead, and Achilles is simply waiting to announce it, to make us all suffer from not knowing.



But as the day wore on, and Achilles did not appear, Petra began to believe that perhaps she had gotten away. Maybe Achilles was staying away because he didn't want anyone speculating about any visible bruises he might have. Or maybe he's having some scrotal problems and he's having some doctor check him out-though heaven help him if Achilles decided that having a doctor handle his injured testes was worthy of the death penalty.



Maybe he was staying away because Virlomi was gone and Achilles did not want them to see him frustrated and helpless. When he caught her and could drag her into the room and shoot her dead in front of them, then he could face them.

And as long as that didn't happen, there was a chance Virlomi was alive.



Stay that way, my friend. Run far and don't pause for anything. Cross some border, find some refuge, swim to Sri Lanka, fly to the moon. Find some miracle, Virlomi, and live.

MURDER To:Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

From:Carlotta%agape@vatican.net/

orders/sisters/ind

Re: Please forward



The attached file is encrypted. Please wait twelve hours after the time of sending and if you don't hear from me, forward it to Bean. He'll know the key.



It took less than four hours to secure and inspect the entire high command base in Bangkok. Computer experts would be probing to try to find out whom it was that Naresuan had been communicating with outside, and whether he was in fact involved with a foreign power or this gambit was a private venture. When Suriyawong's work with the Prime Minister was finished, he came alone to the barracks where Bean was waiting.



Most of Bean's soldiers had already returned, and Bean had sent most of them to bed. He still watched the news in a desultory fashionnothing new was being said, so he was interested only in seeing how the talking heads were spinning it. In Thailand, everything was charged with patriotic fervor. Abroad, of course, it was a different story. All the Common broadcasts were taking a more skeptical view that Indian operatives had really made the assassination attempt.



"Why would India want to provoke Thai entry into the war?"

"They know Thailand will come in eventually whether Burma asks them or not. So they felt they had to deprive Thailand of its best Battle School graduate."



"Is one child so dangerous?"



"Maybe you should ask the Formics. If you can find any."



And on and on, everyone trying to appear smart-or at least smarter than the Indian and Thai governments, which was the game the media always played. What mattered to Bean was how this would affect Peter. Was there any mention of the possibility that Achilles was running the show in India? Not a breath. Anything yet about Pakistani troop movements near Iran? The "Bangkok bombing" had driven that slow- moving story off the air. Nobody was giving this any global implications. As long as the I.F. was there to keep the nukes from flying, it was still just politics as usual in south Asia.



Except it wasn't. Everybody was so busy trying to look wise and unsurprised that nobody was standing up and screaming that this whole set of events was completely different from anything that had gone before. The most populous nation in the world has dared to turn its back on a two-hundred-year-old enemy and invade the small, weak country to its east. Now India was attacking Thailand. What did that mean? What was India's goal? What possible benefit could there be?



Why weren't they talking about these things?



"Well," said Suriyawong, "I don't think I'm going to go to sleep very soon." "Everything all cleaned up?"
"More like everybody who worked closely with the Chakri has been sent home and put under house arrest while the investigation continues."



"That means the entire high command."


"Not really," said Suriyawong. "The best field commanders are out in the field. Commanding. One of them will be brought in as acting Chakri."



"They should give it to you."



"They should, but they won't. Aren't you just a little hungry?" "It's late."
"This is Bangkok."



"Well, not really," said Bean. "This is a military base." "When is your friend's flight due in?"
"Morning. Just after dawn."



"Ouch. She's going to be out of sorts. You going to meet her at the airport?" "I didn't think about it."
"Let's go get dinner," said Suriyawong. "Officers do it all the time. We can take a couple of strike force soldiers with us to make sure we don't get hassled for being children."



"Achilles isn't going to give up on killing me." "Us. He aimed at us this time."


"He might have a backup."



"Bean, I'm hungry. Are you hungry?" Suriyawong turned to the members of the toon that had been with him. "Any of you hungry?"



"Not really," said one of them. "We ate at the regular time." "Sleepy," said another.
"Anybody awake enough to go into the city with us?" Immediately all of them stepped forward.
"Don't ask perfect soldiers whether they want to protect their CO," said Bean. "Designate a couple to go with us and let the others sleep," said Suriyawong.
"Yes sir," said Bean. He turned to the men. "Honest assessment. Which of you will be least impaired by failing to get enough sleep tonight?"



"Will we be allowed sleep tomorrow?" asked one.



"Yes," said Bean. "So it's a matter of how much it affects you to get off your rhythm."



"I'll be fine." Four others felt the same way. So Bean chose the two nearest. "Two of you keep watch for two more hours, then go back to the normal watch rotation."

Outside the building, with their two bodyguards walking five meters behind them, Bean and Suriyawong finally had a chance to talk candidly. First, though, Suriyawong had to know. "You really keep a regular watch rotation even here at the base?"



"Was I wrong?" asked Bean.



"Obviously not, but ... you really are paranoid."



"I know I have an enemy who wants me dead. An enemy who happens to be hopping from one powerful position to another."



"More powerful each time," said Suriyawong. "In Russia, he didn't have the power to start a war."



"He might not in India, either," said Bean.



"There's a war," said Suriyawong. "You're saying it isn't his?"



"It's his," said Bean. "But he's probably still having to persuade adults to go along with him."



"Win a few, and they hand you your own army," said Suriyawong.



"Win a few more, and they hand you the country," said Bean. "As Napoleon and
Washington showed."



"How many do you have to win to get the world?" Bean let the question hang.

"Why did he go after us?" asked Suriyawong. "I think you're right, that this operation at least was entirely Achilles'. It's not the kind of thing the Indian government goes for. India is a democracy. Folding children doesn't play well. No way he got approval."



"It might not even be India," said Bean. "We don't really know anything."



"Except that it's Achilles," said Suriyawong. "Think about the stuff that doesn't make sense. A second-rate, obvious campaign strategy that we're probably going to be able to take apart. A nasty bit of business like this that can only soil India's reputation in the rest of the world."



"Obviously he's not acting in India's best interest," said Bean. "But they think he is,
if he's really the one who brought off this deal with Pakistan. He's acting for himself. And I can see what he gains by kidnapping Ender's jeesh and by trying to kill you."



"Fewer rivals?"



"No," said Bean. "He makes Battle School grads look like the most important weapons in the war."



"But he's not a Battle School grad."



"He was in Battle School, and he's that age. He doesn't want to have to wait till he grows up to be king of the world. He wants everyone to believe that a child should lead them. If you're worth killing, if Ender's jeesh is worth stealing . . ." It also helps Peter Wiggin, Bean realized. He didn't go to Battle School, but if children are plausible world leaders, his own track record as Locke raises him above any other contenders. Military ability is one thing. Ending the League War was a much stronger qualification. It trumped "psychopathic Battle School expulsee" hands down.



"Do you think that's all?" asked Suriyawong.

"What's all?" asked Bean. He had lost the thread. "Oh, you mean is that enough to explain why Achilles would want you dead?" Bean thought about it. "I don't know. Maybe. But it doesn't tell us why he's setting up India for a much bloodier war than it has to fight."



"What about this," said Suriyawong. "Make everybody fear what war will bring, so they want to strengthen the Hegemony to keep the war from spreading."



"That's fine, except nobody's going to nominate Achilles as Hegemon." "Good point. Are we ruling out the possibility that Achilles is just stupid?" "Yes, that's not a possibility."
"What about Petra, could she have fooled him into sticking with this obvious but somewhat dumb and wasteful strategy?"



"That is possible, except that Achilles is very sharp at reading people. I don't know if
Petra could lie to him. I never saw her lie to anybody. I don't know if she can." "Never saw her lie to anybody?" asked Suriyawong.
Bean shrugged. "We became very good friends, at the end of the war. She speaks her mind. She may hold something back sometimes, but she tells you she's doing it. No smoke, no mirrors. The door's either open or it's shut."



"Lying takes practice," observed Suriyawong. "Like the Chakri?"
"You don't get to that position by pure military ability. You have to make yourself

look very good to a lot of people. And hide a lot of things you're doing." "You're not suggesting Thailand's government is corrupt," said Bean.
"I'm suggesting Thailand's government is political. I hope this doesn't surprise you. Because I'd heard that you were bright."



They got a car to take them into town-Suriyawong had always had the authority to requisition a car and a driver, he just never used it till now.



"So where do we eat?" asked Bean. "It's not like I have a restaurant guide with me." "I grew up in families with better chefs than any restaurant," said Suriyawong.
"So we go to your house?"



"My family lives near Chiang Mai." "That's going to be a battle zone."
"Which is why I think they're actually in Vientiane, though security rules would keep them from telling me. My father is running a network of dispersed munitions factories." Suriyawong grinned. "I had to make sure I siphoned off some of these defense jobs for my family.



"In other words, he was best man for the task."



"My mother was best for the task, but this is Thailand. Our love affair with Western culture ended a century ago."

They ended up having to ask the soldiers, and they only knew the kind of place they could afford to eat. So they found themselves eating at a tiny all-night diner in a part of town that wasn't the worst, but wasn't the nicest, either. And the whole thing was so cheap it felt practically free.



Suriyawong and the soldiers went down on the food as if it were the best meal they'd ever had. "Isn't this great?" asked Suriyawong. "When my parents had company, and they were eating all the fancy stuff in the dining room with visitors, we kids would eat in the kitchen, the stuff the servants ate. This stuff. Real food."



No doubt that's why the Americans at Yum-Yum in Greensboro loved what they got there, too. Childhood memories. Food that tasted like safety and love and getting rewarded for good behavior. A treatwe're going out. Bean didn't have any such memories, of course. He had no nostalgia for picking up food wrappers and licking the sugar off the plastic and then trying to get at any of it that rubbed off on his nose. What was he nostalgic for? Life in Achilles' "family"? Battle School? Not likely.
And his time with his family in Greece had come too late to be part of his early childhood memories. He liked being in Crete, he loved his family, but no, the only good memories of his childhood were in Sister Carlotta's apartment when she took him off the street and fed him and kept him safe and helped him prepare to take the Battle School tests-his ticket off Earth, to where he'd be safe from Achilles.



It was the only time in his childhood when he felt safe. And even



though he didn't believe it or understand it at the time, he felt loved, too. If he could sit down in some restaurant and eat a meal like the ones Sister Carlotta prepared there in Rotterdam, he'd probably feel the way those Americans felt about Yum- Yum, or these Thais felt about this place.



"Our friend Borommakot doesn't really like the food," said Suriyawong. He spoke in
Thai, because Bean had picked up the language quite readily, and the soldiers weren't as comfortable in Common.



"He may not like it," said one soldier, "but it's making him grow."

"Soon he'll be as tall as you," said the other. "How tall do Greeks get?" asked the first. Bean froze.
So did Suriyawong.



The two soldiers looked at them with some alarm. "What, did you see something?"






"How did you know he was Greek?" asked Suriyawong.



The soldiers glanced at each other and then suppressed their smiles. "I guess they're not stupid," said Bean.
"We saw all the vids on the Bugger War, we saw your face, you think you're not famous? Don't you know?"



"But you never said anything," said Bean. "That would have been rude."
Bean wondered how many people made him in Araraquara and Greensboro, but were too polite to say anything.



It was three in the morning when they got to the airport. The plane was due in about six. Bean was too keyed up to sleep. He assigned himself to keep watch, and let the

soldiers and Suriyawong doze.



So it was Bean who noticed when a flurry of activity began around the podium about forty-five minutes before the flight was supposed to arrive. He got up and went to ask what was going on.



"Please wait, we'll make an announcement," said the ticket agent. "Where are your parents? Are they here?"



Bean sighed. So much for fame. Suriyawong, at least, should have been recognized. Then again, everyone here had been on duty all night and probably hadn't heard any of the news about the assassination attempt, so they wouldn't have seen
Suriyawong's face flashed in the vids again and again. He went back to waken one of the soldiers so he could find out, adult to adult, what was going on.



His uniform probably got him information that a civilian wouldn't have been told. He came back looking grim. "The plane went down," he said.

Bean felt his heart plummet. Achilles? Had he found a way to get to Sister Carlotta? It couldn't be. How could he know? He couldn't be monitoring every airplane flight
in the world.



The message Bean had sent via the computer in the barracks. The Chakri might have seen it. If he hadn't been arrested by then. He might have had time to relay the information to Achilles, or whatever intermediary they used. How else could Achilles have known that Carlotta would be coming?



"It's not him this time," said Suriyawong, when Bean told him what he was thinking. "There are plenty of reasons a plane can drop out of radar."



"She didn't say it disappeared," said the soldier. "She said it went down."

Suriyawong looked genuinely stricken. "Borommakot, I'm sorry." Then Suriyawong went to a telephone and contacted the Prime Minister's office. Being Thailand's pride and joy, who had just survived an assassination attempt, had its benefits. In a very few minutes they were escorted into the meeting room at the airport where officials from the government and the military were conferring, linked to aviation authorities and investigating agencies worldwide.



The plane had gone down over southern China. It was an Air Shanghai flight, and China was treating it as an internal matter, refusing to allow outside investigators to come to the crash site. But air traffic satellites had the storythere was an explosion, a big one, and the plane was in small fragments before any part of it reached the ground. No chance of survivors.



Only one faint hope remained. Maybe she hadn't made a connection somewhere. Maybe she wasn't on board.



But she was.



I could have stopped her, thought Bean. When I agreed to trust the Prime Minister without waiting for Carlotta to arrive, I could have sent word at once to have her go home. But instead he waited around and watched the vids and then went out for a night on the town. Because he wanted to see her. Because he had been frightened and he needed to have her with him.



Because he was too selfish even to think of the danger he was exposing her to. She flew under her own name-she had never done that when they were together. Was that his fault?



Yes. Because he had summoned her with such urgency that she didn't have time to do things covertly. She just had the Vatican arrange her flights, and that was it. The end of her life.



The end of her ministry, that's how she'd think about it. The jobs left undone. The work that someone else would have to do.


All he'd done, ever since she met him, was steal time from her, keep her from the things that really mattered in her life. Having to do her work on the run, in hiding, for his sake. Whenever he needed her, she dropped everything. What had he ever done to deserve it? What had he ever given her in return? And now he had interrupted her work permanently. She would be so annoyed. But even now, if he could talk to her, he knew what she'd say.



It was always my choice, she'd say. You're part of the work God gave me. Life ends, and I'm not afraid to return to God. I'm only afraid for you, because you keep yourself such a stranger to him.



If only he could believe that she was still alive somehow. That she was there with Poke, maybe, taking her in now the way she took Bean in so many years ago. And the two of them laughing and reminiscing about clumsy old Bean, who just had a way of getting people killed.



Someone touched his arm. "Bean," whispered Suriyawong. "Bean, let's get you out of here."



Bean focused and realized that there were tears running down his cheeks. "I'm staying," he said.



"No," said Suriyawong. "Nothing's going to happen here. I mean let's go to the official residence. That's where the diplomatic greeyaz is flying."



Bean wiped his eyes on his sleeves, feeling like a little kid as he did it. What a thing to be seen doing in front of his men. But that was just too bad-it would be a far worse sign of weakness to try to conceal it or pathetically ask them not to tell. He did what he did, they saw what they saw, so be it. If Sister Carlotta wasn't worth some tears from someone who owed her as much as Bean did, then what were tears for, and when should they be shed?



There was a police escort waiting for them. Suriyawong thanked their bodyguards

and ordered them back to the barracks. "No need to get up till you feel like it," he said.



They saluted Suriyawong. Then they turned to Bean and saluted him. Sharply. In best military fashion. No pity. Just honor. He returned their salute the same way-no gratitude, just respect.



The morning in the official residence was infuriating and boring by turns. China was being intransigent. Even though most of the passengers were Thai businessmen and tourists, it was a Chinese plane over Chinese airspace, and because there were indications that it might have been a ground-to-air missile attack rather than a planted bomb, it was being kept under tight military security.



Definitely Achilles, Bean and Suriyawong agreed. But they had talked enough about Achilles that Bean agreed to let Suriyawong brief the Thai military and state department leaders who needed to have all the information that might make sense of this.



Why would India want to blow up a passenger plane flying over China? Could it really have been solely to kill a nun who was coming to visit a Greek boy in Bangkok? That was simply too far-fetched to believe. Yet, bit by bit, and with the help of the Minister of Colonization, who could take them through details about Achilles' psychopathology that hadn't even been in Locke's reporting on him, they began to understand that yes, indeed, this might well have been a kind of defiant message from Achilles to Bean, telling him that he might have gotten away this time, but Achilles could still kill whomever he wanted.



While Suriyawong was briefing them, however, Bean was taken upstairs to the private residence, where the Prime Minister's wife very kindly led him to a guest bedroom and asked him if he had a friend or family member she should send for, or if he wanted a minister or priest of some religion or other. He thanked her and said that all he really needed was some time alone.



She closed the door behind her, and Bean cried silently until he was exhausted, and then, curled up on a mat on the floor, he went to sleep.


