Hidden Empire

by Orson Scott Card

"No, no, just press the key once and let it go," said Aunt Margaret.

  On the screen were the letters "hhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

  "You seriously don't know how to type an email, do you," said Aunt Margaret.

  Now he had shamed himself. He shrugged, keeping his head down and trying not to let tears come into his eyes.

  "I have an idea," said Aunt Margaret. "Why don't I type the letter for you, and you just tell me what to say?"

  Chinma gratefully got out of the chair and stood aside so she could sit down.

  She immediately put her hands over the keyboard and began to move them so fast Chinma couldn't even see what she was doing. But words appeared on the screen, lots of words, and then she took the mouse, moved it on the table, and made the whole letter disappear.

  "There, I've told her she can write to you at my address."

  "Thank you," said Chinma. He started to leave.

  "No, she's there right now, she's going to answer, I think it was rather urgent."

  So Chinma waited.

  So did Aunt Margaret.

  Finally Aunt Margaret laughed. "Well, we're not doing any good sitting here staring at the computer, are we?" She started to get up. He started to leave the room.

  There was a click from the computer. "Wouldn't you know it? I get up, and her letter comes. I think the computer was just waiting for me to stand up."

  "Why would it do that?" asked Chinma, marveling that she would keep a machine so perverse.

  "It doesn't, really, that's just how it seems sometimes. Yes, it's her letter, and it isn't long, she just wants to know from you … oh, she can't mean this." Margaret swiveled in the chair. "Chinma, it seems that nobody in the place she's at has any idea of the course of this disease, this nictovirus. She knows it might be very painful for you to talk about it, but she has to know what actually happens in the disease. How it progresses. Since you've actually had it."

  These were questions the scientists had asked him over and over. He knew he could answer them. He immediately started talking. "It starts with a tickling in your nose, and you sneeze. More and more. But then you have to keep swallowing … " Chinma struggled for the English word. "In your throat, nose stuff."

  "Mucus. Snot. I get it."

  Chinma registered the words and moved on. "While that's happening, you get … stopped up."

  "Stuffed up, I think we say here."

  Chinma knew what "stuffed up" was, and that wasn't what he was talking about. "No, I mean—stools don't come."

  "Oh, constipation. That's interesting, I've never read anything about that."

  "Very bad constipation," said Chinma, trying out the word. "Days and days, and your stomach gets full and heavy and you don't want to eat."

  She was typing furiously. "You're fine, I'm keeping up."

  "You just want to lie there and your stomach hurts, but you can't sleep because it's so hot."

  "The weather? Or your temperature?"

  Chinma touched his head, his chest. "Everything."

  "Fever then."

  "And I got a headache. And you start to cough and sneeze all the time until your chest hurts. People cry from the headache and the stomachache and the coughing, but nothing helps. And then all of a sudden everything comes loose and you shit and shit and shit."

  "Okay," said Aunt Margaret, "I can see that the language barrier is quite selective."

  "Shit and shit," said Chinma, "and you can't get away from it and nobody will clean you up. Most of them die in their shit."

  "I must ask—are the stools solid or loose?"

  "Solid at first," said Chinma, "but then piles and finally watery and then nothing but you still try to push out the nothing because it hurts so bad."

  "Severe dysentery," said Aunt Margaret as she typed.

  "So blood comes out instead," said Chinma. "It comes out everywhere, and if you didn't shit to death you bleed to death. The ones that die, they bleed a lot."

  "But not everybody does?" asked Aunt Margaret.

  "I didn't bleed," said Chinma. "The people who don't die of it don't bleed as much." She was typing, and he realized that she might have misunderstood. "But a lot of people die without bleeding at all."

  "Very important distinction, thank you," she said. She typed more. "Does it help to stop the bleeding?"

  "I don't know. It wouldn't stop."

  "No clotting?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "Didn't the blood dry and form a scab?"

  "No," said Chinma.

  "Does it gush out or seep out or drip out—"

  He had no idea what she was asking. So he waited.

