espera..

TARGETS





From  Betterman%CroMagnon@HomeAddress.com  FREE  email!   Sign  up  a friend!]
To:             Humble%Assistant@HomeAddress.com  JESUS  loves  you! ChosenOnes.0rg]
Re:   Thanks for your help


Dear Anonymous Benefactor,


I may have been in prison but I wasn't biding under a rock. I know who you are, and I know what you've done. So when you offer to help me continue the research that  was interrupted  by my life sentence,  and imply that  you are responsible  far having my charges reduced and my sentence commuted, I must suspect an ulterior motive.


I think you plan to use my supposed rendezvous with these supposed people as a means of killing them. Sort of like Herod asking the Wise Men to tell him where the newborn king was, so be could go and worship him also.



From: Humble%Assistant@HomeAddress.com [Don't go home ALONE! LonelyHearts]
To:     Befterman%CroMagnon@HomeAddress.com [Your ADS get  seen!  Free
Email]
Re:   You have misjudged me



Dear Doctor,


You have misjudged me. I have no interest in anyone's death. I want you to help them make babies that don't have any of the father's gifts or problems. Make a dozen for them.


But along the way, if you happen to get any nice little embryos that do have the father's gifts, don't discard them, please. Keep them nice and safe. For me. For us.

There are people who would very much like to raise a liftle garden full of beans.



John Paul Wiggin had noticed some years ago that the whole childrearing thing wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. Supposedly somewhere there was such a thing as a normal child, but none of them had come anywhere near his house.


Not that he didn't love his kids. He did. More than they would ever know; more, he suspected, than he knew himself. After all, you never know how much you love somebody until the real test comes. Would you die for this person? Would you throw yourself on the grenade, step in front of the speeding car, keep a secret under torture, to save his life? Most people never know the answer to that question. And even those who do know are still not sure whether it was love or duty or self-respect or cultural conditioning or any number of other possible explanations.


John Paul Wiggin loved his kids. But either he didn't have enough of them, or he had too many. If he had more, then having two of them take off for some faraway colony from which they could never return in his lifetime, that might not have been so bad, because  there'd still be several  left at home for him to enjoy, to help, to admire as parents wanted to admire their children.


And if there had been one fewer If the government had not requisitioned a third child from them. If Andrew had never been born, had never been accepted into a program for which Peter was rejected, then perhaps Peter's pathological ambition might have stayed within normal bounds. Perhaps his envy and resentment, his need to prove himself worthy after all, would not have tainted his life, darkening even his brightest moments.


Of course, if Andrew hadn't been born, the world might now be honeycombed with Formic hives, and the human race nothing but a few ragged bands surviving in some hostile environment like Tierra del Fuego or Greenland or the Moon.


It wasn't the government requisition, either. Little known fact: Andrew had almost certainly been conceived before the requisition came. John Paul Wiggin wasn't all that good a Catholic, until he realized that the population control laws forbade him to be. Then, because he was a stubborn Pole or a rebellious American or simply because he was that peculiar mix of genes and memory called John Paul Wiggin, there was nothing more important to him than being a good Catholic, particularly when it came to disobeying the population laws.


It was the basis of his marriage with Theresa. She wasn't Catholic herself-

which showed that John Paul wasn't that strict about following all the rules-but she came from a big-family tradition and she agreed with him before they got married that they would have more than two children, no matter what it cost them.


In the end, it cost them nothing. No loss of job. No loss of prestige. In fact, they ended up greatly honored as the parents of the savior of the human race.


Only they would never get to see Valentine or Andrew get married, would never see their children. Would probably not live long enough to know when they arrived at their colony world.


And now they were mere fixtures attached to the life of the child they liked the least.


Though truth to tell, John Paul didn't dislike Peter as much as his mother did. Peter didn't get under his skin the way he irritated Theresa. Perhaps that was because John Paul was a good counterbalance  to Peter-John  Paul could be useful  to him. Where Peter kept a hundred things going at once, juggling all his projects and doing none of them perfectly, John Paul was a man who had to dot every I, cross every t. So without exactly telling anyone what his job was, John Paul kept close watch on everything  Peter  was  doing  and followed  through  on things  so they  actually  got done. Where Peter assumed that underlings would understand his purpose and adapt. John Paul knew that they would misunderstand  everything,  and spelled it out for them, followed through to make sure things happened just right.


Of course, in order to do this, John Paul had to pretend that he was acting as Peter's eyes and ears. Fortunately, the people he straightened out had no reason to go to Peter and explain the dumb things they had been doing before John Paul showed up with his questions, his checklists, his cheerful chats that didn't quite come right out and admit to being tutorials.


But what could John Paul do when the project Peter was advancing was so deeply dangerous and, yes, stupid that the last thing John Paul wanted to do was help him with it?


John Paul's position in this little community of Hegemoniacs did not allow him to obstruct what Peter was doing. He was a facilitator, not a bureaucrat; he cut the red tape, he didn't spin it out like a spider web.


In the past, the most obstructive thing John Paul could do was not to do

anything  at all. Without  him there, nudging, correcting,  things slowed down, and often a project died without his help.


But with Achilles, there was no chance of that. The Beast, as Theresa and John Paul called him, was as methodical as Peter wasn't. He seemed to leave nothing to chance. So if John Paul simply left him alone, he would accomplish everything he wanted.





to him.

“Peter, you're not in a position to see what the Beast is doing,” John Paul said



“Father, I know what I'm doing.”


“He's got time for everybody,” said John Paul. “He's friends with every clerk, every janitor, every secretary, every bureaucrat. People you breeze past with a wave or with nothing at all, he sits and chats with them, makes them feel important.”


“Yes, he's a charmer, all right.” “Peter-”
“It's not a popularity contest, Father.”


"No, it's a loyalty contest. You accomplish exactly as much as the people who serve you decide you'll accomplish,  and nothing more. They are your power, these public servants you employ, and he's winning their loyalty away from you.


“Superficially, perhaps,” said Peter.


“For most people, the superficial is all there is. They act on the feelings of the moment. They like him better than you.”


“There's always somebody that people like better,” said Peter with a vicious little smile.


John Paul restrained himself from making the obvious one-word retort, because it would devastate Peter The single crushing word would have been “yes.”


“Peter,” said John Paul, “when the Beast leaves here, who knows how many people he'll leave behind who like him well enough to slip him a bit of gossip now and then? Or a secret document?”

“Father, I appreciate your concern. And once again, I can only tell you that I
have things under control.”


“You seem to think that anything you don't know isn't worth knowing,” said
John Paul, not for the first time.


“And you seem to think that anything I'm doing is not being done well enough,” said Peter for at least the hundredth time.


That's how these discussions always went. John Paul did not push it farther than that-he  knew that if he became  too annoying,  if Peter felt too oppressed  by having his parents around, they'd be moved out of any position of influence.
That would be unbearable. It would mean losing the last of their children. “We really ought to have another child or two,” said Theresa one day. “I'm
still  young  enough,  and  we  always  meant  to  have  more  than  the  three  the
government allotted us.”


“Not likely,” said John Paul.


“Why not? Aren't you still a good Catholic, or did that last only as long as being a Catholic meant being a rebel?”


John Paul didn't like the implications of that, particularly because it might have some truth in it. “No, Theresa, darling. We can't have more children because they'd never let us keep them.”


“Who? The government doesn't care how many children we have now. They're all future taxpayers or baby makers or cannon fodder to them.”


“We're the parents of Ender Wiggin, of Demosthenes, of Locke. Our having another child would be international news. I feared it even before Andrew's battle companions were all kidnapped, but after that there was no doubt.”


“Do you seriously think people would assume that because our first three children were so-” “Darling.” said John Paul-knowing that she hated it when he called her darling because he couldn't keep the sarcasm out of the term, “they'd have the babies out of the cradle, that's how fast they'd strike. They'd be targets from the

moment of conception, just waiting for somebody to come along and turn them into puppets of one regime or another. And even if we were able to protect them, every moment  of their lives would be deformed  by the press of public curiosity.  If we thought Peter was messed up by being in Andrew's shadow, think what it would be like for them.”


“It might be easier for them,” said Theresa. “They would never remember not being in the shadow of their brothers.”


“That only makes it worse,” said John Paul. “They'll have no idea of who they are, apart from being somebody's sib.”[?]


“It was just a thought.”


“I wish we could do it,” said John Paul. It was easy to be generous after she had given in.


“I just... miss having children around.”


"So do I. And if I thought they could be children...


“None of our kids was ever really a child,” said Theresa sadly. “Never really carefree.”


John Paul laughed. “The only people who think children are carefree are the ones who've forgotten their own childhood.”


Theresa thought for a moment and then laughed. “You're right. Everything is either heaven on earth or the end of the world.”


That conversation had been back in Greensboro, after Peter went public with his real identity and before he was given the nearly empty title of Hegemon. They rarely referred back to it.


But the idea was looking more attractive now. There were days when John Paul wanted to go home, sweep Theresa into his arms and say, “Darling”-and he wouldn't be even the tiniest bit sarcastic-“I have our tickets to space. We're joining a colony. We're leaving this world and all its cares behind, and we'll make new babies up in space where they can't save the world or take it over, either”


Then Theresa did this business with trying to get into Achilles's room and

John Paul honestly wondered  if the stress she was under had affected her mental processes.


Precisely because he was so concerned about what she did, he deliberately did not discuss it with her for a couple of days, waiting to see if she brought it up.


She did not. But he didn't really expect her to.


When he judged that the first blush of embarrassment was over and she could discuss things without trying to protect herself, he broached the subject over dessert one night.


“So you want to be a housekeeper,” he said.





grin.

“I wondered how long it would take you to bring that up,” said Theresa with a



“And I wondered how long before you would,” said John Paul- with a grin as laced with irony as her own.


“Now you'll never know,” she said.


“I think,” said John Paul, “that you were planning to kill him.”





controller”

Theresa  laughed.  “Oh.  definitely,  I  was  under  assignment  from  my



“I assumed as much.”


“I was joking,” said Theresa at once.


“I'm not. Was it something Graff said? Or just a spy novel?” “I don't read spy novels.”
“I know.”


“It wasn't an assignment,” said Theresa. “But yes, he did put the thought into my mind. That the best thing for everybody would be for the Beast not to leave Brazil alive.”

“Actually, I don't think that's so,” said John Paul.


“Why not? Surely you don't think he has any value to the world.”


“He brought everybody out of hiding, didn't he'?” said John Paul. “Everybody showed their true colors.”


“Not everybody. Not yet.”


“Things are out in the open. The world is divided into camps. The ambitions are exposed. The traitors are revealed.”


“So the job is done,” said Theresa, “and there's no more use for him.” “I never really thought of you as a murderer”
“I'm not.”


“But you had a plan, right?”


“I was testing to see if any plan was possible-if I could get into his room. The answer was no.”


“Ah. So the objective remains the same. Only the method has been changed.” “I probably won't do it,” said Theresa.
“I wonder how many assassins  have told themselves  that-right  up to the moment  when they fired the gun or plunged  in the knife or served  the poisoned dates?”


“You can stop teasing me now,” said Theresa. "I don't care about politics or the repercussions. If killing the Beast cost Peter the Hegemony, I wouldn't care. I'm just not going to sit back and watch the Beast devour my son.


“But there's a better way,” said John Paul. “Besides killing him?”
“To get him away from where he can kill Peter That's our real goal, isn't it?

Not to save the world from the Beast, but to save Peter. If we kill Achilles-” “I don't recall inviting you into my evil conspiracy.”
“Then yes. the Beast is dead, but so is Peter's credibility as Hegemon. He's forever after as tainted as Macbeth.”


“I know, I know.”


“What we need is to taint the Beast, not Peter.” “Killing is more final.”
“Killing makes a martyr, a legend, a victim. Killing gives you St. Thomas a
Becket. The Canterbury pilgrims.” “So what's your better plan?”
“We get the Beast to try to kill us.” Theresa looked at him dumbfounded.
“We don't let him succeed,” said John Paul.


“And I thought Peter was the one who loved brinksmanship. Good heavens. Johnny P, you've just explained where his madness comes from. How in the world can you arrange for someone to try to kill you in such a public way that it becomes discovered-and at the same time be absolutely sure that he won't succeed.”


“We don't actually let him fire a bullet,” said John Paul, a little impatiently. “All we do is gather evidence that he's preparing the attempt. Peter will have no choice but to send him away-and then we can make sure people know why. I may be resented a bit here, but people really like you. They won't like the Beast after he plotted to harm their 'Doce Teresa.”


“But nobody likes you,” said Theresa. “What if it's you he goes for first?” “Whichever,” said John Paul.
“And how will we know what he's plotting?”

“Because  I put keyboard-reading  programs into all the computers  on the system and software to analyze his actions and give me reports on everything  he does.  There's  no way for him  to make  a plan without  emailing  somebody  about something.”


“I can think of a hundred ways, one of which is-he does it himself, without telling anybody.”


“He'll have to look up our schedule then, won't he? Or something. Something that will be suspicious. Something that I can show to Peter and force him to get rid of the boy.”


“So the way to shoot down the Beast is to paint big targets on our own foreheads.” said Theresa.


“Isn't that a marvelous plan?” said John Paul, laughing at the absurdity of it. “But I can't think of a better one. And it's nowhere near as bad as yours. Do you actually believe you could kill somebody?”


“Mother bear protects the cub,” said Theresa.


“Are you with me? Promise not to slip a fatal laxative into his soup?”


“I'll see what your plan is, when you actually come up with one that sounds like it might succeed.”


“We'll  get the beast  thrown  out of here,”  said John Paul. “One  way or another” That was the plan-which, John Paul knew, was no plan at all, since Theresa hadn't actually promised him she'd give up on her plot to become a killer-by-stealth.


The trouble was that when he accessed the programs that were monitoring
Achilles's computer use, the report said, “No computer use.”


This was absurd. John Paul knew the boy had used a computer because he had received a few messages himself-innocent inquiries, but they bore the screen name that Peter had given to the Beast.


But he couldn't ask anybody outright to help him figure out why his spy programs weren't catching Achilles's sign-ons and reading his keystrokes. The word would get around, and then John Paul wouldn't seem quite such an innocent victim

when Achilles's plot-whatever it was-came to light.


Even when he actually saw Achilles with his own eyes, logging in and typing away on a message, the report that night-which affirmed that the keystroke monitor was at work on that very machine- still showed no activity from Achilles.


John Paul thought about this for a good long white, trying to imagine how
Achilles could have circumvented his software without logging on at least once.


Until it finally dawned on him to ask his software a different question. “List all log-ons from that computer today,” he typed into his desk. After a few moments, the report came up: “No log-ons.”
No log-ons from any of the nearby computers. No log-ons from any of the faraway  computers.  No  log-ons,  apparently,  in  the  entire  Hegemony  computer system.


And since people were logging on all the time, including John Paul himself, this result was impossible.


He found Peter in a meeting with Ferreira, the Brazilian computer expert who was in charge of system  security.  “I'm sorry to interrupt,”  he said, “but it's even better to tell you this when both of you are together.”


Peter was irritated, but answered politely enough. “Go ahead.”


John Paul had tried to think of some benign explanation for his having tried to  mount  a  spy  operation throughout the  Hegemony computer network, but  he couldn't. So he told the truth, that he was trying to spy on Achilles-but said nothing about what he intended to do with the information.


By the time he was done, Peter and Ferreira were laughing- bitterly, ironically, but laughing.


“What's funny?”


“Father,” said Peter. “Didn't it occur to you that we had software on the system doing exactly the same job?”

“Which software did you use?” asked Ferreira.


John Paul told him and Ferreira sighed. “Ordinarily my software would have detected his and wiped it out.” he said. “But your father has a very privileged access to the net. So privileged that my snoopware had to let it by.”


“But didn't your software at least tell you?” asked Peter, annoyed.


“His  is  interrupt-driven,  mine  is  native  in the  operating  system,”  said Ferreira.  “Once his snoopware  got past the initial  barrier  and was resident  in the system, there was nothing to report. Both programs do the same job, just at different times in the machine's cycle. They read the keypress and pass the information on to the operating system, which passes it on to the program. They also pass it on to their own keystroke log. But both programs clear the buffer so that the keystroke doesn't get read twice.”


Peter and John Paul both made the same gesture-hands  to the forehead, covering the eyes. They understood at once, of course.


Keystrokes came in and got processed by Ferreira's snoopware or by John Paul's-but  never by both. So both keystroke logs would show nothing but random letters, none of which would amount to anything meaningful. None of which would ever look like a log-on- even though there were log-ons all over the system all the time.


“Can we combine the logs?” asked John Paul. “We have all the keystrokes, after all.”


“We have the alphabet, too,” said Ferreira, “and if we just find the right order to arrange them in, those letters will spell out everything that was ever written.”


“It's not as bad as that,” said Peter At least the letters are in order. It shouldn't be that hard to meld them together in a way that makes sense."


"But we have to meld all of them in order to find Achilles's logons.


“Write a program,” said Peter “One that will find everything that might be a log-on by him, and then you can work on the material immediately following those possibles.”

“Write a program,” murmured Ferreira.


“Or I will,” said Peter. “I don't have anything else to do.”
That sarcasm doesn't make people love you, Peter, said John Paul silently. Then again, there was no chancc. given Peter's parents, that such sarcasm
would not come readily to his lips. “I'll sort it out,” said Ferreira. “I'm sorry,” said John Paul.
Ferreira only sighed. “Didn't it at least cross your mind that we would have software already in place to do the same job?”


“You mean you had snoopware that would give me regular reports on what Achilles was writing?” asked John Paul. Oops. Peter's not the only sarcastic one. But then, I'm not trying to unite the world.


“There's no reason for you to know,” said Peter.


Time to bite the bullet. “I think Achilles is planning to kill your mother.” “Father,” said Peter impatiently. “He doesn't even know her.”
“Do you think there's any chance that he didn't hear that she tried to get into his room?”


“But ... kill her?” asked Ferreira.


“Achilles doesn't do things by half-measures,” said John Paul. “And nobody is more loyal to Peter than she is.”


“Not even you, Father?” asked Peter sweetly.





her.”

“She doesn't see your faults,” lied John Paul. “Her motherly instincts blind



“But you have no such handicap.”

“Not being your mother,” said John Paul.


“My snoopware should have caught this anyway,” said Ferreira. “I blame only myself. The system shouldn't have had that kind of back door”


“Systems always do,” said John Paul.


After Ferreira left, Peter said a few cold words. “I know how to keep Mother completely  safe,”  he said. "Take  her away from  here. Go to a colony  world.  Go somewhere and do something, but stop trying to protect me.


“Protect you?”


“Do you think I'm so stupid that I'll believe this cockamamy story about
Achilles wanting to kill Mother?”


“Ah. You're the only person here worth killing.”


“I'm  the  only  one  whose  death  would  remove  a  major  obstacle  from
Achilles's path.”


John Paul could only shake his head. “Who else, then?” Peter demanded.
“Nobody else, Peter,” said John Paul. “Not a soul. Everybody's safe, because, after all, Achilles has shown himself to be a perfectly rational boy who would never, ever kill somebody without a perfectly rational purpose in view.”


“Well, yes, of course, he's psychotic,” said Peter “I didn't mean he wasn't psychotic.”


“So many psychotics, so few really effective drugs,” said John Paul as he left the room. That night when he told Theresa, she groaned.


“So he's been getting a free ride.”


“We'll put it all together soon enough, I'm sure,” said John Paul.


“No, Johnny P. We aren't sure that it will be soon enough. For all we know,

it's already too late.”

Card, Orson Scott - Ender 07 - Shadow Puppets (v2.1)

CHAPTER NINE


CONCEPTION


To:   Stone%Cold@IComeAnon.org


From: Third%Party@MysteriousEast.org
Re:   Definitely not vichyssoise


I don't know who you are, don't know what this message means, He is in China. I
was a tourist there, walking along
a public sidewalk. He gave me a folded slip of paper and asked me to post a message to this remailing site, with the subject shown above. So here it is:


“He thinks I told him where Caligulo would be but I did not.”


I hope this means something to you and that you get it, because be seemed very intense about this. As for me, you don't know who am, neither does he, and that's the way I like it.



“It's not the same city,” said Bean.


“Well, of course not,” said Petra. “You're taller”


It was Bean's first return to Rotterdam since he left as a very young child to go into space and learn to be a soldier. In all his wanderings  with Sister Carlotta after  the war, she never  once suggested  coming  here, and he never  thought  of it himself.


But this was where Volescu was-he had had the chutzpah[?] to reestablish himself in the city where he had been arrested. Now, of course, he was not calling his work research-even though it had been illegal for many years. other scientists had pursued it quietly and when, after the war, they were able to publish again, they left all of Volescu's achievements in the dust.


So his offices, in an old but lovely building in the heart of the city, were modestly labeled, in Common, REPRODUCTIVE SAFETY SERVICE S.


“Safety,” said Petra. “An odd name, considering how many babies he killed.”

“Not babies,” said Bean mildly. “Illegal experiments were terminated, but no actual legal babies were ever involved.”


“That really stops your hogs, doesn't it,” she said.


“You watch too many vids. You're beginning to pick up American slang.”





world?”

“What else can I do, with you spending all your time online, saving the



“I'm about to meet my maker,” said Bean. “And you're complaining to me about my spending too much time on pure altruism.”


“He's not your maker,” said Petra.


“Who is, then? My biological parents? They made Nikolai. I was leftovers in the fridge.”


“I was referring to God,” said Petra.


“I know you were,” said Bean, smiling. “Me, I can't help but think that I exist because God blinked. If he'd been paying attention, I could never have happened.”


“Don't goad me about religion,” said Petra. “I won't play.” “You started it,” said Bean.
“I'm not Sister Carlotta.”


“I couldn't have married you if you were. Was that your choice? Me or the nunnery?”


Petra laughed and gave him a little shove. But it wasn't much of a shove. Mostly it was just an excuse to touch him. To prove to herself that he was hers, that she could touch him when she liked, and it was all right. Even with God, since they were legally married now. A necessity before in vitro fertilization, so that there could be no question about paternity or joint ownership of the embryos.


A necessity, but also what she wanted.

When had she started wanting this? In Battle School, if anyone had asked her whom  she  would  eventually  marry,  she  would  have  said,  “A fool,  since  no one smarter would have me,” but if pressed, and if she trusted her inquisitor not to blab, she would have said, “Dink Meeker.” He was her closest friend in Battle School.


Dink was even Dutch. He wasn't in the Netherlands these days, however The Netherlands  had  no military.  Dink  had  been  lent  to England,  rather  like  a prize football  player, and he was cooperating  in joint Anglo-American  planning,  which was such a waste of his talent, since on neither side of the Atlantic was there the slightest desire to get involved in the turmoil that was rocking the rest of the world.


She didn't  even regret  his absence.  She still  cared about  him, had fond memories of him-even, perhaps, loved him in a vaguely-morethan-platonic  way. But after Battle School, where he had been a brave rebel challenging the system, refusing to command  an army in the battle  room and joining  her in helping  Ender  in his struggle against the teachers-after  Battle School, they had worked together almost continuously,  and perhaps came to know each other too well. The rebel pose was gone, and he stood revealed as a brilliant but cocky commander. And when she was shamed in front of Dink, when she was overcome  by fatigue  during a game that turned out to be real, it became a barrier between her and the others, but it was an unvaultable wall between her and fink.


Even when Ender's jeesh was kidnapped and confined together in Russia, she and fink bantered with each other just like old times, but she felt no spark.


Through all that time, she would have laughed if anyone suggested that she would fall in love with Bean, and a scant three years later would be married to him. Because if Dink had been the most likely candidate for her heart in Battle School, Bean had to be the least likely. She had helped him a bit, yes, as she had helped Ender when he first started out, but it was a patronizing kind of help, giving a hand up to an underdog.


In Command School, she had come to respect Bean, to see something of his struggle, how he never did anything to win the approval of others, but always gave whatever it took to help his friends. She came to understand him as one of the most deeply altruistic and loyal people she had ever seen-even though he did not see either of these traits in himself, but always found some reason why everything he did was entirely for his own benefit.


When Bean was the only one not kidnapped, she knew at once that he would

try anything  to save  them.  The others  talked  about  trying  to contact  him  on the outside, but gave up at once when they heard that he had been killed. Petra never gave up on him. She knew that Achilles could not possibly have killed him so easily. She knew that he would find a way to set her free.


And he had done it.


She didn't love him because he had saved her She loved him because, during all her months in captivity, constantly having to bear Achilles's looming presence with his leering threat  of death entwined  with his lust to own her, Bean was her dream of freedom. When she imagined life outside of captivity, she kept thinking of it as life with him. Not as man and wife, but simply: When I'm free, then we'll find some way to fight Achilles. We. We'll. And the “we” was always her and Bean.


Then she learned about his genetic difference. About the death that awaited him from overgrowing his body's ability to nurture itself. And she knew at once that she  wanted  to  bear  his  children.  Not  because  she  wanted  to  have  children  who suffered from some freakish affliction that made them brilliant ephemera, butterflies catching the sunlight only for a single day, but because she did not want Bean's life to leave no child behind. She could not bear to lose him, and desperately  wanted something of him to stay with her when he was gone.


She could never explain this to him. She could hardly explain it to herself.


But somehow things had come together better than she hoped. Her gambit of getting him to see Anton had persuaded him far more quickly than she had thought would be possible.


It led her to believe that he, too, without even realizing it, had come to love her in return. That just as she wanted him to live on in his children, he now wanted her to be the mother who cared for them after he died.


If that wasn't love, it would do.


They married in Spain, with Anton and his new bride looking on. It had been dangerous to stay there as long as they did, though they tried to take the curse off it by leaving frequently with all their bags and then returning to stay in a different town  each  time.  Their  favorite  city  was  Barcelona,  which  was  a  fairyland  of buildings that looked as if they had all been designed by Gaudi-or, perhaps, had sprung from Gaudi's dreams. They were married in the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia. it was one of the few genuine Gaudis still standing, and the name made it

the perfect place for a wedding. Of course the “sagrada familia” referred officially to the sacred family of Jesus. But that didn't mean it couldn't also apply to all families. Besides, weren't her children going to be immaculately conceived?


The honeymoon, such as it was-a week together, island-hopping through the Balearics, enjoying the Mediterranean Sea and the African breezes-was still a week longer than she had hoped for. After knowing Bean's character about as well as one person ever gets to know another person, Petra had been rather shy about getting to know his body, and letting him know hers. But here Darwin helped them, for the passions that made species survive helped them to forgive each other's awkwardness and foolishness and ignorance and hunger.


She was already taking pills to regulate  her ovulation  and more pills to stimulate as many eggs as possible to come to maturity. There was no possibility of their conceiving a baby naturally before they began the in vitro fertilization process. But she wished for it all the same, and twice she woke from dreams  in which a kindly doctor told them, “I'm sorry, I can't implant embryos, because you're already pregnant.”
But she reffised to let it trouble her. She would have his baby soon enough. Now they were here in Rotterdam, getting down to business. Looking, not for
the kindly doctor of her dream, but for the mass murderer who only spared Bean's
life by accident to provide them with a child who would not die as a giant by the age of twenty.


“If we wait long enough,” said Bean, “they'll close the office.”


“No,”  said  Petra.  “Volescu  will  wait  all  night  to  see  you. You're  his experiment that succeeded despite his cowardice.”


“I thought it was my success, not his.”


She pressed herself against his arm. “It was my success,” she said. “Yours? How?”
“It must have been. I'm the one who ended up with all the prizes.”


“If you had ever said things like that in Battle School, you would have been

the laughingstock of all the armies.”


“That's because  the armies were all composed  of prepubescent  children. Grownups don't think such things are embarrassing.”


“Actually,  they  do,”  said  Bean.  “There's  only  this  brief  window  of adolescence where extravagantly romantic remarks are taken for poetry.”


“Such is the power of hormones that we absolutely understand the biological causes of our feelings, and yet we still feel them.”


“Let's not go inside,” said Bean. “Let's go back to the inn and have some more feelings.”


She kissed him. “Let's go inside and make a baby.”


“Try for a baby,” said Bean. “Because I won't let you have one in which
Anton's Key is turned.”


“I know,” she said.


“And  I have  your  promise  that  embryos  with Anton's  Key  will  all  be discarded.”


“Of course,” she said. That satisfied him, though she was sure that he would notice that she had never actually said the words. Maybe he did, unconsciously, and that was why he kept asking.


It was hypocritical and dishonest of her, of course, and she almost felt bad about it sometimes, but what happened after he died would be none of his business.


“All right then,” he said.


“All right then,” she answered. "Time to go meet the baby killer,


“I don't suppose we should call him that to his face, though, right?” “Since when are you the one who worries about good manners?”


Volescu was a weasel, just as Petra knew he would be. He was all business,

playing the role of Mr. Scientist, but Petra knew well what lay behind the mask. She could see the way he couldn't keep his eyes off Bean, the mental measurements he was making. She wanted to make some snide remark about how prison seemed to have done him good, he was carrying some extra weight, needed to walk that off... but they were  here to have  the man choose  them  a baby, and it would serve  no purpose to irritate him.


“I couldn't believe I was going to meet you,” said Volescu. “I knew from that nun who visited me that one of you had lived, and I was glad. I was already in prison by then, the very thing that destroying the evidence had been designed to prevent. So I didn't need to destroy it after all. I wished I hadn't. Then here she comes and tells me the lost one lived. It was the one ray of hope in a long night of despair. And here you are.”


Again he eyed Bean from head to toe.


“Yes,” said Bean, “here I am, and very tall for my age, too, as you seem to keep trying to verify.”


“I'm sorry,” said Volescu. “I know that other business has brought you here. Very important business.”


“You're  sure,”  said Bean,  “that  your  test  for Anton's  Key is absolutely accurate and nondestructive?”


“You exist, don't you? You are what you are, yes? We would not have kept any in which the gene did not take. We had a safe, reliable test.”


“Every one of the cloned embryos was brought to life.” said Bean. “It worked in every one of them?”


“I was very good with planter viruses in those days. A skill that even now isn't much called for in procedures with humans, since alterations are still illegal.” He chuckled, because everyone knew that there was a lively business in tailored human babies in various places around the world, and that skill in gene alteration was in more demand than ever. That was almost certainly Volescu's real business, and the Netherlands was one of the safest places to practice it.


But as Petra listened to him, she became more and more uneasy. Volescu was lying about something. The change in his manner had been slight, but after spending

months observing every tiny nuance in Achilles's demeanor, simply as a matter of survival, she had turned herself into a very precise observer  of other people. The signs of deception were there. Energized speech, overly rhythmic, too jovial. Eyes that kept darting away from theirs. Hands that wouldn't stop touching his coat, his pencil.


What would he be lying about?


It was obvious, once she thought about it.


There was no test. Back when he created Bean, Volescu had simply introduced the planter virus that was supposed to alter all the cells of the embryos, and then waited to see if any embryos lived, and which of the survivors had been successfully  altered.  It  happened  that  they  all  survived.  But  not  all  of  them necessarily had Anton's Key.
Maybe that was why, of all the nearly two dozen babies, only Bean escaped. Maybe Bean was the only one in whom the alteration was successful. The
only one with Anton's Key. The only one who was so preternaturally intelligent that
he was able, at one year of age, to realize there was danger, climb out of his bassinet, get himself inside a toilet tank, and actually stay alive there until the danger passed.


That had to be Volescu's lie. Maybe he had developed a test since then, but that was unlikely. Why would he imagine he'd need it? But he said that he had such a test so he could... could do what?


Start  his experiment  again. Take their  leftover  embryos,  and instead  of discarding the ones with Anton's Key, he'd keep them all and raise them and study them. This time it wouldn't  be just one out of two dozen who had the enhanced intelligence and the shortened lifespan. This time, the genetic odds suggested a fifty- fifty distribution of Anton's Key among the embryos.


So now Petra had a decision to make. If she said out loud what she was so certain of in her mind, Bean would probably realize she was right and the entire deal would be off. If Volescu had no way to test, it was certain nobody else did. Bean would refuse to have children at all.


So if she was to have Bean's child, Volescu had to be the one to do it, not because he had a test for Anton's Key, but because Bean believed he did.

But what about the other embryos? They would be her children, too, growing up as the slaves, the experimental  subjects of a man like this, completely without morals.


“Of  course  you  know,”  said  Petra,  “that  you  won't  do  the  actual implantation.”


Since Bean had never heard this wrinlde in their plans, he was no doubt surprised-but, being Bean, he showed nothing, merely smiled a bit to show that she was speaking for both of them. Such trust. She didn't even feel guilty that he trusted her so much at a moment when she was working so hard to deceive him. She may not be doing what he thought that he wanted, but she knew she was doing what he really desired, deep down in his genes.


Volescu showed surprise, however. “But... what do you mean?”


“Forgive  me,” said Petra, “but we will stay with you through the entire fertilization  process, and we will watch as every fertilized embryo is taken to the Women's Hospital. where they will be under hospital security until the implantation takes place.”


Volescu's face reddened. “What do you accuse me of?”


“Of being the man you have already proven yourself to be.” “Many years ago, and I paid my debt.”
Bean understood now-enough, at least, to join in, his tone of voice as light and cheerful as Petra's. “We have no doubt of that, but of course we want to make sure we don't have any of our little embryos with Anton's Key waking up to some unpleasant surprises in a room full of children, as I did once.”


Volescu rose to his feet. “This interview is over.”


Petra's heart sank. She shouldn't have said anything at all. Now there would be no implantation and Bean would discover...


“So we proceed to extract the eggs?” asked Bean. “The time is right, I
believe. That's why we made the appointment for this day.”

Volescu looked at him sharply. “After you insulted me?”


“Come now, Doctor,” said Bean. “You take the eggs from her, and then I make my donation. That's how salmon do it. It's really quite natural. Though I'd like to skip the swim upstream, if I can.”


Volescu eyed him for a long moment, then smiled his tight little smile. “My little half-nephew Julian has such a sense of humor.”


Petra waited, hardly wanting to breathe, definitely  not wishing to speak, though a thousand words raced through her head.


“All right, yes, of course you can protect the fertilized embryos however you want. I understand your... lack of trust. Even though I know it is misplaced.”


“Then while you and Petra do whatever it is you're going to do,” said Bean, “I'll call for a couple of couriers from the fertility center at Women's Hospital to come and await the embryos and take them to be frozen.”


“It will be hours before we reach that stage,” said Volescu.


“We can afford to pay for their time,” said Petra. “And we don't want any chance of slipups or delays.”


“I will  have  to have  access  to the embryos  again  for several  hours, of course,” said Volescu. “In order to separate them and test them.”


“In our presence,” said Petra. “And the fertility specialist who is going to implant the first one.”


“Of course,” said Volescu with a tight smile. “I will sort them out for you, and discard the-”


“We will discard and destroy any that have Anton's Key,” said Bean. “That goes without saying,” said Volescu stiffly.
He hates these rules we've sprung on him, thought Petra. She could see it in his eyes, despite the calm demeanor. He's furious. He's even... embarrassed, yes. Well, since that's probably as close as he's ever come to feeling shame, it's good for him.



While Petra was examined by the staff doctor who would do the implantation, Bean saw to hiring a security service. A guard would be on duty at the embryo  “nursery,”  as the  hospital  staff  charmingly  called  it, all  day,  every  day. “Since you're the one who first started being paranoid,” Bean told Petra, “I have no choice but to outparanoid you.”


It was a reliet actually. During the days before the embryos were ready for implantation, while Volescu was no doubt trying frantically to devise some nondestructive procedure that he could pretend was a genetic test, Petra was glad not to have to stay in the hospital personally watching over the embryos the whole time.


It gave her a chance to explore the city of Bean's childhood. Bean, however, seemed determined to visit only the tourist sites and then get back to his computer She knew that it made him nervous to stay in one city for so long, especially because for the first time, their whereabouts were known to another person whom they did not trust. It was doubtful Volescu knew any of their enemies. But Bean insisted on changing hotels every day, and walking blocks from their hotel in order to hail a taxi, so that no enemy could set an easy trap for them.


He was evading more than his enemies, though. He was also evading his past in  this  city.  She  scanned  a  city  map  and  found  the  area  that  Bean  was  clearly avoiding. And the next morning, after Bean had chosen the first cab of the day, she leaned forward and gave the taxi driver directions.


It took Bean only a few moments to realize where the cab was going. She saw him  tense  up.  But  he  did  not  refuse  to  go  or  even  complain  about  her  having compelled him. How could he? It would be an admission that he was avoiding the places he had known as a child. A confession of pain and fear.


She was not going to let him pass the day in silence, however “I remember the stories you've told me,” she said to him, gently. “There aren't many of them, but still I wanted to see for myself. I hope it's not too painful for you. But even if it is, I hope you'll bear it. Because someday I'll want to tell our children about their father. And how can I tell the stories if I don't know where they took place?”


After the briefest pause, Bean nodded.


They left the cab and he took her through the streets of his childhood, which

had been old and shabby even then. “It's changed very little,” said Bean. “Really just the one difference. There aren't thousands of abandoned children everywhere. Apparently somebody found the budget to deal with the orphans.”


She kept asking questions, paying close attention to the answers, and finally he understood how serious she was, how much it meant to her Bean began taking her off the main streets. “I lived in the alleys,” he explained. “In the shadows. Like a vulture, waiting for things to die. I had to watch for scraps that other children didn't see. Things discarded at night. Spills from garbage bins. Anything that might have a few calories in it.”


He walked up to one dumpster and laid his hand against it. “This one,” he said. “This one saved my life. There was a restaurant then, where that music shop is. I think the restaurant employee who dumped their garbage knew I was lurking. He always took out most of the cooking garbage in the late afternoon, in daylight. The older kids took everything. And then the scraps from the night's meals, those got dumped in the morning, in daylight again, and the other kids got that, too. But he usually came outside once in the darkness. To smoke right here by the garbage bin. And after his smoke, in the darkness, there'd be a scrap of something, right here.”


Bean put his hand on a narrow shelf formed by the frame that allowed the garbage truck to lift the bin.


“Such a tiny dinner table,” said Petra.


“I think he must have been a survivor of the street himself,”  said Bean, “because it was never something so large as to attract attention. It was always something I could slip into my mouth all at once, so no one ever saw me holding food in my hand. I would have died without him. It was only a couple of months and then he stopped- probably lost his job or moved on to something else-and I have no idea who he was. But it kept me alive.”


“What a lovely thing, to think such a person could have come out of the streets,” said Petra.


“Well, yes, now I see that,” said Bean. “But at the time I didn't think of that sort of thing at all. I was ... focused. I knew he was doing it deliberately, but I didn't bother to imagine why, except to eliminate the possibility that it was a trap, or that he had drugged it or poisoned it somehow.”


“How did you eliminate that possibility?”

“I ate the first thing he put there and I didn't die, and I didn't keel over and then wake up in a child whorehouse somewhere.”


“They had such places?”


“There were rumors that that's what happened to children who disappeared from the street. Along with the rumors that they were cooked into spicy stews in the immigrants' section of town. Those I don't believe.”


She wrapped her arms around his chest. “Oh, Bean, what a hellish place.” “Achilles came from here, too,” he said.
“He was never as small as you were.”


“But he was crippled. That bad leg. He had to be smart to stay alive. He had to keep everyone  else from  crushing  him for no better  reason  than because  they could. Maybe his thing about having to eliminate anyone who sees his helplessness- maybe that was a survival mechanism for him, under these circumstances.”


“You're such a Christian,” said Petra. “So full of charity.”


“Speaking of which,” said Bean. “I assume you're going to raise our child
Armenian Catholic, right?”


“It would make Sister Carlotta happy, don't you think?”


“She was happy no matter what I did,” said Bean. "God made her happy. She's happy now, if she's anything at all. She was a happy person.


“You make her sound-what?-mentally deficient?”


“Yes. She was incapable of holding on to malice. A serious defect.”


“I wonder if there's a genetic test for it,” said Petra. Then she regretted it immediately. The last thing she wanted was for Bean to think too much about genetic tests, and realize what seemed so obvious to her, that Volescu had no test.


They visited many other places, and more and more of them made him tell

her little stories. Here's where Poke used to hide a stash of food to reward kids who did well. Here's where Sister Carlotta first sat down with us to teach us to read. This was our best sleeping place during the winter, until some bigger kids found us and drove us out.


“Here's where Poke stood over Achilles with a cinderblock in her hands,”
said Bean, “ready to dash his brains out.” “If only she had,” said Petra.
“She was too good a person,” said Bean. “She couldn't imagine the evil that might be in him. I didn't, either, until I saw him lying there, what was in his eyes when he looked up at that cinderblock. I've never seen so much hate. That was all-no fear. I saw her death in his eyes right then. I told her she had to do it. Had to kill him. She couldn't. But it happened just the way I warned her. If you let him live, he'll kill you, I said, and he did.”


“Where was it?” asked Petra. “The place where Achilles killed her? Can you take me there?”


He thought about it for a few moments, then walked her to the waterfront among the docks. They found a clear place where they could see between the boats and ships and barges out to where the great Rhine swept past on its way to the North Sea.