When he awoke it was still bright daylight beyond the louvered shutters. His eyes were still sore from crying. He was still exhausted. He must have woken up because his bladder was full. And he was thirsty. That was life. Pump it in, pump it out. Sleep and wake, sleep and wake. Oh, and a little reproduction here and there. But he was
too young, and Sister Carlotta had opted out of that side of life. So for them the cycle had been pretty much the same. Find some meaning in life. But what? Bean was famous. His name would live in history books forever. Probably just as part of a list in the chapter on Ender Wiggin, but that was fine, that was more than most people got. When he was dead he wouldn't care.



Carlotta wouldn't be in any history books. Not even a footnote. Well, no, that wasn't true. Achilles was going to be famous, and she was the one who found him. More than a footnote after all. Her name would be remembered, but always because it was linked with the koncho who killed her because she had seen how helpless he was and saved him from the life of the street.



Achilles killed her, but of course, he had my help.



Bean forced himself to think of something else. He could already feel that burning in his eyelids that meant tears were about to flow. That was done. He needed to keep
his wits about him. Very important to keep thinking.



There was a courtesy computer in the room, with standard netlinks and some of Thailand's leading connection software. Soon Bean was signed on in one of his less- used identities. Graff would know things that the Thai government wasn't getting. So would Peter. And they would write to him.



Sure enough, there were messages from both of them encrypted on one of his dropsites. He pulled them both off.



They were the same. An email forwarded from Sister Carlotta herself.



Both of them said the same thing. The message had arrived at nine in the morning,

Thailand time. They were supposed to wait twelve hours in case Sister Carlotta herself contacted them to retract the message. But when they learned with independent confirmation that there was no chance she was alive, they decided not to wait. Whatever the message was, Sister Carlotta had set it up so that if she didn't
take an active step to block it, every day, it would automatically go to Graff and to
Peter to send on to him.



Which meant that every day of her life, she had thought of him, had done something to keep him from seeing this, and yet had also made sure that he would see whatever it was that this message contained.



Her farewell. He didn't want to read it. He had cried himself out. There was nothing left.



And yet she wanted him to read it. And after all she had done for him, he could surely do this for her.



The file was double-encrypted. Once he had opened it with his own decoding, it remained encoded by her. He had no idea what the password would be, and therefore it had to be something that she would expect him to think of.



And because he would only be trying to find the key after she was dead, the choice was obvious. He entered the name Poke and the decryption proceeded at once.



It was, as he expected, a letter to him. Dear Julian, Dear Bean, Dear Friend,
Maybe Achilles killed me, maybe he didn't. You know how I feel about vengeance. Punishment belongs to God, and besides, anger makes people stupid, even people as bright as you. Achilles must be stopped because of what he is, not because of anything he did to me. my manner of death is meaningless to me. Only my manner of life mattered, and that is for my Redeemer to judge.

But you already know these things, and that is not why I wrote this letter. There is information about you that you have a right to know. It's not pleasant information, and I was going to wait to tell you until you already had some inkling. I was not about to let my death keep you in ignorance, however. That would be giving either Achilles or the random chances of life-whichever caused my sudden deathtoo much power over you.



You know that you were born as part of an illegal scientific experiment using embryos stolen from your parents. You have preternatural memories of your own astonishing escape from the slaughter of your siblings when the experiment was terminated. What you did at that age tells anyone who knows the story that you are extraordinarily intelligent. What you have not known, until now, is why you are so intelligent, and what it implies about your future.

The person who stole your frozen embryo was a scientist, of sorts. He was working on the genetic enhancement of human intelligence. He based his experiment on the theoretical work of a Russian scientist named Anton. Though Anton was under an order of intervention and could not tell me directly, he courageously found a way to circumvent the programming and tell me of the genetic change that was made in
you. (Though Anton was under the impression that the change could only be made in an unfertilized egg, this was really only a technical problem, not a theoretical one.)



There is a double key in the human genome. One of the keys deals with human intelligence. If turned one way, it places a block on the ability of the brain to function at peak capacity. In you, Anton's key has been turned. Your brain was not frozen in its growth. It did not stop making new neurons at an early age. Your brain continues to grow and make new connections. Instead of having a limited capacity, with patterns formed during early development, your brain adds new capacities and new patterns as they are needed. You are mentally like a one-year-old, but with experience. The mental feats that infants routinely perform, which are far greater than anything that adults manage, will always remain within your reach. For your entire life, for instance, you will be able to master new languages like a native speaker. You will be able to make and maintain connections with your own memory that are unlike those of anyone else. You are, in other words, unchartedor perhaps self -charted-territory.



But there is a price for that unfettering of your brain. You have probably already guessed it. If your brain keeps growing, what happens to your head? How does all that brain matter stay inside?



Your head continues to grow, of course. Your skull has never fully closed. I have had your skull measurements tracked, naturally. The growth is slow, and much of the growth of your brain has involved the creation of more but smaller neurons. Also, there has been some thinning of your skull, so you may or may not have noticed the growth in the circumferences of your head-but it is real.



You see, the other side of Anton's key involves human growth. If we did not stop growing, we would die very young. Yet to live long requires that we give up more and more of our intelligence, because our brains must lock down and stop growing earlier in our life cycle. Most human beings fluctuate within a fairly narrow range. You are not even on the charts.


Bean, Julian, my child, you will die very young. Your body will continue to grow, not the way puberty would do it, with one growth spurt and then an adult height. As one scientist put it, you will never reach adult height, because there is no adult height. There is only height at time of death. You will steadily grow taller and larger until your heart gives out or your spine collapses. I tell you this bluntly, because there is no way to soften this blow.



No one knows what course your growth will take. At first I took great encouragement from the fact that you seemed to be growing more slowly than originally estimated. I was told that by the age of puberty, you would have caught up with other children your age-but you did not. You remained far behind them. So I hoped that perhaps he was wrong, that you might live to age forty or fifty, or even thirty. But in the year you were with your family, and in the time we have been together, you have been measured and your growth rate is accelerating. All indications are that it will continue to accelerate. If you live to be twenty, you will have defied all rational expectations. If you die before the age of fifteen, it will be only a mild surprise. I shed tears as I write these words, because if ever there was a child who could serve humanity by having a long adult life, it is you. No, I will be honest, my tears are because I think of you as being, in so many ways, my own son, and the only thing that makes me glad about the fact that you are learning of your future through this letter is that it means I have died before you. The worst fear of every loving parent, you see, is that they will have to bury a child. We nuns and priests are spared that grief. Except when we take it upon ourselves, as I so foolishly and gladly have done with you.



I have full documentation of all the findings of the team that has been studying you. They will continue to study you, if you allow them. The netlink is at the end of this letter. They can be trusted, because they are decent people, and because they also know that if the existence of their project becomes known, they will be in grave danger, for research into the genetic enhancement of human intelligence remains against the law. It is entirely your choice whether you cooperate. They already have valuable data. You may live your life without reference to them, or you may
continue to provide them with information. I am not terribly interested in the science of it. I worked with them because I needed to know what would happen to you.



Forgive me for keeping this information from you. I know that you think you would

have preferred to know it all along. I can only say, in my defense, that it is good for human beings to have a period of innocence and hope in their lives. I was afraid that if you knew this too soon, it would rob you of that hope. And yet to deprive you of this knowledge robbed you of the freedom to decide how to spend the years you have. I was going to tell you soon.



There are those who have said that because of this small genetic difference, you are not human. That because Anton's key requires two changes in the genome, not one, it could never have happened randomly, and therefore you represent a new species, created in the laboratory. But I tell you, you and Nikolai are twins, not separate species, and I, who have known you as well as any other person, have never seen anything from you but the best and purest of humanity. I know you will not accept my religious terminology, but you know what it means to me. You have a soul, my child. The Savior died for you as for every other human being ever born. Your life is of infinite worth to a loving God. And to me, my son.



You will find your own purpose for the time you have left to live. Do not be reckless with your life, just because it will not be long. But do not guard it overzealously, either. Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies. To have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy. Already you have used your years better than most. You will yet find many new purposes, and you will accomplish them. And if anyone in heaven heeds the voice of this old nun, you will be well watched over by angels and prayed for by many saints.



With love, Carlotta





Bean erased the letter. He could pull it from his dropsite and decode it again, if he needed to refer back to it. But it was burned into his memory. And not just as text on a desk display. He had heard it in Carlotta's voice, even as his eyes moved across the words that the desk put up before him.



He turned off the desk. He walked to the window and opened it. He looked out over the garden of the official residence. In the distance he could see airplanes making their approach to the airport, as others, having just taken off, rose up into the sky. He tried to picture Sister Carlotta's soul rising up like one of those airplanes. But the

picture kept changing to an Air Shanghai flight coming in to land, and Sister Carlotta walking off the plane and looking him up and down and saying, "You need to buy new pants."



He went back inside and lay down on his mat, but not to sleep. He did not close his eyes. He stared at the ceiling and thought about death and life and love and loss. And as he did, he thought he could feel his bones grow.



DECISIONS TREACHERY
To: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica.org

From: Unready%cincinnatus@anon.set

Re: Air Shanghai



The pinheads running this show have decided not to share satellite info on Air Shanghai with anyone outside the military, claiming that it involves vital interests of the United States. The only other countries with satellites capable of seeing what
ours can see are China, Japan, and Brazil, and of these only China has a satellite in position to see it. So the Chinese know. And when I'm done with this letter, you'll know, and you'll know how to use the information. I don't like seeing big countries beat up on little ones, except when the big country is mine. So sue me.



The Air Shanghai flight was brought down by a groundto-air missile, which was fired from INSIDE THAILAND. However, computer time-lapse tracking of movements in that area of Thailand show that the only serious candidate for how the ground-to-air missile got to its launch site is a utility truck whose movements originated in, get this, China.



Details: The truck (little white Vietnamese-made "Hog-type vehicle) originated at a warehouse in Gejiu (which has already been tagged as a munitions clearinghouse)
and crossed the Vietnamese border between Jinping, China, and Sinh Ho, Vietnam. It

then crossed the Laotian border via the Ded Tay Chang pass. It traversed the widest part of Laos and entered Thailand near Tha Li, but at this point moved off the main roads. It passed near enough to the point from which the missile was launched for it to have been offloaded and transported manually to the site. And get this: All this movement happened MORE THAN A MONTH AGO.



I don't know about you, but to me and everybody else here, that looks like China wants a "provocation" to go to war against Thailand. Bangkok-bound Air Shanghai jet, carrying mostly Thai passengers, is shot down, over China, by a g-to-a launched from Thailand. China can make it look as though the Thai Army was trying to create a fake provocation against them, when in fact the reverse is the case. Very complicated, but the Chinese know they can show satellite proof that the missile was launched from inside Thailand. They can also prove that it had to have radar assistance from sophisticated military tracking systems-which will imply, in the Chinese version, that the Thai military was behind it, though WE know it means the Chinese military was in control. And when the Chinese ask for independent corroboration, you can count on it: our beloved government, since it loves business better than honor, will back up the Chinese story, never mentioning the movements of that little truck. Thus America will stay in the good graces of its trading partner. And Thailand gets chiseled.



Do your thing, Demosthenes. Get this out into the public domain before our government can play toady. Just try to find a way to do it that doesn't point at me. This isn't just job-losing territory. I could go to jail.



When Suriyawong came to see if Bean wanted any dinner-a nine o'clock repast for the officers on duty, not an official meal with the P.M.-Bean almost followed him right down. He needed to eat, and now was as good a time as any. But he realized that he had not read any of his email after getting Sister Carlotta's last letter, so he told Suriyawong to start without him but save him a place.



He checked the dropsite that Peter had used to forward Carlotta's message, and found a more recent letter from Peter. This one included the text of a letter from one of Demosthenes' contacts inside the U.S. satellite intelligence service, and combined with Peter's own analysis of the situation, it made everything clear to Bean. He fired off a quick response, taking Peter's suspicions a step further, and then headed down
to dinner.


Suriyawong and the adult officers-several of them field generals who had been summoned to Bangkok because of the crisis in the high command-were laughing. They fell silent when Bean entered the room. Ordinarily, he might have tried to put them at ease. Just because he was grieving did not change the fact that in the midst of crises, humor was needed to break the tension. But at this moment their silence was useful, and he used it.



"I just received information from one of my best sources of intelligence," Bean said. "You in this room are those who most need to hear it. But if the Prime Minister
could also join us, it would save time."



One of the generals started to protest that a foreign child did not summon the Prime Minister of Thailand, but Suriyawong stood and bowed deeply to him. The man stopped talking. "Forgive me, sir," said Suriyawong, "but this foreign boy is Julian Delphiki, whose analysis of the final battle with the Formics led directly to Ender's victory."



Of course the general knew that already, but Suriyawong, by allowing him to pretend that he had not know, gave him a way to backpedal without losing face.



"I see," said the general. "Then perhaps the Prime Minister will not be offended at this summons."



Bean helped Suriyawong smooth things over as best he could. "Forgive me for
having spoken with such rudeness. You were right to rebuke me. I can only hope you will excuse me for being forgetful of proper manners. The woman who raised me
was on the Air Shanghai flight."



Again, the general certainly knew this; again, it allowed him to bow and murmur his commiseration. Proper respect had been shown to everyone. Now things could proceed.



The Prime Minister left his dinner with various high officials of the Chinese

government, and stood against the wall, listening, as Bean relayed what he had learned from Peter about the source of the missile that brought down the jet.



"I have been in consultation off and on all day with the foreign minister of China," said the Prime Minister. "He has said nothing about the missile being launched from inside Thailand."



"When the Chinese government is ready to act on this provocation," said Bean, "they will pretend to have just discovered it."



The Prime Minister looked pained. "Could it not have been Indian operatives trying to make it seem that it was a Chinese venture?"



"It could have been anyone," said Bean. "But it was Chinese."



The prickly general spoke up. "How do you know this, if the satellite does not confirm it?"



"It would make little sense for it to be Indian," said Bean. "The only countries that could possibly detect the truck would be China and the U.S., which is well known to be in China's pocket. But China would know that they had not fired the missile, and they would know that Thailand had not fired it, so what would be the point?"



"It makes no sense for China to do it, either," said the Prime Minister.



"Sir," said Bean, "nothing makes sense in any of the things that have happened in the last few days. India has made a nonaggression pact with Pakistan and both nations have moved their troops away from their shared border. Pakistan is moving against Iran. India has invaded Burma, not because Burma is a prize, but because it stands between India and Thailand, which is. But India's attack makes no sense-right, Suriyawong?"



Suriyawong instantly understood that Bean was asking him to share in this, so that it

would not all come from a European. "As Bean and I told the Chakri yesterday, the Indian attack on Burma is not just stupidly designed, it was deliberately stupidly designed. India has commanders wise enough and wellenough trained to know that sending masses of soldiers across the border, with the huge supply problem they represent, creates an easy target for our strategy of harassment. It also leaves them fully committed. And yet they have launched precisely such an attack."



"So much the better for us," said the prickly general.



"Sir," said Suriyawong, "it is important for you to understand that they have the services of Petra Arkanian, and both Bean and I know that Petra would never sign off on the strategy they're using. So that is obviously not their strategy."

"What does this have to do with the Air Shanghai flight?" asked the Prime Minister. "Everything," said Bean. "And with the attempt on Suriyawong's and my life last
night. The Chakri's little game was meant to provoke Thailand into an immediate
entry into the war with India. And even though the ploy did not work, and the Chakri was exposed, we are still maintaining the fiction that it was an Indian provocation. Your meetings with the Chinese foreign minister are part of your effort to involve the Chinese in the war against India-no, don't tell me that you can't confirm or deny it, it's obvious that's what such meetings would have to be about. And I'll bet the Chinese are telling you that they are massing troops on the Burmese border in order to attack the Indians suddenly, when they are most exposed."



The Prime Minister, who had indeed been opening his mouth to speak, held his silence.



"Yes, of course they are telling you this. But the Indians also know that the Chinese are massing on the Burmese border, and yet they proceed with their attack on Burma, and their forces are almost fully committed, making no provision for defense against a Chinese attack from the north. Why? Are we going to pretend that the Indians are that stupid?"

It was Suriyawong who answered as it dawned on him. "The Indians also have a nonaggression pact with China. They think the Chinese troops are massing at the border in order to attack us. They and the Indians have divided up southeast Asia."



"So this missile that the Chinese launched from Thailand to shoot down their own airliner over their own territory," said the Prime Minister, "that will be their excuse to break off negotiations and attack us by surprise?"



"No one is surprised by Chinese treachery," said one of the generals.



"But that's not the whole picture," said Bean. "Because we have not yet accounted for
Achilles."



"He's in India," said Suriyawong. "He planned the attempt to kill us last night."



"And we know he planned that attempt," said Bean, "because I was there. He wanted you dead as a provocation, but he gave approval for it to happen last night because we would both be killed in the same explosion. And we know that he is behind the downing of the Air Shanghai jet, because even though the missile was in place for a
month, ready to be fired, this was not yet the right moment to create the provocation. The Chinese foreign minister is still in Bangkok. Thailand has not yet had several days to commit its troops to battle, depleting our supplies and sending most of our forces on missions far to the northwest. Chinese troops have not yet fully deployed
to the north of us. That missile should not have been fired for several days, at least. But it was fired this morning because Achilles knew Sister Carlotta was on that airplane, and he could not pass up the opportunity to kill her."



