Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Saga 7 - Shadow Puppets

by Orson Scott Card

  "Listen to him," said Petra. "Saying 'we.'"

  "There's no 'we,' " said Bean. "Good luck." Still holding Petra's hand, Bean started for the forest. Petra had only a moment to wave cheerily at Peter and then she was beside Bean, jogging toward the trees.

  "You're going to quit?" shouted Peter after them. "Just like that? When we're finally close to being able to get things moving our way?" They didn't stop to argue. Later, on the private plane Bean chartered to get them from Mindanao to Celebes, Petra mocked Peter's words. " 'When we're finally close to being able to get things moving our way?' Bean laughed.

  "When was it ever our way?" she went on, not laughing now. "It's all about increasing Peter's influence, boosting his power and prestige. Our way."

  "I don't want him dead," said Bean.

  "Who, Achilles?"

  "No!" said Bean. "Him I want dead. It's Peter we have to keep alive. He's the only balance."

  "He's lost his balance now," said Petra. "How long before Achilles arranges to have him killed?"

  "What worries me is, how long before Achilles penetrates and co-opts his entire network?"

  "Maybe we're assigning Achilles supernatural powers," said Petra. "He isn't a god. Not even a hero. Just a sick kid."

  "No," said Bean. "I'm a sick kid. He's the devil."

  "Well, so," said Petra, "maybe the devil's a sick kid."

  "So you're saying we should still try to help Peter."

  "I'm saying that if Peter lives through his little brush with Achilles, he might be more prone to listen to us.

  "Not likely," said Bean. "Because if he survives, he'll think it proves he's smarter than we are, so he'll be even less likely to hear us.

  "Yeah," said Petra. "It's not like he's going to learn anything."

  "First thing we need to do," said Bean, "is split up."

  "No," said Petra.

  "I've done this before, Petra. Going into hiding. Keeping from getting caught."

  "And if we're together we're too identifiable, Ia la Ia," she said.

  "Saying 'Ia la Ia' doesn't mean it isn't true."

  "But I don't care," said Petra. "That's the part you're leaving out of your calculations."

  "And I do care," said Bean, "which is the part you're leaving out of yours."

  "Let me put it this way," said Petra. "If we separate, and Achilles finds me and kills me first, then you'll just have one more female you love deeply who is dead because you didn't protect her."

  "You fight dirty."

  "I fight like a girl."

  "And if you stay with me, we'll probably end up dying together."

  "No we won't," said Petra.

  "I'm not immortal, as you well know."

  "But you are smarter than Achilles. And luckier. And taller. And nicer."

  "The new improved human."

  She looked at him thoughtfully. "You know, now that you're tall, we could probably travel as man and wife."

  Bean sighed. "I'm not going to marry you.

  "Just as camouflage."

  It had begun as hints but now it was quite open, her desire to marry him. "I'm not going to have children," he said. "My species ends with me."

  "I think that's pretty selfish of you. What if the first homo sapiens had felt that way? We'd all still be Neanderthals, and when the Buggers came they would have blasted us all to bits and that would be that."

  "We didn't evolve from Neanderthals," said Bean.

  "Well, it's a good thing we have that little fact squared away," said Petra.

  "And I didn't evolve at all. I was manufactured. Genetically created."

  "Still in the image of God," said Petra.

  "Sister Carlotta could say those things, but it's not funny coming from you."

  "Yes it is," said Petra.

  "Not to me."

  "I don't think I want to have your babies, if they might inherit your sense of humor."

  "That's a relief." Only it wasn't. Because he was attracted to her and she knew it. More than that. He truly cared about her, liked being with her. She was his friend. If he weren't going to die, if he wanted to have a family, if he had any interest in marrying, she was the only female human that he would even consider. But that was the trouble- she was human, and he was not.

  After a few moments of silence, she leaned her head on his shoulder and held his hand. "Thank you," she murmured.

  "For what I don't know."

  "For letting me save your life."

  "When did that happen?" asked Bean.

  "As long as you have to look out for me," said Petra, "you won't die."

  "So you're coming along with me, increasing our risk of being identified and allowing Achilles to get his two worst nemeses with one well-placed bomb, in order to save my life?"

  "That's right, genius boy," said Petra.

  "I don't even like you, you know." At this moment, he was annoyed enough that the statement was almost true.

  "As long as you love me, I don't mind."

  And he suspected that her lie, too, was almost true.