“What a powerful place,” said Petra. “What do you mean?”
“It just-the river, so strong. And yet human beings were able to build this along its banks. This harbor Nature is strong but the human mind is stronger”


“Except when it isn't,” said Bean.


“He gave her body to the river, didn't he?” "He dumped her into the water, yes.
“But the way Achilles saw what he did. Giving her to the water Maybe he romanticized it.”

“He strangled her,” said Bean. “I don't care what he thought while he did it, or afterward. He kissed her and then he strangled her.”


“You didn't see the murder, I hope!” said Petra. It would be too terrible if
Bean bad been carrying such an image in his mind all these years.





meant.”

“I saw the kiss,” said Bean. “I was too selfish and stupid to see what it



Petra remembered her own kiss from Achilles, and shuddered. “You thought what anyone  would have thought,”  said Petra. “You thought  his kiss meant  what mine does.” And she kissed him.


He kissed her back. Hungrily.


But when the kiss ended, his face grew wistful again. “I would undo everything, all that I've done with my life since then,” said Bean, “if I could only go back and undo that one moment.”


“What, you think you could have fought him? Have you forgotten how small you were then?”


“If I'd been there, if he'd known I was watching, he wouldn't have done it. Achilles never risks discovery if he can help it.”


“Or he might have killed you, too.”


“He couldn't kill us both at once. Not with that limp leg. Whichever one he went for, the other would scream bloody murder and go for help.”


“Or hit him over the head with a cinderblock.”


“Yes, well, Poke could have done that, but I couldn't have lifted it higher than his head. And I don't think dropping a stone on his toe would have done the job.”


They stayed by the dock for a little longer, and then made the walk back to the hospital.


The security guard was on duty. All was right with the world.

Bean had gone back to his childhood range and he hadn't cried much, hadn't turned away, hadn't fled back to some safe place.


Or so she thought, until they left the hospital, returned to their hotel, and he lay in the bed, gasping for breath until she realized that he was sobbing. Great dry wracking sobs that shook his whole body. She lay beside him and held him until he slept.



Volescu's fakery was so good that for a few moments Petra wondered if he might really have the ability to test the embryos. But no, it was flimflam-he  was simply  smart  enough,  scientist  enough,  to  find  convincing  flimflam  that  was realistic  enough  to  fool  extremely  intelligent  laypeople  like  them,  and  even  the fertility doctor they brought with them. He must have made it look like the tests these doctors performed to test for a child's sex or for major genetic defects.


Or else the doctor  knew perfectly  well  it was a scam, but said nothing because all the baby-fixers played the same game, pretending to check for defects that couldn't actually be checked for, knowing that by the time the fakery was discovered, the parents would already have bonded with the child-and even if they hadn't, how could they sue for failing to perform an illegal procedure like sorting for athletic prowess or intellect? Maybe all these baby boutiques were fakers.


The only reason Petra wasn't fooled is that she didn't watch the procedure, she watched Volescu, and by the end of the procedure she knew that he was way too relaxed. He knew that nothing he was doing would make the slightest  difference. There was nothing at stake. The test meant nothing.


There were nine embryos. He pretended to identify three of them as having Anton's Key. He tried to hand the containers to one of his assistants to dispose of, but Bean insisted that he give them to their doctor for disposal.


“I don't want any of these embryos to accidentally become a baby,” said Bean with a smile.


But to Petra, they already were babies, and it hurt her to watch as Bean supervised the pouring out of the three embryos into a sink, the scouring of the containers to make sure an embryo hadn't managed to thrive in some remaining droplet.


I'm imagining this, thought Petra. For all she knew, the containers he flushed

had never contained embryos at all. Why would Volescu sacrifice any of them, when all he had to do was lie and merely say that these three had contained embryos with Anton's Key?


So, self persuaded that no actual harm to a child of hers was being done, she thanked Volescu for his help and they waited for him to leave before anything else was done. Volescu carried nothing from the room that he hadn't come in with.


Then Bean and Petra both watched as the six remaining embryos were frozen, their containers tagged, and all of them secured against tampering.



The morning of the implantation, they both awoke almost at first light, too excited, too nervous to sleep. She lay in bed reading, trying to calm herself; he sat at the table in the hotel room, working on email, scanning the nets.


But his mind was obviously on the morning's procedure. “It's going to be expensive,” he said. “Keeping guard over the ones we don't implant.”


She knew what he was driving at. “You know we've got to keep them frozen until we know if the first implant works. They don't always take.”


Bean nodded. “But I'm not an idiot, you know. I'm perfectly aware that you intend to keep all the embryos and implant them one by one until you have as many of my children as possible.”


“Well of course,” said Petra. “What if our firstborn is as nasty as Peter
Wiggin?”


“Impossible,” said Bean. “How could a child of mine have any but the sweetest disposition?”


“Unthinkable, I know,” said Petra. “And yet somehow I thought of it.” “So this security, it has to continue for years.”
“Why?” said Petra. “No one wants the babies that are left. We destroyed the ones with Anton's Key.”


“We know that,” said Bean. “But they're still the children of two members of

Ender's jeesh. Even without my particular curse, they'll still be worth stealing.”





Petra.

“But they won't be old enough to be of any value for years and years,” said



“Not all that many years,” said Bean. “How old were we? How old are we even now? There are plenty of people willing to take the children and invest not that many  years  of  training  and  then  put  them  to work.  Playing  games  and  winning wars.”


“I'll never let any of them anywhere near military training,” said Petra. “You won't be able to stop them,” said Bean.
“We have plenty of money, thanks to the pensions Graff got for us,” said
Petra. “I'll make sure the security is intense.”


“No, I mean you'll never be able to stop the children. From seeking out military service.”


He was right, of course. The testing for Battle School included a child's predilection for military command, for the contest of battle. For war. Bean and Petra had proven how strong that passion was in them. It would be unlikely that any child of theirs would be happy without ever having a taste of the military life.


“At least,” said Petra, “they won't have to destroy an alien invader before they turn fifteen.”


But Bean wasn't listening. His body had suddenly grown alert as he scanned a message on his desk.


“What is it?” she asked.


“I think it's from Hot Soup,” said Bean. She got up and came over to look.
It was an email through one of the anonymous services, this one an Asian- based company called Mysterious East. The subject line was “definitely not vichyssoise.” Not cold soup, then. Hot Soup. The Battle school nickname of Han Tzu. who had been in Ender's jeesh and was now assumed to be deeply involved in

the highest levels of strategy in China.


A message from him to Bean, until recently the military commander of the Hegemon's  forces,  would  be  high  treason.  This  message  had  been  handed  to  a stranger on a street in China. Probably a European- or African-looking tourist. And the message wasn't hard to understand:


He thinks told him where Caligula would be but I did not. “Caligula” could only refer to Achilles. “He” had to refer to Peter.
Han Tzu was saying that Peter thought he was the source of the information about where the prison convoy would be on the day Suriyawong liberated Achilles.


No wonder Peter was sure his source was reliable-Han Tzu himself! Since Han Tzu had been one of the group Achilles  kidnapped,  he would have plenty of reason to hate him. Motive enough for Peter to believe that Han Tzu would tell him where Achilles would be.


But it wasn't Han Tzu.


And  if  it  wasn't  Han  Tzu,  then  who  else  would  send  such  a message, pretending that it came from him? A message that turned out to be correct?


“We should have known it wasn't from Han Tzu all along,” said Bean.


“We  didn't  know Han  Tzu was  supposed  to be the  source,”  said  Petra reasonably.


“Han Tzu would never give information that would lead to innocent Chinese soldiers getting killed. Peter should have known that.”


“We would have known it,” said Petra, “but Peter doesn't know Hot Soup. And he didn't tell us Hot Soup was his source.”


“So of course we know who the source was,” said Bean. “We've got to get word to him at once,” said Petra.
Bean was already typing.

“Only this has to mean that Achilles went in there completely prepared,” said
Petra. “I'd be surprised if he hasn't found a way to read Peter's mail.” “I'm not writing to Peter,” said Bean.
“Who, then?”


“Mr. and Mrs. Wiggin,” said Bean. “Two separate messages. Pieces of a puzzle. Chances are that Achilles won't be watching their mail, or at least not closely enough to realize he should put these together.”


“No,” said Petra. "No puzzles. Whether he's watching or not, there's no time to lose. He's been there for months now.


“If he sees an open message it might precipitate action on his part. It might be Peter's death warrant.”


“Then notify Graff, send him in.”


“Achilles undoubtedly knows Graff already came once to get our parents out,” said Bean. “Again, his arrival might trigger things.”


“OK,” said Petra, thinking. “OK. Here's what. Suriyawong.” “No,” said Bean.
“He'll get a coded message instantly. He thinks that way.” “But I don't know if he can be trusted,” said Bean.
“Of course he can,” said Petra. “He's only pretending to be Achilles's man.” “Of course he is,” said Bean. “But what if he isn't just pretending?”
“But he's Suriyawong!”


“I know,” said Bean. "But I can't be sure.


“All right,” said Petra. “Peter's parents, then. Only don't be too subtle.”

“They're not stupid,” said Bean. “I don't know Mr. Wiggin that well, but Mrs. Wiggin is-well, she's very subtle. She knows more than she lets on.”


“That doesn't mean she's wary. That doesn't mean she'll get the code or talk it over with her husband right away so they can put the messages together.”


“Trust me,” said Bean.


“No, I'll proofread before you send it,” said Petra. “First rule of survival, right? Just because you trust someone's motives doesn't mean you can trust them to do it right.”


“You're a cold, cold woman,” said Bean. “It's one of my best features.”
A half hour later, they both agreed that the messages should work. Bean sent them. It was a few hours earlier in Ribeirao Preto. Nothing would happen till the Wiggins woke up.


“We'll have to be ready to leave immediately after the implantation,” said Petra. If Achilles  had been in control of things from the start, then chances were good that his whole network was still in place and he knew exactly where they were and what they were doing.


“I won't be with you,” said Bean. “I'll be getting our tickets. Have the guards right in the room with you.”


“No,” said Petra. “But just outside.”


Petra showered first, and she was completely packed when Bean came out of the bathroom. “One thing,” said Petra.


“What?” asked Bean as he put his few belongings into the one bag he carried. “Our tickets-should be to separate destinations.”
He stopped packing and looked at her. “I see,” he said. “You get what you want from me, and then you walk away.”

She laughed nervously. “Well, yes,” she said. “You've been telling me this whole time that it's more dangerous for us to travel together.”


“And now that you'll have my baby in you, you don't need to be with me any more,” said Bean. He was still smiling, but she knew that beneath the jest there was true suspicion.


“Whatever the Wiggins do, all hell is going to break loose,” said Petra. “I've memorized all your dead drops and you've memorized all of mine.”


“I gave you all of yours,” said Bean.


“Let's get back together in a week or so,” said Petra. “If I'm like my mother, I'll be puking my guts out by then.”


“If the implantation is successful.”


“I'll miss you every moment,” said Petra. “God help me, but I'll miss you too.”
She knew what a painful, frightening  thing that was for Bean. To allow himself to love someone so much that he would actually miss her, that was no small matter for him. And the two other women he had allowed himself to love with all his heart had been murdered.


“I won't let anybody hurt our baby,” she said.


He thought for a moment, and then his face softened. “That baby is probably the best protection you could have.”


She understood and smiled. “No, they won't kill me till they see what our baby turns out like,” she said. “But that's no protection from being kidnapped and held until the child is born.”


“As long as you and the baby are alive, I'll come and get you.”


“That's the thing that frightens me,” said Petra. “That we might be the bait they use to set a trap for you.”


“We're looking too far ahead,” said Bean. “They aren't going to catch us. You

or me. And if they do, well, we'll deal with that.”


They were packed. They both went over the room one more time to make sure they were leaving nothing behind, no sign they had ever been there. Then they left  for Women's  Hospital  and the child who waited  for them  there, a bundle  of genes  wrapped  in a few undifferentiated  cells,  eager  to implant  themselves  in a womb,  to start  to draw nutrients  from  a mother's  blood,  to begin  to divide  and distinguish themselves into heart and bowel, hands and feet, eyes and ears, mouth and brain.

Card, Orson Scott - Ender 07 - Shadow Puppets (v2.1)

CHAPTER TEN


LEFT AND RIGHT


From: PW
To:   TW, JPW
Re:   Reconciliation of keyboard [?]cogs


You'll be happy to learn that we were able to sort out oil the [?]cogs. We have tracked every computer entry by the person in question. All his entries dealt with official business and assignments he was carrying out for me. Nothing that was in any way improper was done.


Personally,  I  find  this  disturbing.  Either  he  found  a  way  to  fool  both  our programs (not likely), or he is actually doing nothing but what he should (even less likely), or he is playing a very deep game about which we have no idea (extremely likely).


Let's talk tomorrow.



Theresa woke up when John Paul got out of bed to pee at four AM. It worried her that he couldn't make it through the night anymore. He was still a little young to be having prostate problems.


But it wasn't her husband's slackening bladder capacity that kept her awake. It  was  the  memo  from  Peter  informing  them  that  Achilles  had  done  absolutely nothing but what he was supposed to do.


This was impossible. Nobody does exactly what they're supposed to and nothing else. Achilles should have had some friend, some ally, some contact whom he  needed to  notify that  he  was  out  of  China  and  safe.  He  had  a  network of informants and agents, and as he showed when he hopped from Russia to India to China, he was always one step ahead of everybody. The Chinese finally wised up to his pattern and short-circuited it, but that didn't mean Achilles didn't have his next move planned. So why hadn't he done anything to set it in motion?


There were more possibilities than the ones Peter listed, of course. Maybe Achilles had a means of bypassing the electromagnetic shield that surrounded the Ribeirao Preto compound. Of course, he couldn't have brought such a device with

him  when  he  was  rescued,  or  it  would  have  shown  up  in  the  search  that  was conducted during his first bath in Ribeirao. So someone would have to have brought it to him. And Peter was convinced that no such device could exist. Maybe he was right.
Maybe Achilles's next move was something he planned to do entirely alone. Maybe there was something he had that he was able to smuggle into Brazil
inside his body. Did the surveillance cameras show him, perhaps, combing through
his bowel movements? Peter must surely have checked for that.


While she lay there thinking. John Paul had come back from the bathroom. But now she noticed that he had not resumed snoring.


“You're awake?” she asked. “Sorry I woke you.”
“I can't sleep anyway,” she said. “The Beast?”
“We're missing something,”  said Theresa. “He hasn't suddenly become a loyal servant of the Hegemony.”


“I'm not going to get back to sleep either,” said John Paul. He got up and padded in bare feet to his computer  She heard him typing and knew that he was checking his mail first.


Busy work, but it was better than lying here staring at the dark ceiling. She got up also, took her desk from the table, and brought it back to bed, where she began checking her own email.


One of the benefits of being the mother of the Hegemon was that she didn't actually have to answer the tedious mail-she could forward it on to one of Peter's secretaries to deal with, since it consisted mostly of tedious attempts of people trying to get her to use her supposed influence with Peter to get him to do something that was not within his power to do, was illegal even if he could do it, and which he would certainly not do even if it were legal.


It left her with very few pieces of mail that she needed to deal with

personally.


Most of it could be answered with a few sentences  and she dealt with it quickly, if a bit sleepily.


She was about to shut down her desk and try again to get back to sleep when a new piece of mail came in.


To:   T%Hegmom@Hegemony.gov


From: Rock%HardPlace@IComeAnon.com
Re:   And when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.


What was this? Some religious fanatic? But the address was her most private one, used only by John Paul, Peter, and a handful of people she actually liked and knew well.


So who sent it?


She skipped to the bottom. No signature. The message was short. You'll never guess. There I was at a party-the boring but dangerous kind, with fine china that you know you're going to break, and a tablecloth you're bound to spill India ink on-and do you know what happens? Along comes the very man with whom I wanted to tie the knot. He thinks he's rescuing me from the party. But in fact, he was the very reason I came to the party in the first place. Not that I'll ever tell him. He would BLOW UP if he knew. And then, of course, I'm so nervous I bump into the tureen and hot soup spills all aver everything. But . - - you know met just a big oaf.


That was the complete text of the message. It was really annoying, because it didn't sound like anyone she knew. She didn't have friends who sent letters as empty and  pointless  as  this  one.  Gossip  about  a  party.  Somebody  hoping  to  marry somebody else.


But before she could make any progress on figuring it out, another piece of mail came in.


To:   T%Hegmom@Hegemony.gov
From: Sheep%NotGoats@IComeAnon.com
Re:   Even as ye have done it unto the least of these - . -


Another biblical quote. Same person? Bound to be.


But the message was not chatty at all. In fact, it continued the scriptural motif from the subject line. It had nothing to do with the previous message.


Ye took me in, but I was not naked. I took you in, because you were foolish. Ye never knew me, but I knew you.


When does the judgment day come? Like a thief in the night. In an hour when ye look not for me. The fool says, He is not coming. Let us eat drink and be merry for he is not coming. Behold I stand at the door and knock In sorrow shall ye bear children, will have the power to crush your head but ye will have the power to bite my heel.


A time to sow, and a time to reap. A time to gather stones together, a time to run like hell.


She who has ears to hear. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet. I come to bring not peace but a sword.


Theresa  got out of bed. John Paul had to see these letters.  They meant something,  she  knew  that,  especially  arriving  together  like  this.  The  number  of people who knew this address  was very, very small. And not one of them would write either of these letters.


Therefore either this address had been compromised-but who would bother? She was only the mother of the Hegemon-or  these letters were meant to convey a message. And it was from someone who thought that even at this address, her mail might be intercepted by someone else.


Who was that paranoid, but Bean?


Big oaf, that's who he said he was. Bean, definitely. “John Paul,” she said as she padded up behind him. “This is so strange,” he said.
She assumed he was going to tell her about a similar pair of messages, so she

waited.


“The Chinese have imposed a completely absurd law in India. About rocks! People aren't allowed to carry rocks without a permit! Anyone caught with rocks is subject to arrest-and they're actually enforcing it. Have they lost their minds?”


She found it impossible to be interested in the idiocies of China's policies in
India. “John Paul, I have to show you something.”


“Sure,” he said, turning to look at the desk she set down on the table next to his computer


“Read these letters,” she said.


He glanced at one, and before she could imagine he had actually read the whole thing, he flipped to the next one. “Yeah, I got them too,” he said. “A dullbob and a crenchee. You shouldn't let these things get to you.”


“No,” she said. “Look at them closer They came to my private address. I
think they're from Bean.”


He looked up at her, then turned to his own computer and called up his own copies of the letters. “Me too,” he said. “I didn't notice that. Just looked like junk mail, but nobody uses this address.”


“The subject lines-”


“Yes,” said John Paul. “Both scriptures, even though the first one-”


“Yes, and the first one is about left and right hands, and the second one is from the parable or whatever it is when Jesus speaks to the people on his right hand and the people on his left hand.”


“So they both have left and right hands.” said John Paul. "Two parts to the same message.
“Could be,” he said.


“The scriptures are all twisted.” said Theresa.

“You Mormons learn your scriptures,” said John Paul. “We Catholics regard that as a really Protestant thing to do.”


“The real scripture says, I was naked, and you clothed me, I was homeless or something like that and you took me in.”


“I was a stranger and you took me in,” said John Paul. “So you did read scripture.”
“I woke up once during the homily.”


“It's word games.” said Theresa. “I think the second 'took you in' means
'fooled you.' not 'provided shelter for you.'”


By now John Paul was studying the other letter "This one's geopolitical. Fine
China. India ink. And it ends with 'blow up' in all caps.


'Tie the knot,' “ said Theresa, looking at the first letter ”The 'tie' could mean somebody from Thailand.'"


“That's stretching it a little,” said John Paul, chuckling.


“It's all word games.” said Theresa. “ 'Power to bite my heel'- that has to refer to the Beast, don't you think? Achilles, who could only be hurt in the heel.”


“And Achilles was rescued by a Thai-Suriyawong.” “So now you think 'tie' might be 'Thai'?”
“Yes, you told me so.”


“The Thai thinks he's rescuing this person from a party. Suri rescues
Achilles, but Achilles is keeping a secret. He would blow up if he knew.”


Now John Paul was looking at the second letter “A time to run like hell. Is this a warning?”


“That's what the last line has to be. She who has ears, let her hear. Use your feet. Because he comes to bring not peace but the sword.”

"Mine says 'He who has ears to hear' “You're right, they weren't identical.” “Who's the 'I' in these scriptures?” “Jesus.”
“No, no, I mean, what does the message mean by 'I'? I think it's Achilles. I think it's written as if Achilles were talking. I took you in because you were foolish. Thief in the night, when we aren't looking for him. We're stupid because we think he's not coming but he's here at the door”


“A time to run like hell,” said Theresa.


John Paul leaned back and closed his eyes. “A warning from Bean, maybe. Suri thought he was rescuing Achilles but it was exactly what Achilles wanted him to do. And the other letter-that reference to stones, that has to be Petra. They sent us a pair of messages that fit together.”


And now it all fell  into place.  “This  is what's  been bothering  me, said
Theresa. ”This is why I couldn't sleep."


“You didn't get these letters till just now,” said John Paul.


“No, the thing that was keeping me awake, it was how Achilles has done nothing since he got here except his official duties. I was thinking that even though he was short-circuited by the Chinese arresting him, it made no sense for him not to make contact with his network. But what if the Chinese didn't arrest him at all? What if that was a setup? 'You took me in but I was not naked.'”


John Paul nodded. “And I took you in, because you were foolish.” “So the whole point of this was to get Achilles inside the compound.”


“But so what?” said John Paul. “We've been suspicious of him anyway.”





it.”

“But this is more than suspicion,” said Theresa. “Or they wouldn't have sent

“There's no evidence here. Nothing that would persuade Peter” “Yes there is,” said Theresa. “Hot soup.” He looked at her blankly.
“From  Ender's  jeesh.  Han Tzu. Inside  China.  He would know. He's the authority. He 'spilled everything.' Definitely a setup.”


“OK,” said John Paul, “so we have the evidence. We know Achilles wasn't really a prisoner, he wanted to be taken.”


“Don't you see? This means he really understands Peter. He knew that Peter couldn't resist rescuing him. Maybe he even knew that Bean and Petra would leave. Think  about  it-we  all  knew how dangerous  Achilles  could  be, so maybe  he was counting on that.”


“Everybody closest to Peter left, except us-” "And Peter tried to get us to go.
“And Suriyawong.”


“And Achilles has coopted him.”


“Or Suri has Achilles convinced he has.”


They'd been back and forth on that one before. “Whatever,” said Theresa. “Simply by arriving here, Achilles has succeeded in isolating Peter Then he's spent his whole time being Mr Nice Guy, doing everything right-and making friends with everybody while he's at it. Everything's going smoothly. Except-”


“Except that he's in a position to kill Peter”


“If he can do it in a way that doesn't implicate him.”


“Ready to step in, as Peter's assistant, and say, 'Everything's going smoothly at the Hegemony, we'll just keep things going till a new Hegemon is chosen,' and long before they can choose one, he's compromised all the codes, he's neutralized the army, and China is completely rid of the Hegemony once and for all. They'll get advance word of one of Suri's missions and they wipe out our brave little army and-”


“Why wipe it out, if it already obeys you?” said Theresa.

“We don't know that Suri-”


“What do you think would happen if Peter tried to leave?” she asked.


John Paul thought about that. “Achilles would take over while he was gone. There's a long tradition of that maneuver.”


“And just as long a tradition of declaring him sick and keeping anyone from having access to him.”


“Well, he can't restrict access to Peter as long as we're here,” said John Paul. They looked at each other for a long moment.
“Get your passport,” said Theresa. “We can't pack anything.”
“Wipe the computers.”


“What do you think he'll use? Poison? Some bio-agent?” “Bio-agent is likeliest. He could have smuggled that in.” “Does it matter?”
"Peter's not going to believe us.


“He's stubborn and self-willed and he thinks we're idiots,” said John Paul. “But that doesn't mean he's stupid.”


“But he might think he can handle it.”


John Paul nodded. “You're right. He is exactly that stupid.” “Wipe all your files on the system and-”
“It doesn't matter,” said John Paul. “There are backups.”

“Not of these letters, at least.”


John Paul  printed  them  out and then destroyed  them  in the computer's memory, while Theresa wiped them from her desk.


Carrying the paper copies of the letters, they headed for Peter's room.



Peter was sleepy, surly, and impatient with them. He kept dismissing their concerns and insisting they wait till morning until finally John Paul lost his temper and dragged Peter out of bed like a teenager He was so shocked at being treated in such a way that he actually fell silent.


“Stop thinking this is between you and your parents,” John Paul said. “These letters are from Bean and Petra, and they're relaying a message from Han-Tzu in China. These are three of the smartest military minds alive, and all three of them have been proven to be smarter than you.”


Peter's face reddened with anger.
“Have I got your attention now?” said John Paul. “Will you actually listen?” “What does it matter if I listen?” said Peter. "Let one of them be Hegemon,
they're so much smarter than me.


Theresa bent down and got right in his face. “You're acting like a rebellious teenager while we're trying to tell you the house is on fire.”


“Process this information,” said John Paul, “as if we were a couple of your informants. Pretend that you think we actually know something. And while you're at it, take a quick poll and see how effectively Achilles has driven away everybody around you who was completely trustworthy-except us.”


“I know you mean well,” said Peter, but his voice betrayed his anger.


“Shut up,” said Theresa. “Just shut up with your patronizing tone. You saw the letters. We didn't make that up. Hot Soup found a way to tell Bean and Petra that the whole rescue was a setup. You were had, smart boy. Achilles has this whole place sussed by now. Every move you make, somebody tells him.”


“For all we know,” said John Paul, “the Chinese have an operation ready to

roll.”


“Or you're going to be arrested by Suri's soldiers,” said Theresa.
“In other words, you have no idea what I'm even supposed to be afraid of.” “That's right,” said Theresa. “That's exactly right. Because you played into
his hands as if he handed you a script and you read your lines like a robot.”


“You're the puppet right now, Peter,” said John Paul. “You thought you held the strings, but you're the puppet.”


“And you have to leave now,” said Theresa.


“What's the emergency?” said Peter impatiently. “You don't know what he's going to do or when.”


“Sooner or later you're going to have to go,” said Theresa. “Or do you plan to wait until he kills you? Or us? And when you do go, it has to be sudden, unexpected, unplanned. There's no better opportunity than now. While the three of us are still alive. Can you guarantee that will still be true tomorrow? This afternoon? I didn't think so.”


“Before dawn,” said John Paul. “Out of the compound, into the city, onto a plane, out of Brazil.”


Peter just sat there, looking from one to the other But the irritated look was gone from his face. Was it possible? Could he have actually heard something that they said?


“If I leave,” said Peter, “they'll say I abdicated.” “You can say that you didn't.”
“I'll look like a fool. I'll be completely discredited.”


“You were a fool,” said Theresa. “If you say it first, nobody else gets any points for saying it. Cover up nothing. Get a press release out while you're in the air You're Locke. You're Demosthenes. You can spin anything.”

Peter stood up. started pulling clothes out of his dresser drawers. “I think you're right,” he said. “I think your analysis is absolutely right.”


Theresa looked at John Paul. John Paul looked at Theresa. Was this Peter talking?
“Thank you for not giving up on me,” he said. “But this Hegemon thing is done.  I've  lost  any  chance  of  making  it  work.  I  had  my  chance,  and  I  blew  it. Everybody told me not to bring Achilles here. I had all these plans on how to lead him into a trap. But I was already caught in his.”


“I've already told you to shut up once this morning,” said Theresa. “Don't make me do it again.”


Peter didn't bother buttoning his shirt. “Let's go,” he said.


Theresa was glad to see that he didn't try to take anything with him. He only stopped at his computer and typed in a single command.


Then he headed for the door


“Aren't you going to wipe out your files?” asked John Paul. “Alert your head of security?”


“I just did,” said Peter


So he had been prepared for such a day as this. He already had the program in place that would automatically destroy everything that needed destroying. And it would alert those who needed to be alerted.


“We have ten minutes before the people I used to trust get warned to evacuate,” said Peter. “Since we don't know which of them we can still trust, we have to be out of here by then.”


His plan included looking after those who were still loyal to him, whose lives would be in danger when Achilles took over. Theresa had not imagined Peter would think of such a thing. It was a good thing to know about him.

They didn't skulk or run, just walked through the grounds toward the nearest gate, engaged in animated conversation. It might be early in the morning, but who would  imagine  that  the  Hegemon  and  his  parents  were  making  a  getaway?  No luggage, no hurry, no stealth. Arguing. A perfectly normal scene.


And  the  argument  was  real  enough.  They  spoke  softly,  because  in the stillness of dawn they might be overheard even at a distance. But there was plenty of intensity in their hushed voices.


“Skip the melodrama,”  said John Paul. “Your life isn't over. You made a huge mistake, and there are people who are going to say that running out like this is an even bigger one. But your mother and I know that it isn't. As long as you're alive, there's hope.”


“The hope is Bean,” said Peter “He hasn't shot himself in the foot. I'll throw my support behind Bean. Or maybe I shouldn't. Maybe my support would just be the kiss of death.”


“Peter,” said John Paul, “you're the Hegemon. You were elected. You, not this compound. In fact, you're the one who moved the Hegemony offices here. Now you're going to move them somewhere else. Wherever you are, that's the Hegemony. Don't you ever say one thing to imply otherwise. Even if your entire power in the world consists of you and me and your mother, that's not nothing. Because you are Peter  Wiggin,  and  dammit,  we're  John  Paul  Wiggin  and  Theresa  Wiggin  and underneath our charming and civilized exteriors, we're some pretty tough bunducks.”


Peter said nothing.


“Well, actually,” said Theresa to John Paul, “we're the bunducks. Peter's the big sabeek.”


Peter shook his head.


“You are,” Theresa insisted. “And do you know how I know you are? Because you were smart enough to listen to us and get out in time.”


“I was just thinking,” said Peter quietly.


“What?” prompted Theresa, before John Paul could give his standard joking reply: It's about time. It would be the wrong joke for this moment, but John Paul was

never very good about knowing when it was the wrong time for his standard jokes. They came out by reflex, without being processed through his brain first.


“I've underestimated you two,” he said. “Well, yes,” said Theresa.
“In fact, I've been a little shit to you for a long time.” “Not so little,” said John Paul.
Theresa cocked a warning eyebrow at him.


“But I still never did anything as dumb as flying to get into his bedroom to kill him,” said Peter.


Theresa looked at him sharply. He was grinning at her.


John Paul laughed. She couldn't blame him. He couldn't help retaliating. After all, she had just given him the dreaded eyebrow.


“OK, well, you're right,” said Theresa. “That was pretty stupid. But I didn't know what else to do to save you.”


“Maybe saving me isn't such a great idea.”


“You're the only copy of our DNA left on Earth,” said John Paul. "We really don't want to have to start all over, making babies. That's for younger people now.


“Besides,” said Theresa. “Saving you means saving the world.” “Right,” said Peter derisively.
“You're the only hope,” said Theresa.


“Then good luck, world.”


“I do believe,” said John Paul, "that that was almost a prayer. Don't you think so, Theresa? I think Peter said a prayer.


Peter chuckled. “Yeah, why not. Good luck, world. Amen.”

They got to the gate well before the ten minutes were up. There was a cab driver asleep at a cab stand in front of the biggest hotel outside the compound. John Paul woke him and handed him a very large sum of money.


“Take us to the airport,” said Theresa.


“But not this one,” said John Paul. “I think we want to fly out of Araraquara.” “That's an hour away,” said Theresa.
“And we have an hour till the earliest flight anywhere,” said John Paul. “Do you want to spend that hour just sitting in an airport that's fifteen minutes away from the compound?”


Peter laughed. “That is so paranoid,” he said. “just like Bean.” “Bean's alive,” said John Paul.
“I'm OK with that,” said Peter. “Being alive is good.”



Peter had his press release out from one of the computers in the Araraquara airport. But Achilles didn't waste any time, either.


Peter's story was all flue, though he left a few things out. He admitted that he had been fooled into thinking that he was rescuing Achilles  when in fact he was bringing the Trojan Horse inside the walls of Troy. It was a terrible mistake because Achilles was serving the Chinese Empire all along, and Hegemony headquarters was completely compromised. Peter declared that he was moving Hegemony headquarters to another location and urged all Hegemony employees who were still loyal to him to wait for word about where to reassemble.


Achilles's press release declared that he, General Suriyawong, and Ferreira, the head of Hegemony computer security, had discovered that Peter was embezzling Hegemony funds and hiding them in secret accounts-money that should have gone to paying Hegemony debts and feeding the poor and trying to achieve world peace. He declared that the office of the Hegemon would continue to function under the control of Suriyawong as the ranking military leader of Hegemony forces, and that he would help Suriyawong only if he was asked. Meanwhile, a warrant had been issued for

Peter Wiggin's arrest to answer charges of embezzlement, malfeasance in office, and high treason against the International Defense League.


In a press release later that day he announced that Hyrum Graff had been removed  as Minister  of Colonization  and was to be arrested  for complicity  with Peter Wiggin in the conspiracy to defraud the Hegemony.


“The son of a bitch,” said John Paul.


“Graff won't obey him,” said Theresa. “He'll simply declare that you're still
Hegemon and that he answers only to you and Admiral Chamrajnagar.”


“But it'll dry up a lot of his funds,” said Peter. “He'll have a lot less freedom of movement. Because now there's a price on his head, and in some countries they'd just love to arrest him and turn him over to the Chinese.”





Theresa.

“Do  you  really  think Achilles  is  serving  the  Chinese  interest?”  asked



“Every bit as loyally as he served mine,” said Peter.


Before the plane landed in Miami, Peter had his safe haven. In, of all places, the USA.


“I thought America was determined not to get involved,” said John Paul. “It's just temporary,” said Peter
“But it puts them clearly on our team,” said Theresa.





us.”

“'Them'?” said Peter. “You're Americans. So am I. The U.S. isn't 'them,' it's



“Wrong,” said Theresa. “You're the Hegemon. You're above nationality. And so, I might add, are we.”

Card, Orson Scott - Ender 07 - Shadow Puppets (v2.1)

CHAPTER ELEVEN


BABIES


From: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov
To:   Flandres%A-Heg@idl.gov
Re:   MinCol


Mr. Flandres:


The position of Hegemon is not and never was vacant. Peter Wiggin continues to hold that office. Therefore your dismissal of the Han. Hyrum Graff as Minister of Colonization is void. Graff continues to exercise all previous authority in regard to MinCol affairs off the surface of Earth.


Furthermore, IFCom will regard any interference with his operations on Earth, or with his person as he carries out his duties, as obstruction of a vital operation of the International Meet, and we will take all appropriate steps.


From: Flandres%A-Heg@idl.gov
To:   Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov
Re:   MinCol


Admiral Chamrajnagar, sir:


I cannot imagine why you would write to me about this matter. I am not acting Hegemon, I am Assistant Hegemon. I have forwarded your letter to General Suriyawong, and I hope all future correspondence about such matters will be directed to him.


Your humble servant, Achilles Flandres



From: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov
To:   Flandres%A-Heg@idl.gov
Re:   MinCol

Forward my letters wherever you like. I know the game you are playing. I am playing a different one. In my game. I hold all the cards. Your game, on the other hand, will only last until people notice that you have no actual cards at all.



The events in Brazil were already all over the nets and the vids when the implantation  procedure  was complete  and Petra was wheeled out into the waiting room of the fertility  clinic at Women's  Hospital.  Bean was waiting  for her With balloons.


They wheeled her out into the reception area. At first she didn't notice him, because she was busy talking with the doctor. Which was fine with him. He wanted to look at her, this woman who might be carrying his child now.


She looked so small.


He remembered looking up at her when they first met in Battle School. This girl-rare   in  a  place   that   tested   for   aggressiveness   and  a  certain   degree   of ruthlessness. To him, a newcomer, the youngest child ever admitted to the school, she seemed so cool, so tough, like the quintessential  bullyboy, smart-mouthed and belligerent. It was all an act, but a necessary one.


Bean had seen at once that she noticed things. Noticed him, for starters, not with amusement or amazement like the other kids, who could only see how small he was.  No,  she  clearly  gave  him  some  thought,  found  him  intriguing.  Realized, perhaps, that his presence at Battle School when he was clearly underage implied something interesting about him.


It was partly that trait of hers that led Bean to turn to her-that and the fact that as a girl she was almost as much of a misfit as he was bound to be.


She had grown since those days, of course, but Bean had grown far more, and was now quite a bit taller than her. It wasn't just height, either He had felt her rib cage under his hands, so small and brittle, or so it seemed. He felt as though he always had to be gentle with her, or he might inadvertently break her between his hands.


Did all men feel this way? Probably not. For one thing, most women were not as light-bodied as Petra, and for another thing, most men stopped growing when they reached a certain point. But Bean's hands and feet were still misproportioned to his body, like an adolescent's, so that even though he was a tallish man, it was clear his

body meant to grow taller still. His hands felt like paws. Hers seemed as lost within his as a baby's.


How, then, will the baby she carries inside her now seem to me when it is born? Will I be able to cradle the child in one hand? Will there be a genuine danger of my hurting the baby? I'm not so good with my hands these days.


And by the time the baby is big enough, robust enough for me to handle safely, I'll be dead.


Why did I consent to do this?


Oh, yes. Because I love Petra. Because she wants my child so badly. Because Anton had some cock-and-bull story about how all men crave marriage and family even if they don't care about sex.


Now she noticed him, and noticed the balloons, and laughed. He laughed back and went to her, handed her the balloons. “Husbands don't usually give their wives balloons,” she said. “I thought having a baby implanted was a special occasion.”
“I suppose so,” she said, “when it's professionally  done. Most babies are implanted at home by amateurs, and the wives don't get balloons.”


“I'll remember that and try always to have a few on hand.”


He walked beside her as an attendant pushed her wheelchair down the hallway toward the entrance.


“So where is my ticket to?” she asked.


“I got you two,” said Bean. “Different airlines, different destinations. Plus this train ticket. If either of the flights gives you a bad feeling, even if you can't decide why you have misgivings, don't get on it. Just go to the other airline. Or leave the  airport  and  take  the  train.  The  train  ticket  is  an  EU  pass  so  you  can  go anywhere.”

“You spoil me,” said Petra.





wall?”

“What do you think?” asked Bean. “Did the baby hook itself onto the uterine



“I'm not equipped  with an internal  camera,”  said Petra, “and I lack the pertinent nerves to be able to feel microscopically small fetuses implant and start to grow a placenta.”


“That's a very poor design,” said Bean. “When I'm dead, I'll have a few words with God about that.”


Petra winced. “Please don't joke about death.” “Please don't ask me to be somber about it.”
“I'm pregnant. Or might be. I'm supposed to get my way about everything.”


The attendant pushing Petra's wheelchair started to take her toward the front cab in a line of three. Bean stopped him.


“The driver's smoking,” said Bean. “He'll put it out,” said the attendant.
“My wife will not get into a car with a driver whose clothing is giving off cigarette smoke residue.”


Petra looked at him oddly. He raised an eyebrow, hoping she'd realize that this was not about tobacco.


“He's the first taxi in line,” said the attendant, as if it were an incontrovertible law of physics that the first cab in line had to be the one to get the next passengers.


Bean looked at the other two cabs. The second driver looked at him impassively. The third driver smiled. He looked Indonesian or Malay, and Bean knew that in their culture, a smile was pure reflex when facing someone bigger or richer than you.


Yet for some reason he did not feel the mistrust about the Indonesian driver

that he felt about the two Dutch drivers ahead of him.


So he pushed her wheelchair toward the third cab. Bean asked, and the driver said  yes,  he  was  from  Jakarta.  The  attendant,  truly  irritated  at  this  breach  of protocol, insisted on helping Petra into the cab. Bean had her bag and put it in the back seat beside her-he never put anything in the trunks of cabs, in case he had to run for it.


Then he had to stand there as she drove off. No time for elaborate good-byes. He had just put everything that mattered in his life into a cab driven by a smiling stranger, and he had to let it drive away.


Then he went to the first cab in line. The driver was showing his outrage at the way Bean had violated the line. The Netherlands was back to being a civilized place, now that it was self-governing again, and lines were respected. Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.


Bean handed the driver a twenty-five-dollar  coin, which he looked at with disdain. “It's stronger than the Euro right now,” said Bean. “And I'm paying you a fare, so you didn't lose anything because I put my wife in another cab.”


“What is your destination?” said the driver curtly, his English laced with a prim BBC accent. The Dutch really needed to have better programming in their own language  so their citizens  didn't have to watch English vids and listen to English radio all the time.


Bean did not answer him until he was inside the cab, the door closed. “Drive me to Amsterdam,” said Bean.
“What?”


“You heard me,” said Bean.


“That's eight hundred dollars,” said the driver.


Bean peeled a thousand-dollar bill off his roll and gave it to him. “Does the video unit in this car actually work?” he asked.

The driver made a show of scanning the bill to see if it was counterfeit. Bean wish he had used a Hegemony note. You don't like dollars? Well see how you like this! But it was unlikely that anybody would take Hegemony money for any purpose these days. What with Achilles's and Peter's faces on every vid in the city and all the talk about how Peter had embezzled Hegemony funds.