"But you said the missile was a Chinese operation," said the Prime Minister. "Achilles is in India."



"Achilles is in India, but is Achilles working for India?"



"Are you saying he's working for China?" asked the Prime Minister.

"Achilles is working for Achilles," said Suriyawong. "But yes, now the picture is clear."



"Not to me," said the prickly general.



Suriyawong eagerly explained. "Achilles has been setting India up from the beginning. While Achilles was still in Russia, he doubtless used the Russian intelligence service to make contacts inside China. He promised he could hand them all of south and southeast Asia in a single blow. Then he goes to India and sets up a war in which India's army is fully committed in Burma. Until now, China has never been able to move against India, because the Indian Army was concentrated in the west and northwest, so that as Chinese troops came over the passes of the
Himalayas, they were easily fought off by Indian troops. Now, though, the entire
Indian Army is exposed, far from the heartland of India. If the Chinese can achieve a surprise attack and destroy that army, India will be defenseless. They will have no choice but to surrender. We're just a sideshow to them. They will attack us in order
to lull the Indians into complacency."



"So they don't intend to invade Thailand?" asked the Prime Minister.



"Of course they do," said Bean. "They intend to rule from the Indus to the Mekong. But the Indian army is the main objective. Once that is destroyed, there is nothing in their way."



"And all this," said the prickly general, "we deduce from the fact that a certain
Catholic nun was on the airplane?"



"We deduce this," said Bean, "from the fact that Achilles is controlling events in China, Thailand, and India. Achilles knew Sister Carlotta was on that plane because the Chakri intercepted my message to the Prime Minister. Achilles is running this show. He's betraying everybody to everybody else. And in the end, he stands at the top of a new empire that contains more than half the population of the world. China, India, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam. Everyone will have to accommodate this new superpower."

"But Achilles does not run China," said the Prime Minister. "As far as we know, he has never been in China."



"The Chinese no doubt think they're using him," said Bean. "But I know Achilles, and my guess is that within a year, the Chinese leaders will find themselves either dead or taking their orders from him."



"Perhaps," said the Prime Minister, "I should go warn the Chinese foreign minister of the great danger he is in."



The prickly general stood up. "This is what comes of allowing children to play at world affairs. They think that real life is like a computer game, a few mouse clicks and nations rise and fall."



"This is precisely how nations rise and fall," said Bean. "France in 1940. Napoleon remaking the map of Europe in the early 1800s, creating kingdoms so his brothers would have someplace to rule. The victors in World War 1, cutting up kingdoms and drawing insane lines on the map that would lead to war again and again. The Japanese conquest of most of the western Pacific in December of 1941. The collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989. Events can be sudden indeed."



"But those were great forces at work," said the general.



"Napoleon's whims were not a great force. Nor was Alexander, toppling empires wherever he went. There was nothing inevitable about Greeks reaching the Indus."



"I don't need history lessons from you."



Bean was about to retort that yes, apparently he did-but Suriyawong shook his head. Bean got the message.



Suriyawong was right. The Prime Minister was not convinced, and the only generals who were speaking up were the ones who were downright hostile to Bean's and

Suriyawong's ideas. If Bean continued to push, he would merely find himself marginalized in the coming war. And he needed to be in the thick of things, if he was to be able to use the strike force he had so laboriously created.



"Sir," said Bean to the general, "I did not mean to teach you anything. You have nothing to learn from me. I have merely offered you the information I received, and the conclusions I drew from it. If these conclusions are incorrect, I apologize for wasting your time. And if we proceed with the war against India, I ask only for the chance to serve Thailand honorably, in order to repay your kindness to me."



Before the general could say anything-and it was plain he was going to make a haughty reply-the Prime Minister intervened. "Thank you for giving us your best- Thailand survives in this difficult place because our people and our friends offer everything they have in the service of our small but beautiful land. Of course we will want to use you in the coming war. I believe you have a small strike force of highly trained and versatile Thai soldiers. I will see to it that your force is assigned to a commander who will find good use for that force, and for you."



It was a deft announcement to the generals at that table that Bean and Suriyawong were under his protection. Any general who attempted to quash their participation would simply find that they were assigned to another command. Bean could not have hoped for more.



"And now," said the Prime Minister, "while I am happy to have spent this quarter hour in your company, gentlemen, I have the foreign minister of China no doubt wondering why I am so rude as to stay away for all this time."



The Prime Minister bowed and left.



At once the prickly general and the others who were most skeptical returned to the joking conversation that Bean's arrival had interrupted, as if nothing had happened.



But General Phet Noi, who was field commander of all Thai forces in the Malay
Peninsula, beckoned to Suriyawong and Bean. Suriyawong picked up his plate and

moved to a place beside Phet Noi, while Bean paused only to fill his own plate from the pots on serving table before joining them.



"So you have a strike force," said Phet Noi. "Air, sea, and land," said Bean.
"The main. Indian offensive," said Phet Noi, "is in the north. My army will be watching for Indian landings on the coast, but our role will be vigilance, not combat. Still, I think that if your strike force launched its missions from the south, you would be less likely to become tangled up in raids originating in the much more important northern commands."



Phet Noi obviously knew that his own command was the one least important to the conduct of the war-but he was as determined to get involved as Bean and Suriyawong were. They could help each other. For the rest of the meal, Bean and Suriyawong conversed earnestly with Phet Noi, discussing where in the Malay
panhandle of Thailand the strike force might best be stationed. Finally, they were the last three at table.



"Sir," said Bean, "now that we're alone, the three of us, there is something I must tell you."



"Yes?"



"I will serve you loyally, and I will obey your orders. But if the opportunity comes, I will use my strike force to accomplish an objective that is not, strictly speaking, important to Thailand."



"And that is?"



"My friend Petra Arkanian is the hostage-no, I believe she is the virtual slaveof
Achilles. Every day she lives in constant danger. When I have the information

necessary to make success likely, I will use my strike force to bring her out of
Hyderabad."



Phet Noi thought about this, his face showing nothing. "You know that Achilles may be holding on to her precisely because she is the bait that will lure you into a trap."



"That is possible," said Bean, "but I don't believe that it's what Achilles is doing. He believes he is able to kill anyone, anywhere. He doesn't need to set traps for me. To lie in wait is a sign of weakness. I believe he's holding on to Petra for his own reasons."



"You know him," said Phet Noi, "and I do not." He reflected for a moment. "As I listened to what you said about Achilles and his plans and treacheries, I believed that events might unfold exactly as you said. What I could not see was how Thailand could possibly turn this into victory. Even with advance warning, we can't prevail against China in the field of battle. China's supply lines into Thailand would be
short. Almost a quarter of the population of Thailand is Chinese in origin, and while most of them are loyal Thai citizens, a large fraction of them still regard China as their homeland. China would not lack for saboteurs and collaborators within our country, while India has no such connection. How can we prevail?"



"There is only one way," said Bean. "Surrender at once." "What?" said Suriyawong.
"Prime Minister Paribatra should go to the Chinese foreign minister, declare that Thailand wishes to be an ally of China. We will put most of our military temporarily under Chinese command to be used against the Indian aggressors as needed, and will supply not only our own armies, but the Chinese armies as well, to the limit of our abilities. Chinese merchants will have unrestricted access to Thai markets and manufacturing."



"But that would be shameful," said Suriyawong.

"It was shameful," said Bean, "when Thailand allied itself with Japan during World War 11, but Thailand survived and Japanese troops did not occupy Thailand. It was shameful when Thailand bowed to the Europeans and surrendered Laos and Cambodia to France, but the heart of Thailand remained free. If Thailand doesn't preemptively ally itself to China and give China a free hand, then China will rule here anyway, but Thailand itself will utterly lose its freedom and its national existence, for many years at least, and perhaps forever."



"Am I listening to an oracle?" asked Phet Noi.



"You are listening to the fears of your own heart," said Bean. "Sometimes you have to feed the tiger so it won't devour you."



"Thailand will never do this," said Phet Noi.



"Then I suggest you make arrangements for your escape and life in exile," said Bean, "because when the Chinese take over, the ruling class is destroyed."



They all knew Bean was talking about the conquest of Taiwan. All government officials and their families, all professors, all journalists, all writers, all politicians and their families were taken from Taiwan to reeducation camps in the western desert, where they were set to work performing manual labor, they and their children, for the rest of their lives. None of them ever returned to Taiwan. None of their children ever received approval for education beyond the age of fourteen. The method had been so effective in pacifying Taiwan that there was no chance they would not use the same method in their conquests now.



"Would I be a traitor, to plan for defeat by creating my own escape route?" Phet Noi wondered aloud.



"Or would you be a patriot, keeping at least one Thai general and his family out of the hands of the conquering enemy?" asked Bean.



"Is our defeat certain, then?" asked Suriyawong.


"You can read a map," said Bean. "But miracles happen."



Bean left them to their silent thoughts and returned to his room, to report to Peter on the likely Thai response.



ON A BRIDGE



TO: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov From: Wiggin%resistance@haiti.gov



Re: For the sake of India, please do not set foot on Earth



Esteemed Polemarch Chamrajnagar,



For reasons that will be made clear by the attached essay, which I will soon publish, I fully expect that you will return to Earth just in time to be caught up in India's complete subjugation by China.



If your return to India had any chance of preserving her independence, you would bear any risk and return, regardless of any advice. And if your establishing a government in exile could accomplish anything for your native land, who would try to persuade you to do otherwise?



But India's strategic position is so exposed, and China's relentlessness in conquest is so well known, that you must know both courses of action are futile.



Your resignation as Polemarch does not take effect until you reach Earth. If you do not board the shuttle, but instead return to IFCom, you remain Polemarch. You are the only possible Polemarch who could secure the International Fleet. A new commander could not distinguish between Chinese who are loyal to the Fleet and those whose first allegiance is to their now-dominant homeland. The I.F. must not fall under the sway of Achilles. You, as Polemarch, could reassign suspect Chinese

to innocuous postings, preventing any Chinese grab for control. If you return to Earth, and Achilles has influence over your successor as Polemarch, the I.F. will become a tool of conquest.



If you remain as Polemarch, you will be accused, as an Indian, of planning to pursue vengeance against China. Therefore, to prove your impartiality and avoid suspicion, you will have to remain utterly aloof from all Earthside wars and struggles. You can trust me and my allies to maintain the resistance to Achilles regardless of the apparent odds, if for no other reason than this: His ultimate triumph means our immediate death.



Stay in space and, by doing so, allow the possibility of humanity escaping the domination of a madman. In return, I vow to do all in my power to free India from Chinese rule and return it to selfrule.



Sincerely, Peter Wiggin



The soldiers around her knew perfectly well who Virlomi was. They also knew the reward that had been offered for her capture--or her dead body. The charge was treason and espionage. But from the start, as she passed through the checkpoint at the entrance of the base at Hyderabad, the common soldiers had believed in her and befriended her.



"You will hear me accused of spying or worse," she said, "but it isn't true. A treacherous foreign monster rules in Hyderabad, and he wants me dead for personal reasons. Help me."



Without a word, the soldiers walked her away from where the cameras might spot her, and waited. When an empty supply truck came up, they stopped it and while some of them talked to the driver, the others helped her get in. The truck drove through, and she was out.



Ever since, she had turned to the footsoldiers for help. Officers might or might not let compassion or righteousness interfere with obedience or ambition-the common

soldiers had no such qualms. She was transported in the midst of a crush of soldiers on a crowded train, offered so much food smuggled out of mess halls that she could not eat it all, and given bunk space while weary men slept on the floor. No one laid a hand on her except to help her, and none betrayed her.



She moved across India to the east, toward the war zone, for she knew that her only hope, and the only hope for Petra Arkanian, was for her to find, or be found by, Bean.



Virlomi knew where Bean would be: making trouble for Achilles wherever and however he could. Since the Indian Army had chosen the dangerous and foolish strategy of committing all its manpower to battle, she knew that the effective counterstrategy would be harassment and disruption of supply lines. And Bean would come to whatever point on the supply line was most crucial and yet most difficult to



So, as she neared the front, Virlomi went over in her mind the map she had memorized. To move large amounts of supplies and munitions quickly from India to the troops sweeping through the great plain where the Irrawaddy flowed, there were two general routes. The northern route was easier, but far more exposed to raids. The southern route was harder, but more protected. Bean would be working on disrupting the southern route.



Where? There were two roads over the mountains from Imphal in India to Kalemyo in Burma. They both passed through narrow canyons and crossed deep gorges. Where would it be hardest to rebuild a blown bridge or a collapsed highway? On both routes, there were candidate locations. But the hardest to rebuild was on the western route, a long stretch of road carved out of rock along the edge of a steep defile, leading to a bridge over a deep gorge. Bean would not just blow up this bridge, Virlomi thought, because it would not be that hard to span. He would also collapse the road in several places, so the engineers wouldn't be able to get to the place where the bridge must be anchored without first blasting and shaping a new road.



So that is where Virlomi went, and waited.

Water she found flowing cleanly through the side ravines. She was given food by passing soldiers, and soon learned that they were looking for her. Word had spread that the Woman-in-hiding needed food. And still no officer knew to look for her, and still no assassin from Achilles came to kill her. Poor as the soldiers were, apparently the reward did not tempt them. She was proud of her people even as she mourned for them, to have such a man as Achilles rule over them.



She heard of daring raids at easier spots on the eastern road, and traffic on the western road grew heavier, the roads trembling day and night as India burned up her fuel reserves supplying an army far larger than the war required. She asked the soldiers if they had heard of Thai raiders led by a child, and they laughed bitterly. "Two children," they said. "One white, one brown. They come in their helicopters, they destroy, they leave. Whomever they touch, they kill. Whatever they see, they destroy."



Now she began to worry. What if the one that came to take this bridge was not Bean, but the other one? No doubt another Battle School grad-Suriyawong came to mind- but would Bean have told him about her letter? Would he have any idea that she held within her head the plan of the base at Hyderabad? That she knew where Petra was?



Yet she had no choice. She would have to show herself, and hope.



So the days passed, waiting for the sound of the helicopters coming, bringing the strike force that would destroy this road.



Suriyawong had never been a commander in Battle School. They closed down the program before he rose to that position. But he had dreamed of command, studied it, planned it, and now, working with Bean in command of this or that configuration of their strike force, he finally understood the terror and exhilaration of having men listen to you, obey you, throw themselves into action and risk death because they trust you. Each time, because these men were so well-trained and resourceful and their tactics so effective, he brought back his whole complement. Injuries, but no deaths. Aborted missions, sometimesbut no deaths.



"It's the aborted missions," said Bean, "that earn you their trust. When you see that

it's more dangerous than we anticipated, that it requires attrition to get the objective, then show the men you value their lives more than the objective of the moment. Later, when you have no choice but to commit them to grave risk, they'll know it's because this time it's worth dying. They know you won't spend them like a child, on candy and trash."



Bean was right, which hardly surprised Suriyawong. Bean was not just the smartest, he had also watched Ender close at hand, had been Ender's secret weapon in Dragon Army, had been his backup commander on Eros. Of course he knew what leadership was.



What surprised Suriyawong was Bean's generosity. Bean had created this strike force, and trained these men, had earned their trust. Throughout that time, Suriyawong had been of little help, and had shown outright hostility at times. Yet Bean included Suriyawong, entrusted him with command, encouraged the men to help Suriyawong learn what they could do. Through it all, Bean had never treated Suriyawong as a subordinate or inferior, but rather had deferred to him as his superior officer.



In return, Suriyawong never commanded Bean to do anything. Rather they reached a consensus on most things, and when they could not agree, Suriyawong deferred to Bean's decision and supported him in it.



Bean has no ambition, Suriyawong realized. He has no wish to be better than anyone else, or to rule over anyone, or to have more honor.



Then, on the missions where they worked together, Suriyawong saw something else: Bean had no fear of death.



Bullets could be flying, explosives could be near detonation, and Bean would move without fear and with only token concealment. It was as if he dared the enemy to shoot him, dared their own explosives to defy him and go off before he was ready.



Was this courage? Or did he wish for death? Had Sister Carlotta's death taken away

some of his will to live? To hear him talk, Suriyawong would not have supposed it. Bean was too grimly determined to rescue Petra for Suriyawong to believe that he wanted to die. He had something urgent to live for. And yet he showed no fear of battle.



It was as if he knew the day that he would die, and this was not that day.



He certainly hadn't stopped caring about anything. Indeed, the quiet, icy, controlled, arrogant Bean that Suriyawong had known before had become, since the day Carlotta died, impatient and agitated. The calm he showed in battle, in front of the men, was certainly not there when he was alone with Suriyawong and Phet Noi. And the favorite object of his curses was not Achilles-he almost never spoke of Achilles-but Peter Wiggin.