  "Does it come out fast? The blood? Lots of it, or just a little at a time."

  "Little at a time." He remembered his little sister, the baby. She was covered with blood but nobody could even see where it was coming from. It just came out of her skin in very fine drops.

  "When the bleeding starts, you only have a few hours left," said Chinma. He had held the baby and when she died he was covered with her blood.

  "But if you aren't going to die, there's no bleeding."

  "Sometimes a little bleeding but then it stops," said Chinma. "And a lot of people who don't bleed die anyway."

  "Is there anything else?"

  "If you don't die, you're very weak. You just lie there. You don't have the strength to get up and go for water. You get really thirsty."

  "Can you drink? When someone brings you water?"

  "Nobody brought me water."

  "What did you do? You must have been horribly dehydrated." Then she corrected herself. "Very thirsty."

  Chinma nodded. "I made myself crawl to the river. We aren't supposed to drink from the river because it's dirty and makes you sick, but it's the only water I could reach."

  "Why didn't someone bring you water?"

  "Everybody was sick," said Chinma. "But after I got water I felt a little better and I brought some back for Mother and the others. They were just getting the fever then, coughing and starting to shit. I went back for water again and again, but then the baby died and Mother screamed at me to go away because I killed her."

  And suddenly Chinma was overwhelmed by the memory and sank to the floor.

  "Oh my Lord," said Aunt Margaret, getting up from her chair.

  Chinma lay back on the floor and breathed deeply. He could feel his head trying to make him faint, and so he lay very still and breathed slowly and deeply to make the fainting go away.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yes," said Chinma. Please stop trying to make me talk until I can breathe again.

  "Are you sick? Is this something left over from the sneezing flu?"

  He shook his head a little. Why was she asking? Didn't Americans get light-headed and faint when they were overcome with grief?

  "What can I do?" she insisted.

  "Wait," he said.

  She didn't understand him, or didn't believe that he had said "wait."

  "Wait," he said again, and then closed his eyes and spread out his arms and breathed and finally the light-as-air feeling went away from his head. Carefully he rolled over and stood up.

  "Are you prone to fainting fits?" asked Aunt Margaret. "I mean, does this happen often?"

  Chinma shook his head. "What else does Mrs. Malich want to know?"

  "Just—I think … how long till you get your strength back?"

  He thought about it. "I don't know how long it was. After you're getting better, you sleep a lot. I remember when I first got hungry again. That's when I knew I wasn't going to die. Then it was only a couple of days before I could climb trees again. That's why the soldiers didn't kill me. I climbed a tree to get away from the stink. But I climbed it very slowly and I didn't go as high as usual because I wasn't sure I could hold on."

  Aunt Margaret kept typing for a while, and then, once again, the words of the email disappeared.

  "There, I hope that helps her. You were very good to be willing to talk about this all again."

/>   "I told the doctors."

  "Did you almost faint when you told them?" asked Aunt Margaret.

  "No," he said. That was because he hadn't thought about his baby sister covered with blood and dying in his arms and then Mother screaming at him when he crawled into her room dragging the baby on a mat behind him.

  "If you already told the scientists this, I can't understand why in the world this information hasn't been released and these volunteer health workers weren't briefed."

  Chinma wanted to get back to the math book. Well, no, he didn't, but the math book was what he had been working on, and he wanted to get out of Mrs. Malich's office. It was a room that the children were never supposed to go into. Mark had impressed that on him very firmly.

  But instead of leaving the room, he said, "If I give all my money to the police, will that be enough for them to let me go?"

  Aunt Margaret turned slowly and looked at him with an odd expression. "You're not under arrest, you know."

  "But Mrs. Malich said I can't go back to Nigeria because of the officials." Or had she actually said that? "Because there's a law against it."

  "You're here under political asylum laws," said Aunt Margaret. "If you return to your home country, it means you must not be in danger after all and so your visa is revoked."

  "So if I give the man my hundred and eighty dollars, will he let me go?"