Their faces were on the video in the cab, too, when the driver finally got it working. Poor Peter, thought Bean. Now he knows how the popes and anti-popes felt when there were two with a claim to St. Peter's throne. What a lovely taste of history for him. What a mess for the world.


And to Bean's  surprise,  he found that he didn't  actually  care that much whether the world was in a mess-not when the messiness wasn't going to affect his own little family.


I'm actually a civilian now, he realized. All I care about is how these world events will affect my family.


Then he remembered: I used to care about world events only insofar as they affected me. I used to laugh at Sister Carlotta because she was so concerned.


But he did care. He kept track. He paid attention. He told himself it was so he'd know where he'd be safe. Now, though, with far more reason to worry about safety,  he found  the whole  business  of Peter  and Achilles  fundamentally  boring. Peter was a fool to think he could control Achilles, a fool to trust a Chinese source on such a matter. How well Achilles must understand Peter, to know that he would rescue Achilles instead of killing him. But why shouldn't Achilles understand Peter? All he had to do was think of what he would do, if he were in Peter's position, but dumber.


Still, even though he was bored, the story from the newspeople began to make sense, when combined with the things Bean knew. The embezzling story was ludicrous, of course, obviously disinformation from Achilles, though all the predictable nations were in an uproar about it, demanding inquiries: China, Russia, France. What seemed to be true was that Peter and his parents slipped out of the Hegemon's compound in Ribeirao Preto just before dawn this morning, drove to Araraquara, then flew to Montevideo, where they got official permission to fly to the United States as guests of the U.S. government.


It was possible, of course, that their sudden flight was precipitated by something  Achilles  did  or   some  information  they  learned  about  Achilles's

immediate plans. But Bean was reasonably sure that these events were triggered by the  emails  he  and  Petra  had  sent  early  this  morning  when  they  got  Han  Tzu's message.


Apparently the Wiggins had been up either very late or very early, because they  must  have  got  the  letters  almost  as  soon  as  they  were  sent.  Got  them, deciphered  the  message,  realized  the  implication  of  Han  Tzu's  tip,  and  then, incredibly enough, persuaded Peter to pay attention and get out without a moment's delay.


Bean had assumed it would take days before Peter would realize the significance of what he had been told. Part of the problem would be his relationship with his parents. Bean and Petra knew how smart the Wiggins were, but most people in the Hegemony didn't have a clue, least of all Peter Bean tried to imagine the scene when they explained to him that he had been fooled by Achilles. Peter, believing his parents when they told him he had made a mistake? Unthinkable.


And yet he must have believed them right away. Or they drugged him.
Bean laughed a little at the thought, and then looked up from the vid because the cab was turning sharply.


They were pulling off the main road into a side street. They shouldn't be.


By reflex Bean had the door open and was flinging himself out the door by the time the cab driver could get his gun up from the seat and aim it at him. The bullet zipped over his head as Bean hit the ground and rolled. The cab came to a stop and the driver leapt out to finish the job. Abandoning his bag. Bean scrambled to get around the corner. But he'd never get far enough down the street-which had no pedestrians on it, here in the warehouse district-to get out of the range of a bullet once the cabbie followed him onto the main street.


Another shot came just as he made it past the edge of the building. He thought of pressing himself against the side of the building, in the hopes that the gunman was really stupid and would barrel around the corner without looking.


But that wouldn't work, because the cab that had been second in line was pulling to the curb right in front of him, and the driver was raising his own gun to

point it at Bean.


He dived for the ground and two bullets hit the wall where he had been standing. By sheer chance, his leap took him directly in front of the first driver, who was indeed stupid enough to be running around the corner at top speed. He fell over Bean and when he hit the ground, his gun flew out of his hand.


Bean might have gone for the gun, but the second driver was already partly out of his door and would be able to shoot Bean before he could get to it. So Bean scrambled back to the first cab, which was idling in the side street. Could he get the cab between him and either of the gunmen before they could shoot at him again?


He knew he couldn't. But there was nothing to do but try, and hope that, like bad guys in the vids, these two would be terrible shots and miss him every time. And when he got in the cab to drive it away, it would be very nice if the upholstery of the driver's seat were made of that miracle fabric that stops bullets fired through the back window.


Pop. Pop-pop. And then... the ratatat of an automatic weapon. The two cab drivers didn't have automatic weapons.
Bean was around the front of the cab now, keeping low. To his surprise, neither driver was standing at the corner, pointing a gun at him. Perhaps they had been, a moment ago, but now they were lying there on the ground, filled with bullets and seeping copious amounts of blood all over the pavement.


And around the corner charged two Indonesian-looking  men, one with a pistol  and the other  with a small  plastic  automatic  weapon.  Bean recognized  the Israeli design, because that was the weapon his own little army had used on missions where they had to be able to conceal their weapons as long as possible.


“Come with us!” shouted one of the Indonesians.


Bean thought this was probably a good idea. Since the assassination attempt had included one backup, it might include more, and the sooner he got out of there the better.


Of course, he didn't know anything about these Indonesians, or why they would have been there at this moment to save his life, but the fact that they had guns and weren't firing them at him implied that for the moment, at least, they were his

dearest friends.


He grabbed  his suitcase  and ran. The front  right  door  of a nondescript German car was open, waiting for him. The moment he dived in, he said, “My wife- she's in another cab.”


“She safe,” said the man in the back seat, the one with the automatic weapon. “Her driver one of us. Very good choice of cab for her. Very bad choice for you.”


“Who are you?”


“Indonesian immigrant,” said the driver with a grin. “Muslim,” said Bean. “Alai sent you?”
“No, not a lie. True,” said the man.


Bean didn't bother correcting him. If the name Alai meant nothing to him, what was the point in pursuing the matter? “Where's Petra? My wife?”


“Going to airport. She not using ticket you giving her.” The man in the back seat handed him an airline ticket. “She going here.”


Bean looked at his ticket. Damascus.


Apparently Ambul's mission had gone well. Damascus was, for all intents and purposes, the capital of the Muslim world. Even though Alai had dropped out of sight, it was unlikely that he was anywhere else.


“Are we going there as guests?” asked Bean. “Tourists,” said the man in the back.
“Good,” said Bean. “Because we left something in the hospital here that we might have to come back for.” Though it was obvious that Achilles's people-or whoever it was-knew everything about what they were doing at Women's Hospital. In fact... there was almost no chance that anything of theirs remained in Women's Hospital.


He looked back at the man in the back seat. He was shaking his head. “Sorry,

they telling me when we stop here and shoot guys for you, security guard in hospital stealing what you left there.”


Of course. You don't fight your way past a security guard. You just hire him.


And now it was all clear to him. If Petra had gotten in the first cab, it wouldn't have been an assassination, it would have been a kidnapping. This wasn't about killing Bean-that was just a bonus. It was about getting Bean's babies.


Bean knew they hadn't been followed here. They had been betrayed since arriving. Volescu. And if Volescu was in on it, then the embryos that were stolen probably had Anton's Key after all. There was no particular  reason for anyone to want his babies if there wasn't at least a chance that they would be prodigies of the kind Bean was.


Volescu's screening test was probably a fraud. Volescu probably had no idea which of the embryos had Anton's Key and which didn't. They'd implant  them in surrogates and then see what happened when they were born.


Bean had been taken in by Volescu as surely as Peter had been by Achilles. But it wasn't as if they had trusted Volescu. They had simply trusted him not to be in league with Achilles.


Though it didn't have to be him. Just because he had kidnapped Ender's jeesh didn't mean that he was the only would-be kidnapper in the world. Bean's children, if they had his gifts, would be coveted by any ambitious nation or would-be military leader. Raise them up knowing nothing about their real parents, train them here on Earth as intensely as Bean and the other kids had been trained in Battle School, and by the age of nine or ten you can put them in command of strategy and tactics.


It might even be an entrepreneurial scheme. Maybe Volescu did this alone, hiring gunmen, bribing the security guard, so that he could sell the babies later to the highest bidder.


“Bad news, sorry,” said the man in the back seat. “But you still got one baby, yes? In wife, yes?”


“Still the one,” said Bean. If they had the ordinary amount of good luck. Which didn't seem to be the trend at the moment.

Still, going to Damascus. If Alai was really taking them into his protection, Petra would be safe there. Petra and perhaps one child-who might have Anton's Key after all, might be doomed to die without ever seeing the age of twenty. At least those two would be safe.


But the others were out there, children of Bean's and Petra's who would be raised by strangers, as tools, as slaves.


There had been nine embryos.  One had been implanted,  and three were discarded. That would leave five in the possession of Volescu or Achilles or whoever it was who took them.


Unless  Volescu  had actually  found a way to switch the three that  were supposedly discarded, switching containers somehow. There might be eight embryos unaccounted for but probably not, probably only the five they knew about. Bean and Petra had both been watching Volescu too carefully for him to get away with the first three, hadn't they?


By force of will, Bean turned his thoughts away from worries he could do nothing about at this moment, and took stock of his situation.


“Thank you,” said Bean to the men in the car. “I was careless. Without you, I'd be dead.”


“Not careless,” said the man in the back. “Young man in love. Wife has baby in her Time of hope.”


Followed immediately, Bean realized, by a time of near despair He should never have agreed to father children, no matter how much Petra wanted to, no matter how much he loved Petra, no matter how much he too yearned for offspring, for a family. He should have stood firm, because then this would not have been possible. There would have been nothing for his enemies to steal from him. He and Petra would still have been in hiding, undetected, because they would never have had to go to a snake like Volescu.


“Babies good,” said the man in the back. “Make you scared, make you crazy. Somebody take away babies, somebody hurt babies, make you crazy. But good anyway. Babies good.”


Yeah. Well. Maybe Bean would live long enough to know about that, and

maybe he wouldn't.


Because now he knew his life's work, for whatever time he had left before he died of giantism.


He had to get his babies back. Whether they should ever have existed or not, they existed now, each with its own separate genetic identity, each very much alive. Until they were taken, they had been nothing to him but cells in a solution-all that mattered was the one that would be implanted in Petra, the one that would grow and become part of their family. But now they all mattered. Now they were all alive to him, because someone else had them, meant to use them.


He even regretted the ones that had been disposed of. Even if the test had been real, even if they had had Anton's Key, what right did he have to snuff out their genetic identity, just because he oh-so altruistically wanted to spare them the sorrow of a life as short as his?


Suddenly he realized what he was thinking. What it meant.


Sister Carlotta, you always wanted me to turn Christian-and not just Christian,  Catholic.  Well,  here  I  am,  thinking  that  as  soon  as  sperm  and  egg combine, they're a human life, and it's wrong to harm them.


Well, I'm not Catholic, and it wasn't wrong to want children to grow up to have a full life instead of this fifth-of-a-life that I'm headed for.


But how was I different, flushing three of those embryos, from Volescu? He flushed twenty-two  of them, I flushed three. He waited till they were nearly two years further along in development-gestation  plus a year-but in the end, is it really all that different?


Would Sister Carlotta condemn him for that? Had he committed a mortal sin? Was he only getting what he deserved now, losing five because he willingly threw away three?


No, he could not imagine her saying that to him. Or even thinking it to herself. She would rejoice that he had decided to have a child at all. She would be glad if Petra really was pregnant.


But she would also agree with him that the five that were now in someone else's hands, the five that might be implanted in someone else and turned into

babies, he couldn't just let them go. He had to find them and save them and bring them home.

Card, Orson Scott - Ender 07 - Shadow Puppets (v2.1)

CHAPTER TWELVE
PUTTING OUT FIRES From: Han Tzu
To:   Snow Tiger
Re:   stones


I am pleased and honored to have the chance once again to offer my poor counsel to your bright magnificence. My previous advice to ignore the piles of stones in the road was obviously foolish, and you saw that a much wiser course was to declare stone-carrying to be illegal.


Now I once again have the glorious privilege of giving bad advice to him who does not need counsel.


Here is the problem as I see it:


1.    Having declared a law against stone-carrying, you cannot back down and repeal the law without showing weakness.


2.    The law against stone-carrying puts you in the position of arresting and punishing women and small children, which is filmed and smuggled out of India to the great embarrassment of the Universal Peoples State.


3.     The coastline of India being so extensive and our navy so small, we cannot stop the smuggling of these vids.


4.    The stones block the roads, making transportation of troops and supplies unpredictable and dangerous, disrupting schedules.


5.     The stone piles are being called “The Great Wall of India” and other names  which  make  them  a  symbol  of  revolutionary defiance  of  the  Universal People's State.


You tested me by suggesting that there were only two possibilities, which in your wisdom you knew would lead to disastrous consequences. Repealing the law or ceasing to enforce it would encourage further lawlessness. Stricter enforcement will only make martyrs, inflame the opposition, shame us among the ignorant barbarian nations, and encourage further lawlessness.

Through unbelievable  luck, I have not failed your clever test. I have found the third alternative that you already saw:


I see now that your plan is to fill trucks with fine gravel and huge stones. Your soldiers will go to villages which have built these new, higher barricades. They will back the trucks up to the barricades and dump the gravel and the boulders in front of their pile, but not on top of it.


1 .   The rebellious, ungrateful Indian people will reflect upon the difference in size between the Great Wall of India and the Gravel and Boulders of China.


2.     Because you will have blocked all roads into and out of each village, they will  not get any trucks  or buses into or out of their  village  until  they have moved not only the Great Wall of India but also the Gravel and Boulders of China.


3.    They will find that the gravel is too small and the boulders are too large to be moved easily. The great exertion that they must use to clear the roads will be a sufficient teacher without any further punishment of any person.


4.    Any vids smuggled out of India will show that we have only done to their roads what they voluntarily  did themselves,  only more. And the only punishment foreigners will see is Indians picking up rocks and moving them, which is the very thing they chose to do themselves in the first place.


5.    Because there are not enough trucks in India to pile gravel and boulders in more than a small fraction of the villages which have built a Great Wall of India, the villages which receive this treatment should be chosen with care to make sure that the maximum number of roads are blocked, disrupting trade and food supplies throughout India.


6.    You will also make sure sufficient roads are kept open for our supplies, but checkpoints will be set up far from villages and in places that cannot be filmed from a distance. No civilian trucks will be allowed to pass.


7.    Certain villages that are starving will be supplied with small amounts of food airlifted by the Chinese military, who will come as saviors bringing food to those who innocently suffer because of the actions of the rebellious and disobedient blockers of roads. We will provide film of these humanitarian operations by our military to all foreign news media.

I applaud your wisdom in thinking of this plan, and thank you for allowing one so foolish as myself to have this chance to examine your way of thinking and see how you will turn embarrassment to a great lesson for the ungrateful Indian people. Unless, like last time, you have a plan that is even more subtle and wise, which I have been unable to anticipate.


From this child who prostrates himself at your feet to learn wisdom, Han Tzu


Peter did not want to get out of bed. This had never happened to him before in his life.


No, not strictly true. He had often wanted not to get out of bed, but he had always gone ahead and gotten out of bed anyway. What was different today was that he  was  still  in  bed  at  nine-thirty  in  the  morning,  even  though  he  had  a  press conference scheduled for less than half an hour from now in a conference room in the 0. Henry Hotel in his home town of Greensboro, North Carolina.


He could not plead jet lag. There was only an hour's time difference between Ribeirao Preto and Greensboro. It would be a great embarrassment if he did not get up. So he would get up. Very soon now.


Not that it would make any difference. He might, for the moment, still have the title of Hegemon, but there were people in many countries with tides like “king” and “duke” and “marquis,” who nevertheless cooked or took pictures or fixed automobiles for a living. Perhaps he could go back to college under another name and train himself for a career like his father's, a quiet one working for a company somewhere.


Or he could go into the bathroom and fill the tub with water and lie down in it and breathe the water in. A few moments of panic and flailing around, and then the whole problem would go away. In fact, if he hit himself very hard in various places on  his  body,  it  might  look  as  though  he  struggled  with  an  assailant  and  was murdered. He might even be considered a martyr At least people might think that he was important enough to have an enemy who thought he was worth killing.


Any minute now, thought Peter, I will get up and shower so I don't look so bedraggled to the media.

I ought to prepare a statement, he thought. Something to the effect of, “Why I am not as pathetic and stupid as my recent actions prove me to be.” Or perhaps the direct approach: “Why I am even more pathetic and stupid than my recent actions might indicate.”


Given his recent track record, he would probably be saved from the bathtub, given CPR, and then someone would notice the bruises on his body and the lack of an assailant and the story would get out about his pathetic effort to make his suicide attempt look like a brutal murder, thus making his life even more worthless than it already was.


Another knock on the door Couldn't the maid read the do-not-disturb sign? It was written in four languages. Could she possibly be illiterate in all four of them? No doubt she was also illiterate in a fifth.


Twenty-five minutes until the press conference. Did I doze off? That would be nice. Just... doze... off. Sorry, I overslept. I've been so very busy. It's exhausting work to turn over-to a megalomaniac killer-everything I built up through my entire life.


Knock knock knock. It's a good thing I didn't kill myself all this knocking would have ruined my concentration and entirely spoiled my death scene. I should die like Seneca, with fine last speeches. Or Socrates, though that would be harder, since I don't have hemlock but I do have a bathtub. No razor blades, though. I don't grow enough of a beard to need any. Just another sign that I'm only a stupid kid who should never have been permitted to take a role in the grownup world.


The door to his room opened and jammed against the locking bar. How outrageous! Who dare to use a passkey on his room?
And not just a passkey! Someone had the tool that opened the locking bar and now his door was wide open.


Assassins! Well, let them kill me here in the bed, facing them, not cowering in a corner begging them not to shoot.


“Poor baby,” said Mother


“He's depressed,” said Father “Don't make fun of him.”

“I can't help but think of what Ender went through, fighting the Formics almost every day for weeks, completely  exhausted,  and yet he always got up and fought again.”


Peter wanted to scream at her How dare she compare what he had just gone through with Ender's legendary “suffering.” Ender never lost a battle, did she think of that? And he had just lost the war! He was entitled to sleep


“Ready? One, two, three.”


Peter felt the whole mattress slide down the bed until he was awkwardly dumped onto the floor, banging his head against the frame of the bedsprings.


“Ow!” he cried.


Wouldn't that make a noble last word to be recorded by posterity?


How did the great Peter Wiggin, Hegemon of Earth (and, of course, brother of Ender Wiggin, sainted savior), meet his end?


He sustained a terrible head injury when his parents dragged him out of a hotel bed the morning after his ignominious escape from his own compound where not  one  person  had  threatened  him  in  any  way  and  he  had  no  evidence  of  any impending threat against his person.


And what were his last words?


A one-word sentence, fit to be engraved on his monument. Ow.


“I don't think we can get him into the shower without actually touching his sacred person,” said Mother


“I think you're right,” said Father


“And if we touch him,” said Mother, “there's a real possibility that we will be struck dead on the spot.”


Other people had mothers who were compassionate, tender, comforting, understanding. His mother was a sarcastic hag who clearly hated him and always

had.


“Ice bucket,” said Father. “No ice.”
“But it holds water.”


This was too stupid. The old throw-water-on-the-sleeping-teenager trick. “Just go away, I'm getting up in a couple of minutes.”
“No,” said Mother. “You're getting up now. Your father is filling the ice bucket. You can hear the water running.”


“OK, OK, leave the room so I can take my clothes off and get in the shower. Or is this just a subterfuge  so you can see me naked again? You've never let me forget how you used to change my diapers, so apparently that was a very important stage in your life.”


He was answered by having water dashed in his face. Not a whole bucketful, but enough to soak his head and shoulders.


“Sorry I didn't have time to fill it,” said Father. “But when you started making crude sexual innuendos to my wife, I had to use whatever amount of water was at hand to shut you up before you said enough that I would have to beat your bratty little face in.”


Peter got up from the mattress on the floor and pulled off the shorts he slept in. “Is this what you came in to see?”


“Absolutely,” said Father. “You were wrong, Theresa: he does have balls.” “Not enough of them, apparently.”
Peter stalked between them and slammed the bathroom door behind him.



Half an hour later, after keeping the press waiting only ten minutes past the appointed time,  Peter  walked alone  onto  the  platform  at  one  end  of  a  packed conference room. All  the reporters were holding up their little steadycams, the

lenses peering out between the fingers of their clenched fists. It was the best turnout he had ever had at a press conference-though  to be fair he had never actually held one in the United States. Maybe here they would all have been like this.


“I'm as surprised as you are to find myself here today,” said Peter with a smile. "But I must say I'm grateful to the source that provided me with information that allowed me to make my exit, along with my family, from a place that had once been a safe haven, but which had become the most dangerous place in the world to me.


“I am also grateful to the government of the United States, which not only invited me to bring the office of Hegemon here, on a temporary basis, of course, but also provided me with a generous contingent of the Secret Service to secure the area. I don't believe they're necessary, at least not in such numbers, but then, until recently I didn't think I needed any protection inside the Hegemony compound in Ribeirao Preto.”


His smile invited a laugh, and he got one. More of a release of tension than real amusement, but it would do. Father had stressed that-make them laugh now and then,  so everybody  feels  relaxed.  That  will  make  them  think  you're  relaxed  and confident, too.


“My information suggests that the many loyal employees of the Office of Hegemon are in no danger whatsoever, and when a new permanent headquarters is established,  I  invite  all  those  who  want  to,  to  resume  their  jobs.  The  disloyal employees, of course, already have other employment.”


Another laugh-but a couple of audible groans, too. The press smelled blood, and it didn't help that Peter looked-and was-so very young. Humor, yes, but don't look like a wise-cracking kid. Especially don't look like a wise-cracking kid whose parents had to drag him out of bed this morning.


“I will not give you any information that would compromise my recent benefactor. What I  can tell  you is  this:  My inconveniently sudden journey-this disruption in the Office of Hegemon-is entirely my fault.”


There. That wasn't what a kid would say. That wasn't even what adult politicians usually said.


"Against the advice of my military commander and others, I brought the

notorious Achilles Flandres, at his own request and with his assurances of loyalty to me, into my compound. I was warned that he could not be trusted, and I believed those warnings.


"However, I thought I was clever enough and careful enough to detect any betrayal on his part in plenty of time. That was a miscalculation on my part. Thanks to the help of others, it was not a fatal one.


“The  disinformation  now coming  from Achilles  Flandres  in the former Hegemony  compound about my alleged embezzlement  is, of course, false. I have always maintained the financial records of the Hegemony in public. The broad categories of income and disbursement have been published every year on the nets, and  this  morning  I  have  opened  up  the  entire  set  of  financial  records  of  the Hegemony,  and  my  own  personal  records,  on  a  secure  site  with  the  address
'Hegemon Financial Disclosure.' Except for a few secret items in the budget, which any  military  analyst  can  tell  you  is  barely  enough  to  account  for  the  very  few military actions of my office over the past few years, every dollar is accounted for And, yes, we do keep those records  in dollars, since the Hegemony  currency  has fluctuated widely in value, but with a distinctly downward trend, in recent years.”


Another laugh. But everyone was writing like crazy, too, and he could see that this policy of full disclosure was working.


“Besides seeing that nothing has been embezzled from the Hegemony,” Peter went on, “you will also see that the Hegemony  has been working with extremely limited funds. It has been a challenge, with so little money, to marshal the nations of the world to oppose the imperialistic  designs  of the so-called  'Universal  People's State' otherwise known as the Chinese Empire. We have been extremely grateful to those nations who have continued to support the Hegemony at one level or another In deference to some of them who prefer their contribution remain secret, we have withheld some twenty names. You are free to speculate about their identity but I will say neither yes or no, except to tell you candidly that China is not one of them.”





times.

The biggest laugh yet, and a couple of people even clapped their hands a few



“I am outraged that the usurper Achilles Flandres has called into question the credentials of the Minister of Colonization. But if there were any doubts about Flandres's plans, the fact that this was his first act should tell you a great deal about the future he plans for us all. Achilles Flandres will not rest until every human being is under his complete control. Or, of course, dead.”

Peter paused, looked down at the rostrum as if he had notes there, though of course he didn't.


"One thing I do not regret, however, about bringing Achilles  Handres to Ribeirao  Preto, is that I have had a chance  now to take his measure  as a human being-though it is only by the broadest definition that I include him in that category. Achilles Flandres has achieved his power in the world, not by his own intelligence or courage, but by exploiting the intelligence and courage of others. He engineered the kidnapping  of the children who helped my brother, Ender Wiggin, save humanity from the alien invaders. Why? Because he knew that he himself did not have any hope of ruling the world if any of them were working against him.


"Achilles Flandres's power comes from the willingness of others to believe his lies. But his lies will no longer bring him new allies as they have in the past. He has hitched his little wagon to China and drives China like an ox. But I have heard him  laughing  at  the  poor  fools  in  the  Chinese  government  who  believed  him, mocking them for their petty ambitions, as he told me how unworthy they were to have him guiding their affairs.


"No doubt much of this was merely part of his attempt to convince me that he was no longer working with them. But his ridicule was by name and very specific. His contempt  for them  was genuine.  I almost  feel  sorry for them-because  if his power is ever solidified and he has no further use for them, then they will see what I saw.


"Of course, he has scorn for me as well, and if he's laughing at me right now, I can only agree with him. I was snookered, ladies and gentlemen. In that, I join a distinguished   company,   some  of  whom  fell  from  power  in  Russia  after  the kidnappings, some of whom are now suffering as political prisoners after China's conquest of India, and some of whom even now are arresting people in India for... carrying stones.


"I only hope that I will turn out to be the last person so vain and foolish as to think that Achilles Flandres can be controlled or exploited to serve some higher purpose. Achilles Flandres serves only one purpose-his own pleasure. And what pleases him... would be to rule over every man, woman, and child in the human race.


“I  was not  a  fool  when I  committed the Hegemony to opposing the imperialistic acts of the Chinese government. Now, because of my own mistakes, the

prestige  of  the  Hegemony  is  temporarily  diminished.  But  my  opposition  to  the Chinese Empire's oppression of more than half the people of the world is not diminished. I am the implacable enemy of emperors.”


That was as good a stopping point as any.


Peter bowed his head briefly to acknowledge their polite applause. Some in the crowd applauded more than politely-but he was also aware of those who did not clap at all.


The questions began then, but because he had accused himself from the start, he fielded them easily. Two questioners tried to get more information on the source who tipped him off and what it was he tipped Peter off about, but Peter only said, “If I say anything more on this subject, someone who has been kind to me will certainly die. I am surprised you would even ask.” After the second time he said this-word for word-no one asked such a question again.


As to those whose questions were merely veiled accusations, he agreed with all those who implied that he had been foolish. When he was asked if he had proven himself too foolish to hold the office of Hegemon, his first reply was a joke: “I was told  when  I  took  the  job  in  the  first  place  that  accepting  it  proved  I  was  too dimwitted to serve.” Laughter, of course. And then he said, “But I have tried to use that office to serve the cause of peace and self-government for all of humanity, and I challenge anyone to show that I did anything other than advance that cause as much as was possible with the resources I had.”


Fifteen minutes later, he apologized for having no further time. “But please email me any further questions you might have, and my staff and I will try to get answers back to you in time for your deadlines. One final word before I go.”


They fell silent, waiting.


“The future happiness of the human race depends on good people who want to live at peace with their neighbors, and who are willing to protect their neighbors from those who don't want peace. I'm only one of those people. I'm probably not the best of them, and I hope to God I'm not the smartest. But I happen to be the one who was entrusted with the office of Hegemon. Until my term expires or I am lawfully replaced by the nations that have supported the Hegemony, I will continue to serve in that office.”


More applause-and this time he allowed himself to believe that there might

be some real enthusiasm in it. He came back to his room exhausted.


Mother and Father were there, waiting. They had refused to go downstairs with him. “If your mother and father are with you,” Father had said, “then this better be the press conference where you resign. But if you intend to stay in office, then you go down there alone. Just you. No staff. No parents. No friends. No notes. Just you.”


Father had been right. Mother had been right, too. Ender, bless his little heart, was the example he had to follow. If you lose, you lose, but you don't give up.


“How did it go?” asked Mother


“Well enough, I think,” said Peter “I took questions for fifteen minutes, but they were starting to repeat themselves or get off on wild tangents so I told them to email me any further questions. Was it carried on the vid?”


“We polled thirty news stations,”  said Father, “and the top twenty or so newswebs, and most of them had it live.”


“So you watched?” said Peter


“No, we flipped through,” said Mother “But what we saw looked and sounded good. You didn't bat an eye. I think you brought it off.”


“We'll see.”


“Long term,” said Father “You're going to have a bumpy couple of months. Especially because you can count on it that Achilles hasn't emptied his quiver yet.”


“Bow and arrow analogies?” said Peter “You are so old.” They chuckled at his joke.
“Mom. Dad. Thanks.”


“All we did,” said Father, “was what we knew that tomorrow you would have wished we had done today.”


Peter nodded. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Man, I can't believe

I was so dumb. I can't believe I didn't listen to Bean and Petra and Suri and-” “And us,” said Mother helpfully.
“And you and Graff” said Peter


“You trusted your own judgment,” said Father, “and that's exactly what you have to do. You were wrong this time, but you haven't been wrong often, and I doubt you'll ever be this wrong again.”


“For heaven's sake don't start taking a vote on your decisions,” said Mother. “Or looking at opinion polls or trying to guess how your actions will play with the press.”


“I won't,” said Peter.


“Because, you see, you're Locke,” said Mother. “You already ended one war. After a few days or weeks, the press will start remembering that. And you're Demosthenes-you have quite a fervent following.”


“Had,” said Peter.


“They saw what they expected from Demosthenes,” said Mother. “You didn't weasel, you didn't make excuses, you took the blame you deserved and refused the accusations that were false. You put out your evidence-”


“That was good advice, Dad, thanks,” said Peter


“And,” said Mother, "you showed courage.





me?”

“By running away from Ribeirao Preto before anyone so much as glared at



“By getting out of bed,” she answered.
Peter shook his head. "Then my courage is nothing but borrowed courage. “Not borrowed,” said Mother “Stored up. In us. Like a bank. We've seen your
courage and we saved some for you when you temporarily ran out and needed some of it back.”

“Cash flow problem, that's all it was,” said Father


“How many times are you two going to have to save me from myself before this whole drama runs its course?” asked Peter.


“I think... six times,” said Father


“No, eight,” said Mother.


“You two think you're so cute,” said Peter


“Mm-hm.”


A knock at the door “Room service!” called a voice from outside.


Father was at the door in two quick strides. “Three tomato juices?” he asked. “No, no, nothing like that. Lunch. Sandwiches. Bowl of ice cream.”
Even with that reassurance, Father stepped to the side of the door and pulled it open as far as the lock bar allowed. Nobody fired a weapon, and the guy with the food laughed. “Oh, everybody forgets to undo that thing, happens all the time.”


Father opened the door and stepped outside long enough to make sure nobody else was in the hall waiting to follow room service inside.


When the waiter was coming through the door Peter turned around to get out of his way, just in time to see Mother slipping a pistol back into her purse.


“Since when did you start packing?” he asked her


“Since your chief of computer security turned out to be Achilles's good friend,” she said.


“Ferreira?” asked Peter


"He's been telling the press that he installed snoopware to find out who was embezzling funds, and was shocked to discover it was you.


“Oh,” said Peter. “Of course they ran a press conference opposite mine.”

“But almost everybody carried yours live and his was just excerpted. And they all followed the Ferreira clip with a repeat of you announcing that you were posting the Hegemony financial records on the nets.”


"Bet we crash the server


“No, all the news organizations cloned it first thing.”


Father had finished signing off on the meal and the waiter was gone, the door relocked.


“Let's eat,” said Father “If I recall, this place always has great lunches.” “It's good to be home,” said Mother "Well, not home, but in town, anyway. Peter took a bite and it was good.
They had ordered exactly the sandwich he would have ordered, that's how well they knew him. Their lives really were focused on their children. He couldn't have  ordered  their  sandwiches.  Three  place  settings  on the little  rolling  cart  the waiter had wheeled in. There should have been five. “I'm sorry,” he said.


“For what?” asked Father, his mouth full. “That I'm the only kid you've got on Earth.”
“Could be worse,” said Father “Could have been none.” And Mother reached over and patted his hand.

Card, Orson Scott - Ender 07 - Shadow Puppets (v2.1)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN


CALIPH


From: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov
To:   Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov
Re:   The better part of valor


I know you don't want to hear from me. But given that you are no longer in a secure situation, and our mutual foe is playing again on the world stage, I offer you and your parents sanctuary. I am not suggesting that you go into the colony program. Quite the contrary-I regard you as the only hope of rallying worldwide opposition to our foe. That is why your physical protection is of the utmost importance to us.


For that reason, I have been authorized to invite you to a facility off planet for a few days, a few weeks, a few months. It has full connections to the nets and you will be returned to Earth within forty-eight hours of your request. No one will even know you are gone. But it will put you out of reach of any attempt either to kill or capture you or your parents.


Please  take this seriously.  Now that  we know our enemy  has not severed  his connections with his previous host, certain intelligence already obtained now makes a different kind of sense. Our best interpretation  of this data is that an attempt on your life is imminent.


A temporary disappearance from the surface of the Earth would be very useful to you right  now. Think  of it as the equivalent  of Lincoln's  secret  journey  through Baltimore in order to assume the presidency. Or, if you prefer a less lofty precedent, Lenin's journey to Russia in a sealed railroad car.



Petra assumed that she had been taken to Damascus because Ambul had succeeded in making contact with Alai, but neither of them met her at the airport. Nor was there anyone waiting for her at the security gates. Not that she wanted someone carrying a sign that said “Petra Arkanian”-she might as well send Achilles an email telling him where she was.


She had felt nauseated through the entire flight, but she knew it could not possibly be from pregnancy, not this quickly. It took at least a few hours for the hormones to start to flow, It had to be the stark fear that started when she realized

that if Alai's people could find exactly where she was, and have a cab waiting for her, so could Achilles's.


How did Bean know to choose  the cab he chose  for her? Was it some predilection for Indonesians? Did he reason from evidence she didn't even notice? Or did he choose the third cab simply because he didn't trust the concept of “next in line”?


What cab had he got into, and who was driving it?


Someone bumped into her from behind, and for a moment she had a rush of adrenaline as she thought: This is it! I'm being killed by an assassin who approached me from behind because I was too stupid to look around!


After the momentary panic-and the momentary self-blame-she realized that of course it was not an assassin, it was simply a passenger from her flight, hurrying to get out of the airport, while she, uncertain and lost in her own thoughts, had been walking too slowly and obstructing traffic.


I'll go to a hotel, she thought. But not one that Europeans always go to. But wait, if I go to a hotel where everybody but me is Arablooking, I'll stand out. Too obvious. Bean would tease me for not having developed any useful survival habits. Though at least I thought twice before checking into an Arab hotel.


The only luggage she had was the bag she was carrying over her shoulder, and at customs she went through the usual questions. “This is all your luggage?” “Yes.” “How long do you plan to stay?” “A couple of weeks, I expect.” “Two weeks, and no more clothing than this?” “I plan to shop.”


It always aroused suspicions to enter a country with too little luggage, but as Bean said, it's better to have a few more questions at customs or passport control than to have to go to the baggage claim area and stand round where bad people have plenty of time to find you.


The only thing worse, in Bean's view, was to use the first restroom in the airline terminal. “Everybody knows women have to pee incessantly,” said Bean.


“Actually, it's not incessant, and most men don't notice even if it is,” said Petra. But considering that Bean seemed never to need to pee at all, she supposed that her normal human needs seemed excessive to him.

She was  well  trained  now, however  She didn't  even  glance  at  the first restroom she passed, or the second. She probably wouldn't use a bathroom until she got to her hotel room.


Bean, when are you coming? Did they get you onto the next flight? How will we find each other in this city?


She knew he would be furious, however, if she lingered in the airport hoping to meet his flight. For one thing, she would have no idea where his flight would be coming from-he was wont to choose very odd itineraries, so that he could very easily be on a flight from Cairo, Moscow, Algiers, Rome, or Jerusalem. No, it was better to go to a hotel, check in under an alias that he knew about, and- “Mrs. Delphiki?”


She turned at once at the sound of Bean's mother's name, and then realized that the tall, white-haired gentleman was addressing her.


“Yes.” She laughed. “I'm still not used to the idea of being called by my husband's name.”


“Forgive me,” said the man. “Do you prefer your birth name?”


“I haven't used my own name in many months,” said Petra. “Who sent you to meet me?”


“Your host,” said the man.


“I have had many hosts in my life,” said Petra. "Some of whom I do not wish to visit again.


“But such people as that would not live in Damascus.” There was a twinkle in his eye. Then he leaned in close. “There are names that it is not good to say aloud.”


“Mine apparently not being one of them,” she said with a smile.


“In this time and place,” he said, “you are safe while others might not be.” “I'm safe because you're with me?”
“You are safe because I and my... what is your Battle School slang?... my jeesh and I are here watching over you.”

"I didn't see anybody watching over me.


“You didn't even see me,” said the man. “This is because we're very good at what we do.”


"I did see you. I just didn't realize you had taken any notice of me. “As I said.”
She smiled. “Very well, I will not name our host. And since you won't either, I'm afraid I can't go with you anywhere.”


“Oh, so suspicious,” he said with a rueful smile. “Very well, then. Perhaps I can facilitate matters by placing you under arrest.” He showed her a very official- looking badge inside a wallet. Though she had no idea what organization had issued the badge, since she had never learned the Arabic alphabet, let alone the language itself.


But Bean had taught her: Listen to your fear, and listen to your trust. She trusted this man, and so she believed his badge without being able to read it. “So you're with Syrian law enforcement,” she said.


“As often as not,” he replied, smiling again as he put his wallet away. “Let's walk outside,” she said.
“Let's not,” he said. “Let's go into a little room here at the airport.” “A toilet stall?” she asked. “Or an interrogation room?”
“My office,” he said.


If it was an office, it was certainly well disguised. They got to it by stepping behind the El Al ticket counter and going into the employees' back room.


“El Al?” she asked. “You're Israeli?”


“Israel and Syria are very close friends for the past hundred years. You should keep up on your history.”

They  walked  down  a corridor  lined  with  employee  lockers,  a drinking fountain, and a couple of restroom doors.


“I  didn't  think  the  friendship  was  close  enough  to  allow  Syrian  law enforcement to use Israel's national airline,” said Petra.


“I lied about being with Syrian law enforcement,” he said. “And did they lie out front about being El Al?”
He palmed open an unmarked door, but when she made as if to follow him through it, he shook his head. “No no, first you must place the palm of your hand.”


She complied, but wondered how they could possibly have her palm print and sweat signature here in Syria.


No. They  didn't,  of course.  They  were  getting  them  right  now,  so that wherever  else  she  went,  she  would  be  recognized  by  their  computer  security systems.


The door led to a stairway that went down.


And farther down, and farther yet, until they had to be well underground.


“I  don't  think  this  complies  with  international   handicapped  access regulations,” said Petra.


“What the regulators don't see won't hurt us,” said the man.
“A theory that has gotten so many people into so much trouble,” said Petra. They came to an underground tunnel, where a small electric car was waiting
for them. No driver. Apparently her companion was going to drive.


Not so. He got into the backseat beside her, and the car took off by itself.


“Let me guess,” said Petra. “You don't take most of your VIPs through the El
Al ticket counter.”


“There are other ways to get to this little street,” said the man. “But the

people looking for you would not have staked out El Al.”


“You'd be surprised at how often my enemy is two steps ahead.”


“But what if your friends are three steps ahead?” Then he laughed as if it had been a joke, and not a boast.


“We're alone in a car,” said Petra. "Let's have some names now. “I am Ivan Lankowski,” he said.
She laughed in spite of herself. But when he did not smile, she stopped. “I'm sorry,” she said. “You don't look Russian, and this is Damascus.”


“My paternal grandfather was ethnic Russian, my grandmother was ethnic Kazakh, both were Muslims. My mother's parents are still living, thanks be to Allah, and they are both Jordanian.”


“And you never changed the name?”


“It is the heart that makes the Muslim. The heart and the life. My name contains part of my genealogy. Since Allah willed me to be born in this family, who am I to try to deny his gift?”


“Ivan Lankowski,” said Petra. “The name I'd like to hear is the name of the one who sent you.”


“One's superior officer is never named. It is a basic rule. of security.” Petra sighed. "I suppose this proves I'm not in Kansas anymore.
“I don't believe,” said Lankowski, “that you have ever been in Kansas, Mrs. Delphiki.”


“It was a reference to-”


“I have seen The Wizard of Oz,” said Lankowski. “I am, after all, an educated man. And... I have been in Kansas.”


“Then you have found wisdom I can only dream of.”

He chuckled. “It is an unforgettable place. Just like Jordan was right after the Ice Age, covered with tall grasses, stretching forever in every direction, with the sky everywhere, instead of being confined to a small patch above the trees.”





Age.”

“You are a poet,” said Petra. “And also a very old man, to remember the Ice






after it.”

“The Ice Age was my father's time. I only remember the rainy times right



“I had no idea there were tunnels under Damascus.”


“In our wars with the west,” said Lankowski, “we learned to bury everything that we did not want blown up. Individually-targeted bombs were first tested on Arabs, did you know that? The archives are full of pictures of exploding Arabs.”