"He's had everything for a month! And he does these little things-persuading Chamrajnagar not to return to Earth yet, persuading Ghaffar Wahabi not to invade Iran-and he tells me about them, but the big thing, publishing Achilles' whole treacherous strategy, he won't do that-and he tells me not to do it myself! Why not? If the Indian government could be forced to see how Achilles plans to betray them, they might be able to pull enough of their army out of Burma to make a stand against the Chinese. Russia might be able to intervene. The Japanese fleet might threaten Chinese trade. At the very least, the Chinese themselves might see Achilles for what he is, and jettison him even as they follow his plan! And all he says is, It's not the right moment, it's too soon, not yet, you have to trust me, I'm with you on this, right to the end."



He was scarcely kinder in his execrations of the Thai generals running the war--or ruining it, as he said. Suriyawong had to agree with him-the whole plan depended on keeping Thai forces dispersed, but now that the Thai Air Force had control of the air over Burma, they had concentrated their armies and airbases in forward positions. "I told them what the danger was," said Bean, "and they still gather their forces into
one convenient place."



Phet Noi listened patiently; Suriyawong, too, gave up trying to argue with him. Bean was right. People were behaving foolishly, and not out of ignorance. Though of course they would say, later, "But we didn't know Bean was right."


To which Bean already had his answer: "You didn't know I was wrong! So you should have been prudent!"



The only thing different in Bean's diatribes was that he went hoarse for a week, and when his voice came back, it was lower. For a kid who had always been so tiny, even for his age, puberty-if that's what this was--certainly had struck him young. Or maybe he had just stretched out his vocal cords with all his ranting.



But now, on a mission, Bean was silent, the calm of battle already on him. Suriyawong and Bean boarded their choppers last, making sure all their men were aboard; one last salute to each other, and then they ducked inside and the door closed and the choppers rose into the air. They jetted along near the surface of the Indian Ocean, the chopper blades folded and enclosed until they got near Cheduba Island, today's staging area. Then the choppers dispersed, rose into the air, cut the jets, and opened their blades for vertical landing.



Now they would leave behind their reserves-the men and choppers that could bring out anyone stranded by a mechanical problem or unforeseen complication. Bean and Suriyawong never rode together-one chopper failure should not behead the mission. And each of them had redundant equipment, so that either could complete the whole mission. More than once, the redundancy had saved lives and missions-Phet Noi made sure they were always equipped because, as he said, "You give the materiel to the commanders who know how to use it."



Bean and Suriyawong were too busy to chat in the staging area, but they did come together for a few moments, as they watched the reserve team camouflage their choppers and scrim their solar collectors. "You know what I wish?" said Bean.



"You mean besides wanting to be an astronaut when you grow up?" said Suriyawong. "That we could scrub this mission and take off for Hyderabad."
"And get ourselves killed without ever seeing a sign of Petra, who has probably

already been moved to someplace in the Himalayas."



"That's the genius of my plan," said Bean. "I take a herd of cattle hostage and threaten to shoot a cow a day till they bring her back."



"Too risky. The cows always make a break for it." But SuriyaWong knew that to Bean, the inability to do anything for Petra was a constant ache. "We'll do it. Peter's looking for someone who'll give him current information about Hyderabad."



"Like he's working on publishing Achilles' plans." The favorite diatribe. Only because they were on mission, Bean remained calm, ironic rather than furious.



"All done," said Suriyawong. "See you in the mountains."
It was a dangerous mission. The enemy couldn't watch every kilometer of highway, but they had learned to converge quickly when the Thai choppers were spotted, and their strike force was having to finish their missions with less and less time to spare. And this spot was likely to be defended. That was why Bean's contingent-four of the five companies-would be deployed to clear away any defenders and protect Suriyawong's group while they laid the charges and blew up the road and the bridge.



All was going according to plan-indeed, better than expected, because the enemy seemed not to know they were there-when one of the men pointed out, "There's a woman on the bridge."



"A civilian?"



"You need to see," said the soldier.



Suriyawong left the spot where the explosives were being placed and climbed back

up to the bridge. Sure enough, a young Indian woman was standing there, her arms stretched out toward either side of the ravine.



"Has anyone mentioned to her that the bridge is going to explode, and we don't actually care if anyone's on it?"



"Sir," said the soldier, "she's asking for Bean." "By name?"
He nodded.



Suriyawong looked at the woman again. A very young woman. Her clothing was filthy, tattered. Had it once been a military uniform? It certainly wasn't the way local women dressed.



She looked at him. "Suriyawong," she called.



Behind him, he could hear several soldiers exhale or gasp in surprise or wonder. How did this Indian woman know? It worried Suriyawong a little. The soldiers were reliable in almost everything, but if they once got godstuff into their heads, it could complicate everything.



"I'm Suriyawong," he said.



"You were in Dragon Army," she said. "And you work with Bean." "What do you want?" he demanded.
"I want to talk with you privately, here on the bridge."

"Sir, don't go," said the soldier. "Nobody's shooting, but we've spotted a halfdozen
Indian soldiers. You're dead if you go out there." What would Bean do?
Suriyawong stepped out onto the bridge, boldly but not in any hurry. He waited for the gunshot, wondering if he would feel the pain of impact before he heard the sound. Would the nerves of his ears report to his brain faster than the nerves of whatever body part the bullet tore into? Or would the sniper hit him in the head, mooting the point?



No bullet. He came near her, and stopped when she said, "This is as close as you should come, or they'll worry and shoot you."



"You control those soldiers?" asked Suriyawong



"Don't you know me yet?" she said. "I'm Virlomi. I was ahead of you in Battle
School."



He knew the name. He would never have recognized her face. "You left before I got there."



"Not many girls in Battle School. I thought the legend would live on." "I heard of you."
"I'm a legend here, too. My people aren't firing because they think I know what I'm doing out here. And I thought you recognized me, because your soldiers on both sides of this ravine have refrained from shooting any of the Indian soldiers, even though I know they've spotted them."



"Maybe Bean recognized you," said Sirayawong. "In fact, I've heard your name more

recently. You're the one who wrote back to him, aren't you? You were in
Hyderabad."



"I know where Petra is." "Unless they've moved her."
"Do you have any better sources? I tried to think of any way I could to get a message to Bean without getting caught. Finally I realized there was no computer solution. I had to bring the message in my head."



"So come with us."



"Not that simple," she said. "If they think I'm a captive, you'll never get out of here. Handheld g-to-a."



"Ouch," said Suriyawong. "Ambush. They knew we were coming?"



"No," said Virlomi. "They knew I was here. I didn't say anything, but they all knew that the Woman-in-hiding was at this bridge, so they figured that the gods were protecting this place."



"And the gods needed g-to-a missiles?"



"No, I'm the one they're protecting. The gods have the bridge, the men have me. So here's the deal. You pull your explosives off the bridge. Abort the mission. They see that I have the power to make the enemy go away without harming anything. And then they watch me call one of your departing choppers down to me, and I get on of my own free will. That's the only way you're getting out of here. Not really anything I designed, but I don't see any other way out."



"I always hate aborting missions," said Suriyawong. But before she could argue, he

laughed and said, "No, don't worry, it's fine. It's a good plan. If Bean were down here on this bridge, he'd agree in a heartbeat."



Suriyawong walked back to his men. "No, it's not a god or a holy woman. She's Virlomi, a Battle School grad, and she has intelligence that's more valuable than this bridge. We're aborting the mission."



The soldier took this in, and Suriyawong could see him trying to factor the magical element in with the orders.



"Soldier," said Suriyawong, "I have not been bewitched. This woman knows the groundplan of the Indian Army high command base in Hyderabad."



"Why would an Indian give that to us?" the soldier asked.



"Because the bunduck who's running the Indian side of the war has a prisoner there who's vital to the war."



Now it was making sense to the soldier. The magic element receded. He pulled his satrad off his belt and punched in the abort code. All the other satrads immediately vibrated in the preset pattern.



At once the explosives teams began dismantling. If they were to evacuate without dismantling, a second code, for urgency, would be sent. Suriyawong did not want any part of their materiel to fall into Indian hands. And he thought a more leisurely pace might be better.



"Soldier, I need to seem to be hypnotized by this woman," he said. "I am not hypnotized, but I'm faking it so the Indian soldiers all around us will think she's controlling me. Got that?"



"Yes sir."

"So while I walk back toward her, you call Bean and tell him that I need all the choppers but mine to evacuate, so the Indians can see they're gone. Then say 'Petra.' Got that? Tell him nothing else, no matter what he asks. We may be monitored, if not here, then in Hyderabad." Or Beijing, but he didn't want to complicate things by saying that.



"Yes sir."



Suriyawong turned his back on the soldier, walked three paces closer to Virlomi, and then prostrated himself before her.

Behind him, he could hear the soldier saying exactly what he had been told to say. And after a very little while, choppers began to rise into the air from both sides of
the ravine. Bean's troops were on the way out.



Suriyawong got up and returned to his men. His company had come in two choppers. "All of you get in the chopper with the explosives," he said. "Only the pilot and co- pilot stay in the other chopper."



The men obeyed immediately, and within three minutes Suriyawong was alone at his end of the bridge. He turned and bowed once again to Virlomi, then walked calmly
to his chopper and climbed aboard.



"Rise slowly," he told the pilot, "and then pass slowly near the woman in the middle of the bridge, doorside toward her. At no point is any weapon to be trained on her. Nothing remotely threatening."



Suriyawong watched through the window. Virlomi was not signaling. "Rise higher, as if we were leaving," said Suriyawong.

The pilot obeyed.



Finally, Virlomi began waving her arms, beckoning with both of them, slowly, as if she were reeling them back in with each movement of her arms.



"Slow down and then begin to descend toward her. I want no chance of error. The last thing we need is some downdraft to get her caught in the blades."



The pilot laughed grimly and brought the chopper like a dancer down onto the bridge, far enough away that Virlomi wasn't actually under the blades, but close enough that it would be only a few steps for her to come aboard.



Suriyawong ran to the door and opened it.



Virlomi did not just walk to the chopper. She danced to it, making ritual-like circling movements with each step.



On impulse, he got out of the chopper and prostrated himself again. When she got near enough, he said-loud enough to be heard over the chopper blades"Walk on me!"



She did, planting her bare feet on his shoulders and walking down his back. Suriyawong didn't know how they could have communicated more clearly to the Indian soldiers that not only had Virlomi saved their bridge, she had also taken control of this chopper.



She was inside.



He got up, turned slowly, and sauntered onto the chopper.



The sauntering ended the moment he was inside. He rammed the door lever up into place and shouted, "I want jets as fast as you can!"

The chopper rose dizzily. "Strap down," Suriyawong ordered Virlomi. Then, seeing she wasn't familiar with the inside of this craft, he pushed her into place and put the ends of her harness into her hands. She got it at once and finished the job while he hurled himself into his place and got his straps in place just as the chopper cut the blades and plummeted for a moment before the jets kicked in. Then they rocketed down the ravine and out of range of the handheld g-toa missiles.



"You just made my day," said Suriyawong.



"Took you long enough," said Virlomi. "I thought this bridge was one of the first places you'd hit."



"We figured that's what people would think, so we kept not coming here."



"Greeyaz," she said. "I should have remembered to think completely assbackward in order to predict what Battle School brats would do."



Bean had known the moment he saw her on the bridge that she had to be Virlomi, the
Indian Battle Schooler who had answered his Briseis posting. He could only trust that Suriyawong would realize what was happening before he found the need to shoot somebody. And Surly had not let him down.



When they got back to the staging area, Bean barely greeted Virlomi before he started giving orders. "I want the whole staging area dismantled. Everybody's coming with us." While the company commanders saw to that, Bean ordered one of the chopper communications team to set up a net connection for him.



"That's satellite," the soldier said. "We'll be located right away." "We'll be gone before anyone can react," said Bean.
Only then did he start explaining to Suriyawong and Virlomi. "We're fully equipped, right?"


"But not fully fueled."



"I'll take care of that," he said. "We're going to Hyderabad right now." "But I haven't even drawn up the plans."
"Time for that in the air," he said. "This time we ride together, Suriyawong. Can't be helped-we both have to know the whole plan."



"We've waited this long," said Suriyawong. "What's the hurry now?"



"Two things," said Bean. "How long do you think it'll be before word reaches Achilles that our strike force picked up an Indian woman who was waiting for us on a bridge? Second thing-I'm going to force Peter Wiggin's hand. All hell is going to break loose, and we're riding the wave."



"What's the objective?" asked Virlorni. "To save Petra? To kill Achilles?" "To bring out every Battle School kid who'll come with us."
"They'll never leave India," she said. "I may decide to stay myself "



"Wrong on both counts," said Bean. "I give India less than a week before Chinese troops have control of New Delhi and Hyderabad and any other city they want."



"Chinese?" asked Virlomi. "But there's some kind of--" "Nonaggression pact?" said Bean. "Arranged by Achilles?"

"He's been working for China all along," said Suriyawong. "The Indian Army is exposed, undersupplied, exhausted, demoralized."

"But ... if China comes in on the side of the Thai, isn't that what you want?" Suriyawong gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "China comes in on the side of China. We
tried to warn our own people, but they're sure they have a deal with Beijing."



Virlomi understood at once. Battle School-trained, she knew how to think the way
Bean and Suriyawong did. "So that's why Achilles didn't use Petra's plan." Bean and Suriyawong laughed and gave short little bows to each other. "You knew about Petra's plan?"
"We assumed there'd be a better plan than the one India's using." "So you have a plan to stop China?" said Virlomi.
"Not a chance," said Bean. "China might have been stopped a month ago, but nobody listened." He thought of Peter and barely stanched the fury. "Achilles himself may still be stopped, or at least weakened. But our goal is to keep the Indian Battle
School team from falling into Chinese hands. Our Thai friends already have escape routes planned. So when we get to Hyderabad, we not only need to find Petra, we need to offer escape to anyone who'll come. Will they listen to you?"



"We'll see, won't we?" said Virlomi.



"The connection's ready," said a soldier. "I didn't actually link yet, because that's when the clock starts ticking."

"Do it," said Bean. "I've got some things to say to Peter Wiggin." I'm coming, Petra. I'm getting you out.
As for Achilles, if he happens to come within my reach, there'll be no mercy this time, no relying on someone else to keep him out of circulation. I'll kill him without discussion. And my men will have orders to do the same.



encrypt key decrypt key

To: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov

From: Borommakot@chakri.thai.gov/scom

Re: Now, or I will



I'm in a battlefield situation and I need two things from you, now.



First, I need permission from the Sri Lankan government to land at the base at Kilinochchi to refuel, ETA less than an hour. This is a nonmilitary rescue mission to retrieve Battle School graduates in imminent danger of capture, torture,
enslavement, or at the very least imprisonment.



Second, to justify this and all other actions I'm about to take; to persuade those Battle Schoolers to come with me; and to create confusion in Hyderabad, I need you to publish now. Repeat, NOW. Or I will publish my own article, here attached, which specifically names you as a coconspirator with the Chinese, as proven by your
failure to publish what you know in a timely manner. Even though I don't have Locke's worldwide reach, I have a nice little email list of my own, and my article will get attention. Yours, however, would have far faster results, and I would prefer it to come from you.



Pardon my threat. I can't afford to play any more of your "wait for the right time" games. I'm getting Petra out.

encrypt key decrypt key

TO: Borommakot@chakri.thai.gov/scom

From: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov

Re: Done



Confirmed: Sri Lanka grants landing permission/refueling privileges at Kilinochchi for aircraft on humanitarian mission. Thai markings?



Confirmed: my essay released as of now, worldwide push distribution. This includes urgent fyi push into the systems at Hyderabad and Bangkok.



Your threat was sweetly loyal to your friend, but not necessary. This was the time I was waiting for. Apparently you didn't realize that the moment I published, Achilles would have to move his operations, and would probably take Petra with him. How would you have found her, if I had published a month ago?



encrypt key decrypt key

To: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov

From: Borommakot@chakri.thai.gov/scom

Re: Done



Confirm: Thai markings



As to your excuse: Kuso. If that had been your reason for delay, you would have told me a month ago. I know the real reason, even if you don't, and it makes me sick.



For two weeks after Virlomi disappeared, Achilles had not once come into the planning room-which no one minded, especially after the reward was issued for Virlomi's return. No one dared speak of it openly, but all were glad she had escaped

Achilles' vengeance. They were all aware, of course, of the heightened security around thernfor their "protection." But it didn't change their lives much. It wasn't as if any of them had ever had time to go frolicking in downtown Hyderabad, or fraternizing with officers twice or three times their age on the base.



Petra was skeptical of the reward offer, though. She knew Achilles well enough to know that he was perfectly capable of offering a reward for the capture of someone he had already killed. What safer cover could he have? Still, if that were the case it would imply that he did not have carte blanche from Mal Chapekar-if he had to hide things from the Indian government, it meant Achilles was not yet running everything.

When he did return, there was no sign of a bruise on his face. Either Petra's kick had not left a mark, or it took two weeks for it to heal completely. Her own bruises were not yet gone, but no one could see them, since they were under her shirt. She wondered if he had any testicular pain. She wondered if he had had to see a
urologist. She did not allow any trace of her gloating to appear on her face.