  CHAPTER 2 — SURIYAWONG'S KNIFE

  From: Salaom%Spaceboy@Inshallab.com

  To: Watcber%GnDuty@International.net

  Re: What you asked

  My Dear Mr. Wiggin/Locke,

  Philosophically speaking, all guests in a Muslim home are treated as sacred visitors sent by God and under his care. In practice, for two extremely talented, famous, and unpredictable persons who are hated by one powerful non-Muslim figure and aided by another, this is a very dangerous part of the world, particularly if they seek to remain both hidden and free. I do not believe they will be foolish enough to seek refuge in a Muslim county.

  I regret to tell you, however, that your interest and mine do not coincide on this matter, so despite our occasional cooperation in the past, I most certainly will not tell you whether I encounter them or hear news of them.

  Your accomplishments are many, and I have helped you in the past and will in the Future. But when Ender led us in Fighting the Formics these Friends were beside me. Where were you?

  Respectfully yours,

  Alai

  Suriyawong opened his orders and was not surprised. He had led missions inside China before, but always for the purpose of sabotage or intelligence gathering, or "involuntary high officer force reduction," Peter's mostly-ironic euphemism for assassination. The fact that this assignment had been to capture rather than kill suggested that it was a person who was not Chinese. Suriyawong had rather hoped it might be one of the leaders of a conquered country-the deposed prime minister of India, for instance, or the captive prime minister of Suriyawong’s native Thailand.

  He had even entertained, briefly, the thought that it might be one of his own family.

  But it made sense that Peter was taking this risk, not for someone of mere political or symbolic value, but for the enemy who had put the world into this strange and desperate situation.

  Achilles. Erstwhile gimp-legged cripple, frequent murderer, full time psychotic, and warmonger extraordinaire, Achilles had a knack for finding out just what the leaders of nations aspired for and promising them a way to get it. So far he had convinced a faction in the Russian government, the heads of the Indian and Pakistani governments, and various leaders in other lands to do his bidding. When Russia found him a liability, he had fled to India where he already had friends waiting for him. When India and Pakistan were both doing exactly what he had arranged for them to do, he betrayed them using his connections inside China.

  The next move, of course, would have been to betray his friends in China and jump ahead of them to a position of even greater power. But the ruling coterie in China was every bit as cynical as Achilles and recognized his pattern of behavior, so not all that long after he had made China the world's only effective superpower, they arrested him.

  If the Chinese were so smart, why wasn't Peter? Hadn't Peter himself said, "When Achilles is most useful and loyal to you, that is when he has most certainly be
trayed you”? So why was he thinking he could use this monstrous boy?

  Or had Achilles managed to convince Peter, despite all the proof that Achilles kept no promises, that this time he would remain loyal to an ‘ally'?

  I should kill him, thought Suriyawong. In fact, I will. I will report to Peter that Achilles died in the chaos of the rescue. Then the world will be a safer place.

  It's not as if Suriyawong hadn't killed dangerous enemies before. And from what Bean and Petra had told him, Achilles was by definition a dangerous enemy, especially to anyone who had ever been kind to him.

  "If you've ever seen him in a condition of weakness or helplessness or defeat," Bean had said, "he can't bear for you to stay alive. I don't think it's personal. He doesn't have to kill you with his own hands or watch you die or anything like that. He just has to know that you no longer live in the same world with him."

  "So the most dangerous thing you can do," Petra had said, "is to save him, because the very fact that you saw that he needed saving is your death sentence in his mind."

  Had they never explained this to Peter?

  Of course they had. So in sending Suriyawong to rescue Achilles, Peter knew that he was, in effect, signing Suriyawong's death warrant.

  No doubt Peter imagined that he was going to control Achilles, and therefore Suriyawong would be in no danger

  But Achilles had killed the surgeon who repaired his gimp leg, and the girl who had once declined to kill him when he was at her mercy. He had killed the nun who found him on the streets of Rotterdam and got him an education and a chance at Battle School.

  To have Achilles's gratitude was clearly a terminal disease. Peter had no power to make Suriyawong immune. Achilles never left a good deed unpunished, however long it might take, however convoluted the path to vengeance might be.

  I should kill him, thought Suriyawong, or he will surely kill me.

  He's not a soldier, he's a prisoner. To kill him would be murder, even in a war.

  But if I don't kill him, he's bound to kill me. May a man not defend himself?