“I've seen some of the pictures,” said Petra. “I also recall that during those wars, some of the individuals targeted themselves by strapping on their own bombs and blowing them up in public places.”


“Yes, we did not have guided missiles, but we did have feet.” “And the bitterness remains?”
“No, no bitterness,” said Lankowski. “We once ruled the known world, from Spain to India. Muslims ruled in Moscow and our soldiers reached into France, and to the gates of Vienna. Our dogs were better educated than the scholars of the West. Then one day we woke up and we were poor and ignorant, and somebody else had all the guns. We knew this could not be the will of Allah, so we fought.”


“And discovered that the will of Allah was... ”


“The will of Allah was for many of our people to die, and for the West to occupy our countries again and again until we stopped fighting. We learned our lesson. We are very well behaved now. We abide by all the treaty terms. We have freedom of the press, freedom of religion, liberated women, and democratic elections.”


“And tunnels under Damascus.”

“And memories.” He smiled at her “And cars without drivers.” “Israeli technology, I believe.”
“For a long time we thought of Israel as the enemy's toehold in our holy land. Then one day we remembered that israel was a member of our family who had gone away into exile, learned everything our enemies knew, and then came home again. We stopped fighting our brother, and our brother gave us all the gifts of the West, but without destroying our souls. How sad it would have been if we had killed all the Jews and driven them out. Who would have taught us then? The Armenians?”


She laughed at his joke, but also listened to his lecture. So this was how they lived with their history-they assigned meanings to everything that allowed them to see God's hand in everything. Purpose. Even power and hope.


But they also still remembered that Muslims had once ruled the world. And they still  regarded  democracy  as something  they adopted  in order  to placate  the West.


I really should read the Q'uran. she thought. To see what lies underneath the façade of western-style sophistication.


This man was sent to meet me, she thought, because this is the face they want visitors to Syria to see. He told me these stories, because this is the attitude they want me to believe that they have.


But this is the pretty version. The one that has been tailored to fit Western ears.  The  bones  of  the  stories,  the  blood  and  the  sinews  of  it,  were  defeat, humiliation, incomprehension of the will of God, loss of greatness as a people, and a sense of ongoing defeat. These are people with something  to prove and with lost status to retrieve. A people who want, not vengeance, but vindication.


Very dangerous people.


Perhaps also very useful people, to a point.


She took her observations to the next step, but couched her words in the same kind of euphemistic story that he had told. “From what you tell me,” said Petra, “the Muslim world sees this dangerous time in world history as the moment Allah has prepared you for. You were humbled before, so you would be submissive to Allah and ready for him to lead you to victory.”

He said nothing at all for a long time. “I did not say that.”
“Of course you did,” said Petra. “It was the premise underlying everything else you said. But you don't seem to realize that you have told this, not to an enemy, but to a friend.”
“If you are a friend of God,” said Lankowski, “why do you not obey his law?” “But I did not say I was a friend of God,” said Petra. “Only that I was a friend
of yours. Some of us cannot live your law, but we can still admire those who do, and
wish them well, and help them when we can.”


"And come to us for safety because in our world there is safety to be had, while in your world there is none.


“Fair enough,” said Petra.


“You are an interesting girl,” said Lankowski.


“I've commanded soldiers in war,” said Petra, “and I'm married, and I might very well be pregnant. When do I stop being just a girl? Under Islamic law, I mean.”


“You are a girl because you are at least forty years younger than I am. It has nothing to do with Islamic law. When you are sixty and I am a hundred, inshallah, you will still be a girl to me.”


“Bean is dead, isn't he?” asked Petra.


Lankowski looked startled. “No,” he said at once. It was a blurt, unprepared for, and Petra believed him.


“Then something terrible has happened that you can't bear to tell me. My parents-have they been hurt?”


“Why do you think such a thing?”


“Because you're a courteous man. Because your people changed my ticket

and brought me here and promised I'd be reunited with my husband. And in all this time we've  been walking  and riding together,  you have never  so much as hinted about when or whether I would see Bean.”


“I apologize for being remiss,” said Lankowski. “Your husband boarded a later flight that came by a different route, but he is coming. And your family is fine, or at least we have no reason to think they're not.”


“And yet you are still hesitant,” said Petra.


“There was an incident,” said Lankowski. “Your husband is safe. Uninjured. But there was an attempt to kill him. We think if you had been the one who got into the first cab, it would not have been a murder attempt. It would have been a kidnapping.”


“And why do you think that? The one who wants my husband dead wants me dead as well.”


“Ah, but he wants what you have inside you even more,” said Lankowski.


It took only a moment for her to make the logical assumption about why he would know that. “They've taken the embryos,” she said.


“The security guard received a rise in salary from a third party, and in return he allowed someone to remove your frozen embryos.”


Petra had known Volescu was lying about being able to tell which babies had Anton's Key. But now Bean would know it, too. They both knew the value of Bean's babies on the open market, and that the highest price would come if the babies had Anton's Key in their DNA, or the would-be buyers believed they did.


She  found  herself  breathing  too  rapidly.  It  would  do  no  good  to hyperventilate. She forced herself to calm down.


Lankowski reached out and patted her hand lightly. Yes, he sees that I'm upset. I don't yet have Bean's skill at hiding what I feel. Though of course his skill might be the simple result of not feeling anything.


Bean would know that Volescu had deceived them. For all they knew, the baby in her womb might be afflicted with Bean's condition. And Bean had vowed that he would never have children with Anton's Key.

“Have there been any ransom demands?” she asked Lankowski.


“Alas, no,” he replied. “We do not think they wish to trouble themselves with the  near  impossibility  of  trying  to  obtain  money  from  you.  The  risk  of  being outsmarted and arrested in the process of trying to exchange items of value is too high, perhaps, when compared with the risk involved in selling your babies to third parties.”


“I think the risks involved in that are very nearly zero,” said Petra.


“Then we agree on the assessment. Your babies will be safe, if that's any consolation.”


“Safe to be raised by monsters,” said Petra. “Perhaps they don't see themselves that way.”
“Are you confessing that you people are in the market for one of them to raise to be your boy or girl genius?”


“We do not traffic in stolen flesh,” said Lankowski. “We long had a problem with a slave trade that would not die. Now if someone is caught owning or selling or buying or transporting a slave, or being in an official position and tolerating slavery, the penalty is death. And the trials are swift, the appeals never granted. No, Mrs. Delphiki, we are not a good place for someone to bring stolen embryos to try to sell them.”


Even in her concern about her children-her potential children- she realized what he had just confessed: That the “we” he spoke of was not Syria, but rather some kind of pan-Islamic shadow government that did not, officially at least, exist. An authority that transcended nations.


That was what Lankowski meant when he said that he worked for the Syrian government “as often as not.” Because as often as not he worked for a government higher than that of Syria.


They already have their own rival to the Hegemon.


“Perhaps someday,” she said, “my children will be trained and used to help

defend some nation from Muslim conquest.”


“Since Muslims do not invade other nations anymore, I wonder how such a thing could happen?”


“You have Alai sequestered  here somewhere.  What is he doing, making baskets or pottery to sell at the fair?”


“Are those the only choices you see? Pottery-making or aggressive war?”


But his denials did not interest her. She knew her analysis was as correct as it could be without more data-his denial was not a disproof, it was more likely to be an inadvertent confirmation.


What interested her now was Bean. Where was he? When would he get to
Damascus? What would he do about the missing embryos?


Or  at  least  that  was  what  she  tried  to pretend  to herself  that  she  was interested in.


Because all she could really think, in an undercurrent monologue that kept shouting at her from deep inside her mind, was: He has my babies. Not the Pied Piper, prancing them away from town. Not Baba Yaga, luring them into her house on chicken legs. Not the witch in the gingerbread cottage, keeping them in cages and fattening them up. None of those grey fantasies. Nothing of fog and mist. Only the absolute black of a place where no light shines, where light is not even remembered.


That's where her babies were. In the belly of the Beast.



The car came to a stop at a simple platform. The underground road went on, to destinations Petra did not bother trying to guess. For all she knew, the tunnel ran to Baghdad, to Amman, under the mountains to Ankara, maybe even under the radioactive desert to arise in the place where the ancient stone waits for the half-life of the half-life of the half-life of death to pass, so pilgrims can come again on haj[?].


Lankowski reached out a hand and helped her from the car, though she was young and he was old. His attitude toward her was strange, as if he had to treat her very carefully. As if she was not robust, as if she could easily break.

And it was true. She was the one who could break. Who broke.


Only I can't break now. Because maybe I still have one child. Maybe putting this one inside me did not kill it, but gave it life. Maybe it has taken root in my garden and will blossom and bear fruit, a baby on a short twisted stem. And when the fruit is plucked, out will come stem and root as well, leaving the garden empty. And where will the others be then? They have been taken to grow in someone else's plot. Yet I will not break now, because I have this one, perhaps this one.


“Thank you,” she said to Lankowski. “But I'm not so fragile as to need help getting out of a car.”


He smiled at her, but said nothing. She followed him into the elevator and they rose up into...


A garden. As lush as the Philippine jungle clearing where Peter gave the order that would bring the Beast into their house, driving them out.


She saw that the courtyard was glassed over. That's why it was so humid here. That's how it stayed so moist. Nothing was given up to the dry desert air.


Sitting quietly on a stone chair in the middle of the garden was a tall, slender man, his skin the deep cacao brown of the upper Niger where he had been born.


She did not walk up to him at once, but stood admiring what she saw. The long legs, clad not in the business suit that had been the uniform of westerners for centuries now, but in the robes of a sheik. His head was not covered, however And there was no beard on his chin. Still young, and yet also now a man.


“Alai,” she murmured. So softly that she doubted he could hear.


And perhaps he did not hear, but chose that moment only by coincidence, to turn and see her. His brooding expression softened into a smile. But it was not the boyish grin  that  she  had  known when he  bounded along the  low-gravity inner corridors of  Battle  School. This  smile  had  weariness in  it,  and  old  fears  long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.


She realized then why Alai had disappeared from view.


He is Caliph. They have chosen a Caliph again, all the Muslim world under

the authority of one man, and it is Alai.


She could not know this, not just from his place here in a garden. Yet she knew from the way he sat in it that this was a throne. She knew from the way she was brought here, with no trappings of power, no guards, no passwords, just a simple man of elegant courtesy leading her to the boy-man seated on the ancient throne. Alai's power was spiritual. In all of Damascus there was no safer place than here. No one would bother him. Millions would die before letting an uninvited stranger set foot here.


He beckoned to her, and it was the gentle invitation of a holy man. She did not have to obey him, and he would not mind if she did not come. But she came.


“Salaam,” said Alai. “Salaam,” said Petra. “Stone girl,” he said.
“Hi,” she said. The old joke between them, him punning on the meaning of her name in the original Greek, her punning on the jai of jai chat.


“I'm glad you're safe,” he said.


“Your life has changed since you regained your freedom.” “And yours, too,” said Alai. "Married now.
“A good Catholic wedding.”


“You should have invited me,” he said. “You couldn't have come,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. “But I would have wished you well.” “Instead you have done well by us when we needed it most.”
"I'm sorry that I did nothing to protect the other... children. But I didn't know about them in time. And I assumed that Bean and you would have had enough security... no, no, please, I'm sorry, I'm reminding you of pain instead of soothing

you.


She sank down and sat on the ground before his throne, and he leaned over to gather her into his arms. She rested her head and arms on his lap, and he stroked her hair “When we were children, playing the greatest computer game in the world, we had no idea.”


“We were saving the world.”


“And now we're creating the world we saved.” “Not me,” said Petra. “I'm no longer a player.”
“Are any of us players?” said Alai. “Or are we only the pieces moved in someone else's game?”


“Inshallah,” said Petra.


She had rather expected Alai to chuckle, but he only nodded. “Yes, that is our belief, that all that happens comes from the will of God. But I think it is not your belief.”


"No. we Christians have to guess the will of God and try to bring it to pass.


“It feels the same, when things are happening,” said Alai. “Sometimes you think that you're in control, because you make things change by your own choices. And  then  something  happens  that  sweeps  all  your  plans  away  as  if  they  were nothing, just pieces on a chessboard.”


“Shadows that children make on the wall,” said Petra, “and someone turns the light off.”


“Or turns a brighter one on,” said Alai, "and the shadows disappear. “Alai,” said Petra, “will you let us go again? I know your secret.”
“Yes, I'll let you go,” said Alai. “The secret can't be kept for long. Too many people know it already.”


“We would never tell.”

“I know,” said Alai. “Because we were once in Ender's jeesh. But I'm in another jeesh now. I stand at the head of it, because they asked me to do it, because they said God had chosen me. I don't know about that. I don't hear the voice of God, I  don't  feel  his  power  inside  me.  But  they  come  to  me  with  their  plans,  their questions,  the  conflicts  between  nations,  and  I  offer  suggestions.  And  they  take them. And things work out. So far at least, they've always worked. So perhaps I am chosen by God.”


“Or you're very clever”


“Or very lucky.” Alai looked at his hands. “Still, it's better to believe that some high purpose guides our steps than to think that nothing matters except our own small miseries and happinesses.”


“Unless our happiness is the high purpose.”





happy?”

“If our happiness is the purpose of God,” said Alai, “why are so few of us



“Perhaps  he wants  us to have  the happiness  that  we can  only  find for ourselves.”


Alai nodded and chuckled. “We Battle School brats, we all have a bit of the imam in us, don't you think?”


“The Jesuit. The rabbi. The lama.”


“Do you know how I find my answers? Sometimes, when it's very hard? I ask myself 'What would Ender do?'”


Petra shook her head. “It's the old joke. 'I ask myself What would a person smarter than me do in this circumstance, and then I do it.'”


“But Ender isn't imaginary. He was with us, and we knew him. We saw how he built us into an army, how he knew us all, found the best in us, pushed us as hard as we could bear, and sometimes harder, but himself hardest of all.”


Petra felt once again the old sting, that she was the only one he had pushed harder than she could bear.

It made her sad and angry, and even though she knew that Alai had not even been thinking of her when he said it, she wanted to lash back at him.


But he had been kind to her and Bean. Had saved them, and brought them here, even though he did not need or want non-Muslims helping him, since his new role as the leader of the world's Muslims required a certain purity, if not in his soul, then certainly in his companionship.


Still, she had to offer


“We'll help you if you let us,” said Petra. “Help me what?” asked Alai.
“Help you make war against China,” she said.


“But we have no plans to make war against China,” said Alai. “We have renounced military jihad. The only purification and redemption we attempt is of the soul.”


“Do all wars have to be holy wars?”


“No, but unholy wars damn all those who take part in them.” “Who else but you can stand against China?”
“The Europeans. The North Americans.” “It's hard to stand when you have no spine.”
“They're an old and tired civilization. We were, too, once. It took centuries of decline and a series of bitter defeats and humiliations before we made the changes that would allow us to serve Allah in unity and hope.”


“And yet you maintain armies. You have a network of operatives who shoot their guns when they need to.”


Alai nodded gravely. “We're prepared to use force to defend ourselves if we're attacked.”

Petra shook her head. For a moment she had felt frustrated because the world needed rescuing, and it sounded as though Alai and his people were renouncing war Now she was just as disappointed  to realize that nothing had really changed. Alai was planning war-but intended to wait until some attack made his war “defensive.” Not that she disagreed with the justness of defensive  war. It was the falseness  of pretending that he had renounced war when he was in fact planning for it.


Or maybe he meant exactly what he said. It seemed so unlikely.
“You're tired,” said Alai. “Even though the jet lag from the Netherlands is not so bad, you should rest. I understand you were ill on your flight.”


She laughed. “You had someone on the plane, watching me?” “Of course,” he said. “You're a very important person.”
Why should she be important to the Muslims? They didn't want to use her military talents, and she had no political influence in the world. It had to be her baby that made her valuable-but how would her child, if she even had one, have any value to the Islamic world?


“My child,” she said, “will not be raised to be a soldier.”


Alai raised a hand. “You leap to conclusions, Petra,” he said. “We are led, we hope, by Allah. We have no wish to take your child, and while we hope that there will someday be a world in which all children will be raised to know Allah and serve him, we have no desire to take your child from you or keep him here with us.”


“Or her,” said Petra, unreassured. “If you don't want our baby, why am I an important person?”


“Think like a soldier,” said Alai. “You have in your womb what our worst enemy wants most. And, even if you don't have a baby, your death is something that he has to have, for reasons deep in the evil of his heart. His need to reach for you makes you important to those of us who fear him and want to block his path.”


Petra shook her head. “Alai,” she said, “I and my child could die and it would be a mere blip on the rangeflnder[?] to you and your people.”

“It's useful for us to keep you alive,” said Alai.


“How pragmatic of you. But there's more to it than that.” “Yes,” said Alai. “There is.”
“Are you going to tell me?”


“it will sound very mystical to you,” said Alai.


“But that's hardly a surprise, coming from the Caliph.”


“Allah  has brought  something  new into the world-I  speak  of Bean,  the genetic difference between him and the rest of humanity. There are imams who declare him to be an abomination, conceived in evil. There are others who say he is an innocent victim, a child who was conceived as a normal embryo but was altered by evil and can't help what was done to him. But there are others-and the number is by far larger-who say that this could not have been done except by the will of Allah. That Bean's abilities were a key part of our victory over the Formics, so it must have been God's will that brought  him into existence  at the time we needed him. And since God has chosen to bring this new thing into the world, now we must watch and see whether God allows this genetic change to breed true.”


“He's dying, Alai,” said Petra.
“I know,” said Alai. “But aren't we all?” “He didn't want to have children at all.”





hearts.”

“And yet he changed his mind,” said Alai. “The will of God blossoms in all



“So maybe if the Beast kills us, that's the will of God as well. Why did you bother to prevent it?”


“Because my friends asked me to,” said Alai. “Why are you making this so complicated? The things I want are simple. To do good wherever it's within my power, and where I can't do good, at least do no harm.”


“How... Hippocratic of you.”

“Petra, go to bed, sleep, you're becoming bitchy.”


It was true. She was out of sorts, fretting about things she could do nothing to change, wanting Bean to be with her, wanting Alai not to have changed into this regal figure, this holy man.


“You're not happy with what I've become,” said Alai. “You can read minds?” asked Petra.
“Faces,” said Alai. “Unlike Achilles and Peter Wiggin, I didn't seek this. I came home from space with no ambition other than to lead a normal life and perhaps serve my country or my God in one way or another Nor did some party or faction choose me and set me in my place.”


“How could you end up in this garden, on that chair, if neither  you nor anyone else put you there?” asked Petra. It annoyed her when people lied-even to themselves-about things that simply didn't need to be lied about.


“I came home from my Russian captivity and was put to work planning joint military maneuvers of a pan-Arab force that was being trained to join in the defense of Pakistan.”


Petra knew that this pan-Arab force probably began as an army designed to help defend against Pakistan, since right up to the moment of the Chinese invasion of India, the Pakistani government had been planning to launch a war against other Muslim nations to unite the Muslim world under their rule.


“Or whatever,” said Alai, laughing at her consternation when, once again, he had seemed to read her mind. “It became a force for the defense of Pakistan. It put me in contact with military planners from a dozen nations, and more and more they began to come to me with questions well beyond those of military strategy. It was nobody's plan, least of all mine. I didn't think my answers were particularly wise, I simply said whatever seemed obvious to me, or when nothing was clear, I asked questions until clarity emerged.”


"And they became dependent on you.


“I don't think so,” said Alai. “They simply... respected me. They began to want me in meetings with the politicians and diplomats, not just the soldiers. And

the politicians  and diplomats  began asking me questions,  seeking my support  for their views or plans, and finally choosing me as the mediator between the parties in various disputes.”


“A judge,” said Petra.


“A Battle School graduate,” said Alai, “at a time when my people wanted more than a judge. They wanted to be great again, and to do that they needed a leader that they believed had the favor of Allah. I try to live and act in such a way as to give them the leader they need. Petra, I am still the same boy I was in Battle School. And, like Ender, I may be a leader, but I am also the tool my people created to accomplish their collective purpose.”


“Maybe,” said Petra, “I'm just jealous. Because Armenia has no great purpose, except to stay alive and free. And no power to accomplish that without the help of great nations.”


“Armenia is in no danger from us,” said Alai.


“Unless, of course, we provoke the Azerbaijanis,” said Petra. “Which we do by breathing, I must point out.”


“We will not conquer our way to greatness, Petra,” said Alai.


“What, then, you'll wait for the whole world to convert to Islam and beg to be admitted to your new world order?”


“Yes” said Alai. “That's just what we'll do.”


“As plans go,” said Petra, “that's about the most self-delusional one I've ever heard of.”


He laughed. “Definitely you need a nap, my beloved sister You don't want that to be the mouth Bean has to listen to when he arrives.”


“When will he arrive?”


“Well after dark,” said Alai. "Now you see Mr. Lankowski waiting for you at that gate. He'll lead you to your room.

“I sleep in the palace of the Caliph tonight?” asked Petra.


“It's not much, as palaces go,” said Alai. “Most of the rooms are public spaces, offices, things like that. I have a very simple bedroom  and... this garden. Your room will also be very simple-but perhaps it will make it seem luxurious if you think of it as being identical with the one where the Caliph sleeps.”


“I feel as if I've been swept away into one of Scheherazade's stories.” “We keep a sturdy roof. You have nothing to fear from rocs.”
“You think of everything,” said Petra.


“We have an excellent doctor on call, should you wish for medical attention of any kind.”


“It's still too soon for a pregnancy test to mean anything,” said Petra. “If that's what you meant.”


“I meant,” said Alai, “that we have an excellent doctor on call, should you wish for medical attention of any kind.”


“In that case,” said Petra, “my answer is, 'You think of everything.'”



She thought she couldn't sleep, but she had nothing better to do than lie on the bed in a room that was downright spartan-with no television and no book but an Armenian translation of the Q'uran. She knew what the presence of this book in her room implied. For many centuries, translations of the Q'uran were regarded as false by definition,  since  only the original  Arabic  actually  conveyed  the words  of the Prophet. But in the great opening of Islam that followed their abject defeat in a series of desperate wars with the West, this was one of the first things that was changed.


Every translated copy of the Q'uran contained, on the title page, a quotation from the great imam Zuqaq-the very one who brought about the reconciliation of Israel and the Muslim world. “Allah is above language. Even in Arabic, the Q'uran is translated from the mind of God into the words of men. Everyone should be able to hear the words of God in the language he speaks in his own heart.”


So the presence of the Q'uran in Armenian told her, first, that in the palace of

the Caliph, there was no recidivism, no return to the days of fanatical Islam, when foreigners were forced to live by Islamic law, women were veiled and barred from the schools and the roads, and young Muslim soldiers strapped bombs to their bodies to blow up the children of their enemies.


And it also told her that her coming was anticipated and someone had taken great pains to prepare this room for her, simple as it seemed. To have the Q'uran in Common  Speech,  the  more-or-less  phonetically  spelled  English  that  had  been adopted as the language of the International Fleet, would have been sufficient. They wanted to make the point, though, that here in the heart-no, the head-of the Muslim world, they had regard for all nations, all languages. They knew who she was, and they had the holy words for her in the language she spoke in her heart.


She appreciated the gesture and was annoyed by it, both at once. She did not open the book. She rummaged through her bag, then unpacked everything. She showered to clear the must of travel from her hair and skin, and then lay down on the bed because in this room there was nowhere else to sit.


No wonder he spends his time in the garden, she thought. He has to go out there just to turn around.


She woke because someone was at the door. Not knocking. Just standing there, pressing a palm against the reader. What could she possibly have heard that woke her? Footsteps in the corridor?


“I'm not dressed,” she called out as the door opened. “That's what I was hoping,” said Bean.
He came in carrying his own bag and set it down beside the one dresser. “Did you meet Alai?” asked Petra.
“Yes, but we'll talk of that later,” said Bean. “You know he's Caliph,” she insisted. “Later,” he said. He pulled his shoes off.
“I think they're planning a war, but pretending that they're not,” said Petra.

“They can plan what they like,” said Bean. “You're safe here, that's what I
care about.”


Still in his traveling clothes, Bean lay down on the bed beside her, snaking one  arm  under  her,  drawing  her  close  to  him.  He  stroked  her  back,  kissed  her forehead.





them.”

“They told me about the other embryos,”  she said. “How Achilles  stole



He kissed her again and said, “Shhhh.”


“I don't know if I'm pregnant yet,” said Petra. “You will be,” said Bean.
“I knew that he hadn't checked for Anton's Key,” said Petra. “I knew he was lying about that.”


“All right,” said Bean.


“I knew but I didn't tell you,” said Petra. “Now you've told me.”
“I want your child, no matter what.”


“Well,” said Bean, “in that case we can start the next one the regular way.” She kissed him. “I love you,” she said.
“I'm glad to hear that.”


“We have to get the others back,” said Petra. “They're our children and I
don't want somebody else to raise them.”


“We'll get them back,” said Bean. “That's one thing I know.” “He'll destroy them before he lets us have them.”

“Not so,” said Bean. “He wants them alive more than he wants us dead.” “How can you possibly know what the Beast is thinking?”
Bean rolled onto his back and lay there facing the ceiling. “On the plane I did a lot of thinking. About something Ender said. How he thought. You have to know your enemy, he said. That's why he studied the Formics constantly. All the footage of the First War, the anatomies of the corpses of the dead Bugger soldiers, and what he couldn't find in the books and vids, he imagined. Extrapolated. Tried to think of who they were.”


“You're nothing like Achilles,” said Petra. “You're the opposite of him. If you want to know him, think of whatever you're not, and that'll be him.”


“Not true,” said Bean. “In his sad, twisted way, he loves you, and so, in my own sad twisted way, do I.”


“Not the same twists, and that makes all the difference.”


“Ender said that you can't defeat a powerful enemy unless you understand him completely,  and you can't understand him unless you know the desires of his heart, and you can't know the desires of his heart until you truly love him.”


“Please don't tell me that you've decided to love the Beast,” said Petra. “I think,” said Bean, “that I always have.”
“No, no, no,” said Petra in revulsion and she rolled away from him, turned her back on him.


“Ever since I saw him limping up to us, the one bully we thought we could overpower, we little children. His twisted foot, the dangerous hate he felt toward anyone  who  saw  his  weakness.  The  genuine  kindness  and  love  he  showed  to everyone but me and Poke-Petra, that's what nobody understands about Achilles, they see him as a murderer, and a monster-”


“Because he is one.”


“A monster who keeps winning the love and trust of people who should know better. I know that man, the one whose eyes look into your soul and judge you and

find you worthy. I saw how the other children loved him, turned their loyalty from Poke to Achilles, made him their father, truly, in their hearts. And even though he always kept me at a distance, the fact is... I loved him too.”


“I didn't,” said Petra. The memory of Achilles's arms around her as he kissed her-it was unbearable to her, and she wept.


She felt Bean's hand on her shoulder, then stroking her side, gently soothing her “I'm going to destroy him, Petra,” said Bean. “But I'll never do it the way I've been going about it up till now. I've been avoiding him, reacting to him. Peter had the right idea after all. He was dumb about it, but the idea was right, to get close to him. You can't treat him as something faraway and unintelligible. A force of nature, like a storm or earthquake, where you have no hope but to run for shelter. You have to understand him. Get inside his head.”


“I've been there,” said Petra. “It's a filthy place.”


“Yes, I know,” said Bean. “A place of fear and fire. But remember-he lives there all the time.”
“Don't tell me I'm supposed to pity him because he has to live with himself!” “Petra, I spent the whole flight trying to be Achilles, trying to think of what
he yearns for, what he hopes for, to think of how he thinks.”


“And you threw up? Because I did, twice on my flight, and I didn't have to get inside the Beast to do it.”


"Maybe because you have a little beast inside you.


She shuddered. “Don't call him that. Her. It. I'm not even pregnant yet, probably. It was only this morning. My baby is not a beast.”


“Bad joke, I'm sorry.” said Bean. “But listen, Petra, on the flight I realized something. Achilles is not a mysterious force. I know exactly what he wants.”


“What does he want? Besides us, dead?”


“He wants us to know that the babies are alive. He won't even implant them yet. He'll leave little clues for us to follow-nothing too obvious, because he wants us to think we discovered something he's trying to keep hidden. But we'll find out

where they are because he wants us to. They'll all be in one place. Because he wants us to come for them.”


“Bait,” she said.


“No, not just bait,” said Bean. “He could send us a note right now if he wanted that. No, it's more than that. He wants us to think we're very smart to have found out where they are. He wants us to be full of hope that we might rescue them. To be excited, so we'll hurtle into a situation completely unprepared for the fact that he's  waiting  for  us.  That  way  he  can  see  us  fall  from  triumphant  hope  to  utter despair. Before he kills us.”


Bean was right, she knew it. “But how can you even pretend to love someone so evil?”


“No, you still don't understand,” said Bean. “It's not our despair he wants. It's our hope. He has none. He doesn't understand it.”


“Oh. please,” said Petra. “An ambitious person lives on hope.”


“He has no hope. No dream. He tries everything to find one. He goes through the motions of love and kindness, or anything else that might work, and still nothing means anything. Each new conquest only leaves him hungry for another. He's hungry to find something that really matters in life. He knows we have it. Both of us, before we even found each other, we had it.”


“I thought you were famous for having no faith,” said Petra.


“But you see,” said Bean, “Achilles knew me better than I knew myself. He saw it in me. The same thing Sister Carlotta saw.”


“Intelligence?” asked Petra.


“Hope,” said Bean. “Relentless hope. It never crosses my mind that there's no solution, no chance of survival. Oh, I can conceive of that intellectually, but never are my actions based on despair, because I never really believe it. Achilles knows that I have a reason to live. That's why he wants me so badly. And you, Petra. You more than me.”


“And our babies-they are our hope. A completely insane kind of hope, yes,

but we made them, didn't we?”


“So,” said Petra, grasping the picture now, “he doesn't just want us to die, the way he was perfectly content to let Sister Carlotta die in an airplane, when he was far away. He wants us to see him with our babies.”


“And when we realize we can't have them back, that we're going to die after all, the hope that drains out of us, he thinks it'll become his own. He thinks that because he has our babies, he has our hope.”


“And he does,” said Petra.


“But the hope can never be his. He's incapable of it.”


“This is all very interesting,” said Petra, “but completely useless.” “But don't you see?” said Bean. “This is how we can destroy him.” “What do you mean?”
“He's going to fall into the pit he dug for us.” “We don't have his babies.”
“He hopes we'll come and give him what he wants. But instead, we'll come prepared to destroy him.”


“He's going to be laying an ambush for us. If we come in force, he'll either slip away or-as soon as it's clear he's doomed-he'll kill our babies.”


“No, no, we'll let him spring his trap. We'll walk right into it. So that when we face him, we see him in his moment of triumph. Which is always the moment when somebody is at their stupidest.”


“You don't have to be smart when you have all the guns.”


“Relax, Petra,” said Bean. “I'm going to get our babies back. And kill
Achilles while I'm at it. And I'll do it soon, my love. Before I die.”


“That's good,” said Petra. “It will be so much harder for you to do it afterward.”

And then she wept, because, contrary to what Bean had just said, she had no hope. She was going to lose her husband, her children were going to lose their father No victory over Achilles could change the fact that in the end, she was going to lose him.


He reached out for her again, held her close, kissed her brow, her cheek. “Have our baby,” he said. “I'll bring home its brothers and sisters before it's born.”



CHAPTER FOURTEEN SPACE STATION


To:   Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov
From: SitePostAlert
Re:   Girl on bridge



Now  you  are  not  in  cesspool  can  communicate  again.  Have  no  e-mail  here, Stones ore mine. Back on bridge soon. War in earnest. Post to me only, this site, pickup nome BridgeGiri password not stepstool.



Peter found spaceflight  boring, just as he'd suspected he would. Like air travel, only longer and with less scenery.


Thank heaven Mother and Father had the good sense not to get all sentimental about the shuttle flight to the Ministry of Colonization. After all, it was the same space station that had been Battle School. They were going to set foot at last where precious little Ender had had his first triumphs-and, oh yes, killed a boy.


But there were no footprints here. Nothing to tell them what it was like for Ender to ride a shuttle to this place. They were not small children taken away from their homes. They were adults, and the fate of the world just might rest in their hands.


Come to think of it, that was like Ender, wasn't it.


The whole human race was united when Ender came here. The enemy was clear, the danger real, and Ender didn't even have to know what he was doing to win

the war.


By comparison, Peter's task was much more difficult. It might seem simpler- find a really good assassin and kill Achilles.


But it wasn't that simple. First, Achilles, being an assassin and a user of assassins, would be ready for such a plot. Second, it wasn't enough to kill Achilles. He was not the army that conquered India and Indochina. He was not the government that ruled more than half the people of the world. Destroy Achilles, and you still have to roll back all the things he did.


It was like Hitler back in World War II. Without Hitler, Germany would never have had the nerve to conquer France and sweep to the gates of Moscow. But if  Hitler  had  been  assassinated  just  before  the  invasion  of  Russia,  then  in  all likelihood the common language of the International Fleet would have been German. Because it was Hitler's mistakes, his weaknesses, his fears, his hatreds, that lost the back half of the war, just as it was his drive, his decisions, that won the front half.





China.

Killing Achilles might do nothing more than guarantee a world governed by



Still, with him out of the way, Peter would face a rational enemy. And his own assets would not be so superstitiously  terrified. The way Bean and Petra and Virlomi fled at the mere thought of Achilles coming to Ribeirao Preto... though of course in the long run they weren't wrong, still, it complicated  things enormously that he kept having to work alone, unless you counted Mother and Father.


And since they were the only assets he had that he could rely on to serve his interests, he definitely counted them.


Counted them, but was angry at them all the same. He knew it was irrational, but the whole way up to MinCol, he kept coming back to the same seething memory of the way his parents had always judged him as a child and found him wanting, while Ender and Valentine could do no wrong. Being a fundamentally reasonable person, he took due notice of the fact that since Val and Ender left in a colony ship, his parents had been completely supportive of him. Had saved him more than once. He could not have asked any more from them even if they had actually loved him. They did their duty as parents, and more than their duty.


But it didn't erase the pain of those earlier years when everything he did seemed to be wrong, every natural instinct an offense against one of their versions of

God or the other. Well, in all your judging, remember this-it was Ender who turned out to be Cain, wasn't it! And you always thought it was going to be me.


Stupid stupid stupid, Peter told himself Ender didn't kill his brother, Ender defended himself against his enemies. As I have done.


I have to get over this, he told himself again and again during the voyage.


I wish there were something  to look at besides  the stupid vids. Or Dad snoring. Or Mother looking at me now and then, sizing me up, and then winking. Does she have any idea how awful that is? How demeaning? To wink at me! What about smiling? What about looking at me with that dreamy fond expression she used to have for Val and Ender? Of course she liked them.


Stop it. Think about what you have to do, fool.


Think about what you have to write and publish, as Locke and as Demosthenes, to rouse the people in the free countries, to goad the governments of the nations ruled from above. There could be no business as usual, he couldn't allow that. But it was hard to keep the people's attention on a war in which no shots were being  fired.  A war  that  took  place  in  a  faraway  land.  What  did  they  care,  in Argentina, that the people of India had a government  not of their choosing? Why should it matter to a light farmer tending his photovoltaic  screens in the Kalahari Desert whether the people of Thailand were having dirt kicked in their faces?


China had no designs on Namibia or Argentina. The war was over, Why wouldn't people just shut up about it and go back to making money?


That was Peter's enemy. Not Achilles, ultimately. Not even China. It was the apathy of the rest of the world that played into their hands.


And here I am in space, no longer free to move about, far more dependent than I've ever been before. Because if Graff decides not to send me back to Earth, then I can't go. There's no alternative transport. He seems to be entirely on my side. But it's his former Battle School brats that have his true loyalty. He thinks he can use me as I thought I could use Achilles. I was wrong. But probably he is right.


After all the voyaging, it was so frustrating to be there and still have to wait while the shuttle did its little dance of lining up with the station dock. There was nothing to watch. They blanked the “windows” because it was too nauseating in

zero-G to watch the Earth spin madly as the shuttle matched the rotation of the great wheel.


My career might already be over. I might already have earned whatever mention  I'll  have  in history.  I might  already  be  nothing  but  a footnote  in other people's biographies, a paragraph in the history books.


Really,  at  this  point  my best  strategy  for  beefing  up my reputation  is probably to be assassinated in some colorful way.


But the way things are going, I'll probably die in some tragic airlock accident while doing a routine docking at the MinCol space station.


“Stop wallowing,” said Mother.


He looked at her sharply. “I'm not,” he said.





yourself.”

“Good,”  she said. “Be angry at me. That's  better  than feeling  sorry for



He wanted to snap back angrily, but he realized the futility of denying what they all knew was true. He was depressed, definitely, and yet he still had to work. Like the day of his press conference when they dragged him out of bed. He didn't want  a repeat  of  that  humiliation.  He'd  do his  work  without  having  to have  his parents prod him like some adolescent. And he wouldn't get snippy at them when they merely told him the truth.


So he smiled at her. “Come on, Mother, you know that if I were on fire, nobody would so much as pee on me to put it out.”


“Be honest, son,” said his father. “There are hundreds of thousands of people back on Earth who have only to be asked. And some dozens who would do it without waiting for an invitation, if they saw an opportunity.”


“There are some good points about fame,” Peter observed. “And those with empty bladders would probably chip in with a little spit.”


“This is getting quite disgusting,” said Mother


“You say that because it's your job to say it,” said Peter.

“I'm underpaid, then,” said Mother “Because it's nearly a fulltime position.”


“Your role in life. So womanly. Men need civilizing, and you're just the one to do it.”


“I'm obviously not very good at it.”


At that moment the IF sergeant who was their flight steward came into the main cabin and told them it was time to go.


Because they docked at the center of the station, there was no gravity. They floated  along, gripping  handrails  as the steward  flipped  their  bags so they sailed through the airlock just under them. They were caught by a couple of orderlies who had obviously done this a hundred times, and were not the least bit impressed by having the Hegemon himself come to MinCol.


Though in all probability nobody knew who they were. They were traveling under false papers, of course, but Graff had undoubtedly let someone in the station know who they really were.


Probably not the orderlies, though.


Not until they were down one spoke of the wheel to a level where there was a definite floor to walk on did they meet anyone of real status in the station. A man in the grey suit that served MinCol as a uniform waited at the foot of the elevator, his hand outstretched.  “Mr. and Mrs. Raymond,”  he said. “I'm Underminister  Dimak. And this must be your son, Dick.”


Peter smiled wanly at the faint humor in the pseudonym Graff had arbitrarily assigned to him.


“Please tell me that you know who we really are so we don't have to keep up this charade,” said Peter.


“I know,” said Dimak softly, "but nobody else on this station does, and I'd like to keep it that way for now.


“Graff isn't here?”


“The Minister of Colonization is returning from his inspection of the

outfitting of the newest colony ship. We're two weeks away from first leg on that one, and starting next week you won't believe the traffic that'll come through here, sixteen shuttles a day, and that's just for the colonists. The freighters go directly to the dry dock.”


“Is there,” said Father innocently, “a wet dock?” Dimak grinned. “Nautical terminology dies hard.”
Dimak led them along a corridor to a down tube. They slid down the pole after him. The gravity wasn't  so intense  yet as to make this a problem,  even for Peter's parents, who were, after all, in their forties. He helped them step out of the shaft into a lower-and therefore “heavier”-corridor.


There were old-fashioned  directional  stripes along the walls. “Your palm prints have already been keyed,” said Dimak. “Just touch here, and it will lead you to your room.”


“This is left over from the old days, isn't it?” said Father “Though I don't imagine you were here when this was still-”


“But I was here,” said Dimak. “I was mother to groups of new kids. Not your son, I'm afraid. But an acquaintance of yours, I believe.”


Peter did not want to put himself in the pathetic position of naming off Battle
School graduates he knew. Mother had no such qualms. “Petra?” she said. “Suriyawong?”
Dimak leaned in close, so his voice would not have to be pitched loud enough that it might be overheard. “Bean,” he said.


“He must have been a remarkable boy,” said Mother.


“Looked like a three-year-old when he got here,” said Dimak. “Nobody could believe he was old enough for this place.”


“He doesn't look like that now,” said Peter dryly.


“No, I ... I know about his condition. It's not public knowledge, but Colonel
Graff-the minister, I mean-he knows that I still care what happens to-well, to all my

kids, of course-but this one was ... I imagine your son's first trainer felt much the same way about him.”


“I hope so,” said Mother.


The sentimentality was getting so sweet Peter wanted to brush his teeth. He palmed the pad by the entrance and three strips lit up. “Green green brown,” said Dimak.  “But  soon you won't  be needing  this. It's not as if there's  miles  of open country here to get lost in. The stripe system always assumes that you want to go back to your room, except  when you touch the pad just outside the door of your room, and then it thinks you want to go to the bathroom-none inside the rooms, I'm afraid, it wasn't built that way. But if you want to go to the mess hall, just slap the pad twice and it'll know.”