Achilles was full of talk about how well the war was going and what a good job they were doing in Planning. The army was well supplied and despite the harassment of the cowardly Thai military, the campaign was moving forward on schedule. The revised schedule, of course.



Which was such greeyaz. He was talking to the planners. They knew perfectly well that the army was bogged down, that they were still fighting the Burmese in the Irrawaddy plain because the Thai Army's harassment tactics made it impossible to mount the crushing offensive that would have driven the Burmese into the mountains and allowed the Indian Army to proceed into Thailand. Schedule? There was no schedule now.



What Achilles was telling them was: This is the party line. Make sure no memo or email from this room gives anyone even the slightest hint that events are not going according to plan.



It did not change the fact that everyone in Planning could smell defeat. Supplying a huge army on the move was taxing enough to India's limited resources. Supplying it when half the supplies were likely to disappear due to enemy action was chewing through India's resources faster than they could hope to replenish them.



At current rates of manufacture and consumption, the army would run out of munitions in seven weeks. But that would hardly matterunless some miracle happened, they would run out of nonrenewable fuel in four.



Everyone knew that if Petra's plan had been followed, India would have been able to continue such an offensive indefinitely, and attrition would already have destroyed Burmese resistance. The war would already be on Thai soil, and the Indian Army would not be limping along with a relentless deadline looming up behind them.


They did not talk in the planning room, but at meals they carefully, obliquely, discussed things. Was it too late to revert to the other strategy? Not reallybut it would require a strategic withdrawal of the bulk of India's army, which would be impossible to conceal from the people and the media. Politically, it would be a disaster. But then, running out of bullets or fuel would be even more disastrous.



"We have to draw up plans for withdrawal anyway," said Sayagi. "Unless some miracle happens in the field-some brilliance in a field commander that has hitherto been invisible, some political collapse in Burma or Thailand-we're going to need a plan to extricate our people."



"I don't think we'll get permission to spend time on that," someone answered.



Petra rarely said anything at meals, despite her new custom of sitting at table with one or another group from Planning. This time, though, she spoke up. "Do it in your heads," she said.

They paused for a moment, and then Sayagi nodded. "Good plan. No confrontation." From then on, part of mealtime consisted of cryptic reports from each member of
the team on the status of every portion of the withdrawal plan.



Another time that Petra spoke had nothing to do with military planning, per se. Someone had jokingly said that this would be a good time for Bose to return. Petra knew the story of Subhas Chandra Bose, the Netaji of the Japanesebacked anti- British-rule Indian National Army during World War 11. When he died in a plane crash on the way to Japan at the end of the war, the legend among the Indian people was that he was not really dead, but lived on, planning to return someday to lead the people to freedom. In the centuries since then, invoking the return of Bose was both a joke and a serious comment-that the current leadership was as illegitimate as the British Raj had been.



From the mention of Bose, the conversation turned to a discussion of Gandhi.

Someone started talking about "peaceful resistance"-never implying that anyone in Planning might contemplate such a thing, of course-and someone else said, "No, that's passive resistance."



That was when Petra spoke up. "This is India, and you know the word. It's satyagraha, and it doesn't mean peaceful or passive resistance at all."

"Not everyone here speaks Hindi," said a Tamil planner. "But everyone here should know Gandhi," said Petra.
Sayagi agreed with her. "Satyagraha is something else. The willingness to endure great personal suffering in order to do what's right."



"What's the difference, really?"



"Sometimes," said Petra, "what's right is not peaceful or passive. What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne."



"That sounds more like courage than anything else," said the Tamil. "Courage to do right," said Sayagi. "Courage even when you can't win." "What happened to 'discretion is the better part of valor'?"
"A quotation from a cowardly character in Shakespeare," someone else pointed out.



"Not contradictory anyway," said Sayagi. "Completely different circumstances. If there's a chance of victory later through withdrawal now, you keep your forces intact. But personally, as an individual, if you know that the price of doing right is terrible loss or suffering or even death, satyagraha means that you are all the more determined to do right, for fear that fear might make you unrighteous."



"Oh, paradoxes within paradoxes."



But Petra turned it from superficial philosophy to something else entirely. "I am trying," she said, "to achieve satyagraha."

And in the silence that followed, she knew that some, at least, understood. She was alive right now because she had not achieved satyagraha, because she had not always done the right thing, but had done only what was necessary to survive. And she was preparing to change that. To do the right thing regardless of whether she lived through it or not. And for whatever reason-respect for her, uncomfortableness with the intensity of it, or serious contemplation-they remained silent until the meal
ended and they spoke again of quotidian things.



Now the war had been going for a month, and Achilles was giving them daily pep talks about how victory was imminent even as they wrestled privately with the growing problems of extricating the army. There had been some victories, and at two points the Indian Army was now in Thai territory-but that only lengthened the
supply lines and put the army into mountainous country again, where their large
numbers could not be brought to bear against the enemy, yet still had to be supplied. And these offensives had chewed through fuel and munitions. In a few days, they would have to choose between fueling tanks and fueling supply trucks. They were about to become a very hungry all-infantry army.



As soon as Achilles left, Sayagi stood up. "It is time to write down our plan for withdrawal and submit it. We must declare victory and withdraw."



There was no dissent. Even though the vids and the nets were full of stories of the great Indian victories, the advance into Thailand, these plans had to be written down, the orders drawn up, while there was still time and fuel enough to carry them out.



So they spent that morning writing each component of the plan. Sayagi, as their de facto leader, assembled them into a single, fairly coherent set of documents. In the meantime, Petra browsed the net and worked on the project she had been assigned by Achilles, taking no part in what they were doing. They didn't need her for this, and it was her desk that was most closely monitored by Achilles. As long as she was being obedient, Achilles might not notice that the others were not.



When they were almost done, she spoke up, even though she knew that Achilles would be notified quickly of what she said-that he might even be listening through that hearing aid in his ear. "Before you email it," she said, "post it."

At first they probably thought she meant the internal posting, where they could all read it. But then they saw that, using her fingernail on a piece of rough tan toilet paper, she had scratched a net address and was now holding it out.



It was Peter Wiggin's "Locke" forum.



They looked at her like she was crazy. To post military plans in a public place?



But then Sayagi began to nod. "They intercept all our emails," he said. "This is the only way it will get to Chapekar himself."



"To make military secrets public," someone said. He did not need to finish. They knew the penalty.



"Satyagraha," said Sayagi. He took the toilet paper with the address and sat down to go to that netsite. "I am the one doing this, and no one else," he said. "The rest of you warned me not to. There is no reason for more than one person to risk the consequences." Moments later, the data was flowing to Peter Wiggin's forum.



Only then did he send it as email to the general command-which would be routed through Achilles' computer.

"Sayagi," someone said. "Did you see what else is posted here? On this netsite?" Petra also moved to the Locke forum and discovered that the lead essay on Locke's
site was headed, "Chinese treachery and the fall of India." The subhead said, "Will
China, too, fall victim to a psychopath's twisted plans?"



Even as they were reading Locke's essay detailing how China had made promises to both Thailand and India, and would attack now that both armies were fully exposed and, in India's case, overextended, they received emails that contained the same essay, pushed into the system on an urgent basis. That meant it had already been cleared at the top-Chapekar knew what Locke was alleging.


Therefore, their emailed plans for immediate withdrawal of Indian troops from Burma had reached Chapekar at exactly the time when he knew they would be necessary.



"Toguro," breathed Sayagi. "We look like geniuses."



"We are geniuses," someone grumbled, and everyone laughed.



"Does anyone think," asked the Tamil, "we'll hear another pep talk from our Belgian friend about how well the war is going?"



Almost as an answer, they heard gunfire outside.



Petra felt a thrill of hope run through her: Achilles tried to make a run for it, and he was shot.



But then a more practical idea replaced her hope: Achilles foresaw this possibility, and has his own forces already in place to cover his escape.



And finally, despair: When he comes for me, will it be to kill me, or take me with him?



More gunfire.



"Maybe," said Sayagi, "we ought to disperse."



He was walking toward the door when it opened and Achilles came in, followed by six Sikhs carrying automatic weapons. "Have a seat, Sayagi," said Achilles. "I'm afraid we have a hostage situation here. Someone made some libelous assertions about me on the nets, and when I declined to be detained during the inquiry, shooting

began. Fortunately, I have some friends, and while we're waiting for them to provide me with transportation to a neutral location, you are my guarantors of safety."



Immediately, the two Battle School grads who were Sikhs stood up and said, to
Achilles' soldiers, "Are we under threat of death from you?" "As long as you serve the oppressor," one of them answered.
"He is the oppressor!" one of the Sikh Battle Schoolers said, pointing to Achilles.



"Do you think the Chinese will be any kinder to our people than New Delhi has?" said the other.



"Remember how the Chinese treated Tibet and Taiwan! That is our future, because of him!"



The Sikh soldiers were obviously wavering.



Achilles drew a pistol from his back and shot the soldiers dead, one after another. The last two had time to try to rush at him, but every shot he fired struck home.



The pistol shots still rang in the room when Sayagi said, "Why didn't they shoot you?"



"I had them unload their weapons before entering the room," Achilles said. "I told them we didn't want any accidents. But don't think you can overpower me because I'm alone with a half-empty clip. This room has long been wired with explosives, and they go off when my heart stops beating or when I activate the controller implanted under the skin of my chest."



A pocket phone beeped and, without lowering his gun, Achilles answered it. "No, I'm afraid one of my soldiers went out of control, and in order to keep the children safe,

I had to shoot some of my own men. The situation is unchanged. I am monitoring the perimeter. Keep back, and these children will be safe."



Petra wanted to laugh. Most of the Battle Schoolers here were older than Achilles himself.



Achilles clicked off the phone and pocketed it. "I'm afraid I told them that I had you as my hostages before it was actually true."



"Caught you with your pants down, ne?'' said Sayagi. "You had no way of knowing you'd need hostages, or that we'd all be here. There are no explosives in this room."



Achilles turned to him and calmly shot him in the head. Sayagi crumpled and fell. Several of the others cried out. Achilles calmly changed clips.



No one charged him while he was reloading. Not even, thought Petra, me.
There's nothing like casual murder to turn the onlookers into vegetables. "Satyagraha," said Petra.
Achilles whirled on her. "What was that? What language?" "Hindi," she said. "It means, 'One bears what one must.' "
"No more Hindi," said Achilles. "From anyone. Or any other language but Common. And if you talk, it had better be to me, and it had better not be something stupid and defiant like the words that got Sayagi killed. If all goes well, my relief should be here in only a few hours. And then Petra and I will go away and leave you to your

new government. A Chinese government."



Many of them looked at Petra then. She smiled at Achilles. "So your tent door is still open?"



He smiled back. Warmly. Lovingly. Like a kiss.



But she knew that he was taking her away solely in order to relish the time in which she would have false hopes, before he pushed her from a helicopter or strangled her on the tarmac or, if he grew too impatient, simply shot her as she prepared to follow him out of this room. His time with her was over. His triumph was near-the architect of China's conquest of India, returning to China as a hero. Already plotting how he would take control of the Chinese government and then set out to conquer the other half of the world's population.



For now, though, she was alive, and so were the other Battle Schoolers, except Sayagi. The reason Sayagi died, of course, was not what he said to Achilles. He died because he was the one who posted the withdrawal plans on Locke's forum. Being plans for a retreat under unpredictable fire, they were still usable even with Chinese troops pouring down into Burma, even with Chinese planes bombing the retreating soldiers. The Indian commanders would be able to make a stand. The Chinese would have to fight hard before they won.



But they would win. The Indian defense could last no more than a few days, no matter how bravely they fought. That was when the trucks would stop rolling and food and munitions would run out. The war was already lost. There was only a little time for the Indian elite to attempt to flee before the Chinese swept in, unresisted, with their behead-the-society method of controlling an occupied country.



While these events unfolded, the Battle School graduates who would have kept India out of this dangerous situation in the first place, and whose planning was the only thing keeping the Chinese temporarily at bay, sat in a large room with seven corpses, one gun, and the young man who had betrayed them all.

More than three hours later, gunfire began again, in the distance. The booming sound of anti-aircraft guns.



Achilles was on the phone in an instant. "Don't fire at the incoming aircraft," he said, "or these geniuses start dying."



He clicked off before they could say anything in reply. The shooting stopped.
They heard the rotors-choppers landing on the roof.



What a stupid place for them to land, thought Petra. Just because the roof is marked as a heliport doesn't mean they have to obey the signs. Up there, the Indian soldiers surrounding this place will have an easy target, and they'll see everything that happens. They'll know when Achilles is on the roof. They'll know which chopper to shoot down first, because he's in it. If this is the best plan the Chinese can come up with, Achilles is going to have a harder time using China as a base to take over the world than he thinks.



More choppers. Now that the roof was full, a few of them were landing on the grounds.



The door burst open, and a dozen Chinese soldiers fanned out through the room. A Chinese officer followed them in and saluted Achilles. "We came at once, sir."



"Good work," said Achilles. "Let's get them all up on the roof." "You said you'd let us go!" said one of the Battle Schoolers.
"One way or another," said Achilles, "you're all going to end up in China anyway. Now get up and form into a line against that wall."


More choppers. And then the whoosh, whump of an explosion.



"Those stupid eemos," said the Tamil, "they're going to get us all killed." "Such a shame," said Achilles, pointing his pistol at the Tamil's head.
The Chinese officer was already talking into his satrad. "Wait," he said. "It's not the
Indians. They've got Thai markings."



Bean, thought Petra. You've come at last. Either that or death. Because if Bean wasn't running this Thai raid, the Thai could have no other objective than to kill everything that moved in Hyderabad.



Another whoosh-whump. Another. "They've taken out everything on the roof," the
Chinese officer said. "The building's on fire, we've got to get out." "Whose stupid idea was it to land up there anyway?" asked Achilles.
"It was the closest point to evacuate them from!" answered the officer angrily. "There aren't enough choppers left to take all these."



"They're coming," said Achilles, "even if we have to leave soldiers behind." "We'll get them in a few days anyway. I don't leave my men behind!"
Not a bad commander, even if he's a little dim about tactics, thought Petra. "They won't let us take off unless we've got their Indian geniuses with us."

"The Thai won't let us take off at all!"



"Of course they will," said Achilles. "They're here to kill me and rescue her" He pointed at Petra.



So Achilles knew it was Bean that was coming. Petra showed nothing on her face.
If Achilles decided to leave without the hostages, there was a good chance he would kill them all. Deprive the enemy of a resource. And, more important, take away their hope.



"Achilles," she said, walking toward him. "Let's leave these others and get out. We'll be taking off from the ground. They won't know who's in what chopper. As long as we go now."



As she approached him, he swung his pistol to point at her chest.



She did not even pause, merely walked toward him, past him, to the door. She opened it. "Now, Achilles. You don't have to die in flames today, but that's where you're headed, the longer you wait."



"She's right," said the Chinese officer.



Achilles grinned and looked from Petra to the officer and back again. We've shamed you in front of the others, thought Petra. We've shown that we knew what to do, and you didn't. Now you have to kill us both. This officer doesn't know he's dead, but I do. Then again, I was dead anyway. So now let's get out of here without killing anybody else.



"Nothing in this room matters but you," said Petra. She grinned back at him. "Soak a

noky, boy."



Achilles turned back to point the gun, first at one Battle Schooler, then another. They recoiled or flinched, but he did not fire. He dropped his gun hand to his side and walked from the room, grabbing Petra by the arm as he passed her. "Come on, Pet," he said. "The future is calling."



Bean is coming, thought Petra, and Achilles is not going to let me get even a meter away from him. He knows Bean is here for me, so I'm the one person he'll make sure Bean never rescues.



Maybe we'll all kill each other today.



She thought back to the airplane ride that brought her and Achilles to India. The two of them standing at the open door. Maybe there would be another chance today-to die, taking Achilles with her. She wondered if Bean would understand that it was more important for Achilles to die than for her to live. More important, would he know that she understood that? It was the right thing to do, and now that she really knew Achilles, the kind of man he was, she would gladly pay that price and call it cheap.



RESCUE



To:Wahabi%inshallah@Pakistan.gov From:Chapekar%hope@India.gov Re:For the
Indian people



My Dear Friend Ghaffar,



I honor you because when I came to you with an offer of peace between our two families within the Indian people, you accepted and kept your word in every particular.



I honor you because you have lived a life that places the good of your people above

your own ambition.



I honor you because in you rests the hope for my people's future.



I make this letter public even as I send it to you, not knowing what your response will be, for my people must know now, while I can still speak to them all, what I am asking of you and giving to you.

As the treacherous Chinese violate their promises and threaten to destroy our army, which has been weakened by the treachery of the one called Achilles, whom we treated as a guest and a friend, it is clear to me that without a miracle, the vast expanse of the nation of India will be defenseless against the invaders pouring into our country from the north. Soon the ruthless conqueror will work his will from Bengal to Punjab. Of all the Indian people, only those in Pakistan, led by you, will be free.