  "Why do you want to go there? Are you unhappy here?"

  "I should go there to help," said Chinma. "I can't catch the monkey sickness anymore, and I know what happens. I can tell them. I've seen many people live and die. I know which ones. And I speak Yoruba and a little Hausa and I understand some Ibo."

  Aunt Margaret's eyes narrowed. "Actually, you really might be helpful. It's just a stupid rule that keeps you from going. There can be exceptions to the rule. Or at least there should be." She turned around and started lifting papers on the desk. "Oh, what am I thinking, she won't leave it lying around." She started using the mouse to bring up different things on the computer screen. "Well, she won't put it on the computer, either. Probably memorized it and ate the note on which it was written down."

  She got up from the desk and went to the door of the office. "Nicky! Nick! I'm an old woman, don't make me climb the stairs!"

  In a few minutes Nick and Lettie and Annie and John Paul were all crowded into the office, looking around at things they had long been forbidden to see.

  "I don't recall asking for anyone but Nicky," said Aunt Margaret.

  "Nobody calls him Nicky," said Annie. "He hates it, he's Nick."

  "He's Nicky to me," said Aunt Margaret, "and he likes it fine or I'll smack him."

  "What did you need?" asked Nick.

  "Your mother has a special phone number she uses to call the President," said Aunt Margaret. "Do you know if she has it written down anywhere?"

  "She wouldn't tell us," said Lettie.

  "I didn't imagine she would," said Aunt Margaret. "But Nicky is an observant boy, and I thought he might have noticed where she went if she was going to call the President on that line."

  "He always calls her," said Lettie. "I mean Nate Ogzewalla does."

  "I keep asking Nicky, and I keep hearing answers coming from you, my dear, and yet your answer is always that you don't know the answer, so would you kindly allow me to find out if Nicky does."

  "I told you he doesn't answer to Nicky."

  "Lettie," said Nick, "just shut up."

  "Thank you, Nicholas J. Malich," said Aunt Margaret.

  "His middle name doesn't start with J," said Lettie.

  Aunt Margaret raised a hand in order to slap her. But to Chinma's surprise, instead of cowering Lettie laughed and dodged out of the room.

  If he had ever tried that when Father or one of the mothers raised a hand to smack him, he would have been beaten hard with a stick. But Lettie clearly wasn't afraid for a moment. Had anyone ever beaten her? Certainly Chinma had never seen it since he'd been here, and yet Lettie often needed to be beaten, because she was always provoking people. Chinma didn't understand American families yet, that was clear.

  "She never searched for it," said Nick. "It was just in her cellphone."

  "So much for being security conscious," said Aunt Margaret. "If she ever lost her cellphone, the President's private phone number would be there for anyone to take."

  "I don't think it matters," said Nick. "It's just a cellphone and if somebody else got the number, he'd throw it out and get another."

  "Oh," said Aunt Margaret. "Well, that makes sense. The problem is that it doesn't get me any closer to calling the President."

  "Just call the switchboard and say that you're taking care of Cecily Malich's children and you need to speak to Nate Ogzewalla," said Lettie from outside the office door.

  Nick nodded. "That'll do it."

  "But I don't want to talk to Mr. Ogzewalla," said Aunt Margaret. "He'll just tell me I can't talk to the President, and he'll promise to deliver my message, but then he won't do it because, as everyone knows, gatekeepers exist to keep the gate closed, not to open it."

  They all stood or sat in silence, contemplating this conundrum.

  "Why not just use her cellphone and find the number that the President answers?" said Lettie.

  "Her cellphone? It's here?"

  "Well it wouldn't do her any good in Nigeria, would it?" said Lettie.

  Aunt Margaret looked at Nick in consternation.

  Nick grinned. "Lettie sees everything. I never see anything."

  "A good reason to make you stay outside your computer games for at least fifteen minutes a day."

  It took about one minute to find Cecily's cellphone. It was off, and when Aunt Margaret turned it on, it demanded a password.