He showed them to their quarters, which consisted of a single long room with bunks in rows along both sides of a narrow aisle. “I'm afraid you'll have company for the week we're loading up the ship, but nobody'll be here very long, and then you'll have the place to yourself for three more weeks.”


“You're doing a launch a month?” said Peter “How, exactly, are you funding a pace like that?”


Dimak looked at him blankly. “I don't actually know,” he said.


Peter leaned in close and imitated the voice Dimak used for secrets. “I'm the
Hegemon,” he said. "Officially, your boss works for me.





program.”

Dimak  whispered  back,  “You  save  the  world,  we'll  finance  the  colony



“I could have used a little more money for my operations, I can tell you,”
said Peter.


“Every Hegemon feels that way,” said Dimak. “Which is why our funding doesn't come through you.”


Peter laughed. “Smart move. If you think the colonization program is very very important.”


“It's the future of the human race, said Dimak simply. ”The Buggers-pardon

me, the Formics-had  the right idea. Spread out as far as you can, so you can't be wiped out in a single disastrous  war. Not that it saved them, but... we aren't hive creatures."


“Aren't we?” said Father.


“Well, if we are, then who's the queen?” asked Dimak. “In this place,” said Father, “I suspect it's Graff.”
“And we're all just his little arms and legs?”


“And mouths and... well, yes, of course. A little more independent and a little less obedient than the individual Formics, of course, but that's how a species comes to dominate a world the way we did, and they did. Because you know how to get a large number of individuals to give up their personal will and subject themselves to a group mind.”


“So this is philosophy we're doing here,” said Dimak.


“Or very cutting-edge  science,”  said Father  “The behavior  of humars in groups. Degrees of allegiance. I think about it a lot.”


“How interesting.”


“I see that you're not interested at all,” said Father. “And that I'm now in your book as an eccentric  who brings up his theories. But I never do, actually.  I don't know why I did just now. I just... it's the first time I've been in Graff's house, so to speak. And meeting you was very much like visiting with him.”


“I'm... flattered,” said Dimak.


“John  Paul,”  said  Mother,  “I  do  believe  you're  making  Mr  Dimak uncomfortable.”


“When people feel great allegiance to their community, they start to take on the mannerisms as well as the morals of their leader,” said Father, refusing to give up.


“If their leader has a personality,” said Peter

“How do you get to be a leader without one?” asked Father.


“Ask Achilles,” said Peter “He's the opposite. He takes on the mannerisms of the people he wants to have follow him.”


“I don't remember  that one,” said Dimak. “He was only here a few days before he-before we discovered he had a track record of murder back on Earth.”


“Someday you have to tell me how Bean got him to confess. He won't tell.” “If he won't tell, neither will I,” said Dimak.
“How loyal,” said Father.


“Not really,” said Dimak. “I just don't know myself. I know it had something to do with a ventilation shaft.”





they?”

“That confession,” said Peter “The recordings wouldn't still be here, would



“No, they wouldn't,” said Dimak. “And even if they were, they're part of a sealed juvenile record.”


“Of a mass murderer”


“We only notice laws when they act against our interest,” said Dimak. “See?” said Father. “We've traded philosophies.”
“Like tribesmen swapping at a potlatch,” said Dimak. “If you don't mind, I'd like to have you talk with Security Chief Uphanad before dinner”


“What about?”


“The colonists aren't a problem-they have a one-way flow and they can't easily communicate planetside. But you're probably going to be recognized here. And even if you're not, it's hard to maintain a false story for long.”


“Then let's not have a false story,” said Peter.

“No. let's have a really good one,” said Mother.


“Let's just not talk to anybody,” said Father.





you.”

“Those are precisely the issues that Major Uphanad wants to discuss with



Once Dimak had left, they chose bunks at the back of the long room. Peter took a top bunk, of course, but while he was unloading his bags into the locker in the wall behind the bunk, Father  discovered  that each set of six bunks-three  on each side-could be separated from the others by a privacy curtain.


“It has to be a retrofit,” said Father. “I can't believe they would let the kids seal themselves off from each other.”


“How soundproof is this material?” asked Mother.


Father pulled it around in a circular motion, so it irised shut with him on the other side. They heard nothing from him. Then he dilated it open.


“Well?” he asked.


“Pretty effective sound barrier,” said Mother.


“You did try to talk to us, didn't you?” asked Peter. “No, I was listening for you,” said Father.
“Well we were listening for you, John Paul,” said Mother. “No, I spoke. I didn't shout, but you couldn't hear me, right?”
“Peter,” said Mother, “you just got moved to the next compartment over.”


“That won't work when the colonists come through.”


“You can come back and sleep in Mommy's and Daddy's room when the visitors come,” said Mother.





Peter.

“You'll have to walk through my room in order to get to the bathroom,” said

“That's right,” said Father. “I know you're Hegemon and should have the best room, but then, we're not likely to walk in on you making love.”


“Don't count on it,” said Peter sourly.


“We'll open the door just a little and say 'knock knock' before we come through,” said Mother. “It'll give you time to smuggle your best pal out of sight.”


It made him faintly nauseated to be having this discussion with his parents. “You two are so cute. I'm really glad to change rooms here, believe me.”


It was good to have solitude, once the door was closed, even if the price of it was moving all his stuff out of the locker he had just loaded and putting it in a locker in the next section. Now he got a lower bunk, for one thing. And for another thing, he didn't have to put up with listening to his parents try to cheer him up.


He had to have thinking time.


So of course he promptly fell asleep.


Dimak woke him by speaking to him over the intercom. “Mr. Raymond, are you there?”


It took Peter a split second to remember that he was supposed to be Dick
Raymond. “Yes. Unless you want my father.”


“Already spoke to him,” said Dimak. “I've keyed the guidebars to lead you to the security department.”


It was on the top level, with the lowest gravity-which made sense, because if security action were required, officers dispersing from the main office would have a downhill trip to wherever they were going.


When they stepped inside the office, Major Uphanad was there to greet them. He offered his hand to all of them.


“Are you from India?” asked Mother, “or Pakistan?” “India,” said Uphanad, not breaking his smile at all.

"I'm so sorry for your country, said Mother.


“I haven't been back there since-in a long time.”


“I hope your family is faring welt under the Chinese occupation.”


“Thank you for your concern,” said Uphanad, in a tone of voice that made it clear this topic was finished.


He offered them chairs and sat down himself-behind  his desk, taking full advantage of his official position. Peter resented it a little, since he had spent a good while now as the man who was always in the dominant place. He might not have had much actual power, as Hegemon, but protocol always gave him the highest place.


But he was not supposed to be known here. So he could hardly be treated differently from any civilian visitor.


“I know that you are particular guests of the Minister,” said Uphanad, “and that  you  wish  your  privacy  to  be  undisturbed.  What  we  need  to  discuss  is  the boundary of your privacy. Are your faces likely to be recognized?”


“Possibly,” said Peter. “Especially his.” He pointed to his father. This was a lie, of course, and probably futile, but.


“Ah,” said Uphanad. “And I assume your real names would be recognized.” “Likely,” said Father.
“Certainly,” said Mother, as if she were proud of the fact and rather miffed that he had cast any doubt on it at all.


“So... should meals be brought to you? Do we need to clear the corridors when you go to the bathroom?”


Sounded like a nightmare to Peter.


“Major Uphanad, we don't want to advertise our presence here, but I'm sure your staff can be trusted to be discreet.”


“On the contrary,” said Uphanad. “Discreet people make it a point not to take

the staff's loyalty for granted.”


“Including yours?” asked Mother sweetly.


“Since you have already lied to me repeatedly,” said Uphanad. “I think it safe to say that you are taking no one's loyalty for granted.”


“Nevertheless,” said Peter, “I'm not going to stay cooped up in that tube. I'd like to be able to use your library-I'm assuming you have one-and we can take our meals in the mess hall and use the toilet without inconveniencing others.”


“There, you see?” said Uphanad. “You are simply not security minded.” “We can't live here as prisoners,” said Peter.
“He didn't mean that,” said Father. “He was talking about the way you simply announced the decision for the three of us. So much for me being the one most likely to be recognized.”


Uphanad smiled. “The recognition problem is a real one,” he said. “I knew you at once, from the vids, Mr Hegemon.”


Peter sighed and leaned back.


“Your face is not as recognizable as if you were an actual politician,” said Uphanad. “They thrive on putting their faces before the public. Your career began, if I remember correctly, in anonymity.”


“But I've been on the vids,” said Peter.


“Listen,” said Uphanad. “Few on our staff even watch the vids. I happen to be a news addict, but most people here have rather cut their ties with the gossip of Earth. I think your best way to remain under cover here is to behave as if you had nothing to hide. Be a bit standoffish-don't get into conversations with people that lead to mutual explanations of what you do and who you are, for instance. But if you're cheerful and don't act mysterious, you should be fine. People won't expect to see the Hegemon living with his parents in one of the bunk rooms here.” Uphanad grinned. “It will be our little secret, the six of us.”


Peter did the count. Him, his parents, Uphanad, Dimak. and... oh, Graff, of

course.


“I think there will be no assassination attempt here,” said Uphanad, “because there are very few weapons on board, all are kept under lock and key, and everybody coming  up here  is scanned  for weaponry.  So I suggest  you not  attempt  to carry sidearms. You are trained in hand-to-hand combat?”


“No,” said Peter.


“There is a gym on the bottom level, very well equipped. And not just with childsize devices, either. The adults also need to stay fit. You should use the facility to maintain  your  bone  mass,  and  so forth,  but  also  we  can  arrange  martial  arts classes for you, if you're interested.”


“I'm not interested,” said Peter. “But it sounds like a good idea.”


“Anyone they send against us, though,” said Mother, “will be very much better trained in it than we will.”


“Perhaps so, perhaps not,” said Uphanad. “If your enemies attempt to get to you here, they will have to rely on someone  they can get through our screening. People who seem particularly athletic are subjected to special scrutiny. We are, you see, paranoid about one of the anti-colonization groups getting someone up here just to perform an act of sabotage or terrorism.”


“Or assassination.”


“You see?” said Uphanad. “But I assure you I and my staff are very thorough. We never leave anything unchecked.”
“In other words, you knew who we were before we walked in the door.” “Before your shuttle took off, actually,” said Uphanad. “Or at least I had a
fairly good guess.”





station.

They said their good-byes, then settled into the routine of life in a space



Day and night were kept on Greenwich time, for no particular reason but that it was at zero longitude and they had to pick some time. Peter found that his parents were not so awfully intrusive as he had feared, and he was relieved that he could not

hear their lovemaking or their conversations about him through the divider


What he did, mostly, was go to the library and write.


Essays, of course, on everything, for every conceivable forum. There were plenty of publications that were happy to have pieces from Locke or Demosthenes, especially now that everyone knew these identities belonged to the Hegemon. With most serious work appearing first on the nets, there was no way to target particular audiences. But he still talked about subjects that would have particular  interest in various regions.


The aim of everything he wrote was to fan the flames of suspicion of China and Chinese ambitions. As Demosthenes, he wrote quite directly about the danger of allowing the conquest of India and Indochina to stand, with a lot of who's-next rhetoric. Of course he couldn't stoop to any serious rabble-rousing,  because every word he said would be held against the Hegemon.


Life was so much easier when he was anonymous on the nets.


As Locke, however, he wrote statesmanlike, impartial essays about problems that different nations and regions were facing. “Locke” almost never wrote against China directly, but rather took it for granted that there would be another invasion, and that longterm investments in probable target countries might be unwise, that sort of thing.


It was hard work, because every essay had to be made interesting, original, important, or no one would pay attention to it. He had to make sure he never sounded like someone  riding  a hobby  horse-  rather  the way Father  had sounded  when he started  spouting  off  about  his  theories  of group  loyalty  and character  to Dimak. Though, to be fair, he'd never heard Father do that before, it still gave him pause and made him realize how easily Locke and Demosthenes-and therefore Peter Wiggin himself-could become at first an irritant, at last a laughingstock.


Father called this process stassenization and made various suggestions for essay topics, some of which Peter used. As to what Father and Mother did with their days, when they weren't reading his essays and commenting on them, catching errors, that sort of thing-well, Peter had no idea.


Maybe Mother had found somebody's room to clean.

Graff stopped in for a brief visit on their first morning there, but then was off again-returned  to Earth, in fact, on the shuttle that had brought them. He did not return for three weeks, by which time Peter had written nearly forty essays, all of which had been published in various places. Most of them were Locke's essays. And, as usual, most of the attention went to Demosthenes.


When Graff returned, he invited them to dine with him in the Minister's quarters,  and  they  had  a  convivial  dinner  during  which  nothing  important  was discussed. Whenever the subject seemed to be turning to a matter of real moment, Graff would interrupt with the pouring of water or a joke of some kind-only rarely the funny kind.


This puzzled Peter, because surely Graff could count on his own quarters being secure. But apparently not, because after dinner he invited them on a walk, leading  them  quickly  out  of  the  regular  corridors  and  into  some  of  the  service passages. They were lost almost at once, and when Graff finally opened a door and took them onto a wide ledge overlooking a ventilation shaft, they had lost all sense of direction except, of course, where “down” was.


The ventilation shaft led “down” ... a very long way.


“This is a place of some historical importance,” said Graff. “Though few of us know it.”


“Ah,” said Father knowingly.


And because he had guessed it, Peter realized it should be guessable, and so he guessed. “Achilles was here,” he said.


“This,” said Graff, “is where Bean and his friends tricked Achilles. Achilles thought he was going to be able to kill Bean here, but instead Bean got him in chains,   hanging  in   the   shaft.   He   could   have   killed  Achilles.  His   friends recommended it.”


“Who were the friends?” asked Mother.


“He never told me, but that's not surprising-I never asked. I thought it would be wiser if there were never any kind of record, even inside my head, of which other children were there to witness Achilles's humiliation and helplessness.”

“It wouldn't have mattered, if he had simply killed Achilles. There would have been no murders.”


“But, you see,” said Graff, “if Achilles had died, then I would have had to ask those names, and Bean could not have been allowed to remain in Battle School. We might  have  lost  the  war  because  of  that,  because  Ender  relied  on  Bean  quite heavily.”


“You let Ender stay after he killed a boy,” said Peter.


“The boy died accidentally,” said Graff, “as Ender defended himself.” “Defended himself because you left him alone,” said Mother
“I've already faced trial on those charges, and I was acquitted.” “But you were asked to resign your commission,” said Mother.
“But I was then given this much higher position as Minister of Colonization. Let's not quibble over the past. Bean got Achilles here, not to kill him, but to induce him to confess. He did confess, very convincingly, and because I heard him do it, I'm on his death list, too.”


“Then why are you still alive?” asked Peter.


“Because,  contrary to widespread  belief, Achilles  is not a genius and he makes mistakes. His reach is not infinite and his power can be blocked. He doesn't know everything.  He doesn't  have  everything  planned.  I think  half  the time  he's winging it, putting himself in the way of opportunity and seizing it when he sees it.”
“If he's not a genius, then why does he Keep beating geniuses?” asked Peter. “Because he does the unexpected,” said Graff. “He doesn't actually do things
remarkably well, he simply does things that no one thought he would do. He stays a
jump ahead. And our  finest minds were not  even thinking about him  when he brought off his most spectacular successes. They thought they were civilians again when he had them kidnapped. Bean wasn't trying to oppose Achilles's plans during the war, he was trying to find and rescue Petra. You see? I have Achilles's test scores. He's a champion suckup, and he's very smart or he wouldn't have got here. He knew how to ace a psych test, for instance, so that his violent tendencies remained

hidden from us when we chose him to come in the last group we brought to Battle School. He's dangerous, in other words. But he's never had to face an opponent, not really. What the Formics faced, he's never had to face.”


“So you're confident,” said Peter.


“Not at all,” said Graff. “But I'm hopeful.”


“You brought us here just to show us this place?” said Father.


“Actually, no. I brought you here because I came up earlier in the day and swept it personally for eavesdropping devices. Plus, I installed a sound damper here, so that our voices are not carrying down the ventilation shaft.”


“You think MinCol has been penetrated,” said Peter


“I know it has,” said Graff “Uphanad was doing his routine scan of the logs of outgoing messages, and he found an odd one that was sent within hours of your arrival here. The entire message consisted of the single word 'on'. Uphanad's routine scan, of course, is more thorough than most people's desperate search. He found this one simply by looking for anomalies in message length, language patterns, etc. To find codes, you see.”


“And this was in code?” asked Father.


“Not a cipher, no. And impossible to decode for that reason. It could simply mean 'affirmative,'  as in 'the mission is on.' It might be a foreign word-there  are several dozen common languages in which 'on' has meaning by itself. It might be
'no' backward. You see the problem? What alerted Uphanad, besides its brevity, was the fact that it was sent within hours of your arrival-after your arrival-and both the sender and the receiver of the message were anonymous.”


“How could the sender be anonymous from a secure militarydesigned facility?” asked Peter.


“Oh, it's quite simple, really,” said Graff. “The sender used someone else's sign-on.”


“Whose?”


“Uphanad was quite embarrassed when he showed me the printout of the

message.  Because  as far as the computer  was concerned,  it was sent by Uphanad himself.”


“Someone got the log-on of the head of security?” said Father. “Humiliating, you may be sure,” said Graff.
“You've fired him?” asked Mother


“That would not make us more secure, to lose the man who is our best defense against whatever operation that message triggered.”


“So you think it is the English word 'on' and it means somebody is preparing to move against us.”


“I think that's not unlikely. I think the message was sent in the clear. It's only undecipherable because we don't know what is 'on.'”


“And you've taken into account,” said Mother, “the possibility that Uphanad actually sent this message himself, and is using the fact that he told you about it as cover for the fact that he's the perpetrator”


Graff looked at her a long time, blinked, and then smiled. “I was telling myself, 'suspect everybody,' but now I know what a truly suspicious person is.”


Peter hadn't thought of it either But now it made perfect sense.


“Still, let's not leap to conclusions, either,” said Graff. “The real sender of the message might have used Major Uphanad's sign-on precisely so that the chief of security would be our prime suspect.”


“How long ago did he find this message?” asked Father


“A couple of days,” said Graff. “I was already scheduled to come, so I stuck to my schedule.”


“No warnings?”


“No,” said Graff. “Any departure from routine would let the sender know his signal was discovered and perhaps interpreted. It would lead him to change his

plans.”


“So what do we do?” asked Peter.


“First,” said Graff, “I apologize for thinking you'd be perfectly safe here. Apparently Achilles's reach-or perhaps China's-is longer than we thought.”


“So do we go home?” asked Father


“Second,” said Graff, “we can't do anything that would play into their hands. Going home right now, before the threat can be identified  and neutralized,  would expose you to greater danger Our betrayer could give another signal that would tell them when and where you were going to arrive on Earth. What your trajectory of descent is going to be. That sort of thing.”


“Who would risk killing the Hegemon by downing a shuttle?” said Peter. “The world would be outraged, even the people who'd be happy to see me dead.”


“Anything we do that changes our pattern would let the traitor know his signal was intercepted. It might rush the project, whatever it is, before we're ready. No, I'm sorry to say this, but... our best course of action is to wait.”


“And what if we disagree?” said Peter.


“Then I'll send you home on the shuttle of your choosing, and pray for you all the way down.”


“You'd let us go?”


“You're my guest,” said Graff. “Not my prisoner”


“Then let's test it,” said Peter “We're leaving on the next shuttle. The one that brought you-when it goes back, we'll be on it.”


“Too soon,” said Graff. “We have no time to prepare.”


“And neither does he. I suggest,” said Peter, “that you go to Uphanad and make sure  he  knows that  he  has  to  put  a  complete blanket  of  secrecy on  our imminent departure. He's not even to tell Dimak.”


“But if he's the one,” said Mother, “then-”

“Then he can't send a signal,” said Peter “Unless he can find a way to let the information  slip out and become public knowledge  on the station. That's why it's vital, Minister Graff, that you remain with him at all times after you tell him. So if it's him, he can't send the signal.”





know.”

“But it's probably  not him,” said Graff, “and now you've let everybody



"But now we'll be watching for the outgoing message. “Unless they simply kill you as you're boarding the shuttle.”
“Then our worries will be over,” said Peter. “But I think they won't kill us here, because this agent of theirs is too useful to them- or to Achilles, depending on whose man he is-for them to use him up completely on this operation.”





message-”

Graff  pondered  this.  “So  we  watch  to  see  who  might  be  sending  the



"And you have agents stationed at the landing point on Earth to see if they can spot a would-be assassin.


“I can do that,” said Graff. “One tiny problem, though.” “What's that?” said Peter.
“You can't go.”


“Why can't I?” said Peter


“Because your one-man propaganda campaign is working. The people who read your stuff have drifted more strongly into the antiChina camp. It's still a fairly slight movement, but it's real.”


“I can write my essays there,” said Peter.


“In danger of being killed at any moment,” said Graff. “That could happen here, too,” said Peter

“Well-but you yourself said it was unlikely.”


“Let's catch the mole who's working your station,” said Peter, “and send him home.  Meanwhile,  we're  heading  for  Earth.  It's  been  great  being  here,  Minister Graff. But we've got to go.”


He looked at his mother and father


“Absolutely,” said Father


“Do you think,” said Mother, “that when we get back to Earth we can find a place with little tiny beds like these?” She clung more tightly to Father's arms. “It's made us so much closer as a family.”

Card, Orson Scott - Ender 07 - Shadow Puppets (v2.1)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN


WAR PLANS


From: Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica.org
To:   DropBox%Feijoada@ICameAnon.net
Re:
Encrypted using code *********** Decrypted using code ********


I spend half my memory capacity  just holding on to whatever  online identity you're  using  from  week  to week.  Why  not  rely  on encryption?  Nobody's  broken hyperprime encryption yet.


Here  it  is, Bean:  Those  stones  in india?  Virlomi  started  it, of  course.  Got  a message from her:
>Now you are not  in cesspool,  can communicate  again.  Have  no email  here. Stones are
>mine. Back on bridge soon. War in earnest. Post to me only, this site, pickup name
>BridgeGirl password not stepstool.


At least I think that's what “stones are mine” means. And what does “password not stepstool” mean? That the password is “not stepstool”? Or that the password is not “stepstool,” in which case it's probably not 'aardvark" either, but how does that help?


Anyhow, I think she's offering to begin war in earnest  inside India. She can't possibly have a nationwide network, but then, maybe she doesn't need one. She was certainly enough in tune with the Indian people to get them all piling stones in the road. And now the whole stone wall business has taken off. Lots of skirmishes between angry hungry citizens and Chinese soldiers. Trucks hijacked. Sabotage of Chinese offices proceeding [?]apace. What can she do more than is already happening?


Given where you are, you may have more need of her information and/or help than I do. But I'd appreciate your help understanding the parts of the message that are opaque to me.

From: LostlboBoy%Novy@IComeAnon.nef
To:   Demosthenes%Tecumseh@freeamerica.org
Re:   >blank<
Encrypted using code ******** Decrypted using code ***********


Here's  why  I  keep  changing  identities.  First,  they  don't  have  to  decrypt  the message to get information if they see patterns in our correspondence-it  would be useful for them to know the frequency  and timing of our correspondence  and the length of our messages. Second, they don't have to decrypt the whole message, they only have to guess our encrypt  and decrypt  codes. Which I bet you have written down somewhere because you don't actually core whether I get killed because you're too lazy to memorize.  Of course  I mean that  in the nicest  possible  way, 0 right honorable Mr. Hegemon.


Here's what Virlomi meant. Obviously she intended that you not be able to understand the message and correspond with her properly unless you talked to me or Suri. That means she doesn't trust you completely. My guess is that if you wrote to her  and  left  a message  using  the  password  “not  stepstool,”  she'd  know that  you hadn't talked to me. (You don't know how tempting it was lust to leave you with that guess.)


When we picked her up from that bridge near the Burmese border, she boarded the chopper by stepping on Suriyawang's  bock as he lay prostrate before her. The password is not stepstool, it's the real name of her stepstaal. And she's going to be bock at that bridge, which means she's made her way across India to the Burmese border, where she'll  be in a position  to disrupt  Chinese  supply of their troops in India-or, conversely, Chinese attempts to move their troops out of India and back into China or Indochina.


Of course she's only going to be atone bridge. But my guess is that she's already setting up guerrilla groups that are gefting ready to disrupt traffic on the other roads between Burma and India, with a strong possibility that she's set up something along the Himalayan border as well. I doubt she can seal the borders, but she can slow and harass their passage, tying up troops trying to protect supply lines and making the Chinese  less  able  to  mount  offensives  or  keep  their  troops  supplied  with ammunition-always a problem for them.


Personally, I think you should tell her not to tip her hand too soon. I may be able to tell you when to post a reply asking her to start in earnest on a particular date. And no, I won't post myself because I am most certainly watched here, and I don't

wont them to know about her directly. I've already caught two snoopware intrusions on my desk, which cost me twenty minutes each time, scrambling them so they send back  false  information  to  the  snoops.  Encrypted  email  like  this  I  can  send,  but messages posted to dead drops can be picked up by snoopware on the local net.


And yes these are indeed my friends. But they'd be fools not to keep track of what I'm sending out-if they can.



Bean measured himself in the mirror. He still looked like himself, more or less. But he didn't like the way his head was growing. Larger in proportion to his body. Growing faster.


I should be getting smarter, shouldn't I? More brain space and all?


Instead I'm worrying about what will happen when my head gets too big, my skull and brains too heavy for my neck to hold the whole assemblage in a vertical position.


He measured himself against the coat closet, too. Not all that long ago, he had to stand on tiptoe  to reach  coat  hangers.  Then it became  easy. Now he was reaching a bit downward from shoulder height.


Door frames were not a problem yet. But he was beginning to feel as though he should duck.
Why should his growth be accelerating now? He already hit the puberty rush. Petra staggered past him, went into the bathroom, and puked up nothing for
about five agonizing minutes.


“They should have drugs for that,” he told her afterward.


“They do,” said Petra. “But nobody knows how they might affect the baby.” “There've been no studies? Impossible.”
“No studies on how they might affect your children.” “Anton's Key is just a couple of code spots on the genome.”

“Genes often do double and triple duty, or more.”


“And the baby probably doesn't even have Anton's Key. And it's not healthy for the baby if you can't keep any food down.”


“This won't last forever,” said Petra. “And I'll get fed intravenously if I have to. I'm not doing anything to endanger  this baby, Bean. Sorry if my puking ruins your appetite for breakfast.”


“Nothing ruins my appetite for breakfast,” said Bean. “I'm a growing boy.” She retched again.
“Sorry,” said Bean.


“I don't do this,” she whispered miserably, “because your jokes are so bad.” “No,” said Bean. "It's cause my genes are.
She retched again and he left the room, feeling guilty about leaving, but knowing  he'd  be useless  if he stayed.  She  wasn't  one  of  those  people  who  need petting when they're sick. She preferred to be left alone in her misery. It was one of the ways they were alike. Sort of like injured animals that slink off into the woods to get better-or die-alone.


Alai was waiting for him in the large conference room. Chairs were gathered around a large holo on the floor, where a map was being projected of the terrain and militarily significant roads of India and western China.


By now the others were used to seeing Bean there, though there were some who still didn't like it. But the Caliph wanted him there, the Caliph trusted him.


They watched as the known locations of Chinese garrison troops were brought up in blue, and then the probable locations of mobile forces and reserves in green. When he first saw this map, Bean made the faux pas of asking where they were getting their information. He was informed, quite coldly, that both Persia and the Israeli-Egyptian consortium had active satellite placement programs, and their spy satellites were the best in orbit. “We can get the blood type of individual enemy soldiers,”  said  Alai  with  a  smile. An  exaggeration,  of  course.  But  then  Bean wondered-some kind of spectroanalysis of their sweat?

Not possible. Alai was joking, not boasting.


Now, Bean trusted their information as much as they did-because of course he  had  made  discreet  inquiries  through  Peter  and  through  some  of  his  own connections.  Putting together  what Vlad could tell him from Russian intelligence and what Crazy Tom was giving him from England plus Peter's American sources, it was clear that the Muslims-the Crescent League-had everything the others had. And more.


The plan was simple. Massive troop movements along the border between India and Pakistan, bringing Iranian troops up to the front. This should draw a strong Chinese response, with their troops also concentrated along that border


Meanwhile, Turkic forces were already in place on, and sometimes inside, China's  western  border,  having  traveled  over  the past  few months  in disguise  as nomads. On paper, the western region of China looked like ideal country for tanks and trucks, but in reality, fuel supply lines would be a recurring nightmare. So the first wave of Turks would enter as cavalry, switching to mechanized transport only when they were in a position to steal and use Chinese equipment.


This was the most dangerous  aspect of the plan, Bean knew. The Turkic armies, combining forces from the Hellespont to the Aral Sea and the foothills of the Himalayas, were equipped like raiders, yet had to do the job of an invading army. They had a couple of advantages that might compensate for their lack of armor and air support. Having no supply lines meant the Chinese wouldn't  have anything to bomb at first. The native people of the western China province  of Xinjiang  were Turkic too, and like the Tibetans, they had never stopped seething under the rule of Han China.


Above all, the Turks would have surprise and numbers on their side during the crucial first days. The Chinese garrison troops were all massed on the border with Russia. Until those forces could be moved, the Turks should have an easy time, striking anywhere they wanted, taking out police and supply stations-and, with luck, every airfield in Xinjiang.


By the time Chinese troops moved off the Russian border and into the interior  to  deal  with the  Turks, the  fully mechanized Turkish troops would be entering China from  the  west. Now there would be  supply lines to attack, but deprived of their forward air bases, and forced to face Turkish fighters which would

now be using them, China would not have clear air superiority.


Taking underdefended air bases with cavalry was just the sort of touch Bean would  have  expected  from Alai.  They  could  only  hope  that  Han  Tzu  would  not anticipate Alai having complete authority over the inevitable Muslim move, for the Chinese  would  have  to be crazy  not  to be planning  to defend  against  a Muslim invasion.


At some point, it was hoped that the Turks would do well enough that the Chinese  would be forced to begin shifting troops from India north into Xinjiang. Here the terrain favored Alai's plan, for while some Chinese troops could be airlifted over  the  Tibetan  Himalayas,  the  Tibetan  roads  would  be  disrupted  by  Turkic demolition teams, and the Chinese troops would all have to be moved eastward from India, around the Himalayas, and into western China from the east rather than the south.


It would take days, and when the Muslims  believed  that  the maximum number of Chinese troops were in transit, where they could not fight anybody, they would launch the massive invasion over the border between Pakistan and India.


So much depended on what the Chinese believed. At first, the Chinese had to believe that the real assault would come from Pakistan, so that the main Chinese force would remain tied up on that frontier. Then, at a crucial point several days into the Turkic operation, the Chinese had to be convinced that the Turkic front was, in fact, the real invasion. They had to be so convinced of this that they would withdraw troops from India, weakening their forces there.


How else does an inexperienced three-million-man  army defeat an army of ten million veterans?


They went through contingency plans for the several days following the commitment of Muslim troops in Pakistan, but Bean knew, as did Alai, that nothing that happened after the Muslim troops began crossing the Indian border could be predicted. They had plans in case the invasion failed utterly, and Pakistan had to be protected at fallback positions well inside the Pakistani border They had plans for dealing with a complete rout of the Chinese forces-not likely, as they knew. But in the most likely scenario-a difficult back-and-forth battle across a thousand-mile front-plans would have to be improvised to take advantage of every turn of events.


“So,” said Alai. “That is the plan. Any comments?”

Around the circle, one officer after another voiced his measured confidence. This was not because they were all yes-men, but because Alai had already listened carefully to the objections they raised before and had altered the plans to deal with those he thought were serious problems.


Only one of the Muslims offered any objection today, and it was the one nonmilitary  man,  Lankowski,  whose  role,  as  best  Bean  could  tell,  was  halfway between  minister-without-portfolio  and chaplain.  “I think it is a shame,”  he said, “that our plans are so dependent upon what Russia chooses to do.”


Bean knew what he meant. Russia was completely  unpredictable  in this situation. On the one hand, the Warsaw Pact had a treaty with China that had secured China's long northern border with Russia, freeing them to conquer India in the first place. On the other hand, the Russians and Chinese had been rivals in this region for centuries, and each believed the other held territory that was rightfully theirs.


And there  were unpredictable  personal  issues  as well. How many loyal servants of Achilles were still in positions of trust and authority in Russia? At the same time, many Russians were furious at how they had been used by him before he went to India and then China.


Yet Achilles brokered the secret treaty between Russia and China, so he couldn't be all that detested, could he?


But what was that treaty really worth? Every Russian schoolchild knew that the stupidest Russian tsar of them all had been Stalin, because he made a treaty with Hitler's Germany and then expected it to be kept. Surely the Russians did not really believe China would stay at peace with them forever.


So there was always the chance that Russia, seeing China at a disadvantage, would join the fray. The Russians would see it as a chance to seize territory and to preempt the inevitable Chinese betrayal of them.


That would be a good thing, if the Russians attacked in force but were not terribly successful. It would bleed Chinese troops from the battle against the Muslims. But it would be a very bad thing if Russia did too well or too badly. Too well, and they might slice down through Mongolia and seize Beijing. Then the Muslim victory would become a Russian one. Alai did not want to have Russia in a dominant role in the peace negotiations.

And if Russia entered the war but lost quickly, Chinese troops would not have  to watch  the  Russian  border  Free  to move,  those  garrison  troops  might  be hurled against the Turks, or they might be sent through Russian territory to strike into Kazakhstan, threatening to cut off Turkish supply lines.


That was why Alai had expressed his hope that the Russians would be too surprised to do anything at all.


“There's no helping it,” said Alai. “We have done all we can do. What Russia does is in the hands of God.”


“May I speak?” said Bean.


Alai nodded. All eyes turned to him. At previous meetings, Bean had said nothing, preferring to talk with Alai in private, where he did not risk committing an error in the way he spoke to the Caliph.


“When you have committed to battle,” said Bean, “I believe I can use my own  contacts,  and  persuade  the  Hegemon  to  use  his,  to  urge  Russia  to  pursue whatever course you think most advisable.”


Several of the men shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.


“Please reassure my worried friends here,” said Alai, “that you have not already been in discussion with the Hegemon or anyone else about our plans.”


“The opposite is true,” said Bean. “You are the ones who are preparing to take action. I have been providing you with all the information I learned from them. But I know these people, and what they can do. The Hegemon has no armies, but he does have great influence on world opinion. Of course he will speak in favor of your action. But he also has influence inside Russia, which he could use either to urge intervention, or to argue against it. My friends, also.”


Bean knew that Alai knew that the only friend worth mentioning was Vlad, and Vlad had been the only one of the kidnapped members of Ender's jeesh to join with Achilles and take his side. Whether that had been because he had truly become a follower of Achilles or because he thought Achilles was acting in the interest of Mother Russia, Bean still had not figured out. Vlad provided him with information sometimes, but Bean always looked for a second source before he fully trusted it.


“Then I will tell you this,” said Alai. “Today I don't know what would be

more useful, for Russia to join in the attack or for Russia to stand by doing nothing. As long as they don't attack us, I'll be content. But as events unfold, the picture may become clearer”


Bean did not need to point out to Alai that Russia would not enter the war to rescue a failing Muslim invasion-only if the Russians scented victory would they put their own forces at risk. So if Alai waited too long to ask for help, it would not come.


They took a break for the noon meal, but it was very brief, and when they returned to the conference room, the map had changed. There was a third part of the plan, and Bean knew that this was the one that Alai was least certain about.


For months now, Arab armies from Egypt, Iraq, and every other Arab nation had been transported on oil tankers from Arab ports to Indonesia. The Indonesian navy was one of the most formidable in the world, and its carrier-based air force was the only one in the region  that  rivaled  the Chinese  in equipment  and armament. Everyone knew that it was because of the Indonesian umbrella that the Chinese had not taken Singapore or ventured into the Philippines.


Now it  was  proposed  that  the  Indonesian  navy  be  used  to  transport  a combined Arab-Indonesian  army to effect a landing in Thailand or Vietnam. Both nations were filled with people who longed for deliverance from the Chinese conquerors.


When the plans for the two possible landing sites had been fully laid out, Alai did not ask for criticisms-he had his own. “I think in both cases, our plans for the landing are excellent. My misgiving is the same one I've had all along. There is no serious military objective there to be achieved. The Chinese can afford to lose battle  after  battle  there,  using  only  their  available  forces,  retreating  farther  and farther, while waiting to see the outcome of the real war. I think the soldiers we sent there would risk dying for no good purpose. It's too much like the Italian campaign in World War II. Long, slow, costly, and ineffective, even if we win every battle.”


The Indonesian commander bowed his head. “I am grateful for the Caliph's concern for the lives of our soldiers. But the Muslims of Indonesia could not bear to stand by while their brothers fight. If these objectives are meaningless, find us something meaningful to do.”


One of the Arab officers added his agreement. “We've committed our troops to this operation. Is it too late, then, to bring them back and let them join with the

Pakistanis  and  Iranians  in the  liberation  of  India?  Their  numbers  might  make  a crucial difference there.”


“The time draws close for the weather to be at its best for our purposes,” said Alai. “There's  no time to bring back the Arab armies.  But I can see no value in sending  soldiers  into  battle  for  no  better  reason  than  solidarity,  or  delaying  the invasion in order to bring the Arab armies into a different theater of war. If it was a mistake to send them to Indonesia, the mistake is my own.”


They murmured their disagreement. They could not agree with blaming the Caliph for any mistakes. At the same time, Bean knew that they appreciated knowing they were led by a man who did not blame others. It was part of the reason they loved him.


Alai spoke over their objections. “I have not decided yet whether to launch the third  front.  But  if we do launch  it, then the objective  we should  plan for is Thailand, not Vietnam. I realize the risks of leaving the fleet exposed for a longer time at sea-we will have to count on the Indonesian pilots to protect their ships. I choose Thailand because it is a more coherent country, with terrain more suitable for a swift conquest. In Vietnam, we would have to fight for every inch of territory, and our progress would look slow on the map-the Chinese would feel safe. In Thailand, our  progress  will  look  very  quick  and  dangerous.  As  long  as  they  forget  that Thailand is not important to them in the overall war, it might cause them to send troops there to oppose us.”


After  a  few more  niceties,  the  meeting  ended.  One  thing  that  no  one mentioned  was the actual  date of the invasion.  Bean was sure that one had been chosen and that everyone in the room but him knew what it was. He accepted that-it was the one piece of information which he had no need to know, and the most crucial one to withhold from him if he could not be trusted after all.


Back in their room, Bean found Petra asleep. He sat down and used his desk to access his email and check a few sites on the nets. He was interrupted by a light knock on the door Petra was instantly awake-pregnant or not, she still slept like a soldier-and she was at the door before Bean could shut down his connection and step away from the table.


Lankowski stood there, looking apologetic and regal, a combination that only he could have mastered. “If you will forgive me,” he said, “our mutual friend wishes to speak with you in the garden.”

“Both of us?” asked Petra. “Please, unless you are too ill.”
Soon they were seated on the bench beside Alai's garden throne- though of course he never called it that, referring to it only as a chair


“I'm sorry. Petra, that I couldn't bring you into the meeting. Our Crescent League is not recidivist, but it would make some of them too uncomfortable to have a woman present at such meetings.”


“Alai, do you think I don't know that?” she said. “You have to deal with the culture around you.”


“I assume that Bean has acquainted you with our plans?”


“I was asleep when he returned to the room,” said Petra, “so anything that's changed since last time, I don't know.”


“I'm sorry, then, but perhaps you can pick up what's happening from the context. Because I know Bean has something to say and he didn't say it yet.”


“I saw no flaw in your plans,” said Bean. “I think you've done everything that could possibly be done, including being smart enough not to think you can plan what will happen once battle has been joined in India.”


“But such praise is not what I saw on your face,” said Alai. “I didn't think my face was readable,” said Bean.
“It isn't,” said Alai. “That's why I'm asking you.”


“We've received an offer that I think you'll be glad of,” said Bean. “From?”
“I don't know if you ever knew Virlomi,” said Bean. “Battle School?”

“Yes.”


“Before my time, I think. I was a young boy and paid no attention to girls anyway.” He smiled at Petra.


“Weren't we all,” said Bean. “Virlomi was the one who made it possible for me and Suriyawong  to retrieve  Petra from Hyderabad  and save the Indian Battle School graduates from being slaughtered by Achilles.”


“She has my admiration, then,” said Alai.


“She's back in India. All that building of stone obstacles, the socalled Great
Wall of India-apparently she's the one who started that.”


Now Alai's interest looked like more than mere politeness.


“Peter received a message from her She has no idea about you and what you're doing, and neither does Peter, but she sent the message in language that he couldn't understand without conferring with me-a very careful and wise thing for her to do, I think.”


They exchanged smiles.


“She is in place in the area of a bridge spanning one of the roads between India and Burma. She may be able to disrupt one, many, or even all of the major roads leading between India and China.”


Alai nodded.


“It would be a disaster, of course.” said Bean, “if she acted on her own and cut the roads before the Chinese are able to move any troops out of India. In other words, if she thinks the real invasion is the Turkish one, then she might think her most helpful role would he to keep Chinese troops in India. Ideally, what she would do is wait until they start trying to move troops hack into India, and then cut the roads, keeping them out.”