I ask you now to take upon yourself all the hopes of the Indian people. Our struggle over the next few days will give you time, I hope, to bring your armies back to our border, where you will be prepared to stand against the Chinese enemy.



I now give you permission to cross that border at any point where it is necessary, so you can establish stronger defensive positions. I order all Indian soldiers remaining at the Pakistani border to offer no resistance whatsoever to Pakistani forces entering our country, and to cooperate by providing full maps of all our defenses, and all codes and codebooks. All our materiel at the border is to be turned over to Pakistan as well.



I ask you that any citizens of India who come under the rule of the Pakistani government be treated as generously as you would wish us, were our situations reversed, to treat your people. Whatever past offenses have been committed between our families, let us forgive each other and commit no new offenses, but treat each other as brothers and sisters who have been faithful to different faces of the same God, and who must now stand shoulder to shoulder to defend India against the invader whose only god is power and whose worship is cruelty.



Many members of the Indian government, military, and educational system will flee to Pakistan. I beg you to open your borders to them, for if they remain in India, only death or captivity will be in their future. All other Indians have no reason to fear individual persecution from the Chinese, and I beg you not to flee to Pakistan, but rather to remain inside India, where, God willing, you will soon be liberated.



I myself will remain in India, to bear whatever burden is placed upon my people by the conqueror. I would rather be Mandela than de Gaulle. There is to be no governmentin-exile. Pakistan is the government of the Indian people now. I say this

with the full authority of Congress.



May God bless all honorable people, and keep them free.

Your brother and friend, Tikal Chapekar



Jetting over the dry southern reaches of India felt to Bean like a strange dream, where the landscape never changed. Or no, it was a vidgame, with a computer making up scenery on the fly, recycling the same algorithms to create the same type of scenery in general, but never quite the same in detail.



Like human beings. DNA that differed by only the tiniest amounts from person to person, and yet those differences giving rise to saints and monsters, fools and geniuses, builders and wreckers, lovers and takers. More people live in this one country, India, than lived in the whole world only three or four centuries ago. More people live here today than lived in the entire history of the world up to the time of Christ. All the history of the Bible and the Iliad and Herodotus and Gilgamesh and everything that had been pieced together by archaeologists and anthropologists, all
of those human relationships, all those achievements, could all have been played out by the people we're flying over right now, with people left over to live through new stories that no one would ever hear.



In these few days, China would conquer enough people to make five thousand years of human history, and they would treat them like grass, to be mown till all were the same level, with anything that rose above that level discarded to be mere compost.



And what am I doing? Riding along on a machine that would have given that old prophet Ezekiel a heart attack before he could even write about seeing a shark in the sky. Sister Carlotta used to joke that Battle School was the wheel in the sky that Ezekiel saw in his vision. So here I am, like a figure out of some ancient vision, and what am I doing? That's right, out of the billions of people I might have saved, I'm choosing the one I happen to know and like the best, and risking the lives of a couple of hundred good soldiers in order to do it. And if we get out of this alive, what will I do then? Spend the few years of life remaining to me, helping Peter Wiggin defeat Achilles so he can do exactly what Achilles is already so close to doing-unite humanity under the rule of one sick, ambitious marubo?



Sister Carlotta liked to quote from another biblical git-vanity, vanity, all is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun. A time to scatter rocks and a time to gather rocks together.


Well, as long as God didn't tell anybody what the rocks were for, I might as well leave the rocks and go get my friend, if I can.



As they approached Hyderabad, they picked up a lot of radio chatter. Tactical stuff from satrads, not just the net traffic you'd expect because of the Chinese surprise attack in Burma that had been triggered by Peter's essay. As they got closer, the onboard computers were able to distinguish the radio signatures of Chinese troops as well as Indian.



"Looks like Achilles' retrieval crew got here ahead of us," said Suriyawong.



"But no shooting," said Bean. "Which means they've already got to the planning room and they're holding the Battle Schoolers as hostages."



"You got it," said Suriyawong. "Three choppers on the roof."



"There'll be more on the ground, but let's complicate their lives and take out those three."



Virlomi had misgivings. "What if they think it's the Indian Army attacking and they kill the hostages?"



"Achilles is not so stupid he won't make sure who's doing the shooting before he starts using up his ticket home."



It was like target practice, and three missiles took out three choppers, just like that. "Now get us onto blades and show the Thai markings," said Suriyawong.
It was, as usual, a sickening climb and drop before the blades took over. But Bean

was used to the sense of clawing nausea and was able to notice, out the windows, that the Indian troops were cheering and waving.



"Oh, suddenly now we're the good guys," said Bean.



"I think we're just the not-quite-so-evil guys," said Suriyawong.
"I think you're taking irresponsible risks with the lives of my friends," said Virlomi. Bean sobered at once. "Virlomi, I know Achilles, and the only way to keep him from
killing your friends, just for spite, is to keep him worried and off balance. To give him no time to display his malice."



"I meant that if one of those missiles had gone astray," she said, "it could have hit the room they're in and killed them all."



"Oh, is that all you're worried about?" Bean said. "Virlomi, I trained these men. There are situations in which they might miss, but this was not one of them."



Virlomi nodded. "I understand. The confidence of the field commander. It's been a long time since I had a toon of my own."



A few choppers stayed aloft, watching the perimeter; most set down in front of the building where the planning room was located. Suriyawong had already briefed the company commanders he was taking into the building by satrad as they flew. Now he jumped from the chopper as soon as the door opened and, with Virlomi running behind him, he got his group moving, executing the plan.



At once, Bean's chopper lifted back up and, with another chopper, hopped the building to come down on the other side. This was where they found the two remaining Chinese helicopters, blades spinning. Bean had his pilot set down so the chopper's weapons were pointed at the sides of the two Chinese machines. Then he and the thirty men with him went out both doors as Chinese troops across the open

space between them did the same.



Bean's other chopper remained airborne, waiting to see whether its missiles or the troops inside would be needed first.



The Chinese had Bean's troops outnumbered, but that wasn't really the issue. Nobody was shooting, because the Chinese wanted to get away alive, and there was no hope
of that if shooting broke out, because the airborne chopper would simply destroy both the remaining Chinese machines and then it wouldn't matter what happened on the ground, they'd never get home and their mission would be a failure.



So the two little armies formed up just like regiments in the Napoleonic wars, neat little lines. Bean wanted to shout something like "fix bayonets" or "load"but nobody was using muskets and besides, what interested him would be coming out the door of the building....



And there he was, rushing straight for the nearest chopper, gripping Petra by the arm and half-dragging her along. Achilles held a pistol down at his side. Bean wanted to have one of his sharpshooters him out, but he knew that then the Chinese would open fire and take Petra would certainly be killed. So he called out to Achilles.



Achilles ignored him. Bean knew what he was thinking-get inside the chopper while everybody's holding their fire, and then Bean would be helpless, unable to do anything to Achilles without also harming Petra.



So Bean spoke into his satrad and the hovering chopper did what the gunner was trained to do-fired a missile that blew up just beyond the nearer Chinese chopper. The machine itself blocked the blast so Petra and Achilles weren't hurtbut the chopper was rocked over onto its side and then, as the blades chewed to bits against the ground, it flipped over and over and smashed up against a barracks. A few soldiers slithered out, trying to drag out others with broken limbs or other injuries before the machine went up in flames.



Achilles and Petra now stood in the middle of the open space. The only remaining

Chinese chopper was too far for him to run to. He did the only thing he could do, under the circumstances. He held Petra in front of him with a gun pointed to her head. It wasn't a move they taught you in Battle School. It was straight from the vids.



In the meantime, the Chinese officer in charge-a colonel, if Bean remembered correctly how to translate the rank insignia, which was a very high rank for a small- scale operation like this one-strode out with his men. Bean did not have to instruct him to stay far away from Achilles and Petra. The colonel would know that any move to get between Achilles and Bean's men would lead to shooting, since there was only a stalemate as long as Bean had the ability to kill Achilles the moment he harmed Petra.



Without looking at the soldiers near him, Bean said, "Who has a trank pistol?"



One was slapped into his open hand. Someone murmured, "Keep your hand on a real gun, too."



And someone else said, "I hope the Indian Army doesn't realize that Achilles doesn't have any Indian kids with him. They couldn't care less about an Armenian." Bean appreciated it when his men thought through the whole situation. No time for praise now, though.



He stepped away from his men and walked toward Achilles and Petra. As he did, he saw Suriyawong and Virlomi come out the door through which the Chinese colonel had just come. Suriyawong called out, "All secure. Loading. Achilles murdered only one of ours."



"One of 'ours'?" said Achilles. "When did Sayagi become one of yours? You mean that I can kill anybody else and you don't care, but touch a Battle School brat and I'm a murderer?"



"You're never taking off in that chopper with Petra," said Bean.

"I know I'm never taking off without her," said Achilles. "If I don't have her with me, you'll blow that chopper into bits so small they'd have to use a comb to gather them up."



"Then I guess I'll just have one of my sharpshooters kill you." Petra smiled.
She was telling him yes, do it.



"Colonel Yuan-xi will then regard his mission as a failure, and he will kill as many of you as he can. Petra first."



Bean saw that the colonel had gotten his men on board the chopper-those who had come with him from the building and those who had deployed from the choppers when Bean first landed. Only he, Achilles, and Petra remained outside.



"Colonel," said Bean, "the only way this doesn't end in blood is if we can trust each other's word. I promise you that as long as Petra is alive, uninjured, and with me, you can take off safely with no interference from me or my strike force. Whether you have Achilles with you is of no importance to me."



Petra's smile vanished, replaced with a face that was an obvious mask of anger. She did not want Achilles to get away.



But she still hoped to live-that was why she was saying nothing, so Achilles wouldn't know that she was demanding his death, even at the cost of her own.



What she was ignoring was the fact that the Chinese commander had to meet the minimum conditions for mission success-he had to have Achilles with him when he left. If he didn't, a lot of people here would die, and for what? Achilles' worst deeds were already done. From here on, no one would ever trust his word on anything. Whatever power he got now would be by force and fear, not by deception. Which

meant that he would be making enemies every day, driving people into the arms of his opponents.



He might still win more battles and more wars and he might even seem to triumph completely, but, like Caligula, he would make assassins out of the people closest to him. And when he died, men just as evil but perhaps not as crazy would take his place. Killing him now would not make that much difference to the world.



Keeping Petra alive, however, would make all the difference in the world to Bean. He had made the mistakes that killed Poke and Sister Carlotta. But he was going to make no mistakes today. Petra would live because Bean couldn't bear any other outcome. She didn't even get a vote on the matter.



The colonel was weighing the situation.



Achilles was not. "I'm moving to the chopper now. My fingers are pretty tight on this trigger. Don't make me flinch, Bean."



Bean knew what Achilles was thinking: Can I kill Bean at the last moment and still get away, or should I leave that pleasure for another time?



And that was an advantage for Bean, because his thinking was not clouded by thoughts of personal vengeance.



Except, he realized, that it was. Because he, too, was trying to think of some way to save Petra and still kill Achilles.



The colonel walked up closer behind Achilles before calling out his answer to Bean. "Achilles is the architect of a great Chinese victory, and he must come to Beijing to be received in honor. My orders say nothing about the Armenian."



"They'll never let us take off without her, you fool," said Achilles.

"Sir, I give you my word, my parole. Even though Achilles has already murdered a woman and a girl who did nothing but good for him, and deserves to die for his crimes, I will let him go and let you go."



"Then our missions do not conflict," said the colonel. "I agree to your terms, provided you also agree to care for any of my men who remain behind according to the rules of war."



"I agree," said Bean.



"I'm in charge of our mission," said Achilles, "and I don't agree." "You are not in charge of our mission, sir," said the colonel.
Bean knew exactly what Achilles would do. He would take the gun away from Petra's head long enough to shoot the colonel. Achilles would expect this move to surprise people, but Bean was not surprised at all. His hand with the trank gun was already rising before Achilles even started to turn to the colonel.



But Bean was not the only one who knew what to expect from Achilles. The colonel had deliberately moved close enough to Achilles that as he swung the gun around, the colonel slapped the weapon out of Achilles' hand. At the same moment, with his other hand the colonel slapped Achilles' arm close to the elbow, and even though there seemed to be almost no force behind the blow, Achilles' arm bent sickeningly backward. Achilles cried out in pain and dropped to his knees, letting go of Petra. She immediately launched herself to the side, out of the way, and at that moment Bean fired the trank gun. He was able to adjust the aim at the last split second, and the tiny pellet struck Achilles' shirt with such force that even though the casing collapsed against the cloth, the tranquilizer blew right through the fabric and penetrated Achilles' skin. He collapsed immediately.



"It's only a tranquilizer," said Bean. "He'll be awake in six hours or so, with a headache."

The colonel stood there, not bending yet to even notice Achilles, his eyes still fixed on Bean. "Now there is no hostage. Your enemy is on the ground. How good is your word, sir, when the circumstance in which it was given goes away?"



"Men of honor," said Bean, "are brothers no matter what uniform they wear. You may put him aboard, and take off. I recommend that you fly in formation with us until we are south of the defenses around Hyderabad. Then you may fly your own course, and we'll fly ours."



"That is a wise plan," said the colonel.



He knelt and started to pick up Achilles' limp body. It was tricky work, and so Bean, small as he was, stepped forward to help by taking Achilles' legs.



Petra was on her feet by then, and when Bean glanced at her he could see that she was eyeing Achilles' pistol, which lay on the ground near her. Bean could almost read her mind. To kill Achilles with his own gun had to be temptingand Petra had not given her word.



But before she could even move toward the pistol, Bean had his trank gun pointed at her. "You could also wake up in six hours with a headache," he said.



"No need," she said. "I know that I'm also bound by your word." And, without stooping for the gun, she came and helped Bean carry his end of Achilles' body.



They rolled Achilles through the wide door of the chopper. Soldiers inside the machine took him and carried him back, presumably to a place where he could be secured during flight maneuvers. The chopper was grossly overcrowded, but only with men-there were no supplies or heavy munitions, so it would fly as well as normal. It would simply be uncomfortable for the passengers.



"You don't want to ride home on that chopper," said Bean. "I invite you to ride with us."

"But you're not going where I'm going," said the colonel.



"I know this boy you have just taken aboard," said Bean. "Even if he doesn't remember what you did when he wakes up, someone will tell him someday, and once he knows, you'll be marked. He never forgets. He will certainly kill you."



"Then I will have died obeying my orders and fulfilling my mission," said the colonel.



"Full asylum," said Bean, "and a life spent helping liberate China and all other nations from the kind of evil he represents."



"I know that you mean to be kind," said the colonel, "but it hurts my soul to be offered such rewards for betraying my country."



"Your country is led by men without honor," said Bean. "And yet they are sustained in power by the honor of men like you. Who, then, betrays his country? No, we have no time for arguments. I only plant the idea so it will fester in your soul." Bean smiled.



The colonel smiled back. "Then you are a devil, sir, as we Chinese always knew you
Europeans to be."



Bean saluted him. He returned the salute and got on board. The chopper door closed.
Bean and Petra ran out of the downdraft as the Chinese machine rose up into the air. There it hovered as Bean ordered everyone into the one chopper that remained on the ground. Less than two minutes later, his chopper, too, rose up, and the Thai and Chinese machines flew together over the building, where they were joined by the other helijets of Bean's strike force as they rose up from the ground or converged from their watching points at the perimeter.


They flew together toward the south, slowly, on blades. No Indian weapon was fired at them. For the Indian officers no doubt knew that their best young military minds were being taken to far more safety than they could possibly have in Hyderabad, or anywhere in India, once the Chinese came in force.



Then Bean gave the order, and all his choppers rose up, cut the blades, and dropped as the jets came on and the blades folded back for the quick ride back to Sri Lanka.



Inside the chopper, Petra sat glumly in her straps. Virlomi was beside her, but they did not speak to each other.



"Petra," said Bean. She did not look up.
"Virlomi found us, we did not find her. Because of her, we were able to come for you."



Petra still did not look up, but she reached out a hand and laid it on Virlomi's hands, which were clasped in her lap. "You were brave and good," said Petra. "Thank you for having compassion for me."



Then she looked up to meet Bean's gaze. "But I don't thank you, Bean. I was ready to kill him. I would have done it. I would have found a way."



"He's going to kill himself in the end," said Bean. "He's going to overreach himself, like Robespierre, like Stalin. Others will see his pattern and when they realize he's finally about to put them to the guillotine, they'll decide they've had enough and he will, most certainly, die."



"But how many will he kill along the way? And now your hands are stained with all

their blood, because you loaded him onto that chopper alive. Mine, too."



"You're wrong," said Bean. "He is the only one responsible for his killings. And you're wrong about what would have happened if we had let him take you along. You would not have lived through that ride."



"You don't know that."



"I know Achilles. When that chopper rose to about twenty stories up, you would have been pushed out the door. And do you know why?"



"So you could watch," she said.



"No, he would have waited till I was gone," said Bean. "He's not stupid. He regards his own survival as far more important than your death."



"Then why would he kill me now? Why are you so sure?"