  "Well, there you are. It needs a password and I don't know it."

  "Rube," said Nick.

  "What?"

  "The password. It's Dad's nickname, what the guys on his team called him. Rube. R-U-B-E."

  "Oh, so you do notice things," said Aunt Margaret. Sure enough, the password got the phone working. "Speed dial," she said. But the first number got her nowhere. "Can you believe it?" Aunt Margaret asked them, pressing end. "The President is not the first number on her speed dial!"

  "Who is?" asked Lettie.

  "Your school," said Aunt Margaret.

  It wasn't until the seventh speed dial number that Aunt Margaret finally smiled and nodded.

  Chinma looked at her in awe. She was a woman. She was telephoning the President of the United States without permission. And instead of looking frightened or even respectful, she was triumphant.

  "Mr. President, I am Margaret Diklich, Cecily's aunt, and I am tending her children, and you can arrest me later for using this telephone number but there's something Cecily desperately needs, though she doesn't know she needs it, and you're the only one who can get it for her."

  Chinma watched in awe. This woman talked to the President as if he were a slightly naughty little boy.

  "What she needs is a certain political refugee that is living in this house with her children. Apparently the law says if he returns to Nigeria he loses his asylum here, but I suspect that if anyone can get an exception to that rule, it's you."

  Again she listened.

  "Isn't it obvious? Chinma is the world's most qualified expert on the course of the nictoviral disease and what treatments are effective. And he's completely immune to the infection. Those meddling Christians haven't been decently briefed on anything, it is the most completely screwed-up operation in history, and I'm including Gallipoli, Fredericksburg, and the occupation of Iraq when I say that."

  Now they could all hear laughter from the cellphone. The President was actually enjoying this conversation.

  "I believe Chinma should be sent straight to Cecily, yes, and furthermore, from what he's told me I believe they will need hundreds of thousands of doses of stool softener and just as many doses of loperamide—that's the generic name of Imodium—and ibuprofen,
plus a million bottles of clean water."

  The President's question was audible to them all. "Why?"

  "Because from what Chinma told me, it seems that the people who die without getting to the bleeding stage of the disease are actually dying of dehydration caused by constipation, which causes them to resist eating and drinking, followed by devastating dysentery, which drains them of whatever fluids they do have."

  The President said something, but rather softly.

  Aunt Margaret laughed. "Yes, those are very much like Chinma's own words. They shit themselves to death, Mr. President, and not one person seems to have bothered to tell anyone in this expedition that the main treatment for these poor victims is to keep them hydrated."

  More from the President.

  "Thank you very much, Mr. President. I will have Chinma's bag packed in fifteen minutes." Then she flipped the phone closed.

  "Chinma is going?" said Lettie.

  "Chinma is needed and he volunteered and so, yes, he's going."

  "Then so am I!" shouted Lettie.

  "Chinma is immune to the disease and he knows something," said Aunt Margaret. "You are not immune to anything except good manners, and you know nothing. So no, you are not going."

  "I know a lot of things!" shouted Lettie.

  "You didn't know the password," said Nick.

  "I knew everything else!" screamed Lettie.

  Aunt Margaret turned to Chinma. "What in the world would your parents do about a child like this?"

  It was about time someone asked him that. "They would beat her until she fainted."

  Lettie turned to him in scorn. "Oh, they would not."

  Nick, who had seen Chinma without his shirt, asked, "Shall we show her, Chinma?"

  "Show me what?" Lettie demanded.

  Chinma stood up, turned his back, and raised up his shirt. He knew what they would see, because other nonfavorite children in his family bore similar scars, though perhaps he had the most.

  Lettie said nothing at all.

  Chinma lowered his shirt and turned back to face her.

  "I didn't know," said Lettie quietly. "I'm sorry."

  "Good heavens," said Aunt Margaret. "The child has a spark of empathy after all. Come, Chinma. Let's get you packed."

  CHLHBflR

  War will exist as long as any community desires to impose its will on another community more than it desires peace.