“But if we tell her,” said Alai, “and the message is ... intercepted, then the
Chinese will know that the Turkic operation is not the main effort.”


“Well, that's why I didn't want to bring this up in front of the others. I can tell you that I believe communication between her and Peter, and between Peter and me,

is secure. I believe that Peter is desperate for your invasion to succeed, and Virlomi will be too, and they will not tell anyone anything that would compromise it. But it's your call.”


“Peter is desperate for our invasion to succeed?” asked Alai.


“Alai, the man's not stupid. I didn't have to tell him about your plans or even that  you had plans. He knows  that  you're  here, in seclusion,  and he has satellite reports of the troop movements to the Indian frontier He hasn't discussed it with me, but  I  wouldn't  be  at  all  surprised  if  he  also  knew  about  the  Arab  presence  in Indonesia- that's the kind of thing he always finds out about because he has contacts everywhere.”


“Sorry to suspect you,” said Alai, “but I'd be remiss if I didn't.”


“Think about Virlomi, anyway.” said Bean. “It would be tragic if, in her effort to help, she actually hindered your plan.”


“But that's not all you wanted to say,” said Alai. “No,” said Bean, and he hesitated.
“Go on.”


“Your reason for not wanting to open the third front was a sound one,” said
Bean. “Not wanting to waste lives taking militarily ummportant objectives.” “So you think I shouldn't use that force at all,” said Alai.
“No” said Bean. “I think you need to be bolder with them. I think you need to waste more lives on an even more spectacular nonmilitary objective.”


Alai turned away. “I was afraid you'd see that.” “I was sure you'd already thought of it.”
“I was hoping one of the Arabs or the Indonesians themselves would propose it,” said Alai.


“Propose what?” asked Petra.

“The military goal,” said Bean, “is to destroy their armies, which is done by attacking them with superior force, achieving surprise, and cutting off their supply and escape  routes. Nothing  you do with the third front  can achieve  any of those objectives.”


“I know,” said Alai.


“China isn't a democracy. The government doesn't have to win elections. But they need the support of their people all the more because of that.”


Petra sighed her understanding. “Invade China itself.”


“There is no hope of success in such an invasion,” said Alai. “On the other fronts,  we will  have  a citizenry  that  welcomes  us and cooperates  with us, while obstructing  them. In China, the opposite  would be true. Their air force would be working from nearby airfields and could fly sortie after sortie between each wave of our planes. The potential for disaster would be very great.”


“Plan for disaster.” said Bean. “Begin with disaster” “You're too subtle for me,” said Alai.
“What's disaster in this case? Besides actually getting stopped at the beach- not  likely,  since  China  has  one  of  the  most  invasible  shorelines  in  the  world-a disaster is for your force to be dispersed, cut off from supply, and operating without coordinating central control.”


“Land  them,”  said Alai, “and have  them  immediately  begin  a guerrilla campaign? But they won't have the support of the people.”


“I thought about this a lot,” said Bean. “The Chinese people are used to oppression-when  have   they   not   been   oppressed?-but   they've   never   become reconciled to it. Think how many peasant revolts there've been-and against governments far more benign than this one. Now, if your soldiers go into China like Sherman's march to the sea, they'll be opposed at every step.”
“But they have to live off the land, if they're cut off from supply.” said Alai. “Strictly disciplined troops can make this work.” said Bean. “But this will be
hard for the Indonesians, given the way the Chinese have always been regarded

within Indonesia itself.”


“Trust me to control my troops.”


“Then here's what they do. In every village they come to, they take half the food-but only half. They make a big point of leaving the rest, and you tell them it's because Allah did not send you to make war against the Chinese people. If you had to kill anybody to get control of the village, apologize to the family or to the whole village, if it was a soldier who died. Be the nicest invaders they've ever imagined.”


“Oh,” said Alai. “That's asking a lot, from mere discipline.”


Petra was getting the vision of this...“Maybe if you quote to your soldiers that passage from The Elevated Places, where it says, 'Maybe your Lord will destroy your enemy and make you rulers in the land. Then He will see how you act.'”


Alai looked at her in genuine consternation. “You quote the Q'uran to me?”


“I thought the verse was appropriate,” she said. “Isn't that why you had them put it in my room? So I'd read it?”


Alai shook his head. “Lankowski gave you the Q'uran.” “And she read it,” added Bean. “We're both surprised.”
“It's a good passage to use,” said Alai. “Maybe God will make us rulers in
China. Let's show from the start that we can do it justly and righteously.”


“The best part of the plan.” said Bean, “is that the Chinese soldiers will come right afterward, and fearing that their own armies will be left without supplies, or in the effort to deprive your army of further provender, they will probably seize all the rest of the food.”


Alai nodded, smiled, then laughed. “Our invading army leaves the Chinese people enough to eat, but the Chinese army makes them starve.”


“The likelihood of a public relations victory is very high,” said Bean.


“And meanwhile,” said Petra, “the Chinese soldiers in India and Xinjiang are going crazy because they don't  know what's going on  with their  families back

home.”


“The invasion fleet doesn't mass for the attack,” said Bean. “It's done in Filipino and Indonesian fishing boats, small forces up and down the coast. The Indonesian fleet, with its carriers, waits far offshore, until they're called in on air strikes against identified military targets. Every time they try to find your army, you melt away. No pitched battles. At first the people will help them; soon enough, the people will help you. You resupply with ammunition and demolition equipment by air drops at night. Food they find for themselves. And all the time they move farther and  farther  inland,  destroying  communications,  blowing  up  bridges.  No  dams, though. Leave the dams alone.”


“Of course,” said Alai darkly. “We remember Aswan.”


“Anyway, that was my suggestion.” said Bean. “Militarily, it does nothing for you during the first weeks. The attrition rate will be high at first, until the teams get in from the coast and get used to this kind of combat. But if even a quarter of your contingents are able to remain free and effective, operating inside China, it will force the Chinese to bring more and more troops home from the Indian front.”


“Until they sue for peace,” said Alai. “We don't actually want to rule over China. We want to liberate India and Indochina, bring back all the captives taken into China, and restore the rightful governments, but with a treaty allowing complete privileges to Muslims within their borders.”


“So much bloodshed, for such a modest goal,” said Petra. “And, of course, the liberation of Turkic China,” said Alai. “They'll like that,” said Bean.
“And Tibet,” said Alai.


“Humiliate them enough.” said Petra, “and you've merely set the stage for the next war.”


“And complete freedom of religion in China as well.”


Petra laughed. “It's going to be a long war, Alai. The new empire they'd probably give up-they haven't held it that long, and it's not as if it brought them great wealth and honor. But they've held Tibet and Turkic China for centuries. There are

Han Chinese all over both territories.”


“Those are problems to be solved later,” said Alai, “and not by you. Probably not by me, either. But we know what the West keeps forgetting. If you win, win.”


“I think that approach was proven a disaster at Versailles.”


“No”' said Alai. “It was only proven a disaster after Versailles, when France and England didn't have the spine, didn't have the will, to compel obedience to the treaty. After World War II, the Allies were wiser They left their troops on German soil for nearly a century. In some cases benignly, in some cases brutally, but always definitely there.”


“As you said,” Bean answered, “you and your successors will find out how well this works, and how to solve the new problems that are bound to come up. But I warn you now, that if liberators turn out to be oppressors, the people they liberated will feel even more betrayed and hate them worse.”


“I'm aware of that,” said Alai. “And I know what you're warning me of.”


“I think,” said Bean, “that you won't know whether the Muslim people have actually changed from the bad old days of religious intolerance until you put power in their hands.”


“What the Caliph can do,” said Alai, “I will do.”


“I know you will,” said Petra. “I don't envy you your responsibility.” Alai smiled. “Your friend Peter does. In fact, he wants more.”
“And your people,” said Bean, “will want more on your behalf. You may not want to rule the world, but if you win in China, they'll want you to, in their name. And at that point. Alai, how can you tell them no?”


“With these lips,” said Alai. “And this heart.”



CHAPTER SIXTEEN TRAPS

To: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov From: Sand%Water@ArabNet.net Re:   Invitation to a party


You don't want to miss this one. Kemal upstairs thinks he's the whole show, but when Show and Pock get started in the basement, that's when the fireworks stop, say wait for the downstairs party before you pop any corks.



“John Paul,” said Theresa Wiggin quietly, “I don't understand what Peter's doing here.”


John Paul closed his suitcase. “That's the way he likes it.” “We're supposed to be doing this secretly, but he-”
“Asked us not to talk about it in here.” John Paul put his finger to his lips, then  picked  up  her  suitcase  as  well  as  his  and  started  on  the  long  walk  to  the bunkroom door.


Theresa could do nothing but sigh and follow him. After all they'd been through with Peter, you'd think he could confide in them. But he still had to play these games where nobody knew everything that was going on but him. It was only a few hours since he had decided they were going to leave on the next shuttle, and supposedly they were supposed to keep it an absolute secret.


So what does Peter do? Asks practically every member of the permanent station crew to do some favor for him, run some errand, “and you've got to get it to me by 1800.”


They weren't idiots. They all knew that 1800 was when everyone going on the next flight had to board for a 1900 departure.





crew.

So this great secret had been leaked, by implication, to everybody on the



And yet he still insisted that they not talk about it, and John Paul was going along with him!  What  kind of  madness was  this?  Peter  was  clearly not  being careless, he was too systematic for it to be an accident. Was he hoping to catch someone in the act of transmitting a warning to Achilles? Well, what if, instead of a warning, they just blew up the shuttle? Maybe that was the operation-to sabotage

whatever shuttle they were going home on. Did Peter think of that?


Of course he did. It was in Peter's nature to think of everything.


Or at least it was in Peter's nature to think he had thought of everything.


Out in the corridor, John Paul kept walking too quickly for her to converse with him, and when she tried anyway, he put his fingers to his lips.


“It's OK,” he murmured.


At the elevator to the hub of the station, where the shuttles docked, Dimak was waiting for them. He had to be there, because their palms would not activate the elevator.


“I'm sorry we'll be losing you so soon,” said Dimak.





Army's.”

“You never did tell us,” said John Paul, “which bunk room was Dragon



“Ender never slept there anyway,”  said Dimak. “He had a private room. Commanders always did. Before that he was in several armies, but...”


“Too late now, anyway,” said John Paul.


The elevator door opened. Dimak stepped inside, held the door for them, palmed the controls, and entered the code for the right flight deck.


Then he stepped back out of the elevator. “Sorry I can't see you off, but
Colonel-the Minister suggested I shouldn't know about this.” John Paul shrugged.
The elevator doors closed and they began their ascent.


“Johnny P.,” said Theresa, “if we're so worded about being bugged, what was that about, talking so openly with him?”


“He carries a damper,” said John Paul. “His conversations can't be listened to. Ours can, and this elevator is definitely bugged.”

“What, Uphanad told you that?”


“It would be insane to set up security in a tube like this station without bugging the tunnel through which everybody has to pass to get inside.”


“Well excuse me for not thinking like a paranoid spy.” “I think that's one of your best traits.”
She realized that she couldn't say anything she was thinking. And not just because it might be overheard by Uphanad's  security system. “I hate it when you
'deal' with me.”





little.

“OK, what if I 'handle' you instead?” suggested John Paul, leering just a



“If you weren't carrying my bag for me,” said Theresa, “I'd...” “Tickle me?”
“You aren't in on this any more than I am,” said Theresa. “But you act as if you know everything.” Gravity had quickly faded, and now she was holding onto the side rail as she hooked her feet under the floor rail.


“I've guessed some things,” said John Paul. “For the rest, all I can do is trust. He really is a very smart boy.”


“Not as smart as he thinks,” said Theresa.


“But a lot smarter than you think,” said John Paul.


“I suppose your evaluation of his intelligence is just right.” “Such a Goldilocks line. Makes me feel so ... ursine.”
“Why can't you just say 'bearlike'?”


“Because I know the word 'ursine,' and so do you, and it's fun to say.” The elevator doors opened.

“Carry your bag for you, Ma'am?” said John Paul.


“If you want,” she said, “but I'm not going to tip you.” “Oh, you really are upset,” he murmured.
She pulled herself past him as he started tossing bags to the orderlies.





said.

Peter was waiting at the shuttle entrance. “Cut it rather fine, didn't we?” he



“Is it eighteen hundred?” asked Theresa.


“A minute before,” said Peter.





airlock.

“Then we're early,” said Theresa. She sailed past him, too, and on into the



Behind her, she could hear Peter saying, “What's got into her?” and John Paul answering, “Later”


It took a moment to reorient herselt once she was inside the shuttle. She couldn't shake the sensation that the floor was in the wrong place- down was left and in was out, or some such thing. But she pulled herself by the handholds on the seat backs  until  she had found a seat. An aisle  seat, to invite  other  passengers  to sit somewhere else. But there were no other passengers. Not even John Paul and Peter After waiting a good five minutes, she became too impatient to sit there any longer.





something.

She  found them  standing in  midair  near  the  airlock, laughing about



“Are you laughing at me?” she asked, daring them to say yes. “No,” said Peter at once.
“Only a little,” said John Paul. “We can talk now. The pilot has cut all the links to the station, and... Peter's wearing a damper, too.”


“How nice,” said Theresa. “Too bad they didn't have one for me or your

father to use.”





stock.”

“They didn't,” said Peter “I've got Graff's. It's not like they keep them in



“Why did you tell everybody you met here that we were leaving on this shuttle? Are you trying to get us killed?”


“Ah, what tangled webs we weave, when we practice to deceive,” said Peter. “So you're playing spider,” said Theresa. “What are we, threads? Or flies?” “Passengers,” said John Paul.
And Peter laughed.


“Let me in on the joke,” said Theresa, “or I'll space you, I swear I will.”


"As soon as Graff knew he had an informer here at the station, he brought his own  security  team  here.  [?]Unbeknownst  to  anyone  but  him,  no  messages  are actually going into or out of the station. But it looks to anyone on the station as if they are.


“So you're hoping to catch someone sending a message about what shuttle we're on,” said Theresa.


“Actually, we expect that no one will send a message at all.” “Then what is this for?” said Theresa.
“What matters is, who doesn't send the message.” And Peter grinned at her.


“I won't ask anything more,” said Theresa, “since you're so smug about how clever you are. I suppose whatever your clever plan is, my dear clever boy thought it up.”


“And people say Demosthenes has a sarcastic streak,” said Peter


A moment ago she didn't get it. And now she did. Something clicked, apparently. The right mental gear had shifted, the tight synapse had sizzled with electricity for a moment. “You wanted everybody to think they had accidentally

discovered we were leaving. And gave them all a chance to send a message,” said
Theresa. “Except one person. So if he's the one...”


John Paul finished her sentence. “Then the message won't get sent.” “Unless he's really clever,” said Theresa.
“Smarter than us?” said Peter.


He and John Paul looked at each other Then both of them shook their heads, said, “Naw,” and then burst out laughing.


“I'm glad you too are bonding so well,” she said.


“Oh, Mom, don't be a butt about this,” said Peter “I couldn't tell you because if he knew it was a trap it wouldn't  work, and he's the one person who might be listening to everything. And for your information I only just got the damper”


“I understand all that,” said Theresa. “It's the fact that your father guessed it and I didn't.”


“Mom,” said Peter, “nobody thinks you're a lackwit, if that's what you're worried about.”


“Lackwit?  In what musty drawer of some dead English professor's  dust- covered desk did you find that word? I assure you that never in my worst nightmares did I ever suppose that I was a lackwit.”


“Good,” said Peter “Because if you did, you'd be wrong.” “Shouldn't we be strapping in for takeoff?” asked Theresa. “No,” said Peter. “We're not going anywhere.”
“Why not?”


“The station computers are busily running a simulation program saying that the shuttle is in its launch routine. Just to make it look right, we'll be cut loose and drift away from the station. As soon as the only people in the dock are Graff's team from outside, we'll come back and get out of this can.”

“This seems like a pretty elaborate shade to catch one informer”


“You raised me with such a keen sense of style, Mom,” said Peter “I can't overcome my childhood at your knee.”



Lankowski knocked at the door at nearly midnight. Petra had already been asleep for an hour. Bean logged off, disconnected his desk, and opened the door


“Is there something wrong?” he asked Lankowski. “Our mutual friend wishes to see the two of you.”
“Petra's already asleep,” said Bean. But he could see from the coldness of
Lankowski's demeanor that something was very wrong. “Is Alai all right?”


“He's very well, thank you,” said Lankowski. “Please wake your wife and bring her along as quickly as possible.”


Fifteen minutes later, adrenaline making sure that neither he nor Petra was the least bit groggy, they stood before Alai, not in the garden, but in an office, and Alai was sitting behind a desk.


He had a single sheet of paper on the desk and slid it across to Bean. Bean picked it up and read it.
“You think I sent this,” said Bean.


“Or Petra did,” said Alai. “I tried to tell myself that perhaps you hadn't impressed upon her the importance of keeping this information from the Hegemon. But then I realized that I was thinking like a very old-fashioned Muslim. She is responsible  for  her  own  actions. And  she  understood  as  well  as  you  did  that maintaining secrecy on this matter was vital.”


Bean sighed.


“I didn't send it,” said Bean. “Petra didn't send it. We not only understood your desire to keep this secret, we agreed with it. There is zero chance we would have sent information about what you're doing to anyone, period.”



building!”

“And  yet  here  is  this  message,  sent  from  our  own  netbase.  From  this



“Alai,” said Bean, “we're three of the smartest people on Earth. We've been through a war together, and the two of you survived Achilles's kidnapping. And yet when something  like this happens,  you absolutely  know that  we're  the ones who betrayed your trust.”


“Who else from outside our circle knew this?”


“Well, let's see. All the men at that meeting have staffs. Their staffs are not made up of idiots. Even if no one explicitly told them, they'll see memos, they'll hear comments. Some of these men might even think it's not a breach of security to tell a deeply trusted aide. And a few of them might actually be only figureheads, so they have to tell the people who'll be doing the real work or nothing will get done.”


“I know all these men,” said Alai.


“Not as well as you know us,” said Petra. “Just because they're good Muslims and loyal to you doesn't mean they're all equally careful.”


“Peter has been building up a network of informants  and correspondents since he was ... well, since he was a kid. Long before any of them knew he was just a kid. It would be shocking if he didn't have an informant in your palace.”


Alai sat staring at the paper on the desk. “This is a very clumsy sort of disguise for the message,” said Alai. “I suppose you would have done a better job of it.”


“I would have encrypted it,” said Bean, “and Petra probably would have put it inside a graphic.”


“I think the very clumsiness of the message should tell you something,” said Petra. “The person who wrote this is someone who thinks he only needs to hide this information from somebody outside the inner circle. He would have to know that if you saw it, you'd recognize instantly that 'Shaw' refers to the old rulers of Iran, and
'Pack' refers to Pakistan, while 'Kemal' is a transparent reference to the founder of post-Ottoman Turkey. How could you not get it?”

Alai  nodded.  “So  he's  only  coding  it  like  this  to  keep  outsiders  from understanding it, in case it gets intercepted by an enemy.”


“He doesn't think anybody here would search his outgoing messages,” said Petra. “Whereas  Bean and I know for a fact that we've been bugged since we got here.”


“Not terribly successfully,” said Alai with a tight little smile. “Well, you need better snoopware, to start with,” said Bean.
“And if we had sent a message to Peter,” said Petra, “we would have told him explicitly to warn our Indian friend not to block the Chinese exit from India, only their return.”


“We would have had no other reason to tell Peter about this at all,” said
Bean. “We don't work for him. We don't really like him all that much.” “He's not,” said Petra firmly, “one of us.”
Alai nodded, sighed, leaned back in his chair. “Please, sit down,” he said. “Thank you,” said Petra.
Bean walked to the window and looked out over lawns sprinkled by purified water from the Mediterranean. Where the favor of Allah was, the desert blossomed. “I don't think there'll be any harm from this,” said Bean. “Aside from our losing a bit of sleep tonight.”
“You must see that it's hard for me to suspect my closest colleagues here.” “You're the Caliph,” said Petra, “but you're also still a very young man, and
they see that. They know your plan is brilliant, they love you, they follow you in all
the great things you plan for your people. But when you tell them, Keep this an absolute secret, they say yes, they even mean it, but they don't take it really quite seriously because, you see, you re...”


“Still a boy,” said Alai.


“That will fade with time,” said Petra. “You have many years ahead of you. Eventually all these older men will be replaced.”

“By younger men that I trust even less,” said Alai ruefully.


“Telling Peter is not the same thing as telling an enemy,” said Bean. “He shouldn't have had this information in advance of the invasion. But you notice that the informer didn't tell him when the invasion would start.”


“Yes he did,” said Alai.


“Then I don't see it,” said Bean.


Petra got up again and looked at the printed-out email. “The message doesn't say anything about the date of the invasion.”


“It was sent,” said Alai, “on the day of the invasion.” Bean and Petra looked at each other. “Today?” said Bean.
“The Turkic campaign has already begun,” said Alai. “As soon as it was dark in Xinjiang. By now we have received confirmation via email messages that three airfields  and a significant  part of the power grid are in our hands. And so far, at least, there is no sign that the Chinese know anything is happening. It's going better than we could have hoped.”


“It's begun,” said Bean. “So it was already too late to change the plans for the third front.”


“No, it wasn't,” said Alai. “Our new orders have been sent. The Indonesian and Arab commanders are very proud to be entrusted with the mission that will take the war home to the enemy.”


Bean was appalled. “But the logistics of it... there's no time to plan.”


“Bean,” said Alai with amusement. “We already had the plans for a complicated beach landing. That was a logistical nightmare. Putting three hundred separate forces ashore at  different points on the Chinese coast, under cover of darkness, three days from today, and supporting them with air raids and air drops- my people can do that in their sleep. That was the best thing about your idea, Bean, my friend. It wasn't a plan at all, it was a situation, and the whole plan is for every individual commander to improvise ways to fulfil the mission objectives. I told

them, in my orders, that as long as they keep moving inland, protect their men, and cause maximum annoyance to the Chinese government and military, they can't fail.”


“It's begun,” said Petra.


“Yes,” said Bean. “It's begun, and Achilles is not in China.”


Petra looked at Bean and grinned. “Let's see what we can do about keeping him away.”


“More to the point,” said Bean. “Since we have not given Peter the specific message  he needs  to convey  to Virlomi  in India,  may we do so now, with your permission?”


Alai squinted at him. “Tomorrow. After news of the fighting in Xinjiang has started to come out. I will tell you when.”



In Uphanad's office, Graff sat with his feet on the desk as Uphanad worked at the security console.


“Well, sir, that's it,” said Uphanad. “They're off.” “And they'll arrive when?” said Graff.
“I don't know,” said Uphanad. “That's all about trajectories and very complicated  equations  balancing  velocity,  mass,  speed-I  wasn't  the  astrophysics teacher in Battle School, you recall.”


“You were small-force tactics, if I remember,” said Graff. “And when you tried that experiment with military music- having the boys learn to sing together-”





was.”

Graff groaned. “Please. Don't remind me. What a deeply stupid idea that



“But you saw that at once and let us mercifully drop the whole thing.” "Esprit de corps my ass,' said Graff.
Uphanad hit a group of keys on the console keyboard and the screen showed that  he had just  logged off. “All  done here. I'm  glad you found out  about the

informer here in MinCol. Having the Wiggins leave was the only safe option.”


“Do you remember,” said Graff, “the time I accused you of letting Bean see your log-on?”


“Like yesterday,” said Uphanad. “I don't think you were going to believe me until  Dimak  vouched  for  me  and  suggested  Bean  was  crawling  around  the  duct system and peeking through vents.”


“Yes. Dimak was sure that you were so methodical you could not possibly have broken your habits in a moment of carelessness. He was right, wasn't he?”


“Yes,” said Uphanad.


“I learned my lesson,” said Graff. “I trusted you ever since.” “I hope I have earned that trust.”
“Many times over. I didn't keep all the faculty from Battle School. Of course, there were some who thought the Ministry of Colonization too tame for their talents. But it isn't really a matter of personal loyalty, is it?”


“What isn't, sir?”


“Our loyalty should be to something larger than a particular person, don't you think? To a cause, perhaps. I'm loyal to the human race-that's a pretentious one, don't you think?-but  to a particular  project, spreading the human genome throughout  as many star systems as possible. So our very existence can never be threatened again. And  for  that,  I'd  sacrifice  many  personal  loyalties.  It  makes  me  completely predictable, but also someone unreliable, if you get what I mean.”


"I think I do, sir.


“So my question, my good friend, is this: What are you loyal to?” “To this cause, sir. And to you.”
“This informant who used your log-on. Did he peer at you through the vents again, do you think?”

“Very unlikely, sir I think it much more probable that he penetrated  the system and chose me at random, sir.”


“Yes, of course. But you must understand that because your name was on that email, we had to eliminate you as a possibility first.”


“That is only logical, sir.”


"So as we sent the Wiggins home on the shuttle, we made sure that every member of the permanent staff found out that they were leaving and had every opportunity to send a message. Except you.


“Except me, sir?”


“I have been with you continuously since they decided to go. That way, if a message was sent, even if it used your log-on, we would know it wasn't you who sent it. But if a message wasn't sent, well... it was you who didn't send it.”


“This is not likely to be foolproof, sir,” said Uphanad. “Someone else might have not sent the message for reasons of his or her own, sir. It might be that their departure was not something for which a message was necessary.”


“True,” said Graff. “But we would not convict you of a crime on the basis of a message not sent. Merely assign you to a less critical responsibility. Or give you the opportunity to resign with pension.”


“That is very kind of you, sir” “Please don't think of me as kind, I-”
The door opened. Uphanad turned, obviously surprised. “You can't come in here,” he said to the Vietnamese woman who stood in the doorway.


“Oh, I invited her,” said Graff. “I don't think you know Colonel Nguyen of the IF Digital Security Force.”


“No,” said Uphanad, rising to offer his hand. "I didn't even know your office existed. Per se.


She ignored his hand and gave a paper to Graff.

“Oh,” he said, not reading it yet. “So we're in the clear in this room.” “The message did not use his log-on,” she said.
Graff read the message. It consisted of a single word: “Off.” The log-on was that of one of the orderlies from the docks.


The time in the message header showed it had been sent only a couple of minutes before. “So my friend is in the clear,” said Graff.


“No sir,” said Nguyen.


Uphanad, who had been looking relieved, now seemed baffled. “But I did not send it. How could I?”


Nguyen did not answer him, but spoke only to Graff. “It was sent from this console.”


She walked over to the console and started to log back on. “Let me do that,” said Uphanad.
She turned around and there was a stun gun in her hand. “Stand against the wall,” she said. "Hands in plain view.


Graff got up and opened the door “Come on in,” he said. Two more IF soldiers entered. “Please inspect Mr Uphanad for weapons or other lethal items. And under no circumstances is he to be allowed to touch a computer. We wouldn't want him to activate a program wiping out critical materials.”


“I don't know how this thing was done,” said Uphanad. “but you're wrong about me.”


Graff pointed to the console. “Nguyen is never wrong,” he said. “She's even more methodical than you.”


Uphanad watched. “She's signing on as me.” And then, “She used my password. That's illegal!”


Nguyen called Graff over to look at the screen. “Normally, to log off, you

press these two keys, you see? But he also pressed this one. With his little finger, so you wouldn't  actually  notice  it  had  been  pressed.  That  key  sequence  activated  a resident program that sent the email, using a random selection from among the staff identities. It also launched the ordinary log-off sequence, so to you, it looked like you had just watched somebody log off in a perfectly normal way.”


“So he had this ready to send at any time,” said Graff.
“But when he did send it, it was within five minutes of the actual launch.” Graff and Nguyen turned around to look at Uphanad. Graff could see in his
eyes that he saw he had been caught.


“So,” said Graff, “how did Achilles get to you? You've never met him, I don't think. Surely he didn't form some attachment with you when he was here for a few days as a student.”


“He has my family,” said Uphanad, and he burst into tears.


“No no,” said Graff. "Control yourself act like a soldier, we have very little time here in which to correct your failure of judgment. Next time you'll know, if someone comes to you with a threat like this, you come to me.


“They said they'd know if I told you.”


“Then you would tell me that, too,” said Graff, “But, now you have told me. So let's make this thing work to our advantage. What happens when you send this second message'?”


“I don't know,” said Uphanad. “It doesn't matter anyway. She just sent it again. When they get the same message twice, they'll know something is wrong.”


“Oh, they didn't get the message either time,” said Graff. “We cut this console off. We cut off the whole station from earthside contact. Just as the shuttle never actually left.”


The door opened yet again, and in came Peter, John Paul, and Theresa.


Uphanad turned his face to the wall. The soldiers would have turned him back around, but Graff gave them a gesture: Let be. He knew how proud Uphanad was. This shame in front of the people he had tried to betray was unbearable. Give

him time to compose himself.


Only when the Wiggins were sitting did Graff invite Uphanad also to take a seat. He obeyed, hanging his head like a caricature of a whipped dog.


“Sit up. Uphanad, and face this like a man. These are good people, they understand  that  you  did  what  you  thought  you  must  for  your  family. You  were unwise not to trust me more, but even that is understandable.”


From  Theresa's  face, Graff could see that she, at least, was not half so understanding as he seemed to assume. But he won her silence with a gesture.


“I'll tell you what,” said Graff. “Let's make this work to our advantage. I actually have a couple of shuttles at my disposal for this operation-compliments of Admiral Chamrajnagar. by the way-so the real quandary is deciding which of them to send when we actually allow your email to go out.”


“Two shuttles?” asked Peter.


“We have to make a guess about what Achilles  planned to do with this information. If he means to attack you upon landing, well, we have a very heavily armed shuttle that should be able to deal with anything he can throw against it from the ground  or the air  I think  what  he's  planning  is probably  a missile  as you're overflying some region where he can get a portable launch platform.”


“And your heavily armed shuttle can deal with that?” asked Peter


“Easily. The trouble is, this shuttle is not supposed to exist. The IF charter specifically  forbids  any  weaponization  of  atmospheric  craft.  It's  designed  to  go along with colony ships, in case the extermination of the Formics was not complete and we run into resistance. But if such a shuttle enters Earth's atmosphere and proves its capabilities by shooting down a missile, we could never tell anyone about it without compromising the IF. So we could use this shuttle to get you safely to Earth, but could never tell anyone about the attempt on your life.”


“I could live with that,” said Peter


“Except that you don't actually have to get to Earth at this time.” “No, I don't.”

“So we can send a different shuttle. Again, one whose existence is not known, but this time it is not illegal. Because it hasn't been weaponized at all. In fact, while it's quite expensive compared to, say, a bazooka, it's very, very cheap compared with a real shuttle. This one's a dummy. It is carefully designed to match the velocity and radar signature  of a real shuttle, but it lacks a few things-like  any place to put a human being, or any capability of a soft landing.”


“So you send this one down,” said John Paul, “draw their fire, and then have a propaganda field day.”


“We'll have IF observers watching for the boost and we'll be on that launch platform before it can be dismantled, or at least before the perpetrators can get away. Whether it ends up pointing to Achilles or China, either way we can demonstrate that someone on Earth fired at an IF shuttle.”


“Puts them in a very bad position,” said Peter. “Do we announce that I was the target?”


“We can decide that based on their response,  and on who is getting the blame. If it's China, I think we gain more by making it an attack on the International Fleet. If it's Achilles, we gain more by making him out to be an assassin.”


“You seem to have been quite free about discussing these things in front of us,” said Theresa. “I suppose now you have to kill us.”


“just me,” whispered Uphanad.


“Well, I do have to fire you,” said Graff. “And I do have to send you back to Earth,  because  it  just  wouldn't  do  to  have  you  stay  on  here. You'd  just  depress everyone else, slinking around looking guilty and unworthy.”





again.

Graff's tone was light enough to help keep Uphanad from bursting into tears



“I've heard,” Graff went on, "that the Indian people need to have loyal men who'll fight for their freedom. That's the loyalty that transcends your loyalty to the Ministry of Colonization, and I understand it. So you must go where your loyalty leads you.


“This is unbelievable mercy, sir,” said Uphanad.

“It wasn't my idea,” said Graff. “My plan was to have you tried in secret by the IF and executed. But Peter told me that, if you were guilty and it turned out you were protecting family members in Chinese custody, it would be wrong to punish you for the crime of imperfect loyalty.”


Uphanad turned to look at Peter “My betrayal might have killed you and your family.”


“But it didn't,” said Peter.


“I like to think,” said Graff, “that God sometimes shows mercy to us by letting some accident prevent us from actually carrying out our worst plans.”


“I don't believe that,” said Theresa coldly. “I believe if you point a gun at a man's head and the bullet was a dud, you're still a murderer in the eyes of God.”


“Well then,” said Graff, “when we're all dead, if we find that we still exist in some form or other, we'll just have to ask God to tell us which of us is right.”



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN PROPHETS


SecureSite.net
From: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov
PASSWORD:   Suriyowong
Re:   girl on bridge


Reliable source begs: Do not interfere with Chinese egress from India. But when they need to return or supply, Block all possible routes.



The Chinese thought at first that the incidents in Xinjiang province were the work of the insurgents who had been forming and reforming guerrilla groups for centuries. In the protocol-burdened Chinese army, it was not until late afternoon in Beijing that Han Tzu was finally able to get enough information together to prove this was a major offensive originating outside China.


For the fiftieth time since taking a place in the high command in Beijing,

Han Tzu despaired of getting anything done. It was always more important to show respect for one's superiors' high status than to tell them the truth and make things happen. Even now, holding in his hands evidence of a level of training, discipline, coordination, and supply that made it impossible for these incidents in Xinjiang to be the work of local rebels, Han Tzu had to wait hours for his request for a meeting to be processed through all the oh-so-important  aides, flunkies, functionaries,  and poobahs  whose  sole  duty  was  to  look  as  important  and  busy  as  possible  while making sure that as little as possible actually got done.


It was fully dark in Beijing when Han Tzu crossed the square separating the Strategy  and  Planning  section  from  the  Administrative   section-another   bit  of mindlessly bad structure, to separate these two sections by a long walk in the open air. They should have been across a low divider from each other, constantly shouting back and forth. Instead, Strategy and Planning were constantly  making plans that Administrative  couldn't  carry  out,  and  Administrative  was  constantly misunderstanding the purpose of plans and fighting against the very ideas that would make them effective.


How did we ever conquer India? thought Han Tzu.


He kicked at the pigeons scurrying around his feet. They fluttered a few meters away, then came back for more, as if they thought his feet might have shed something edible with each step.


The only reason this government stays in power is that the people of China are pigeons. You can kick them and kick them, and they come back for more. And the  worst  of  them  are  the  bureaucrats.  China  invented  bureaucracy,  and  with  a thousand-year head start on the rest of the world, they'd kept advancing the arts of obfuscation, kingdombuilding, and tempests-in-teapots to a level unknown anywhere else. Byzantine bureaucracy was, by comparison, a forthright system.


How did Achilles do it? An outsider, a criminal, a madman-and all of this was well known to the Chinese government yet he was able to cut through the layers of fawning backstabbers and get straight to the decision-making level. Most people didn't even know where the decision-making level was, since it was certainly not the famous leaders at the top, who were too old to think of anything new and too frightened of losing their perks or getting caught out in their decades of criminal acts ever to do anything but say, “Do as you think wise,” to their underlings.


It was two levels down that decisions were made, by aides to the top generals. It had taken Han Tzu six months to realize that a meeting with the top man

was   useless,   because   he   would   confer   with   his   aides   and   follow   their recommendations every time. Now he never bothered to meet with anyone else. But to set up such a meeting, of course, required that an elaborate request be made to each general, acknowledging  that while the subject of the meeting was so vital it must be held immediately, it was so trivial that each general only needed to send his aide to the meeting in his place.


Han Tzu was never sure whether all this elaborate charade was merely to show proper respect for tradition and form, or whether the generals actually were fooled by all this and made the decision, each time, whether to attend in person or send their aide.


Of course, it was also possible that the general never saw the messages, and the aides made the decision for him. Most likely, though, his memo went to each general with a commentary: “Noble and worthy general would be slighted if not in attendance,” for instance, or “Tedious waste of heroic leader's time, unworthy aide will be glad to take notes and report if anything important is said.”


Han Tzu had no loyalty to any of these buffoons.  Whenever  they made decisions   on  their  own,  they  were  hopelessly   wrong.  The  ones  that  weren't completely bound by tradition were just as controlled by their own egos.


Yet Han Tzu was completely loyal to China. He had always acted in China's best interest, and always would.


The trouble was, he often defined “China's best interest” in a way that might easily get him shot.


Like that message he sent to Bean and Petra, hoping they'd realize the danger to  the  Hegemon  if  he  really  believed  Han  Tzu  had  been  the  source  of  his information. Sending such a bit of information was definitely treason, since Achilles's adventure had been approved at the highest levels and therefore represented official Chinese policy. And yet  it  would be a  disaster for  China's prestige in the world at large if it became known that China had sent an assassin to kill the Hegemon.


Nobody seemed to understand that sort of thing, mostly because they refused to see China as anything other than the center of the universe, around which all other nations orbited. What did it matter if China was regarded as a nation of tyrants and assassins? If someone doesn't like what China does, then that someone can go home

and cry in his beer.


But no nation was invincible, not even China. Han Tzu understood that, even if the others did not.


It didn't help that the conquest  of India had been so easy. Han Tzu had insisted on devising all sorts of contingency plans when things went wrong with the surprise attack on the Indian, Thai, and Vietnamese armies. But Achilles's campaign of deception had been so successful, and the Thai strategy of defense had been so effective, that the Indians were fully committed, their supplies exhausted, and their morale at rock bottom when the Chinese armies began pouring across the borders, cutting  the  Indian  army  to  pieces,  and  swallowing  up  each  piece  within  days- sometimes within hours.


All the glory went to Achilles,  of course, though it had been Han Tzu's careful planning with his staff of nearly eighty Battle School graduates that put the Chinese armies exactly where they needed to be at exactly the time they needed to be  there.  No,  even  though  Han  Tzu's  team  had  written  up  the  orders,  they  had actually been issued by Administrative, and therefore it was Administrative that won the medals, while Strategy and Planning got a single group commendation that had about the same effect on morale as if some lieutenant colonel had come in and said, “Nice try, boys, we know you meant well.”


Well, Achilles was welcome to the glory, because in Han Tzu's opinion, invading India had been pointless and self-defeating-not  to mention evil. China did not have the resources to take on India's problems. When Indians governed India, the suffering people could only blame their fellow Indians. But now when things went wrong- which they always did in India it would all be blamed on the Chinese.


The Chinese administrators who were sent in to govern India stayed surprisingly free of corruption and they worked hard but the fact is that no nation is governable except by overwhelming force or complete cooperation. And since there was no way conquering Chinese officials would get complete cooperation, and there was no hope of being able to pay for overwhelming force, the only question was when the resistance would become a problem.


It became a problem not long after Achilles left for the Hegemony, when the Indians started piling up stones. Han Tzu had to hand it to them, when it came to truly annoying but symbolically powerful civil disobedience, the Indians were truly the daughters and sons of Gandhi. Even then, the bureaucrats hadn't listened to Han Tzu's advice and ended up getting themselves into a steadily worsening cycle of

reprisals.


So ... it doesn't  matter  what the outside world thinks, right? We can do whatever we want because no one else has the power or the will to challenge us, is that the story?


What I have in my hands is the answer to that theory.



“What  does  it  mean  that  they've  done  nothing  to  acknowledge  our offensive?” said Alai.


Bean and Petra sat with him, looking at the holomap that showed every single objective in Xinjiang taken on schedule, as if the Chinese had been handed a script and were doing their part exactly as the Crescent League had asked them to.


“I think things are going very well,” said Petra. “Ridiculously well,” said Alai.
“Don't be impatient,” said Bean. “Things move slowly in China. And they don't like making public pronouncements about their problems. Maybe they still see this as a group of local insurgents. Maybe they're waiting to announce what's going on until they can tell about their devastating counterattack.”


“That's just it,” said Alai. “Our satintel[?] says they're doing nothing. Even the nearest garrison troops are still in place.”


“The garrison commanders don't have the authority to send them into battle,” said Bean. “Besides, they probably don't even know anything's wrong. Your forces have the land-based communications grid under control, right?”





busy.”

“That was a secondary objective. That's what they're doing now, just to keep



Petra began to laugh. “I get it,” she said. “What's so funny?” asked Alai.
“The public announcement,” said Petra. “You can't announce that a Caliph

has been named unanimously by all the Muslim nations.” “We can announce it any time,” said Alai, irritated.
“But you're waiting. Until the Chinese make their announcement that some unknown  nation  has  attacked  them.  Only  when  they've  either  admitted  their ignorance or committed to some theory tat's completely false do you come out and tell what's really happening. That the Muslim world is fully united under a Caliph, and that you have taken responsibility  for liberating  the captive nations from the godless imperialist Chinese.”


“You have to admit the story plays better that way,” said Alai.