"Because he had his arm around you like a lover," said Bean. "Standing there with the gun to your head, he held you with affection. I think he meant to kiss you before he took you on board. He'd want me to see that."



"She would never let him kiss her," said Virlomi with disgust.



But Petra met Bean's gaze, and the tears in her eyes were a truer answer than
Virlomi's brave words. She had already let Achilles kiss her. Just like Poke.



"He marked you," said Bean. "He loved you. You had power over him. After he didn't need you anymore as the hostage to keep me from killing him, you could not go on living."

Suriyawong shuddered. "What made him that way?"



"Nothing made him that way," said Bean. "No matter what terrible things happened in his life, no matter what dreadful hungers rose up from his soul, he chose to act on those desires, he chose to do the things he did. He's responsible for his own actions, and no one else. Not even those who saved his life."



"Like you and me today," said Petra.



"Sister Carlotta saved his life today," said Bean. "The last thing she asked me was to leave vengeance up to God."



"Do you believe in God?" asked Suriyawong, surprised. "More and more," said Bean. "And less and less."
Virlomi took Petra's hands between hers and said, "Enough of blame and enough of Achilles. You're free of him. You can have whole minutes and hours and days in which you don't have to think of what he'll do to you if he hears what you say, and how you have to act when he might be watching. The only way he can hurt you now is if you keep watching him in your own heart."



"Listen to her, Petra," said Suriyawong. "She's a goddess, you know." Virlomi laughed. "I save bridges and summon choppers."
"And you blessed me," said Suriyawong.



"I never did," said Virlomi.



"When you walked on my back," said Suriyawong. "My whole body is now the path

of a goddess."



"Only the back part," said Virlomi. "You'll have to find someone else to bless the front."



While they bantered, half-drunk with success and liberty and the overwhelming tragedy they were leaving behind them, Bean watched Petra, saw the tears drop from her eyes onto her lap, longed to be able to reach out and touch them away from her eyes. But what good would that do? Those tears had risen up from deep wells of
pain, and his mere touch would do nothing to dry them at their source. It would take time to do that, and time was the one thing that he did not have. If Petra knew happiness in her lifehappiness, that precious thing that Mrs. Wiggin talked about-it would come when she shared her life with someone else. Bean had saved her, had freed her, not so he could have her or be part of her life, but so that he did not have to bear the guilt of her death as he bore the deaths of Poke and Carlotta. It was a
selfish thing he did, in a way. But in another way, there would be nothing for himself at all from this day's work.



Except that when his death came, sooner rather than later, he might well look back on this day's work with more pride than anything else in his life. Because today he won. In the midst of all this terrible defeat, he had found a victory. He had cheated Achilles out of one of his favorite murders. He had saved the life of his dearest friend, even though she wasn't quite grateful yet. His army had done what he needed it to do, and not one life had been lost out of the two hundred men he had first been given. Always before he had been part of someone else's victory. But today, today he won.



To: Chamrajnagar%jawaharlal@ifcom.gov From: PeterWiggin%freeworld@hegemon.gov Re: Confirmation


Dear Polemarch Chamrajnagar,



Thank you for allowing me to reconfirm your appointment as Polemarch as my first

official act. We both know that I was giving you only what you already had, while you, by accepting that reconfirmation as if it actually meant something, restored to the office of Hegemon some of the luster that has been torn from it by the events of recent months. There are many who feel that it is an empty gesture to appoint a Hegemon who leads only about a third of the human race and has no particular influence over the third that officially supports him. Many nations are racing to find some accommodation with the Chinese and their allies, and I live under the constant threat of having my office abolished as one of the first gestures they can make to
win the favor of the new superpower. I am, in short, a Hegemon without hegemony.



And it is all the more remarkable that you would make this generous gesture toward the very individual that you once regarded as the worst of all possible Hegemons. The weaknesses in my character that you saw then have not magically vanished. It is only by comparison with Achilles, and only in a world where your homeland groans under the Chinese lash, that I begin to look like an attractive alternative or a source of hope instead of despair. But regardless of my weaknesses, I also have strengths, and I make you a promise:



Even though you are bound by your oath of office never to use the International
Fleet to influence the course of events on Earth, except to intercept nuclear weapons or punish those who use them, I know that you are still a man of Earth, a man of India, and you care deeply what happens to all people, and particularly to your people. Therefore I promise you that I will devote the rest of my life to reshaping this world into one that you would be glad of, for your people, and for all people. And I hope that I succeed well enough, before one or the other of us dies, that you will be glad of the support you gave to me today.



Sincerely,

Peter Wiggin, Hegemon



Over a million Indians made it out of India before the Chinese sealed the borders. Out of a population of a billion and a half, that was far too few. At least ten times that million were transported over the next year, from India to the cold lands of Manchuria and the high deserts of Sinkiang. Among the transported ones was Tikal Chapekar. The Chinese gave no report to outsiders about the fate of him or any of
the other "former oppressors of the Indian people." The same, on a far smaller scale,

happened to the governing elites of Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.



As if this vast redrawing of the world's map were not enough, Russia announced that it had joined China as its ally, and that it considered the nations of eastern Europe that were not loyal members of the New Warsaw Pact to be provinces in rebellion. Without firing a shot, Russia was able, simply by promising not to be as dreadful an overlord as China, to rewrite the Warsaw Pact until it was more or less the constitution of an empire that included all of Europe east of Germany, Austria, and Italy in the south, and east of Sweden and Norway in the north.



The weary nations of western Europe were quick to "welcome" the "discipline" that Russia would bring to Europe, and Russia was immediately given full membership in the European Community. Because Russia now controlled the votes of more than half the members of that community, it would require a constant tug of war to keep some semblance of independence, and rather than play that game, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and Portugal left the European Community. But even they took great pains to assure the Russian bear that this was purely over economic issues and they really welcomed this renewed Russian interest in the West.



America, which had long since become the tail to China's dog in matters of trade, made a few grumpy noises about human rights and then went back to business as usual, using satellite cartography to redraw the map of the world to fit the new reality and then sell the atlases that resulted. In sub-Saharan Africa, where India had once been their greatest single trading partner and cultural influence, the loss of India was much more devastating, and they loyally denounced the Chinese conquest even as they scrambled to find new markets for their goods. Latin America was even louder in their condemnation of all the aggressors, but lacking serious military forces, their bluster could do no harm. In the Pacific, Japan, with its dominant fleet, could afford to stand firm; the other island nations that faced China across various not-so-wide bodies of water had no such luxury.



Indeed, the only force that stood firm against China and Russia while facing them across heavily defended borders were the Muslim nations. Iran generously forgot how threateningly Pakistani troops had loomed along their borders in the month before India's fall, and Arabs joined with Turks in Muslim solidarity against any Russian encroachment across the Caucasus or into the vast steppes of central Asia. No one seriously thought that Muslim military might could stand for long against a

serious attack from China, and Russia was only scarcely less dangerous, but the Muslims laid aside their grievances, trusted in Allah, and kept their borders bristling with the warning that this nettle would be hard to grasp.



This was the world as it was the day that Peter "Locke" Wiggin was named as the new Hegemon. China let it be known that choosing any Hegemon at all was an affront, but Russia was a bit more tolerant, especially because many governments that cast their vote for Wiggin did so with the public declaration that the office was more ceremonial than practical, a gesture toward world unity and peace, and not at all an attempt to roll back the conquests that had brought "peace" to an unstable world.



But privately, many leaders of the very same governments assured Peter that they expected him to do all he could to bring about diplomatic "transformations" in the occupied countries. Peter listened to them politely and said reassuring things, but he felt nothing but scorn for them-for without military might, he had no way of negotiating with anyone about anything.



His first official act was to reconfirm the appointment of Polemarch Chamrajnagar- an action which China officially protested as illegal because the office of Hegemon no longer existed, and while they would do nothing to interfere with Chamrajnagar's continued leadership of the Fleet, they would no longer contribute financially either to the Hegemony or the Fleet. Peter then confirmed Graff as Hegemony Minister of Colonization-and, again, because his work was offworld, China could do nothing more than cut off its contribution of funds.



But the lack of money forced Peter's next decision. He moved the Hegemony capital out of the former Netherlands and returned the Low Countries to selfgovernment, which immediately put a stop to unrestricted immigration into those nations. He closed down most Hegemony services worldwide except for medical and agricultural research and assistance programs. He moved the main Hegemony offices to Brazil, which had several important assets:



First, it was a large enough and powerful enough country that the enemies of the Hegemony would not be quick to provoke it by assassinating the Hegemon within its borders.


Second, it was in the southern hemisphere, with strong economic ties to Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific, so that being there kept Peter within the mainstream of international commerce and politics.



And third, Brazil invited Peter Wiggin to come there. No one else did.



Peter had no delusions about what the office of Hegemon had become. He did not expect anyone to come to him. He went to them.



Which is why he left Haiti and crossed the Pacific to Manila, where Bean and his Thai army and the Indians they rescued had found temporary refuge. Peter knew that Bean was still angry at him, so he was relieved that Bean not only agreed to see him, but treated him with open respect when he arrived. His two hundred soldiers were crisply turned out to greet him, and when Bean introduced him to Petra, Suriyawong, and Virlomi and the other Indian Battle Schoolers, he phrased everything as if he were presenting his friends to a man of higher rank.



In front of all of them, Bean then made a little speech. "To His Excellency the Hegemon, I offer the service of this band of soldiersveterans of war, former opponents, and now, because of treachery, exiles from their homeland and brothers- and sisters-at-arms. This was not my decision, nor the decision of the majority. Each individual here was given the choice, and chose to make this offer of our service. We are few, but nations have found our service valuable before. We hope that we now
can serve a cause that is higher than any nation, and whose end will be the establishment of a new and honorable order in the world."



Peter was surprised only by the formality of the offer, and the fact that it was made without any sort of negotiation beforehand. He also noticed that Bean had arranged to have cameras present. This would be news. So Peter made a brief, soundbite- oriented reply accepting their offer, praising their achievements, and expressing
regret at the suffering of their people. It would play well-twenty seconds on the vids, and in full on the nets.

When the ceremonies were done, there was an inspection of their inventory-all the equipment they had been able to rescue from Thailand. Even their fighterbomber pilots and patrol boat crews had managed to make their way from southern Thailand to the Philippines, so the Hegemon had an air force and a fleet. Peter nodded and commented gravely as he saw each item in the inventory-the cameras were still running.



Later, though, when they were alone, Peter finally allowed himself a rueful, selfmocking laugh. "If it weren't for you I'd have nothing at all," he said. "But to compare this to the vast fleets and air forces and armies that the Hegemon once commanded. . ."



Bean looked at him coldly. "The office had to be greatly diminished," he said, "before they'd have given it to you."

The honeymoon, apparently, was over. "Yes," Peter said, "that's true, of course." "And the world had to be in a desperate condition, with the existence of the office of
Hegemon in doubt."



"That, too, is true," said Peter. "And for some reason you seem to be angry about this."



"That's because, apart from the not-trivial matter of Achilles' penchant for killing people now and then, I fail to see much difference between you and him. You're both content to let any number of people suffer needlessly in order to advance your personal ambitions."



Peter sighed. "If that's all the difference that you see, I don't understand how you could offer your service to me."



"I see other differences, of course," said Bean. "But they're matters of degree, not of kind. Achilles makes treaties he never intends to keep. You merely write essays that might have saved nations, but you delay publishing them so that those nations will

fall, putting the world in a position desperate enough that they would make you
Hegemon."



"Your statement is true," said Peter, "only if you believe that earlier publication would have saved India and Thailand."



"Early in the war," said Bean, "India still had the supplies and equipment to resist
Chinese attack. Thailand's forces were still fully dispersed and hard to find."



"But if I had published early in the war," said Peter, "India and Thailand would not have seen their peril, and they wouldn't have believed me. After all, the Thai government didn't believe you, and you warned them of everything."



"You're Locke," said Bean.



"Ah yes. Because I had so much credibility and prestige, nations would tremble and believe my words. Aren't you forgetting something? At your insistence, I had declared myself to be a teenage college student. I was still recovering from that, trying to prove in Haiti that I could actually govern. I might have had the prestige
left to be taken seriously in India and Thailandbut I might not. And if I published too soon, before China was ready to act, China would simply have denied everything to both sides, the war would have proceeded, and then there would have been no shock value at all to my publication. I wouldn't have been able to trigger the invasion at exactly the moment you needed me to."



"Don't pretend that this was your plan all along."



"It was my plan," said Peter, "to withhold publication until it could be an act of power instead of an act of futility. Yes, I was thinking of my prestige, because right now the only power I have is that prestige and the influence it gives me with the governments of the world. It's a coin that is minted very slowly, and if spent ineffectively, disappears. So yes, I protect that power very carefully, and use it sparingly, so that later, when I need to have it, it will still exist."

Bean was silent.

"You hate what happened in the war," said Peter. "So do 1. It's possible-not likely, but possible-that if I had published earlier, India might have been able to mount a real resistance. They might still have been fighting now. Millions of soldiers might have been dying even as we speak. Instead, there was a clean, almost bloodless victory for China. And now the Chinese have to govern a population almost twice the size of their own, with a culture every bit as old and allabsorbing as their own. The snake has swallowed a crocodile, and the question is going to arise again and again-who is digesting whom? Thailand and Vietnam will be just as hard to govern,
and even the Burmese have never managed to govern Burma. What I did saved lives. It left the world with a clear moral picture of who did the stabbing in the back, and who was stabbed. And it leaves China victorious and Russia triumphant-but with captive, angry populations to govern who will not stand with them when the final struggle comes. Why do you think China made a quick peace with Pakistan? Because they knew they could not fight a war against the Muslim world with Indian revolt
and sabotage a constant threat. And that alliance between China and Russia-what a joke! Within a year they'll be quarreling, and they'll be back to weakening each other across that long Siberian border. To people who think superficially, China and
Russia look triumphant. But I never thought you were a superficial thinker." "I see all that," said Bean.
"But you don't care. You're still angry at me." Bean said nothing.
"It's hard," said Peter, "to see how all of this seems to work to my advantage, and not blame me for profiteering from the suffering of others. But the real issue is, What
am I going to be able to do, and what will I actually do, now that I'm nominally the leader of the world, and actually the administrator of a small tax base, a few international service agencies, and this military force you gave to me today? I did
the few things that were in my power to shape events so that when I got this office, it would still be worth having."



"But above all, to get that office."

"Yes, Bean. I'm arrogant. I think I'm the only person who understands what to do and has what it takes to do it. I think the world needs me. In fact, I'm even more arrogant than you. Is that what this comes down to? I should have been humbler? Only you
are allowed to assess your own abilities candidly and decide that you're the best man for a particular job?"



"I don't want the job."



"I don't want this job, either," said Peter. "What I want is the job where the Hegemon speaks, and wars stop, where the Hegemon can redraw borders and strike down bad laws and break up international cartels and bring all of humanity a chance for a decent life in peace and whatever freedom their culture will allow. And I'm going to get that job, by creating it step by step. Not only that, I'm going to do it with your help, because you want somebody to do that job, and you know, just as surely as I
do, that I'm the only one who can do it." Bean nodded, saying nothing.
"You know all that, and you're still angry with me."



"I'm angry with Achilles," said Bean. "I'm angry with the stupidity of those who refused to listen to me. But you're here, and they're not."



"It's more than that," said Peter. "If that's all it was, you would have talked yourself out of your wrath long before we had this conversation."



"I know," said Bean. "But you don't want to hear it."



"Because it will hurt my feelings? Let me make a stab at it, then. You're angry because every word from my mouth, every gesture, every expression on my face reminds you of Ender Wiggin. Only I'm not Ender, I'll never be Ender, you think Ender should be doing what I'm doing, and you hate me for being the one who made sure Ender got sent away."

"It's irrational," said Bean. "I know that. I know that by sending him away you saved his life. The people who helped Achilles try to kill me would have worked day and night to kill Ender without any prompting from Achilles at all. They would have feared him far more than they feared you or me. I know that. But you look and talk so much like him. And I keep thinking, if Ender had been here, he wouldn't have botched things the way I did."



"The way I read it, it's the other way around. If you hadn't been there with Ender, he would have botched it at the end. No, don't argue, it doesn't matter. What does matter is, the world's the way it is right now, and we're in a position where, if we move carefully, if we think through and plan everything just right, we can fix this. We can make it better. No regrets. No wishing we could undo the past. We just look to the future and work our zhupas off."



"I'll look to the future," said Bean, "and I'll help you all I can. But I'll regret whatever I want to regret."



"Fair enough," said Peter. "Now that we've agreed on that, I think you should know. I've decided to revive the office of Strategos."



Bean gave one hoot of derision. "You're putting that title on the commander of a force of two hundred soldiers, a couple of planes, a couple of boats, and an overheated company of strategic planners?"



"Hey, if I can be called Hegemon, you can take on a title like that." "I notice you didn't want any vids of me getting that tide."
"No, I didn't," said Peter. "I don't want people to hear the news while looking at vids of a kid. I want them to learn of your appointment as Strategos while seeing stock footage of the victory over the Formics and hearing voice-overs about your rescue of the Indian Battle Schoolers."



