Shadow Puppets Part 22

"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

s.p.a.cE STATION

To: [email protected] From: SitePostAlert Re: Girl on bridgeNow 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 pa.s.sword not stepstool.Peter found s.p.a.ceflight 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sa.s.sin and kill Achilles.

But it wasn't that simple. First, Achilles, being an a.s.sa.s.sin and a user of a.s.sa.s.sins, 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated just before the invasion of Russia, then in all likelihood the common language of the International Fleet would have been German. Because it was. .h.i.tler'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.

Killing Achilles might do nothing more than guarantee a world governed by China.

Still, with him out of the way, Peter would face a rational enemy. And his own a.s.sets would not be so superst.i.tiously 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 a.s.sets 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 s.p.a.ce station.

"Stop wallowing," said Mother.

He looked at her sharply. "I'm not," he said.

"Good," she said. "Be angry at me. That's better than feeling sorry for yourself."

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, n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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, d.i.c.k."

Peter smiled wanly at the faint humor in the pseudonym Graff had arbitrarily a.s.signed 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 n.o.body 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 s.h.i.+p. 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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. "n.o.body 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 a.s.sumes 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 s.h.i.+p, but n.o.body'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.

Dimak whispered back, "You save the world, we'll finance the colony program."

"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 b.u.g.g.e.rs-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.