“Absolutely,” said Petra. “I'm not laughing because you re wrong to do it that way, I'm simply laughing at the irony that you are so successful and the Chinese so completely  unprepared  that it's actually  delaying  your announcement!  But... have patience,  dear  friend.  Somebody  in  the  Chinese  high  command  knows  what's happening, and eventually the rest of them will listen to him and they'll mobilize their forces and make some kind of announcement.”


“They have to,” said Bean. “Or the Russians will deliberately misunderstand their troop movements.”


“All right,” said Alai. “But unfortunately, all the vids of my announcement were shot during daylight hours. It never crossed our minds that they would take this long to respond.”


“You know what?” said Bean. “No one will mind a bit if the vids are clearly prerecorded.  But  even better  would be for you to go on camera,  live, to declare yourself and to announce what your armies are doing in Xinjiang.”


“The danger with doing it live is that I might let something slip, telling them that the Xinjiang invasion is not the main offensive,”


“Alai, you could announce outright that this was not the main offensive, and half the Chinese would think that was disinformation designed to keep their troops in India pinned down along the Pakistani border. In fact, I advise you to do that. Because then you'll have a reputation as a truthteller. It will make your later lies that much more effective.”


Alai laughed. “You've eased my mind.”

“You're suffering,” said Petra, “from the problem that plagues all the top commanders  in this age of rapid communications.  In the old days, Alexander  and Caesar were right there on the field of battle. They could watch, issue orders, deal with things. They were needed. But you're stuck here in Damascus because here is where all the communications come together If you're needed, you'll be needed here. So instead of having a thousand things to keep your mind busy, you have all this adrenaline flowing and nowhere for it to go.”


“I recommend pacing,” said Bean. “Do you play handball?” asked Petra.
“I get the picture,” said Alai. “Thank you. I'll be patient.”


“And think about my advice,” said Bean. “To go on live and tell the truth. Your people will love you better if they see you as being so bold you can simply tell the enemy what you're going to do, and they can't stop you from doing it.”


“Go away now,” said Alai. “You're repeating yourself.” Laughing, Bean got up. So did Petra.
“I won't have time for you after this, you know,” said Alai. They paused, turned.
“Once it's announced, once everybody knows, I'll have to start holding court. Meeting people. Judging disputes. Showing myself to be the true Caliph.”


“Thank you for the time you've spent with us till now,” said Petra.


“I hope we never have to oppose each other on the field of battle,” said Bean. “The way we've had to oppose Han Tzu in this war.”


“Just remember,” said Alai. “Han Tzu's loyalties are divided. Mine are not.” “I'll remember that,” said Bean.
“Salaam,” said Alai. “Peace be in you. ”And in you,“ said Petra, ”peace."


When the meeting ended, Han Tzu did not know whether his warning had been believed. Well, even if they didn't believe him now, in a few more hours they'd have no choice. The major force in the Xinjiang invasion would undoubtedly start their assault just before dawn tomorrow. Satellite intelligence would confirm what he'd told them today. But at the cost of twelve more hours of inaction.


The most frustrating moment, however, had come near the end of the meeting,  when the senior  aide to the senior  general  had asked, “So if this is the beginning of a major offensive, what do you recommend?”


“Send all available troops in the north-I would recommend fifty percent of all the garrison troops on the Russian border Prepare  them not only to deal with these  horse-borne  guerrillas  but  also  with  a  major  mechanized  army  that  will probably invade tomorrow.”


“What about the concentration of troops in India?” asked the aide.
“These are our best soldiers, the most highly trained, and the most mobile.” “Leave them where they are,” said Han Tzu.





attack.”

“But if we strip the garrisons along the Russian border, the Russians will



Another aide spoke up. “The Russians never fight well outside their own borders. Invade them and they'll destroy you, but if they invade you, their soldiers won't fight.”


Han Tzu tried not to show his contempt for such ludicrous judgments. “The Russians will do what they do, and if they attack, we'll do what we need to do in response. However, you don't keep your troops from defending against a present enemy because they might be needed for a hypothetical enemy.”


All well and good. Until the senior aide to the senior general said, “Very well. I will recommend the immediate removal of troops from India as quickly as possible to meet this current threat.”


“That's not what I meant,” said Han Tzu.

“But it is what I mean,” said the aide.


“I believe this is a Muslim offensive,” said Han Tzu. “The enemy across the border in Pakistan is the same enemy attacking us in Xinjiang. They are certainly hoping we'll do exactly what you suggest, so their main offensive will have a better chance of success.”


The aide only laughed, and the others laughed with him. “You spent too many years out of China during your childhood, Han Tzu. India is a faraway place. What does it matter what happens there? We can take it again whenever we want. But these invaders in Xinjiang, they are inside China. The Russians are poised[?[ on the Chinese border. No matter what the enemy thinks, that is the real threat.”


“Why?” said Han Tzu, throwing caution to the winds as  he  directly challenged the senior aide. “Because foreign troops on Chinese soil would mean the present government has lost the mandate of heaven?”


From around the table came the hiss of air suddenly gasped between clenched teeth. To refer to the old idea of the mandate of heaven was poisonously out of step with government policy.


Well, as long as he was irritating people, why stop with that? “Everyone knows that Xinjiang and Tibet are not part of Han China,” said Han Tzu. “They are no more important to us than India- conquests that have never become fully Chinese. We once owned Vietnam before, long ago, and lost it, and the loss meant nothing to us. But the Chinese army, that is precious. And if you take troops out of India, you run the grave risk of losing millions of our men to these Muslim fanatics. Then we won't have the mandate of heaven to worry about. We'll have foreign troops in Han China before we know it- and no way to defend against them.”


The silence around the table was deadly. They hated him now, because he had spoken to them of defeat-and told them, disrespectfully, that their ideas were wrong.


“I hope none of you will forget this meeting,” said Han Tzu. “You can be sure that we will not,” said the senior aide.
“If I am wrong, then I will bear the consequences of my mistake, and rejoice that your ideas were not stupid after all. What is good for China is good for me, even if I am punished for my mistakes. But if I am right, then we'll see what kind of men

you are.  Because  if  you're  true  Chinese,  who  love  your  country  more  than  your careers, you'll remember that I was right and you'll bring me back and listen to me as you should have listened to me today. But if you're the disloyal selfish garden- pigs I think you are, you'll make sure that I'm killed, so that no one outside this room will ever know that you heard a true warning and didn't listen to it when there was still  time  to  save  China  from  the  most  dangerous  enemy  we  have  faced  since Genghis Khan.”


What a glorious speech. And how refreshing actually to say it with his lips to the people who most needed to hear it, instead of playing the speech over and over in his mind, ever more frustrated because not a word of it had been said aloud.


Of course  he would be arrested  tonight,  and quite  possibly  shot  before morning. Though the more likely pattern would be to arrest him and charge him with passing information to the enemy, blaming him for the defeat that only he actually tried  to  prevent.  There  was  something  about  irony  that  had  a  special  appeal  to Chinese people who got a little power. There was a special pleasure in punishing a virtuous man for the powerful man's own crimes.


But Han Tzu would not hide. It might be possible, at this moment, for him to leave China and go into exile. But he would not do it.


Why not?


He could not leave his country in its hour of need. Even though he might be killed for staying, there would be many other Chinese soldiers his age who would die in the next days and weeks. Why shouldn't he be one of them? And there was always the chance, however small and remote, that there were enough decent men among those at that meeting that Han Tzu would be kept alive until it was clear that he was right. Perhaps then-contrary to all expectation- they would bring him back and ask him how to save themselves from this disaster they had brought upon China.


Meanwhile, Han Tzu was hungry, and there was a little restaurant he liked, where the manager and his wife treated him like one of the family. They did not care about his lofty rank or his status as one of the heroes of Ender's jeesh. They liked him for his company. They loved the way he devoured their food as if it were the finest cuisine in the world-which, to him, it was. If these were his last hours of freedom, or even of life, why not spend them with people he liked, eating food he enjoyed?

As night fell in Damascus, Bean and Petra walked freely along the streets, looking into shop windows. Damascus still had the traditional markets, where most fresh food and local handwork were sold. But supermarkets,  boutiques, and chain stores had reached Damascus, like almost every other place on earth. Only the wares for  sale  reflected  local  taste.  There  was  no  shortage  of  items  of  European  and American design for sale, but what Bean and Petra enjoyed was the strangeness of items that would never find a market in the West, but which apparently were much in demand here.


They traded guesses about what each item was for.


They stopped at an outdoor restaurant with good music played softly enough that they could still converse.  They had a strange  combination  of local  food and international cuisine that had even the waiter shaking his head, but they were in the mood to please themselves.


“I'll probably just throw it up tomorrow,” said Petra. “Probably,” said Bean. “But it'll be a better grade of-” “Please!” said Petra. “I'm trying to eat.”
“But you brought it up,” said Bean.


“I know it's unfair, but when I discuss it, it doesn't make me sick. It's like tickling. You can't really nauseate yourself.”


“I can,” said Bean.


“I have no doubt of it. Probably one of the attributes of Anton's Key.”


They  continued  talking  about  nothing  much,  until  they  heard  some explosions, at first far away, then nearby.


“There can't possibly be an attack on Damascus,” said Petra under her voice. “No, I think it's fireworks,” said Bean. “I think it's a celebration.”
One of the cooks ran into the restaurant and shouted out a stream of Arabic, which was of course completely unintelligible to Bean and Petra. All at once the

local customers jumped up from the table. Some of them ran out of the restaurant- without paying, and nobody made to stop them. Others ran into the kitchen.


The few non-Arabiphones  in the restaurant  were left to wonder what was going on.


Until a merciful waiter came out and announced in Common Speech, “Food will be delay, I very sorry to tell you. But happy to say why. Caliph will speak in a minute.”


“The Caliph?” asked an Englishman. “isn't he in Baghdad?” “I thought Istanbul,” said a Frenchwoman.
“There has been no Caliph in many centuries,” said a professoriallooking
Japanese.


“Apparently they have one now,” said Petra reasonably. “I wonder if they'll let us into the kitchen to watch with them.”


“Oh, I don't know if I want to,” said the Englishman. “If they've got themselves a new Caliph, they're going to be feeling quite chauvinistic for a while. What if they decide to start hanging foreigners to celebrate?”


The Japanese  scholar  was outraged at this suggestion.  While he and the Englishman  politely went for each other's throats, Bean, Petra, the Frenchwoman, and several other westerners went through the swinging door into the kitchen, where the kitchen help barely noticed they were there. Someone had brought a nice-sized flat vid in from one of the offices and set it on a shelf, leaning it against the wall.


Alai was already on the screen.


Not that it did them any good to watch. They couldn't understand a word of it. They'd have to wait for the full translation on one of the newsnets later.


But the map of western China was pretty self-explanatory. No doubt he was telling them that the Muslim people had united to liberate long-captive brothers in Xinjiang. The waiters and cooks punctuated almost every sentence with cheers-Alai seemed to know this would happen, because he left pauses after each declaration.


Unable to understand his words, Bean and Petra concentrated on other things.

Bean tried to determine whether this speech was going out live. The clock on the wall was no indicator-of course they would insert it digitally into a prerecorded vid during the broadcast so that no matter when it was first aired, the clock would show the current time. Finally he got his answer when Alai stood up and walked to the window. The camera followed him, and there spread out below him were the lights of Damascus, twinkling in the darkness. He was doing it live. And whatever he said while  pointing  to the  city,  it  was  apparently  very  effective,  because  at  once  the cheering  cooks  and waiters  were weeping  openly,  without  shame,  their  eyes  still glued to the screen.


Petra. meanwhile, was trying to guess how Alai must look to the Muslim people watching him. She knew his face so well, so that she had to try to separate the boy she had known from  the man he now was. The compassion  she had noticed before was more visible than ever. His eyes were full of love. But there was fire in him, too, and dignity. He did not smile-which was proper for the leader of nations which were now at war, and whose sons were dying in combat, and killing, too. Nor did he rant, whipping them up into some kind of dangerous enthusiasm.


Will these people follow him into battle? Yes, of course, at first, when he has a tale of easy victories to tell them. But later, when times are hard and fortune does not favor them, will they still follow him?


Perhaps yes. Because what Petra saw in him was not so much a great general- though yes, she could imagine Alexander might have looked like this, or Caesar-as a prophet-king. Saul or David, both young men when first called by prophecy to lead their people into war in God's name. Joan of Arc.


Of course, Joan of Arc ended up dying at the stake, and Saul fell on his own sword-or no, that was Brutus or Cassius, Saul commanded one of his own soldiers to kill  him, didn't he? A bad end for  both of  them. And David died in disgrace, forbidden by God to build the holy temple because he had murdered Uriah to get Bathsheba into a state of marriageable widowhood.


Not a good list of precedents, that.


But they had their glory, didn't they, before they fell.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE WAR ON THE GROUND

To:   Chamrajnagar%Jawaharlal@ifcom.gov
From: AncientFire%Embers@han.gov
Re:   Official statement coming


My esteemed friend and colleague,


It grieves me that you would even suppose that in this time of trouble, when China is assailed  by unprovoked  assaults  from religious  fanatics,  we would have either the desire or the resources to provoke the International Fleet. We have nothing but the highest esteem for your institution, which so recently saved all humankind from the onslaught of the stardrogons.


Our official  statement,  which wih be released  forthwith,  does not include  our speculations  on who is in fact responsible  for the tragic shooting down of the IF shuttle while it overflew Brazilian territory. While we do not admit to having any participation   in  or  foreknowledge   of  the  event,  we  have  performed  our  own preliminary  investigation  and  we  believe  you  will  find  that  the  equipment  in question may in fact have originated with the Chinese military.


This causes us excruciating embarrassment, and we beg you not to publicize this information. Instead, we provide you with the attached documentation showing that our one missile launcher which is not accounted for, and which therefore may have been used to commit this crime, was released into the control of a certain Achilles de Flandres, ostensibly  for military operations  in connection  with our preemptive defensive action against the Indian aggressor as it ravaged Burma. We believed this materiel had been returned to us, but we discover upon investigation that it was not.


Achilles de Flandres at one time was under our protection, having rendered us a service in connection with forewarning us of the danger that India posed to peace in Southeast Asia. However, certain crimes be committed prior to this service came to our attention, and we arrested him (see documentation). As he was being conveyed to his place of reeducation, unknown forces raided the convoy and released Achilles de Flandres, killing all of the escorting soldiers.


Since Achilles de  Flandres ended up  almost  immediately in  the  Hegemony compound in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, and he has been in a position to do much mischief there since the hasty departure of Peter Wiggin, and since the missile was fired from Brazilian territory and the shuffle was shot down over Brazil, we suggest that  the  place to  look for  responsibility for  this  attack on  the  IF is  in  Brazil, specifically the Hegemony compound.

Ultimate  responsibility  for  all  of  de  Flandress  actions  after  his  abscondment from our custody must lie with those who took him, namely, Hegemon Peter Wiggin and  his  military  forces,  headed  by  julian  Delphiki  and,  more  recently,  the  Thai national, Suriyawong, who is regarded by the Chinese government as a terrorist.


I hope that this information, provided to you off the record, will prove useful to you in your investigation. If we can be of any other service that is not inconsistent with our desperate struggle for survival against the onslaught of the barbarian hordes from Asia, we will be glad to provide it.


Your humble and unworthy colleague, Ancient Fire
From: Chamrajnagar%Jawaharlal@ifcom.gov
To:   Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov
Re:   Who will take the blame?



Dear Hyrum,


You see from the attached message from the esteemed bead of the Chinese government  that they have decided  to offer up Achilles  as the sacrificial  lamb. I think they'd be glad if we got rid of him for them. Our investigators will officially report  that  the  launcher  is  of  Chinese  manufacture  and  has  been  traced  back  to Achilles de Flandres without mentioning that it was originally provided to him by the Chinese government.  When asked, we will refuse to speculate. That's the best they can hope for from us.


Meanwhile, we now have the legal basis firmly established for an Earthside intervention-and from evidence provided by the nation most likely to complain about such an intervention. We will do nothing to affect the outcome or progress of the war in Asia. We will first seek the cooperation of the Brazilian government but will make it clear that such cooperation is not required, legally or militarily. We will ask them to isolate the Hegemony compound so that no one can get in or out, pending the arrival of our forces.


I ask that you inform the Hegemon and that you make your plans accordingly. Whether Mr. Wiggin should be present at the taking of the compound is a matter on

which I have no opinion.



Virlomi never went into town herself. Those days were over. When she had been free to wander, a pilgrim in a land where people either lived their whole lives in one village or cut themselves loose and spent their whole lives on the road, she had loved coming to villages, each one an adventure, filled with its own tapestry of gossip, tragedy, humor, romance, and irony.


In the college she had briefly attended, between coming home from space and being brought into Indian military headquarters in Hyderabad, she had quickly realized  that intellectuals  seemed to think that their life-the life of the mind, the endless self-examination,  the continuous  autobiography  afflicted upon all comers- was somehow higher than the repetitive, meaningless lives of the common people.


Virlomi knew the opposite to be true. The intellectuals in the university were all the same. They had precisely  the same deep thoughts  about  exactly  the same shallow emotions and trivial dilemmas. They knew this, unconsciously, themselves. When a real event happened, something that shook them to the heart, they withdrew from the game of university life, for reality had to be played out on a different stage.


In the villages, life was about life, not about one-[?]upmanship and display. Smart  people  were  valued  because  they  could  solve  problems,  not  because  they could speak pleasingly  about them. Everywhere  she went in India, she constantly heard herself thinking, I could live here. I could stay among these people and marry one of these gentle peasant men and work beside him all my life.


And then another part of her answered, No you couldn't. Because like it or not, you are one of those university people after all. You can visit in the real world, but you don't belong there. You need to live in Plato's foolish dream, where ideas are real and reality is shadow. That is the place you were born for, and as you move from village to village, it is only to learn from them, to teach them, to manipulate them, to use them to achieve your own ends.


But my own ends, she thought, are to give them gifts they need: wise government, or at least self-government.


And then she laughed at herself, because the two were usually opposites. Even if  an  Indian ruled over  Indians, it  was  not  selfgovernment, for  the  ruler governed the people, and the people governed the ruler. It was mutual government. That's the best that could be aspired to.

Now, though, her pilgrim days were over. She had returned to the bridge where the soldiers stationed to protect it and the nearby villagers had made a kind of god of her.


She came back without fanfare, walking into the village that had taken her most  to  heart  and  falling  into  conversation  with  women  at  the  well  and  in  the market. She went to the washing stream and lent a hand with the washing of clothes; someone offered to share clothing with her so she could wash her dirty traveling rags, but she laughed and said that one more washing would rub them into dust, but she would like to earn some new clothing by helping a family that had a bit they could spare for her.


“Mistress,” said one shy woman, “did we not feed you at the bridge, for nothing?”


So she was recognized.


“But I wish to earn the kindness you showed me there.” “You have blessed us many times, lady,” said another. "And now you bless us by coming among us.
“And washing clothes.”


So she was still a god.





fear.”

“I'm not what you think I am,” she said. “I am more terrible than your worst



“To our enemies, we pray, lady,” said a woman.


“Terrible to them, indeed,” said Virlomi. “But I will use your sons and husbands to fight them, and some of them will die.”





Chinese.”

“Half our sons and husbands were already taken in the war against the



“Killed in battle.”

“Lost and could not find their way home.”


“Carried off into captivity by the Chinese devils.”





me.”

Virlomi raised a hand to still them. “I will not waste their lives, if they obey



“You shouldn't go to war, lady,” said one old crone. “There's no good in it. Look at you, young, beautiful. Lie down with one of our young men, or one of our old ones if you want, and make babies.”


“Someday,” said Virlomi, “I'll choose a husband and make babies with him. But today my husband is India, and he has been swallowed by a tiger. I must make the tiger sick, so he will throw my husband up.”


They giggled, some of them, at this image. But others were very grave. “How will you do this?”
“I will prepare the men so they don't die because of mistakes. I will assemble all the weapons we need, so no man is wasted because he is unarmed. I will bide my time, so we don't bring down the wrath of the tiger upon us, until we're ready to hurt them so badly that they never recover from the blow.”


“You didn't happen to bring a nuclear weapon with you, lady?” asked the crone. Clearly something of an unbeliever.


“It's an offense against God to use such things,” said Virlomi. “The Muslim God was burned out of his house and turned his face against them because they used such weapons against each other”


“I was joking,” said the crone, ashamed.


“I am not,” said Virlomi. “If you don't want me to use your men in the way I have described, tell me, and I'll go away and find another place that wants me. Perhaps your hatred of the Chinese is not so fierce as mine. Perhaps you are content with the way things are in this land.”


But they were not content, and their hatred was hot enough, it seemed.

There wasn't much time for training, despite her promise, but then, she wasn't going to use these men for firefights. They were to be saboteurs, thieves, demolition experts. They conspired with construction workers to steal explosives; they learned how to use them; they built dry storage pits in the jungles that clung to the steep hills.


And they went to nearby towns and recruited  more men, and then went farther and farther afield, building a network of saboteurs near every key bridge that could be blown up to block the Chinese from the use of the roads they would need to bring troops and supplies back and forth, in and out of India.


There could be no rehearsals.  No dry runs. Nothing was done to arouse suspicion of any kind. She forbade her men to make any gestures of defiance, or do anything to interfere with the smooth running of the Chinese transportation network through their hills and mountains.


Some of them chafed at this, but Virlomi said, “I gave my word to your wives and mothers that I would not waste your lives. There will be plenty of dying ahead, but only when your deaths will accomplish something, so that those who live can bear witness: We did this thing, it was not done for us.”


Now she never went to town, but lived where she had lived before, in a cave near the bridge that she would blow up herself, when the time came.


But she could not afford to be cut off from the outside world. So three times a day, one of her people would sign on to the nets and check her dead drop sites, print out the messages there, and bring them to her. She made sure they knew how to wipe the information out of the computer's memory, so no one else could see what the computer had shown, and after she read the messages they brought, she burned them.


She got Peter Wiggin's message in good time. So she was ready when her people started coming to her, running, out of breath, excited.


“The war with the Turks is going badly for the Chinese,” they said. “We have it on the nets, the Turks have taken so many airfields that they can put more planes in the sky in Xinjiang than the Chinese can. They have dropped bombs on Beijing itself, lady!”


“Then you should weep for the children who are dying there,” said Virlomi.

“But the time for us to fight is not yet.”


And the next day, when the trucks began to rumble across the bridges, and line up bumper to bumper along the narrow mountain roads, they begged her, “Let us blow up just one bridge, to show them that India is not sleeping while the Turks fight our enemy for us!”


She only answered them, “Why should we blow up bridges that our enemy is using to leave our land?”


“But we could kill many if we timed the explosion just right!”


“Even if we could kill five thousand by blowing up all the bridges at exactly the right  moment,  they have five million.  We will  wait. Not one of you will  do anything to warn them that they have enemies in these mountains. The time is soon, but you must wait for my word.”


Again and again she said it, all day long, to everyone who came, and they obeyed.  She  sent  them  to telephone  their  comrades  in faraway  towns  near  other bridges, and they also obeyed.


For three days. The Chinese-controlled  news talked about how devastating armies were about to be brought to bear against the Turkic hordes, ready to punish them for their treachery. The traffic across the bridges and along the mountain roads was unrelenting. Then came the message she was waiting for.


Now.


No signature, but it was in a dead drop that she had given to Peter Wiggin. She knew that it meant that the main offensive had been launched in the west, and the Chinese would soon begin sending troops and equipment back from China into India.


She did not burn the message. She handed it to the child who had brought it to her and said, “Keep this forever. It is the beginning of our war.”


“Is it from a god?” asked the child.


“Perhaps the shadow of the nephew of a god,” she answered with a smile. “Perhaps only a man in a dream of a sleeping god.”

Taking the child by the hand, she walked down into the village. The people swarmed around her. She smiled at them, patted the children's  heads, hugged the women and kissed them.


Then  she led this  parade  of citizens  to the office  of the local  Chinese administrator and walked inside the building. Only a few of the women came with her. She walked right past the desk of the protesting officer on duty and into the office of the Chinese official, who was on the telephone.


He looked up at her and shouted, first in Chinese, then in Common. “What are you doing! Get out of here.”


But Virlomi paid no attention to his words. She walked up to him, smiling, reached out her arms as if to embrace him.


He raised his hands in protest, to fend her off with a gesture.


She took his arms, pulled him off balance, and while he staggered to regain his footing, she flung her arms around him, gripped his head, and twisted it sharply.


He fell dead to the floor.


She opened a drawer in his desk, took out his pistol, and shot both of the
Chinese soldiers who were rushing into the office. They, too, fell dead to the floor


She looked calmly at the women. “It is time. Please get on the telephones and call the others in every city. It is one hour till dark. At nightfall, they are to carry out their tasks. With a short fuse. And if anyone tries to stop them, even if it's an Indian, they  should  kill  them  as  quietly  and  quickly  as  possible  and  proceed  with  their work.”


They repeated the message to her, then set to work at the telephones.


Virlomi went outside with the pistol hidden in the folds of her skirt. When the other two Chinese soldiers in this village came running, having heard the shots, she started jabbering to them in her native dialect. They did not realize that it was not the local language at all, but a completely unrelated tongue from the Dravidian south.  They  stopped  and  demanded  that  she  tell  them  in  Common  what  had happened. She answered with a bullet into each man's belly before they even saw that she had a gun. Then she made sure of them with a bullet to each head as they lay

on the ground.


“Can you help me clean the street?” she asked the people who were gawking.





office.

At once they came out into the road and carried the bodies back inside the



When the telephoning was done, she gathered them all together at the door of the office. “When the Chinese authorities come and demand that you tell them what happened,  you must tell them  the truth. A man came walking  down the road, an Indian man but not from this village. He looked like a woman, and you thought he must be a god, because he walked right into this office and broke the neck of the magistrate. Then he took the magistrate's pistol and shot the two guards in the office, and then the two who came running up from the village. Not one of you had time to do anything but scream. Then this stranger made you carry the bodies of the dead soldiers  into  the  office  and  then  ordered  you  to leave  while  he  made  telephone calls.”


“They will ask us to describe this man.”


“Then describe me. Dark. From the south of India.”


“They will say, if he looked like a woman, how do you know she was not a woman?”


“Because he killed a man with his bare hands. What woman could do that?” They laughed.
“But you must not laugh,” she said. “They will be very angry. And even if you  do  not  give  them  any  cause, they  may  punish you  very  harshly for  what happened here. They may think you are lying and torture you to try to get you to tell the truth. And let me tell you right now, you are perfectly free to tell them that you think it may have been the same person who lived in that little cave near the bridge. You may lead them to that place.”


She turned to the child who had brought her Peter Wiggin's message. “Bury that paper in the ground until the war is over. It will still be there when you want it.”


She spoke to them all once more. “None of you did anything except carry the bodies of the dead to the places I told you to carry them. You would have told the

authorities, but the only authorities you know are dead.”


She stretched out her arms. “Oh, my beloved people, I told you I would bring terrible days to you.” She did not have to pretend to be sad, and her tears were real as she walked among them, touching hands, cheeks, shoulders one more time. Then she strode out along the road and out of the village. The men who were assigned to do it would blow up the nearby bridge an hour from now. She would not be there. She would be walking along paths in the woods, heading for the command  post from which she would run this campaign of sabotage.


For it would not be enough to blow up these bridges. They had to be ready to kill the engineers who would come to repair them, and kill the soldiers who would come  to protect  them,  and then,  when  they  brought  enough  soldiers  and enough engineers that they could not be stopped from rebuilding the bridges, they would have to cause rockfalls and mudslides to block the narrow canyons.


If they could seal this border for three days. the advancing Muslim armies would have time, if they were competently led, to break through and cut off the huge Chinese  army that still faced them, so that the reinforcements,  when they finally made it through, would be far, far too late. They, too, would be cut off in their turn.


Ambul had asked for only one favor from Alai, after setting up the meeting between him and Bean and Petra. “Let me fight as if I were a Muslim, against the enemy of my people.”


Alai had assigned him, because of his race, to serve among the Indonesians, where he would not look so very different.


So it was that Ambul went ashore on a stretch of marshy coast somewhere south of Shanghai. They went as near as they could on fishing boats, and then clambered into flatbottomed marsh skimmers, which they rowed among the reeds, searching for firm ground.


In the end, though, as they knew they would, they had to leave the boats behind and trudge through miles of mud. They carried their boots in their backpacks, because the mud would have sucked them off if they had tried to wear them.


By the time the sun came up, they were exhausted, filthy, insectbitten, and famished.

So they rubbed the mud off their feet and ankles, pulled on their socks, put on their boots, and set off at a trot along a trace that soon became a trail, and then a path along the low dike between rice paddies. They jogged past Chinese peasants and said nothing to them.


Let them think we're conscripts  or volunteers  from the newly conquered south, on a training mission. We don't want to kill civilians. Get in from the coast as far as you can. That's what their officers had said to them, over and over.


Most of the peasants might have ignored them. Certainly they saw no one take off at a run to spread the alarm. But it was not yet noon when they spotted the dust plume of a fast-moving vehicle on a road not far off.


“Down,” said their commander in Common.


Without hesitation they flopped down in the water and then frogged their way to the edge of the dike, where they remained hidden. Only their officer raised his head high enough to see what was happening, and his whispered commentary was passed quietly along the line so all fifty men would know.


“Military truck,” he said.


Then, “Reservists. No discipline.”


Ambul thought: This is a dilemma. Reservists are probably local troops. Old men, unfit men, who treated their military service like a social club, until now, when somebody trotted them out because they were the only soldiers in the area. Killing them would be like killing peasants.





suicide.

But of course they were armed, so not killing them might be committing



They could hear the Chinese commander yelling at his part-time soldiers. He was very angry-and very stupid, thought Ambul. What did he think was happening here? If it was a training exercise by some portion of the Chinese army, why would he bring along a contingent of reservists? But if he thought it was a genuine threat, why was he yelling? Why wasn't he trying to reconnoiter with stealth so he could assess the danger and make a report?


Well, not every officer had been to Battle School. It wasn't second nature to them, to think like a true soldier. This fellow had undoubtedly spent most of his

military service behind a desk.


The whispered command came down the line. Do not shoot anybody, but take careful aim at somebody when you are ordered to stand up.


The voice of the Chinese officer was coming nearer.


“Maybe they won't notice us,” whispered the soldier beside Ambul. “It's time to make them notice us,” Ambul whispered back.
The soldier had been a waiter in a fine restaurant in Jakarta before volunteering  for the army after the Chinese  conquest  of Indochina.  Like most of these men, he had never been under fire.


For that matter, neither have I, thought Ambul. Unless you count combat in the battle room.


Surely that did count. There was no blood, but the tension, the unbearable suspense of combat had been there. The adrenaline, the courage, the terrible disappointment  when you knew you had been shot and your suit froze around you, locking you out of the battle. The sense of failure when you let down the buddy you were supposed to protect. The sense of triumph when you felt like you couldn't miss.


I've been here before. Only instead of a dike, I was hiding behind a three- meter cube, waiting for the order to fling myself out, firing at whatever  enemies might be there.


The man next to him elbowed him. Like all the others, he obeyed the signal and watched their commander for the order to stand up.


The commander gave the sign, and they all rose up out of the water.


The Chinese reservists and their officer were nicely lined up along a dike that ran perpendicular to the one the Indonesian platoon had been hiding behind. Not one of them had his weapon at the ready.


The Chinese officer had been interrupted in mid-yell. He stopped and turned stupidly to look at the line of forty soldiers, all pointing their weapons at him.

Ambul's commander walked up to the officer and shot him in the head. At once the reservists threw down their weapons and surrendered.
Every Indonesian  platoon  had at least  one Chinese-speaker,  and usually several. Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia had been eager to show their patriotism, and their best interpreter was very efficient in conveying their commander's orders. Of course it was impossible to take prisoners. But they did not want to kill these men.


So they were told to remove all their clothing and carry it to the truck they had arrived in. While they were undressing, the order was passed along the line in Indonesian: Do not laugh at them or show any sign of ridicule. Treat them with great honor and respect.


Ambul understood the wisdom of this order. The purpose of stripping them naked was to make them look ridiculous, of course. But the first people to ridicule them would be Chinese, not Indonesians. When people asked them, they would have to  say  that  the  Indonesians  treated  them  with  nothing  but  respect.  The  public relations campaign was already under way.


Half an hour later, Ambul was with the sixteen men who rode into town in the captured Chinese truck, with one naked and terrified old reservist showing them the way. Just before reaching the small military headquarters, they slowed down and pushed him out of the truck.


It was quick and bloodless. They drove right into the small compound and disarmed everyone there at the point of a gun. The Chinese soldiers were all herded naked into a room without a telephone, and they stayed there in utter silence while the sixteen Indonesians commandeered two more trucks, clean underwear and socks, and a couple of Chinese military radios.


Then they piled all the remaining ammunition and explosives, weapons and radios in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded them with the remaining military vehicles, and set a small amount of plastique in the middle of the pile with a five- minute fuse.


The Chinese interpreter ran to the door of the room where the prisoners were being held, shouted to them that they had five minutes to evacuate this place before everything blew up, and they should warn the townspeople to get away from here.


Then he unlocked the door and ran out to one of the waiting trucks.

Four minutes out of town, they heard the fireworks begin. It was like a war back there-bullets going off, explosions, and a plume of smoke.


Ambul imagined  the naked soldiers running from door to door, warning people. He hoped that no one would die because they stopped to laugh at the naked men instead of obeying them.


Ambul was assigned to sit up front beside the driver of one of the captured trucks. He knew they would not have these vehicles for long-they would be too easy to  spot-but  they  would  carry  them  away  from  this  place  and  give  some  of  the soldiers a chance to catch a quick nap in the back of the truck.


Of course, it was also possible that they would return to the rest of the platoon  to  find  them  slaughtered,  with  a  large  contingent  of  Chinese  veterans waiting to blow them to bits.


Well, if that happened, it would happen. Nothing he could do in this truck would affect such an outcome in any way. All he could do was keep his eyes open and help the driver stay awake.


There was no ambush. When they got back to the other men, they found most of them asleep, but all the sentries awake and watchful.


Everyone piled into the trucks. The men who had slept a little were assigned to the front seats to drive; the men who had not slept were put in the backs of the trucks to sleep as best they could while the truck jolted along on back roads.


Ambul was one of those who discovered that if you're tired enough, you can indeed sleep sitting up on a hard bench in a truck with no springs on a rough road. You just can't sleep for very long at a time.


He woke up once to find them moving smoothly along a wellpaved road. He stayed awake just long enough to think, Is our commander an idiot, using a highway like this? But he didn't care enough about it to stay awake.


The trucks stopped after only three hours of driving. Everyone was still exhausted, but they had much to do before they could get a real meal, and genuine sleep. The commander had called a halt beside a bridge. He had the men unload everything from the trucks. Then they pushed them off the bridge into the stream.

Ambul thought: That was a foolish mistake. They should have left them neatly parked, and not together, so that air surveillance would not recognize them.


But no, speed was more important than concealment. Besides, the Chinese air force was otherwise engaged. Ambul doubted there'd be many planes available for surveillance any time soon.


While the noncoms were distributing captured supplies among the men, they were told some of what their commander had learned from listening to the captured radios  during  the  drive.  The  enemy  kept  speaking  of  them  as  paratroopers  and assumed they were heading for a major military objective or some rendezvous point. “They don't know who we are or what we're doing, and they're looking for us in all the wrong places,” said the commander. “That won't last long, but it's the reason we weren't blown while we were driving along. Plus, they think we're at least a thousand men.”


They had made good progress inland, those hours on the road. The terrain was almost hilly here, and despite the fact that every arable inch of China had been under cultivation for millennia, there was some fairly wild country here. They might actually get far enough from this road before night that they could get a decent sleep before taking off again.


Of course, they would do most of their movement by night, most of their sleeping by day.


If they lived through the night. If they survived another day.


Carrying more now than they had when they first came ashore the previous night, they staggered off the road and into the woods alongside the stream. Heading west. Upstream. Inland.



CHAPTER NINETEEN FAREWELLS


To: Porto%Aberto@BateRopo.org From: Locke%erasmus@polnet.gov Re:   Ripe


Encryption seed:[?]

Decryption key:


Is this Bean or Petra? Or both?


After all his subtle strategies  and big surprises, it was a petty murder attempt that tagged him. I don't know if the news of the shooting down of an IF shuffle even penetrated the war coverage where you are, but he thought I was aboard. I wasn't, but the Chinese named him as the smoke, and suddenly the IF has legal basis for an Earthside operation. The Brazilian government is cooperating, has the compound on lockdown,


The only trouble is, the compound seems to be defended by your little army. We want to do this without loss of life, but you trained your soldiers very well, and Suri doesn't respond to my feeble attempts to contact him. Before left, he seemed to be in Achilles's pocket. That might have been protective coloration, but who knows what happened on that return trip from China?


Achilles has a way of getting to people. An Indian officer at MinCol who had known Graff for years was the one who fingered me for the shuttle, because the fact that his family was in a camp in China was used to control him, Does Achilles have a way to control Suri? If Suri commands the soldiers to protect Achilles, will they?


Would it make a difference if you were there? I will be there, but I'm afraid I never quite trusted your assurance that the soldiers would absolutely obey me. I have a feeling that I lost face when I fled the compound. But you know them, I don't.


Your advice would be appreciated. Your presence would be very helpful. I will understand if you choose to provide neither. You owe nothing to me-you were right when I was wrong, and I jeopardized everybody. But at this point, I'd like to do this without killing any of your soldiers, and especially without being killed myself-I wouldn't want to pretend my motives are entirely altruistic. I have no choice but to be there myself. If I'm not on the ground for the penetration of the compound, I can kiss my future as Hegemon good-bye.


Meanwhile, the Chinese don't seem to be doing so well, do they? My congratulations to the Caliph. I hope he will be more generous to his conquered foes than the Chinese were.



Petra found it hard to concentrate on her search of the nets. It was too

tempting to switch to the news stories about the war. It was the genetic disease that the doctors had found in her as a child, the disease that sent her into space to spend her formative years in Battle School. She just couldn't leave war alone. Appalling as it was, combat still held irresistible allure. The contest of two armies, each striving for mastery, with no rules except those forced on them by the limitations of their forces and their fear of reprisal in kind.


Bean had insisted that they search for some signal from Achilles. It seemed absurd to her, but Bean was positive that Achilles wanted them to come to him.


“He's on his last legs,” said Bean. “Everything's  turned against  him. He thought  he'd  positioned  himself  to  take  my  place.  Then  he  reached  too  far  in shooting down that shuttle, just at the moment that the Crescent League pulled China out from under him. He can't go back there, can't even leave Ribeirao. So he's going to make whatever plays he has left to make. We're loose ends. He doesn't want to leave us dangling. So... he's going to call us in.”


“Let's not go,” Petra had said then, but Bean only laughed. “If I thought you meant that,” he said, “I might consider it. But I know you don't. He has our babies. He knows we'll come.”


Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't. What good would it do those embryos if their parents walked into a trap and died?


And it would be a trap. Not a fair trade, not a bargain, my freedom for your babies. No, Achilles was not capable of that, not even to save his own life. Bean had trapped him once before, forced a confession out of him, which led to his being put in a mental institution. He'd never go back there again. Like Napoleon, he'd escaped from one captivity, but from the next there'd be no more escaping. So he wouldn't go. That much both Bean and Petra agreed on. He would only summon them to kill them.


Yet still she searched, wondering how they'd even know when they found what they were looking for.


And while she searched, the war kept drawing her The campaign in Xinjiang had already moved eastward into the fringes of Han China. The Persians and Pakistanis were on the verge of encircling both halves of the Chinese army in western India.


The news about the Indonesians and Arabs operating inside China was a little

more oblique. The Chinese were complaining loudly about Muslim paratroopers performing terrorist attacks inside China, and threatening that they would be treated as   spies   and   war   criminals   when   they   were   caught.   The   caliph   responded immediately  by declaring that these were regular troops, in uniform, and the only thing that bothered the Chinese was that the war they had been so willing to inflict on others had finally come home. “We will hold every level of the Chinese military and the Chinese government personally and individually responsible for each crime against our captured soldiers.”


That was the language that only the presumed victors could afford to use, but the Chinese  clearly  took it to heart,  immediately  announcing  that  they had been completely misunderstood, and any soldiers found to be in uniform would be treated as prisoners.


To Petra, though, the most entertaining aspect of the Chinese posturing was that  they kept  referring  to the Indonesian  and Arab troops  as paratroopers.  They simply could not believe that troops landed on the coasts had got so far inland so quickly.


And one other little bit of information. One of the American newsnets had a commentary  by a retired general  who almost  certainly  was being given briefings about what American spy satellites were showing. What caught Petra's attention was when he said, “What I can't understand is why the Chinese troops that were moved out of India a few days ago, to meet the threat in Xinjiang, are not being used in Xinjiang or being sent back into India. Fully a quarter of the Chinese military is just sitting there not being used.”


Petra showed this to Bean, who smiled. “Verlomi is very good. She's pinned them down for three days. How long before the Chinese army inside India simply runs out of ammunition?”