"Well, fine," said Bean. "I accept. Do I get a fancy uniform?"


"No," said Peter. "At the rate you're growing lately, we'd have to pay for new ones too often, and you'd bankrupt us."



A thoughtful expression passed across Bean's face. "What," said Peter, "did I offend again?"
"No," said Bean. "I was just wondering what your parents said, when you declared yourself to be Locke."

Peter laughed. "Oh, they pretended that they'd known it all along. Parents." At Bean's suggestion, Peter located the headquarters of the Hegemony in a
compound just outside the city of Ribeirao Preto in the state of Sao Paulo. There
they would have excellent air connections anywhere in the world, while being surrounded by small towns and agricultural land. They'd be far from any government body. It was a pleasant place to live as they planned and trained to achieve the
modest goal of freeing the captive nations while holding the line against any new aggressions.



The Delphiki family came out of hiding and joined Bean in the safety of the Hegemony compound. Greece was part of the Warsaw Pact now, and there was no going home for them. Peter's parents also came, because they understood that they would become targets for anyone wanting to get to Peter. He gave them both jobs in the Hegemony, and if they minded the disruption of their lives, they never gave a sign of it.



The Arkanians left their homeland, too, and came gladly to live in a place where their children would not be stolen from them. Suriyawong's parents had made it out of Thailand, and they moved the family fortune and the family business to Ribeirao Preto. Other Thai and Indian families with ties to Bean's army or the Battle School graduates came as well, and soon there were thriving neighborhoods where

Portuguese was rarely heard.



As for Achilles, month after month they heard nothing about him.



Presumably he got back to Beijing. Presumably, he was worming his way into power one way or another. But they allowed themselves, as the silence about him
continued, to hope that perhaps the Chinese, having made use of him, now knew him well enough to keep him away from the reins of power.



On a cloudy winter afternoon in June, Petra walked through the cemetery in the town of Araraquara, only twenty minutes by train from Ribeirao Preto. She took care to make sure she approached Bean from a direction where he could see her coming. Soon she stood beside him, looking at a marker.



"Who is buried here?" she asked.



"No one," said Bean, who showed no surprise at seeing her. "It's a cenotaph." Petra read the names that were on it.
Poke. Carlotta.
There was nothing else.



"There's a marker for Sister Carlotta somewhere in Vatican City," said Bean. "But there was no body recovered that could actually be buried anywhere. And Poke was cremated by people who didn't even know who she was. I got the idea for this from Virlomi."

Virlomi had set up a cenotaph for Sayagi in the small Hindu cemetery that already existed in Ribeirao Preto. It was a bit more elaborate-it included the dates of his birth and death, and called him "a man of satyagraha."



"Bean," said Petra, "it's quite insane of you to come here. No bodyguard. This marker standing here so that assassins can set their sights before you show up."



"I know," said Bean.



"At least you could have invited me along."



He turned to her, tears in his eyes. "This is my place of shame," he said. "I worked very hard to make sure your name would not be here."



"Is that what you tell yourself? There's no shame here, Bean. There's only love. And that's why I belong here-with the other lonely girls who gave their hearts to you."



Bean turned to her, put his arms around her, and wept into her shoulder. He had grown, to stand tall enough for that. "They saved my life," he said. "They gave me life."



"That's what good people do," said Petra. "And then they die, every one of them. It's a damned shame."



He gave one short laugh-whether at her small levity or at himself, for weeping, she did not know. "Nothing lasts long, does it," said Bean.



"They're still alive in you."



"Who am I alive in?" said Bean. "And don't say you."

"I will if I want. You saved my life."



"They never had children, either one of them," said Bean. "No one ever held either Poke or Carlotta the way a man does with a woman, or had a baby with them. They never got to see their children grow up and have children of their own."



"By Sister Carlotta's choice," said Petra. "Not Poke's."
"They both had you."



"That's the futility of it," said Bean. "The only child they had was me."



"So ... you owe it to them to carry on, to marry, to have more children who'll remember them both for your sake."



Bean stared off into space. "I have a better idea. Let me tell you about them. And you tell your children. Will you do that? If you could promise me that, then I think that I could bear all this, because they wouldn't just disappear from memory when I die."



"Of course I'll do that, Bean, but you're talking as if your life were already over, and it's just beginning. Look at you, you're getting along, you'll have a man's height before long, you'll-"

He touched her lips, gently, to silence her. "I'll have no wife, Petra. No babies." "Why not? If you tell me you've decided to become a priest I'll kidnap you myself
and get you out of this Catholic country."

"I'm not human, Petra," Bean replied. "And my species dies with me." She laughed at his joke.
But as she looked into his eyes, she saw that it wasn't a joke at all. Whatever he meant by that, he really thought that it was true. Not human. But how could he think that? Of all the people Petra knew, who was more human than Bean?



"Let's go back home," Bean finally said, "before somebody comes along and shoots us just for loitering."



"Home," said Petra.



Bean only halfway understood. "Sorry it's not Armenia."



"No, I don't think Armenia is home either," she said. "And Battle School sure wasn't, nor Eros. This is home, though. I mean, Ribeirao Preto. But here, too. Because ... my family's here, of course, but. . ."



And then she realized what she was trying to say.



"It's because you're here. Because you're the one who went through it all with me. You're the one who knows what I'm talking about. What I'm remembering. Ender. That terrible day with Bonzo. And the day I fell asleep in the middle of a battle on Eros. You think you have shame." She laughed. "But it's OK to remember even that with you. Because you knew about that, and you still came to get me out."



"Took me long enough," said Bean.



They walked out of the cemetery toward the train station, holding hands because neither of them wanted to feel separate right now.

"I have an idea," said Petra. "What?"
"If you ever change your mind-you know, about marrying and having babieshang on to my address. Look me up."



Bean was silent for a long moment. "Ali," he finally said, "I get it. I rescued the princess, so now I can marry her if I want."



"That's the deal."



"Yeah, well, I notice you didn't mention it until after you heard my vow of celibacy." "I suppose that was perverse of me."
"Besides, it's a cheat. Aren't I supposed to get half the kingdom, too?" "I've got a better idea," she answered. "You can have it all." AFTERWORD
Just as Speaker for the Dead was a different kind of novel from Ender's Game, so also is Shadow of the Hegemon a different kind of book from Ender's Shadow. No longer are we in the close confines of Battle School or the asteroid Eros, fighting a war against insectoid aliens. Now, with Hegemon, we are on Earth, playing what amounts to a huge game of Risk-only you have to play politics and diplomacy as well in order to get power, hold onto it, and give yourself a place to land if you lose it.



Indeed, the game that this novel most resembles is the computer classic Romance of

the Three Kingdoms, which is itself based on a Chinese historical novel, thus affirming the ties between history, fiction, and gaming. While history responds to irresistible forces and conditions (pace the extraordinarily illuminating book Guns, Germs, and Steel, which should be required reading by everyone who writes history or historical fiction, just so they understand the ground rules), in the specifics, history happens as it happens for highly personal reasons. The reasons European civilization prevailed over indigenous civilizations of the Americas consist of the implacable laws of history; but the reason why it was Cortez and Pizarro who
prevailed over the Aztec and Inca empires by winning particular battles on particular days, instead of being cut down and destroyed as they might have been, had everything to do with their own character and the character and recent history of the emperors opposing them. And it happens that it is the novelist, not the historian, who has the freer hand at imagining what causes individual human beings to do the things they do.



Which is hardly a surprise. Human motivation cannot be documented, at least not with any kind of finality. After all, we rarely understand our own motivations, and so, even when we write down what we honestly believe to be our reasons for making the choices we make, our explanation is likely to be wrong or partly wrong or at
least incomplete. So even when a historian or biographer has a wealth of information at hand, in the end he still has to make that uncomfortable leap into the abyss of ignorance before he can declare why a person did the things he did. The French Revolution inexorably led to anarchy and then tyranny for comprehensible reasons, following predictable paths. But nothing could have predicted Napoleon himself, or even that a single dictator of such gifts would emerge.



Novelists who write about Great Leaders, however, too often fall into the opposite trap. Able to imagine personal motivations, the people who write novels rarely have the grounding in historical fact or the grasp of historical forces to set their plausible characters into an equally plausible society. Most such attempts are laughably wrong, even when written by people who have actually been involved in the society of movers and shakers, for even those caught up in the maelstrom of politics are rarely able to see through the trees well enough to comprehend the forest. (Besides, most political or military novels by political or military leaders tend to be self- serving and selfjustifying, which makes them almost as unreliable as books written by the ignorant.) How likely is it that someone who took part in the Clinton administration's immoral decision to launch unprovoked attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan in the late summer of 1998 would be able to write a novel in which the political exigencies that led to these criminal acts are accurately recounted? Anyone

in a position to know or guess the real interplay of human desires among the major players will also be so culpable that it will be impossible for him to tell the truth, even if he is honest enough to attempt it, simply because the people involved were so busy lying to themselves and to each other throughout the process that everyone involved is bound to be snow-blind.



In Shadow of the Hegemon, I have the advantage of writing a history that hasn't happened, because it is in the future. Not thirty million years in the future, as with my Homecoming books, or even three thousand years in the future, as with the trilogy of Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, but rather only a couple of centuries in the future, after nearly a century of international stasis caused by the Formic War. In the future history posited by Hegemon, nations and peoples of today are still recognizable, though the relative balance among them has changed. And I have both the perilous freedom and the solemn obligation to attempt to tell my characters' highly personal stories as they move (or are moved) amid the highest circles of power in the governing and military classes of the world.



If there is anything that can be called my "life study," it is precisely this subject area: great leaders and great forces shaping the interplay of nations and peoples throughout history. As a child, I would put myself to sleep at night imagining a map of the world as it existed in the late fifties, just as the great colonial empires were beginning to grant independence, one by one, to the colonies that had once made up those great swathes of British pink and French blue across Africa and southern Asia. I imagined all those colonies as free countries, and, choosing one of them or some other relatively small nation, I would imagine alliance, unifications, invasions, conquests, until all the world was united under one magnanimous, democratic government. Cincinnatus and George Washington, not Caesar or Napoleon, were my models. I read Machiavelli's The Prince and Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but I also read Mon-non scripture (most notably the Book of Mormon stories of the generals Gideon, Moroni, Helaman, and Gidgiddoni, and Doctrine and Covenants section 121) and the Old and New Testaments, all the while trying to imagine how one might govern well when law gives way to exigency, and the circumstances under which war becomes righteous.



I don't pretend that the imaginings and studies of my life have brought me to great answers, and you will find no such answers in Shadow of the Hegemon. But I do believe I understand something of the workings of the world of government, politics, and war, both at their best and at their worst. I have sought the borderline between

strength and ruthlessness, between ruthlessness and cruelty, and at the other extreme, between goodness and weakness, between weakness and betrayal. I have pondered how it is that some societies are able to get young men to kill and die with fervor trumping fear, and yet others seem to lose their will to survive or at least their will to do the things that make survival possible. And Shadow of the Hegemon and the two remaining books in this long tale of Bean, Petra, and Peter are my best attempt to use what I have learned in a tale in which great forces, large populations, and individuals of heroic if not always virtuous character combine to give shape to
an imaginary, but I hope believable, history.



I am crippled in this effort by the factor that real life is rarely plausible-we believe that people would or could do these things only because we have documentation. Fiction, lacking that documentation, dares not be half so implausible. On the other hand, we can do what history never can-we can assign motive to human behavior, which cannot be refuted by any witness or evidence. So, despite doing my utmost to be truthful about how history happens, in the end I must depend on the novelist's tools. Do you care about this person, or that one? Do you believe such a person would do the things I say they do, for the reasons I assign?



History, when told as epic, often has the thrilling grandeur of Dvorak or Smetana, Borodin or Mussorgsky, but historical fiction must also find the intimacies and dissonances of the delicate little piano pieces of Satie and Debussy. For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events. Tchaikowsky can carry me away, but I tire quickly of the large effect, which feels so hollow and false on the second hearing. Of Satie I never tire, for his music is endlessly surprising and yet perfectly satisfying. If I can bring off this novel in Tchaikowsky's terms, that is well and good; but if I can also give you moments of Satie, I am far happier, for that is the harder and, ultimately, more rewarding task.



Besides my lifelong study of history in general, two books particularly influenced me during the writing of Shadow of the Hegemon. When I saw Anna and the King, I became impatient with my own ignorance of real Thai history, and so found David K. Wyatt's Thailand: A Short History (Yale, 1982, 1984). Wyatt writes clearly and
convincingly, making the history of the Thai people both intelligible and fascinating. It is hard to imagine a nation that has been more lucky in the quality of its leaders as Thailand and its predecessor kingdoms, which managed to survive invasions from

every direction and European and Japanese ambitions in Southeast Asia, all the while maintaining its own national character and remaining, more than many kingdoms and oligarchies, responsive to the needs of the Thai people. (I followed Wyatt's lead in calling the pre-Siamese language and the people who spoke it, in lands from Laos to upper Burma and southern China, "Tai," reserving "Thai" for the modem language and kingdom that bear that name.)



My own country once had leaders comparable to Siam's Mongkut and
Chulalongkorn, and public servants as gifted and selfless as many of
Chulalongkorn's brothers and nephews, but unlike Thailand, America is now a nation in decline, and my people have little will to be well led. America's past and its resources make it a major player for the nonce, but nations of small resources but strong will can change the course of world history, as the Huns, the Mongols, and the Arabs have shown, sometimes to devastating effect, and as the people of the Ganges have shown far more pacifically.



Which brings me to the second book, Lawrence James's Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (Little, Brown, 1997). Modem Indian history reads like one long tragedy of good, or at least bold, intentions leading to disaster, and in Shadow of the Hegemon I consciously echoed some of the themes I found in James's book.



As always, I relied on others to help me with this book by reading the first draft of each chapter to give me some idea whether I had wrought what I intended. My wife, Kristine; my son Geoffrey; and Kathy H. Kidd and Erin and Phillip Absher were my most immediate readers, and I thank them for helping prevent many a moment of inclarity or ineffectiveness.



The person most influential in giving this book the shape it has, however, is the aforementioned Phillip Absher, for when he read the first version of a chapter in which Petra was rescued from Russian captivity and united with Bean, he commented that I had built up her kidnapping so much that it was rather disappointing how easily the problem turned out to be resolved. I had not realized how high I had raised expectations, but I could see that he was right-that her easy release was not only a breaking of an implied promise with the reader, but also implausible under the circumstances. So instead of her kidnapping being an early event in a very involved story, I realized that it could and should provide the

overarching structure of the entire novel, thus splitting what was to be one novel into two. As the story of Han Qing-jao took over Xenocide and caused it to become two books, so also the story of Petra took over this, Bean's second book, and caused there to be a third, Shadow of Death (which I may extend to the longer phrase from the Twenty-third Psalm, The Valley of the Shadow of Death; it would never do to become tied to a title too early). The book originally planned to be third will now be the fourth, Shadow of the Giant. All because Phillip felt a bit disappointed and, just
as importantly, said so, causing me to think again about the structure I had unconsciously created in subversion of my conscious plans.



I rarely write two novels at once, but I did this time, going back and forth between Shadow of the Hegemon and Sarah, my historical novel about the wife of Abraham (Shadow Mountain, 2000). The novels sustained each other in odd ways, each of them dealing with history during times of chaos and transformation-like the one the world is embarking upon at the time of this writing. In both stories, personal loyalties, ambitions, and passions sometimes shape the course of the history and sometimes surf upon history's wave, trying merely to stay just ahead of the breaking crest. May all who read these books find their own ways to do the same. It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.



As always, I have relied upon Kathleen Bellamy and Scott Allen to help keep communications open between me and my readers, and many who visited and took part in my online commun (http.//www.hatrack.com,     http.//www.frescopix.com, and http.//www.nauvoo.com) helped me, often in ways they did not realize.



Many writers produce their art from a maelstrom of domestic chaos and tragedy. I am fortunate enough to write from within an island of peace and love, created by my wife, Kristine, my children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, and Zina, and good and dear friends and family who surround us and enrich our lives with their good will, kind help, and happy company. Perhaps I would write better were my life more miserable, but I have no interest in performing the experiment.



In particular, though, I write this book for my second son, Charlie Ben, who wordlessly has given great gifts to all who know him. Within the small community of his family, of school friends at Gateway Education Center, and of church friends in the Greensboro Summit Ward, Charlie Ben has given and received much friendship and love without uttering a word, as he patiently endures his pain and

limitations, gladly receives the kindness of others, and generously shares his love and joy with all who care to receive it. Twisted by cerebral palsy, his body movements may look strange and disturbing to strangers, but to those willing to look more closely, a young man of beauty, humor, kindness, and joy can be found. May
we all learn to see past such outward signs, and show our true selves through all barriers, however opaque they seem. And Charlie, who will never hold this book in his own hands or read it with his own eyes, will nevertheless hear it read to him by loving friends and family members. So to you, Charlie, I say: I am proud of all you do with your life, and glad to be your father; though you deserved a better one, you have been generous enough to love the one you have.