  Besides, he's the one who masterminded the plan that put my people into subjugation to the Chinese, destroying a nation that had never been conquered, not by the Burmese, not by colonizing Europeans, not by the Japanese in the Second World War, not by the Communists in their day. For Thailand alone he deserves to die, not to mention all his other murders and betrayals.

  But if a soldier does not obey orders, killing only as he is ordered to kill, then what is he worth to his commander? What cause does he serve? Not even his own survival, for in such an army no officer would be able to count on his men, no soldier on his companions.

  Maybe I'll be lucky, and his vehicle will blow up with him inside.

  Those were the thoughts he wrestled with as they flew below radar, brushing the crests of the waves of the China Sea.

  They skimmed over the beach so quickly there was barely time to register the fact, as the on-board computers made the assault craft jog left and right, jerk upward and then drift down again, avoiding obstacles on the ground while trying to stay below radar. Their choppers were thoroughly masked, and the on-board dis-info pretended to all watching satellites that they were anything other than what they actually were. Before long they reached a certain road and turned north, then west, zipping over what Peter's intelligence sources had tagged as checkpoint number three. The men at that checkpoint would radio a warning to the convoy transporting Achilles, of course, but they wouldn't have finished the first sentence before Suriyawong's pilot spotted the convoy.

  "Armor and troop transport fore and aft," he said. "Take out all support vehicles."

  "What if the prisoner has been put in one of the support vehicles?"

  "Then there will be a tragic death by friendly fire," said Suriyawong.

  The soldiers understood, or at least thought they understood- Suriyawong was going through the motions of rescuing the prisoner, but if the prisoner died he would not mind.

  This was not, strictly speaking, true, or at least not at this moment. Suriyawong simply trusted the Chinese soldiers to go absolutely by the book. The convoy was merely a show of force to keep any local crowds or rebels or rogue military groups from attempting to interfere. They had not contemplated the possibility of-or even a motive for- a rescue from some outside force. Certainly not from the tiny commando force of the Hegemon.

  Only a half dozen Chinese soldiers were able to get out of the vehicles before the Hegemony missiles blew them up. Suriyawong's soldiers were already firing before they leapt from the settling choppers, and he knew that in moments all resistance would be over.

  But the prison van carrying Achilles was undisturbed. No one had emerged from it, not even the drivers.

  Violating protocol, Suriyawong jumped down from the command chopper and walked toward the back of the prison van. He stood close as the soldier assigned to blow the door slapped on the unlocking charge and detonated it. There was a loud pop, but no back blast at all as the explosive tore open the latch.

  The door jogged open a couple of centimeters.

  Suriyawong extended an arm to stop the other soldiers from going into the van to rescue the prisoner, Instead he opened the door only far enough to toss his own combat knife onto the floor of the van. Then he pushed the door back into place and stood back, waving his men back also.

  The van rocked and lurched from some violent activity inside it. Two guns went off. The door flew open as a body collapsed backward into the dirt at their feet.

  Be Achilles, thought Suriyawong, looking down at the Chinese officer who was trying to gather his entrails with his hands. Suriyawong had the irrational thought that the man ought really to wash his organs before jamming them back into his abdomen. It was so unsanitary.

  A tall young man in prison pajamas appeared in the van door, holding a bloody combat knife in his hand.

  You don't look like much, Achilles, thought Suriyawong. But then, you don't have to look all that impressive when you've just killed your guards with a knife you didn't expect someone to throw on the floor at your feet.

  "All dead inside?" asked Suriyawong.

  A soldier would have answered yes or no, along with a count of the living and dead. But Achilles hadn't been a soldier in Battle School for more than a few days. He didn't have the reflexes of military discipline.

  "Very nearly." said Achilles. "Whose stupid idea was it to throw me a knife instead of opening the mossin' door and blasting the hell out of those guys?"

  "Check to see if they're dead," Suriyawong said to his nearby men. Moments later they reported that all convoy personnel had been killed. That was essential if the Hegemon was to be able to preserve the fiction that it was not a Hegemony force that had carried out this raid.

  "Choppers, in twenty," said Suriyawong.

  At once his men scrambled to the choppers.

  Suriyawong turned to Achilles. "My commander respectfully invites you to allow us to transport you out of China."

  "And if I refuse?"

  "If you have your own resources in country, then I will bid you good-bye with my commander's compliments."