“You can't really start a betting pool with just the two of us,” said Petra. “Stop watching the war and get back to work.”
“Why wait for Achilles to send this signal that I still don't think he's going to send?” asked Petra. "Why not just accept Peter's invitation and join him for the storming of the compound?


“Because if Achilles thinks he's luring us into a trap, he'll let us get inside

without firing a shot. Nobody dies.” “Except us.”
“First, Petra, there's no us. You're a pregnant woman, and I don't care how brilliant you are at military affairs, I can't possibly deal with Achilles if the woman who's carrying my baby is standing there in jeopardy.”


“So I'm supposed to sit outside watching,  not knowing what's going on, whether you're alive or dead?”


“Do we have to have the argument about how I'm going to die in a few years anyway, and you're not, and if I'm dead but we rescue the embryos you can still have babies, but if you're dead, we can't even have the baby you've already got inside you?”


“No, we don't have to have that argument,” said Petra angrily.


“And second, you won't be sitting outside watching, because you'll be here in
Damascus, following the war news and reading the Q'uran.”


“Or clawing my own eyes out in the agony of not knowing. You'd really leave me here?”


“Achilles himself may be trapped inside the Hegemony compound, but he has people to run his errands everywhere. I doubt that many of them were lost when the China connection dried up. If it dried up. I don't want you leaving here because it would be just  like Achilles  to kill  you long before  you came  anywhere  near  the compound.”


“So why don't you think he'll kill you?” “Because he wants me to watch the babies die.”
Petra couldn't help it. She burst into tears and bowed over her desk. “I'm sorry,” said Bean. “I didn't mean to make you-”
“Of course you didn't mean to make me cry,” said Petra. “I didn't mean to cry, either Just ignore this.”

“I can't ignore it,” said Bean. “I can barely understand what you're saying, and you're about to drip snot on your desk.”


“It's not snot!” Petra shouted at him, then touched her nose and discovered that it was. She sniffed and then laughed and ran into the bathroom and blew her nose and finished crying by herself.


When she came out, Bean was lying on the bed, his eyes closed. “I'm sorry,” said Petra.
“I'm sorrier,” said Bean softly.


“I know you have to go alone. I know I have to stay here. I know all of that, but I hate it, that's all.”


Bean nodded.


“So why aren't you searching the nets?” “Because the message just came.”
She walked over to his desk and looked into the display. Bean had connected to an auction site, and there it was:


Wanted: A good womb. Five human embryos ready for implantation. Battle- Schoolgraduate  parents,  died  in tragic  accident.  Estate  needs  to dispose  of  them immediately. Likely to be extraordinarily brilliant children. Trust fund will be set up for each child successfully  implanted and brought to term. Applicants  must prove they do not need the money. Top five bidders will have their funds held in escrow by certified accounting firm, pending evaluation.


“Did you reply?” asked Petra. “Or bid?”


“I sent an inquiry in which I suggested that I'd like to have all five, and I'll pick them up in person. I told him to reply to one of my dead drop sites.”


“And you're not checking your mail to see if your dead drop has forwarded anything yet?”

“Petra, I'm scared.”


“That's a relief. It suggests you aren't insane.”


“He's the best survivor I've ever known. He'll have a way out of this...” “No,” said Petra. “You're a survivor. He's a killer”
“He's not dead,” said Bean. “That makes him a survivor”


“Nobody's been trying to kill him for half his life,” said Petra. “His survival is no big deal. You've had a pathological killer on your trail for years, and yet here you are.”


“It's not so much that I'm afraid of him killing me,” said Bean, “though I don't find it an appealing way to go. I still plan to die by growing so tall I'm hit by a low-flying plane.”


“I'm not playing your macabre little how-I'd-like-to-die game.”


“But if he does kill me, and then gets out of there alive somehow, what will happen to you?”


“He won't get out of there alive.”


“So maybe not. But what if I'm dead, and all the babies are dead?” “I'll have this one.”
“You'll wish you hadn't loved me. I still haven't figured out why you do.”


“I'll never wish I hadn't loved you, and I'll always be glad that after I pestered you long enough, you finally decided you loved me too.”





she is.”

“Don't let anybody call the kid by some stupid nickname based on how small



“No legume names?”


The incoming-mail icon flashed on his desk. “You've got mail,” said Petra.

Bean sighed, sat up, slid over onto the chair, and opened the letter


My oldest friend. I have five little presents with your name written all over them, and not much time left in which to give them to you. I wish you trusted me more, because I've never meant you any harm, but I know you don't, and so you are free to bring an armed escort with you. Well meet in the open air, the east garden. The east gate will be open. You and the first five with you can come in; any more than that try to come in and you'll all be shot.


I don't know where you are, so I don't know how long it will take for you to get here. When you come, I'll have your property in a refrigerated container, good for six  hours  at  the  right  temperature.  If  one  of  your  escort  is  a  specialist  with  a microscope, you are free to examine the specimens on the spot, and then have the specialist carry them out.


But I hope you and I can chat for a while about old times. Reminisce about the good old days, when we brought civilization to the streets of Rotterdam. We've been down a good long road since then. Changed the world, both of us. Me more than you, kid. Eat your heart out,


Of course, you married the only woman I ever loved, so maybe things balance out in the end.


Naturally, our conversation will be more pleasant if it ends with you taking me out of the compound and giving me safe passage to a place of my own choosing. But I realize  that may not be within your power. We really are limited creatures,  we geniuses. We know what's best for everybody, but we still don't get our way until we can persuade the lesser creatures to do our bidding. They just don't understand how much  happier  they'd  be  if  they  stopped  thinking  for  themselves.   They're  so unequipped for it.


Relax, Bean. That was a joke. Or an indecorous truth. Often the same thing. Give Petra a kiss for me. Let me know when to open the gate.


“Does he really expect you to believe that he'll just let you take the babies?” “Well, he does imply a swap for his freedom,” said Bean.

“The only swap he implies is your life for theirs,” said Petra. “Oh,” said Bean. “Is that how you read it?”
“That's what he's saying and you know it. He expects the two of you to die together, right there.”





there.”

“The real question,” said Bean, “is whether he'll really have the embryos



“For all we know,” said Petra, “they're in a lab in Moscow or Johannesburg or already in the garbage somewhere in Ribeirao.”


“Now who's the grim one?”


“It's obvious that he wasn't able to place them out for implantation. So to him they represent failure. They have no value now. Why should he give them to you?”


“I didn't say I'd accept his terms,” said Bean. “But you will.”
“The  hardest  thing  about  a kidnapping  is always  the swap,  ransom  for hostage. Somebody  always has to trust somebody,  and give up their piece before they've received what the other one has. But this case is really weird, because he's not really asking for anything from me.”


“Except your death.”


“But he knows I'm dying anyway. It all seems so pointless.” “He's insane, Julian. Haven't you heard?”
“Yes, but his thinking makes sense inside his own head. I mean, he's not schizophrenic, he sees the same reality as the rest of us. He's not delusional. He's just pathologically conscience-free. So how does he see this playing out? Will he just shoot me as I come in? Or will he let me win, maybe even let me kill him, only the joke's on me because the embryos he gives me aren't ours, they're from the tragic mating of two really dumb people. Perhaps two journalists.”


“You're joking about this, Bean, and I-”

“I have to catch the next flight. If you think of anything else that I should know, email me, I'll check in at least once before I go in and see the lad.”





cronies.”

“He  doesn't  have  them,”  said  Petra.  “He  already  gave  them  out  to his



“Quite possible.” “Don't go.”
“Not possible.”





you are.

"Bean, you're smarter than he is, but his advantage is, he's more brutal than



“Don't count on it,” said Bean.





world?”

“Don't you realize that I know both of you better than anyone else in the



“And no matter how well we think we know people, the fact is we're all strangers in the end.”


“Oh, Bean, tell me you don't believe that.” “It's self-evident truth.”
“I know you!” she insisted.


“No. You don't. But that's all right, because I don't really know me either, let alone you. We never understand anybody, not even ourselves. But Petra, shh, listen. What we've done is, we've created something else. This marriage. It consists of the two of us, and we've become something else together. That's what we know. Not me, not you, but what we are, who we are together Sister Carlotta quoted somebody in the Bible about how a man and a woman marry and they become one flesh. Very mystical and borderline weird. But in a way it's true. And when I die, you won't have Bean, but you'll still have Petra-with-Bean, Bean-with-Petra, whatever we call this new creature that we've made.”

“So all those months I spent with Achilles, did we build some disgusting monstrous Petra-with-Achilles thing? Is that what you're saying?”


“No,” said Bean. “Achilles doesn't build things. He just finds them, admires them, and tears them apart. There is no Achilles-withanybody. He's just... empty.”


“So what happened to that theory of Ender's, that you have to know your enemy in order to beat him?”


“Still true.”


“But if you can't know anybody...”


“It's imaginary,”  said Bean. “Ender wasn't crazy, so he knew it was just imaginary. You try to see the world through your enemy's eyes, so you can see what it all means to him. The better you do at it, the more time you spend in the world as he sees it, the more you understand how he views things, how he explains to himself the things he does.”


“And you've done that with Achilles.” “Yes.”
“So you think you know what he's going to do.” “I have a short list of things I expect.”
“And what if you're wrong? Because that's the one certainty in all of this-that whatever you think Achilles is going to do, you're wrong.”


“That's his specialty.” “So your short list...”
“Well, see, the way I made my list, I thought of all the things I thought he might do, and then I didn't put any of those on my list, I only put on the things I didn't think he'd do.”


“That'll work,” said Petra. “Might,” said Bean.

“Hold me before you go,” she said.


He did.





are.”

“Petra, you think you aren't going to see me again. But I'm pretty sure you



“Do you realize how it scares me that you're only pretty sure?”


“I could die of appendicitis in the plane on the way to Ribeirao. I'm never more than pretty sure of anything.”


“Except that I love you.”


“Except that we love each other.”



Bean's flight was the normal misery of hours in a confined space. But at least he was flying west, so the jet lag wasn't as debilitating. He thought he might just go directly in as soon as he arrived, but thought better of it. He needed to think clearly. To be able to improvise and act quickly on impulse. He needed to sleep.


Peter was waiting for him at the doorway of the airplane. Being Hegemon gives you a few privileges denied to other people in airports.


Peter led him down the stairs instead of out the jetway, and they got in a car that drove them directly to the hotel that had been set up as the IF command post. IF soldiers were at every entrance, and Peter assured him there were sharpshooters in every surrounding building, and in this one, too.


“So,” said Peter, when they were alone in Bean's room, “what's the plan?” “You sound as if you think I have one,” said Bean.
“Not even a goal?”


“Oh, I have two goals,” said Bean. “I promised Petra right after he stole our embryos that I'd get them back for her, and that I'd kill Achilles in the process.”

“And you have no idea how you'll do that.”


“Some. But nothing I plan will work anyway, so I don't let myself get too attached to any of them.”


“Achilles really isn't that important now,” said Peter “I mean, he's important because in essence everyone inside that compound is his hostage, but on the world stage-he's lost all his influence. Went up in smoke when he shot down that shuttle and the Chinese disavowed him.”


Bean shook his head. “Do you really think, if he gets out of this alive, he won't be back at his old games? You think he won't have any takers for his medicine show?”


“I suppose there's no shortage of government people with dreams of power he can seduce them with, or fears that he can exploit.”


“Peter, I'm here so he can torment me and then kill me. That's why I'm here. His purpose. His goal.”


“Well, if this is the only plan, then...”


“That's right, Peter. He's the one with the plan this time. And I'm the one who can surprise him by not doing what he expects.”


“All right,” said Peter “I'm in.” “What?”
“You've convinced me. I'm in.” “You're in what?”
“I'm going in the gate with you.”


“No you're not.”





people.”

“I'm Hegemon. I'm not standing outside while you go in and save my



“He'll be very happy to kill you along with me.”

“You first.” “No, you first.”
“Whatever,” said Peter. “You're not getting through that gate unless I'm one of your five.”


“Look, Peter,” said Bean. “The reason we're in this predicament is that you think you're smarter than everybody else, so no matter what advice you get, you go off half-cocked and do something astonishingly dumb.”


“But I stay around to pick up the pieces.” “I give you credit for that.”
“I won't do anything you don't tell me to,” said Peter. “It's your show.” “I need to have all five of my escort be highly trained soldiers.”
“No you don't,” said Peter “Because if there's any shooting, five won't be enough anyway. So you have to count on there being no shooting. So I might as well be one of the five.”


“But I don't want to die with you beside me,” said Bean. “Fine with me, I don't want to die beside you, either”
“You have another seventy or eighty years ahead of you. You're going to gamble with that? Me, I'm just playing with house money.”


“You're the best, Bean,” said Peter.


“That was in school. What armies have I commanded since then? Other people are doing all the fighting now. I'm not the best, I'm retired.”


“You don't retire from your own mind.”


“People retire from their minds all the time. What won't let you alone is your reputation.”

“Well, I love arguing philosophy with you,” said Peter abruptly, “but you need your sleep and I need mine. See you at the east gate in the morning.”


In a moment he was out the door


So what was that sudden departure about?


Bean had the sneaking suspicion that maybe Peter finally believed him that he didn't have a plan and had no guarantee of winning. Not even, in fact, a decent chance of winning, if by winning he meant an outcome in which Bean was alive, Achilles was dead, and Bean had the babies. No doubt Peter had to run and get a life insurance  policy. Or drum up some last minute emergency  that would absolutely prevent him from going through the gate with Bean after all. “So sorry, I wish I were going with you, but you'll do fine, I know it.”


Bean thought he'd have trouble getting to sleep, what with the catnaps he got on the plane and the tension of tomorrow's events preying on his mind.





light.

So naturally he fell asleep so fast he didn't even remember turning off the




In the morning, Bean got up and posted a message to Achilles, naming a time about an hour later for their meeting. Then he wrote a brief note to Petra, just so she'd know he was thinking of her in case this was the last day of his life. Then another  note to his parents,  and one to Nikolai. At least  if he managed  to bring Achilles down with him, they'd be safe. That was something.


He walked downstairs to find Peter already waiting beside the IF car that would take them to the perimeter that had been established around the compound. They rode in near silence, because there was really nothing more to say.


At the perimeter, near the east gate, Bean found out very quickly that Peter hadn't lied-the IF was standing behind his determination to go in with Bean's group. Well, that was fine. Bean didn't really need his companions to do much.


As he had requested before leaving Damascus, the IF had a uniformed doctor, two highly trained sharpshooters, and a fully equipped hazard squad, one of whom was to come in with Bean's party.

“Achilles will have a container that purports to be a transport refrigerator for a half dozen frozen embryos,”  Bean said to the hazardist.  “If I have you carry it outside, then that means I'm sure it's a bomb or contains some toxin, and I want it treated that way-even if I say something different inside there. If it turns out to have been embryos after all, well, that's my own mistake, and I'll explain it to my wife. If I have the doctor here carry it, that means I'm sure it's the embryos, and the package is to be treated that way.”


“And what if you're not sure?” asked Peter"


“l'll be sure,” said Bean, “or I won't give it to anybody.”


“Why don't you just carry it yourself?” asked the hazardist, “and tell us what to do when it gets outside?”
Peter answered for him. “Mr. Delphiki doesn't expect to get back out alive.” “My goal for all four of you,” said Bean, “is for you to walk out of there
uninjured. There's no chance of that if you start shooting, for any reason. That's why
none of you is going to carry a loaded weapon.” They looked at him as if he were insane.
“I'm not going in there unarmed,” said one of the other men.





five.”

“Fine,” said Bean. “Then there'll be one less. He didn't say I had to bring



“Technically,” said Peter to the other sharpshooter, “you won't be unarmed. Just unloaded. So they'll treat you as if did have bullets, because they won't know you don't.”


“I'm a soldier, not a sap,” said the man, and he walked away. “Anybody else?” said Bean.
In answer, the other sharpshooter took the full clip out of his weapon, popped out the bullets one by one, and then ejected the first bullet from the chamber


“I don't carry a weapon anyway,” said the doctor

“Don't need a loaded pistol to carry a bomb,” said the hazardist.


With a slim plastic .22-caliber  pistol already tucked into the back of his pants, Bean was now the only person in his party with a loaded gun.


“I guess we re ready to go,” said Bean.



It was a dazzling tropical morning as they stepped through the gate into the east garden. Birds in all the trees ranted their calls as if they were trying to memonze something and just couldn't get it to stick. There was not a soul in sight.


Bean wasn't going to wander around searching for Achilles. He definitely wasn't going to get far from the gate. So, about ten paces in, he stopped. So did the others.


And they waited.


It didn't take long. A soldier in the Hegemony uniform stepped out into the open. Then another, and another, until the fifth soldier appeared.


Suriyawong.


He gave no sign of recognition. Rather he looked right past both Bean and
Peter as if they were nothing to him.


Achilles stepped out behind them-but stayed close to the trees, so he wouldn't be  too  easy  a  target  for  sharpshooters.  He  was  carrying,  as  promised,  a  small transport fridge.


“Bean,” he said with a smile. "My how you've grown. Bean said nothing.
“Oh, we aren't in a jesting mood,” he said. “I'm not either, really. It's almost a sentimental moment for me, to see you again. To see you as a man. Considering I knew you when you were this high.”


He held out the transport fridge. “Here they are, Bean.”

“You're just going to give them to me?”


“I don't really have a use for them. There weren't any takers in the auction.” “Volescu went to a lot of trouble to get these for you,” said Bean.
"What trouble? He bribed a guard. Using my money.


“How did you get Volescu to help you, anyway?” asked Bean.


“He owed me,” said Achilles. “I'm the one who got him out of jail. I got our brilliant  Hegemon  here to give me authority to authorize  the release of prisoners whose crimes had ceased to be crimes. He didn't make the connection  that I'd be releasing your creator into the wild.” Achilles grinned at Peter.


Peter said nothing.


“You trained these men well, Bean,” said Achilles. “Being with them is like... well, it's like being with my family again. Like on the streets, you know?”


Bean said nothing.


“Well, all right, you don't want to chat, so take the embryos.”


Bean remembered one very important fact. Achilles didn't care about killing his victims with his own hands. It was enough for him that they die, whether he was present or not.


Bean turned to the hazardist. “Would you do me a favor and take this just outside the gate? I want to stay and talk with Achilles for a couple of minutes.”


The hazardist walked up to Achilles and took the transport fridge from him. “Is it fragile?” he asked.


Achilles answered, “It's very securely packed and padded, but don't play football with it.”


In only a few steps, he was out the gate.


“So what did you want to talk about?” asked Achilles.

“A couple of little questions I'm curious about.” “I'll listen. Maybe I'll answer”
“Back  in  Hyderabad.  There  was  a  Chinese  officer  who  knocked  you unconscious to break our stalemate.”
“Oh, is that who did it?” “Whatever happened to him?”




later”

“I'm not sure. I think his chopper was shot down in combat only a few days



“Oh,” said Bean. “Too bad. I wanted to ask him what it felt like to hit you.” “Really, Bean, aren't we both too old for that sort of gibe?”
Outside the gate there was a muffled explosion. Achilles looked around, startled. “What was that?”
“I'm pretty sure,” said Bean, “that it was an explosion.” “Of what?”
“Of the bomb you just tried to give me,” said Bean. “Inside a containment chamber.”
Achilles tried, for a moment, to look innocent. “I don't know what you...” Then he apparently realized there was no point in feigning ignorance when
the thing had just exploded. He pulled the remote detonator out of his pocket,
pressed the button a couple of times. “Damn all this modern technology, nothing ever works right.” He grinned at Bean. “Got to give me credit for trying.”


“So... do you have the embryos or not?” asked Bean. “They're inside, safe,” said Achilles.

Bean knew that was a lie. In fact, he had decided yesterday that it was most likely the embryos had never been brought here at all.


But he'd get more mileage out of this by pretending to believe Achilles. And there was always the chance that it wasn't a lie.


“Show me,” Bean said.


“You have to come inside, then,” said Achilles. “OK.”
“That'll take us outside the range of the sharpshooters you no doubt have all around the compound, waiting to shoot me down.”


“And inside the range of whoever you have waiting for me there.” “Bean. Be realistic. You're dead whenever I want you dead.”
“Well, that's not strictly true,” said Bean. “You've wanted me dead a lot more often than I've died.”


Achilles grinned. “Do you know what Poke was saying just before she had that accident and fell into the Rhine?”


Bean said nothing.


“She was saying that I shouldn't hold a grudge against you for telling her to kill me when we first met. He's just a little kid, she said. He didn't know what he was saying.”


Still, Bean said nothing.


“I wish I could tell you Sister Carlotta's last words, but... you know how collateral damage is in wartime. You just don't get any warning.”





are.”

“The embryos,” said Bean. “You said you were going to show me where they



“All right then,” said Achilles. "Follow me.

As soon  as Achilles's  back  was  turned,  the doctor  looked  at  Bean  and frantically shook his head.


“It's all right,” Bean told the doctor and the other soldier “You can go on out. You won't be needed any more.”


Achilles turned back around. “You're letting your escort go?” “Except for Peter,” said Bean. "He insists on staying with me.
“I didn't hear him say that,” said Achilles. “I mean, he seemed so eager to get away when he left this place, I thought for sure he didn't want to see it again.”





Peter.

“I'm trying to figure out how you were able to fool so many people,” said



“But I'm not trying to fool you,” said Achilles.  “Though  I can see how someone like you would long to find a really masterful liar to study with.” Laughing, Achilles turned his back again, and led the way toward the main office building.


Peter came closer to Bean as they followed him inside. “Are you sure you know what you're doing?” he asked quietly.


“I told you before, I have no idea.”


Once inside, they were indeed confronted by another dozen soldiers. Bean knew them all by name. But he said nothing to them, and none of them met his gaze or showed any sign that they knew him.


What does Achilles want? thought Bean. His first plan was to send me out of the compound with a remote-controlled bomb, so it's not as if he planned to keep me alive. Now he's got me surrounded by soldiers, and doesn't tell them to shoot.


Achilles turned around and faced him. “Bean,” he said. “I can't believe you didn't make some kind of arrangement for me to get out of here.”


“Is that why you tried to blow me up?” asked Bean.


“That was when I believed you'd try to kill me as soon as you thought you had the embryos. Why didn't you?”

“Because I knew I didn't have the embryos.”


“Do you and Petra already think of them as your children? Have you named them yet?”


“There's no arrangement to get you out of here, Achilles, because there's no place for you to go. The only people that still had any use for you are busy getting their butts kicked by a bunch of pissed-off Muslims. You saw to it that you couldn't go anywhere in space when you shot down that shuttle.”


“In all fairness, Bean, you have to remember that nobody was supposed to know it was me who did it. But someone really should tell me-why wasn't Peter on that shuttle? I suppose somebody caught my informant.” He looked back and forth from Peter to Bean, looking for an answer.


Bean did not confirm or deny. Peter, too, kept his silence. What if Achilles lived  through  this  somehow?  Why  bring  down  Achilles's  wrath  on  a  man  who already had enough trouble in his life?


“But if you caught my informant,” said Achilles, “why in the world would Chamrajnagar-or  Graff, if it was him-launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they'd risk a shuttle and its crew just to catch me? I find that quite flattering.  Sort of like winning the Nobel  Prize for scariest villain.”


“I think,” said Bean, “that you don't have the embryos at all. I think you dispersed them as soon as you got them. I think you already had them implanted in surrogates.”


“Wrong,” said Achilles. He reached inside his pants pocket and took out a small container Exactly like the ones in which the embryos had been frozen. “I brought one along, just to show you. Of course, he's probably thawed quite a bit. My body heat and all that. What do you think? Do we still have time to get this little sucker implanted in somebody? Petra's already pregnant. I hear, so you can't use her. I know! Peter's mother! She always likes to be so helpful, and she's used to giving birth to geniuses. Here, Peter, catch!”


He tossed the container toward Peter, but too hard, so it sailed over Peter's upstretched hands and hit the floor. It didn't break, but instead rolled and rolled.

“Aren't you going to get it?” Achilles asked Bean.


Bean shrugged. He walked over to where the container had come to rest. The liquid inside it sloshed. Fully thawed.


He stepped on it, broke it, ground it under his foot.


Achilles whistled. “Wow. You are some disciplinarian. Your kids can't get away with anything with you.”


Bean walked toward Achilles.


“Now, Bean, I can see how you might be irritated at me, but I never claimed to be an athlete. When did I have a chance to play ball, will you tell me that? You grew up where I did. I can't help it that I don't know how to throw accurately.”


He was still affecting  his ironic tone of voice, but Bean could see that Achilles was afraid now. He had been expecting Bean to beg, or grieve-something that would keep him off balance and give control to Achilles. But Bean was seeing things through Achilles's eyes now, and he understood: You do whatever your enemy can't believe that you would even think of doing. You just do it.


Bean reached into the butt holster that rode inside his pants, hanging from the waistband, and pulled out the flat .22-caliber pistol concealed there. He pointed it at Achilles's right eye, then the left.


Achilles took a couple of steps backward. “You can't kill me,” he said. "You don't know where the embryos are.


“I know you don't have them,” said Bean, “and that I'm not going to get them without letting you go. And I'm not letting you go. So I guess that means the embryos are forever lost to me. Why should you go on living?”


“Suri,” said Achilles. “Are you asleep?” Suriyawong pulled his long knife from its sheath.
“That's not what's needed here,” said Achilles. “He has a gun.”


“Hold still, Achilles,” said Bean. “Take it like a man. Besides, if I miss, you

might live through it and spend the rest of your days as a brain-damaged shell of a man. We want this to be nice and clean and final, don't we?”


Achilles pulled another vial out of his pockets. “This is the real thing, Bean.” He reached out his hand, offering it. “You killed one, but there are still the other four.”


Bean slapped it out of his hand. This one broke when it hit the floor. “Those are your children you're killing!” cried Achilles.
“I  know  you,”  said  Bean.  “I  know  that  you  would  never  promise  me something you could actually deliver.”


“Suriyawong!” shouted Achilles. “Shoot him!” “Sir,” said Suriyawong.
It was the first sound he'd made since Bean came through the east gate.


Suriyawong knelt down, laid his knife on the smooth floor, and slid it toward
Achilles until it rested at his feet.


“What's this supposed to be?” demanded Achilles. “The loan of a knife,” said Suriyawong.
“But he has a gun!” cried Achilles.


“I expect you to solve your own problems,” said Suriyawong, “without getting any of my men killed.”


“Shoot him!” cried Achilles. “I thought you were my friend.”


“I told you from the start,” said Suriyawong. “I serve the Hegemon.” And with that, Suriyawong turned his back on Achilles.


So did all the other soldiers.


Now Bean understood why Suriyawong had worked so hard to earn Achilles's

trust: so that at this moment of crisis, Suri was in a position to betray him.


Achilles laughed nervously. “Come on now, Bean. We've known each other a long time.” He had backed up against a wall. He tried to lean against it. But his legs were a little wobbly and he started to slide down the wall. “I know you, Bean,” he said. “You can't just kill a man in cold blood, no matter how much you hate him. It's not in you to do that.”


“Yes it is,” said Bean.


He aimed the pistol down at Achilles's right eye and pulled the trigger. The eye snapped shut from the wind of the bullet passing between the eyelids and from the obliteration of the eye itself. His head rocked just a little from the force of the little bullet entering, but not leaving.


Then he slumped over and sprawled out on the floor. Dead.


It didn't bring back Poke, or Sister Carlotta, or any of the other people he had killed. It didn't change the nations of the world back to the way they were before Achilles started making them his building blocks, to break apart and put together however he wanted. It didn't end the wars Achilles had started. It didn't make Bean feel any better. There was no joy in vengeance, and precious little in justice, either.


But there was this: Achilles would never kill again. That was all Bean could ask of a little .22.


CHAPTER TWENTY HOME


From: YourFresh%Vegetable@Freebie.net
To:   MyStone%Maiden@Freebie.net
Re:   Come home


He's dead. I'm not.
He didn't have them.

We'll find them, one way or another, before I die.


Come home. There's nobody trying to kill you any more.



Petra flew on a commercial jet, in a reserved seat, under her own name, using her own passport.


Damascus was full of excitement, for it was now the capital of a Muslim world  united  for  the  first  time  in  nearly  two  thousand  years.  Sunni  and  Shinite leaders alike had been declaring for the Caliph. And Damascus was the center of it all.


But her excitement was of a different kind. It was partly the baby that was maturing inside her, and the changes already happening to her body. It was partly the relief at being free of the death sentence Achilles had passed on her so long ago.


Mostly, though, it was that giddy sense of having been on the edge of losing everything,  and winning after all. It swept over her as she was walking down the aisle of the plane, and her knees went rubbery under her and she almost fell.


The man behind her took her elbow and helped her regain her legs. “Are you all right?” he asked.


“I'm just a little bit pregnant,” she said.





big.”

“You must get over this business of falling down before the baby gets too



She laughed and thanked him, then put her own bag in the overhead-without needing help, thank you-and took her seat.


On the one hand, it was sad flying without her husband beside her. On the other hand, it was wonderful to be flying home to him.


He met her at the airport and gathered her into a huge hug. His arms were so long. Had they grown in the few days since he left her?

She refused to think about that.





ended.

“I hear you saved the world,” she said to him when the embrace finally



“Don't believe those rumors.” “My hero,” she said.
“I'd rather be your lover,” he whispered. “My giant,” she whispered back.
In answer, he embraced her again, and then leaned back, lifting her off her feet. She laughed as he whirled her around like a child. The way her father had done when she was little. The way he would never do with their children.


“Why are you crying?” he asked her


“It's just tears in my eyes,” she said. “It's not crying. You've seen crying, and this isn't it. These are happy-to-see-you tears.”


“You're just happy to be in a place where trees grow without waiting around to be planted and irrigated.”


They walked out of the airport a few minutes later and he was right, she was happy  to  be  out  of  the  desert.  In  the  years  they  had  lived  in  Ribeirao  she  had discovered an affinity for lush places. She needed the Earth to be alive around her, everything  green,  all  that  photosynthesis  going  on in public,  without  a speck  of modesty. Things that ate sunlight and drank rain. “It's good to be home,” she said.


“Now I'm home, too,” said Bean.


“You were here already,” she said. “But you weren't, till now.” She sighed and clung to him a little. They took the first cab.


They went to the Hegemony compound, of course, but instead of going to their house-it indeed, it was their house, since they had given it up when they resigned from the Hegemon's service that day back in the Philippines-Bean took her

right to the Hegemon's office.


Peter was waiting there for her, along with Graff and the Wiggins. There were hugs that became kisses and handshakes that became hugs.


Peter told all about what happened up in space. Then they made Petra tell about Damascus, though she protested that it was nothing at all, just a city happy with victory.


“The war's not over yet,” said Peter. “They're full of Muslim unity,” said Petra.
“Next thing you know,” said Graff, “the Christians and Jews will get back together.  The  only  thing  standing  between  them,  after  all,  is  that  business  with Jesus.”
“It's a good thing,” said Theresa, “to have a little less division in the world.” “I think it's going to take a lot of divisions,” said John Paul, “to bring about
less division.”


“I told you they were happy in Damascus, not that I thought they were right to be,” said Petra. “There are signs of trouble ahead. There's an imam preaching that India and Pakistan should be reunited under a single government again.”


“Let me guess,” said Peter. “A Muslim one.”


“If they liked what Virlomi did to the Chinese,” said Bean, “they'll love what she can get the Hindus to do to get free of the Pakistanis.”


“And Peter will love this one,” said Petra. “An Iraqi politician made a speech in Baghdad in which he very pointedly said, 'In a world where Allah has chosen a Caliph, why do we need a Hegemon?'”
They laughed, but their faces were serious when the laughing stopped. “Maybe he's right,” said Peter “Maybe when this war is over, the Caliph will
be the Hegemon, in fact if not in name. Is that a bad thing? The goal was to unite the
world in peace. I volunteered to do it, but if somebody else gets it done, I'm not

going to get anybody killed just to take the job away from him.”


Theresa took hold of his wrist, and Graff chuckled. “Keep talking like that, and I'll understand why I've been supporting you all these years.”


“The Caliph is not going to replace the Hegemon,” said Bean, “or erase the need for one.”


“No?” asked Peter.





go.”

“Because a leader can't take his people to a place where they don't want to



“But they want him to rule the world,” said Petra.


“But to rule the world, he has to keep the whole world content with his rule,” said Bean. “And how can he keep non-Muslims  content without making orthodox Muslims  extremely  discontented?  It's what the Chinese  found in India. You can't swallow a nation. It finds a way to get itself vomited  out. Begging  your pardon, Petra.”


“So your friend Alai will realize this, and not try to rule over nonMuslim people?” asked Theresa.


“Our friend Alai would have no problem with that idea,” said Petra. “The question is whether the Caliph will.”


“I hope we won't remember this day,” said Graff “as the time when we first started fighting the next war.”


Peter spoke up. “As I said before, this war's not over yet.”


“Both of the frontline Chinese armies in India have been surrounded and the noose is tightening,” said Graff. “I don't think they have a Stalingrad-style defense in them, do you? The Turkic armies have reached the Hwang He and Tibet just declared its independence and is slaughtering the Chinese troops there. The Indonesians and Arabs are impossible to catch and they're already making a serious dent in internal communications in China. It's just a matter of time before they realize it's pointless to keep killing people when the outcome is inevitable.”


“It takes a lot of dead soldiers before governments ever catch on to that,”

said Theresa.


“Mother always takes the cheerful view,” said Peter, and they laughed.


Finally, though, it was time for Petra to hear the story of what happened inside the compound. Peter ended up telling most of it, because Bean kept skipping all the details and rushing straight to the end.


“Do you think Achilles  believed  Suriyawong  would really kill Bean for him?” asked Petra.


“I think,” said Bean, “that Suriyawong told him that he would.” “You mean he intended to do it, and changed his mind?”
“I think,” said Bean, “that Suri planned that moment from the start. He made himself indispensable  to Achilles. He won his trust. The cost of it was losing the trust of everyone else.”


“Except you,” said Petra.


“Well,  you  see,  I know Suri.  Even  though  you  can't  ever  really  know anybody-don't throw my own words back up to me, Petra-”


“I didn't! I wasn't!”


“I walked into the compound without a plan, and with only one real advantage. I knew two things that Achilles didn't know. I knew that Suri would never give himself to the service of a man like Achilles, so if he seemed to be doing so, it was a lie. And I knew something about myself. I knew that I could, in fact, kill a man in cold blood if that's what it took to make my wife and children safe.”


“Yes,” said Peter, “I think that's the one thing he just didn't believe, not even at the end.”


“It wasn't cold blood,” said Theresa. “Yes it was,” said Bean.
“It was, Mother,” said Peter. “It was the right thing to do, and he chose to do

it, and it was done. Without having to work himself up into a frenzy to do it.”


“That's what heroes do,” said Petra. “Whatever's necessary for the good of their people.”
“When we start saying words like 'hero,' ” said Bean, “it's time to go home.” “Already?” said Theresa. “I mean, Petra just got here. And I have to tell her
all my horrible stories about how hard each of my deliveries was. It's my duty to
terrify the mother-to-be. It's a tradition.”


“Don't worry, Mrs. Wiggin,” said Bean. “I'll bring her back every few days, at least. It's not that far.”


“Bring me back?” said Petra.


“We left the Hegemon's employ, remember?” said Bean. “We only worked for him so we'd have a legal pretext for fighting Achilles and the Chinese. so there'd be nothing for us to do. We have enough money from our Battle School pensions. So we aren't going to live in Ribeirao Preto.”


“But I like it here,” said Petra.


“Uh-oh, a fight, a fight,” said John Paul.


“Only because you haven't lived in Araraquara yet. It's a better place to raise children.”





you?”

“I know Araraquara,” said Petra. “You lived there with Sister Carlotta, didn't



“I lived everywhere with Sister Carlotta,” said Bean. “But it's a good place to raise children.”


“You're Greek and I'm Armenian. Of course we need to raise our children to speak Portuguese.”



The house Bean had rented was small, but it had a second bedroom for the baby, and a lovely little garden, and monkeys that lived in the tall trees on the property behind them. Petra imagined her little girl or boy coming out to play and

hearing the chatter of the monkeys and delighting in the show they put on for all comers.


“But there's no furniture,” said Petra.


“I knew I was taking my life in my hands picking out the house without you,”
said Bean. “The furniture is up to you.”


“Good,” said Petra. “I'll make you sleep in a frilly pink room.” “Will you be sleeping there with me?”


“Of course.”


“Then frilly pink is fine with me, if that's what it takes.”



Peter, unsentimental as he was, saw no reason to hold a funeral for Achilles. But Bean insisted on at least a graveside service, and he paid for the carving of the monument.  Under the name “Achilles  de Flandres,”  the year of his birth, and the date of his death, the inscription said:


Born crippled in body and spirit, He changed the face of the world. Among all the hearts he broke And lives he ended far too young Were his own heart
And his own life. May he find peace.



It was a small group gathered there in the cemetery in Ribeirao Preto. Bean and Petra, the Wiggins, Peter Graff had gone back to space. Suriyawong had led his little army back to Thailand, to help their homeland drive out the conquerors and restore itself.


No one had anything much to say over Achilles's grave. They could not pretend that they weren't all glad that he was dead. Bean read the inscription he had written, and everyone agreed that it wasn't just fair to Achilles, it was generous.


In the end it was only Peter who had something he could say from the heart.

“Am I the only one here who sees something of himself in the man who's lying in this box?”


No one had an answer for him, either yes or no.



Three bloody weeks later, the war ended. If the Chinese had accepted the terms the Caliph had offered in the first place, they would have lost only their new conquests,  plus Xinjiang  and Tibet. Instead,  they waited  until  Canton  had fallen, Shanghai was besieged, and the Turkic troops were surrounding Beijing.


So when the Caliph drew the new map, the province of Inner Mongolia was given to the nation of Mongolia, and Manchuria and Taiwan were given their independence. And China had to guarantee  the safety of teachers  of religion. The door had been opened to Muslim proselytizing.


The Chinese government promptly fell. The new government repudiated the ceasefire  terms, and the Caliph declared martial  law until new elections  could be held.


And somewhere in the rugged terrain of easternmost India, the goddess of the bridge lived among her worshipers, biding her time, watching to see whether India was going to be free or had merely changed one tyranny for another. In the aftermath of  war,  while  Indians,  Thais,  Burmese,  Vietnamese,  Cambodians  and  Laotians searched their onetime conquerors' land for family members who had been carried off. Bean and Petra also searched as best they could by computer, hoping to find some record of what Volescu and Achilles had done with their lost children.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


In writing this sequel to Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon, I faced two new problems. First, I was expanding the roles of several minor characters from earlier books, and ran the serious risk of inventing aspects of their appearance or their past that would contradict some long-forgotten detail in a previous volume. To avoid this as much as possible, I relied on two online communities.


The Philotic Web (http://www.philoticweb.net) carries a timeline combining the story flows of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, which proved invaluable to

me. It was created by Nathan M. Taylor with the help of Adam Spieckermann.


On my own website, Hatrack River (http://www.hatrack.com),  I posted the first five chapters of the manuscript of this novel, in the hope that readers who had read  the  other  books  in  the  series  more  recently  than  I  might  be  able  to  catch inadvertent  inconsistencies  and other problems. The Hatrack River community did not disappoint  me. Among the many who responded-and  I thank them all-I found particular value in the suggestions of Keiko A. Haun (“accio”), .Justin Pollen, Chris Bridges,   Josh  Galvez   (“Zevlag”),   David  Tayman   (“Taalcon”),   Alison   Purnell (“Eaquae Legit”), Vicki Norris (“CKDexterHaven”), Michael Sloan (“Papa Moose”), and Oliver Withstandley.


In addition, I had the help, chapter by chapter through the whole book, of my regular crew of first readers-Phillip and Em Absher, Kathryn H. Kidd, and my son Geoffrey.  My wife, Kristine A. Card, as usual read each chapter  while the pages were still warm from the LaserJet. Without them I could not have proceeded with this book.


The second problem posed by this novel was that I wrote it during the war in Afghanistan  between the U.S. and its allies and the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. Since in Shadow Puppets  I had to show the future state of relations  between  the Muslim and Western worlds, and between Israel and its Muslim neighbors, I had to make  a prediction  about  how the current  hate-filled  situation  might  someday  be resolved. Since I take quite seriously my responsibility to the nations and peoples I write about, I was dependent  for much of my understanding  of the causes of the present  situation  on  Bernard  Lewis's  What  Went  Wrong?:  Western  Impact  and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford University Press, 2001).


This book is dedicated to my wife's parents. Besides the fact that much of the peace and joy in Kristine's and my lives comes from our close and harmonious relationship with both our extended families, I owe an additional debt to James B. Allen, for his excellent work as a historian, yes, but more personally for having taught me to approach history fearlessly, going wherever the evidence leads, assuming neither the best nor the worst about people of the past, and adapting my personal worldview wherever it needs adjustment, but never carelessly throwing out previous ideas that remain valid.


To my assistants, Kathleen Bellamy and Scott Allen, I owe much more than I pay them. As for my children, Geoffrey, Emily. and Zina, and my wife, Kristine, they are the reason it's worth getting out of bed each day.