Hidden Empire

by Orson Scott Card

  "How?" asked Chinma.

  "Watch me."

  Mark took a loaded clip out of the box and slid it up into the hilt of the pistol. But there was already a clip in Arty's weapon. Was it already loaded? Chinma looked up helplessly, but then a lean middle-aged man, one of the caregivers, stepped to him, took the pistol, and quickly ejected the empty clip that was in it. Then he handed back the pistol.

  Chinma was vaguely aware that the man was now explaining to someone—his wife?—that he didn't load the gun, he merely unloaded it.

  Meanwhile, Chinma got the clip facing the right way, slid it in, and then watched Mark do something that made a cha-chink noise—it looked like he pulled the pistol apart very quickly, then put it back together. All he could do was stand there, looking at his own pistol.

  Someone took the pistol out of his hand, pulled back hard on the top of it, and got the same noise.

  "The safety," said Mark.

  Chinma looked up at the man. He was the radio man, the one who recorded what people said. The man pushed a lever, then handed the pistol to Chinma, stepped back to his position against the wall, and nodded once.

  Both boys put their pistols into the slack hands of the soldiers lying on the cots.

  The firing downstairs had stopped, and they could all hear the footfalls of the enemy soldiers rushing up to their floor.

  We're three rooms from the stairs, thought Chinma. "They kill the others before us," he said aloud.

  Mark looked at him, nodded grimly. "You're right, you're right." He took the pistol back from Benny's hand. "We have to bring them straight to us." Mark ran to the door, flung it open, and fired the pistol out the door, up into the ceiling.

  Then he ran back to Benny and put the pistol into his hand once more.

  "There are only two of them," Mark said to Benny and Arty.

  "Hold up … my hand," whispered Benny. Mark knelt beside him and propped Benny's hand so he could point the pistol at the door.

  The enemy soldiers were quiet now; having heard a gunshot coming from this floor, they were wary now. But in the silence of the room, with the door open, everyone could hear the soft footsteps coming closer.

  Chinma tried to prop up Arty's hand, but the man was trembling and the point of the gun wasn't just shaking, it wavered many centimeters at a time. Chinma propped up Arty's head so he could see to aim, which left Chinma's arms widely spread. Both Arty's head and the pistol were heavier by the moment, and neither one was steady.

  One of the enemy soldiers dodged past the door, firing a burst of automatic fire into the room, but high, so no one was hit.

  "Get down!" Mark hissed at the caregivers, but he hardly needed to say it—the ones who had been standing hit the floor the moment that burst came into the room.

  Then Mark stood up, took the pistol out of Benny's hand, put his feet in a wide stance, and held out the pistol, pointing toward the door. "God help me," he said softly.

  The pistol trembled, but it was a lot steadier than Arty's hand.

  Chinma knew that this was the only way. Arty and Benny would defend them all if they could, but their arms didn't have the strength.

  Chinma had the strength. He had never held a gun until this day. His family owned guns, but he had never been allowed to touch one. But he could copy what Mark was doing.

  He took the pistol out of Arty's hand. He wished that the radio man would come and take it from him once again. The man must know how to shoot, and Chinma did not.

  At that moment of hesitation, his peripheral vision showed a movement at the door, and before Chinma could look, Mark's gun went off. Chinma only saw the enemy soldier falling backward, out into the corridor, and Mark also staggered backward from the gunshot.

  Off balance, Mark shot again as the other enemy soldier stepped through the door, already firing his automatic weapon. Mark's shot missed completely. The enemy's bullets, though, flung Mark backward onto the sick soldiers lying helpless on the floor.

  Chinma didn't stop to look. He had seen bodies hit by automatic weapons before. He had known every person he had watched them kill. This time, however, instead of a camera he had a gun, and instead of being up in a tree he was in the same room with the killers. Mark had knocked down one of them. The other one was already firing again, starting to swing his weapon to put bullets into the men on the floor.

  Chinma didn't have time to take the stance Mark had taken. Then again, he was only three meters away from the gunman. He pulled the trigger and the recoil threw his hand up and back.

  The gunman twisted around, but he was not knocked down. He saw Chinma now, and was bringing his weapon to bear when Chinma fired again.

  This time he controlled the recoil better, and saw where the bullet hit the man, high in his shoulder. The man cried out and staggered but he didn't drop his weapon. Chinma fired again, aiming much lower, and now the man crumpled and fell to the floor, dropping his weapon.

  Chinma walked over to him, just as the gunmen in his village had walked over to the wounded and dying.

  The man jammered at him in a language Chinma didn't know. Then in English he said, "Satan!"

  Without thinking or aiming, Chinma shot him in the face, because that's what he was looking at, the hate in the man's face. The bullet went into the man's mouth and he was dead.

  Then Chinma turned to the door and saw that the man Mark had shot was trying to crawl toward his weapon. Chinma shot him, too, and then walked out and stood over his body and aimed straight down at his head and shot him again. The body jerked and was still.

  Behind him, he could hear a man saying something about cold blood.

  "He just saved your butt," said the radio man.

  The first man said, "We didn't come here to kill."

  "You forget what people were saying a few minutes ago? That boy had to watch everybody in his village, everybody in his family, get murdered by men like these. Did you ever think that maybe he just didn't want to watch you die?"

  Chinma heard them, and the words registered. There were no more enemy soldiers. Mark and he had shot them both. There was still firing going on outside, and it sounded close. More soldiers might come in. The work wasn't done.

  Chinma walked back into the room, still holding the pistol. He saw the man with the booming voice—the "radio man," Mrs. Malich had called him—and he handed him the pistol. "Can you load it? Can you shoot?"

  "Yes sir I can," said the man.

  Chinma walked to where Mark lay on the floor. The caregivers had pulled his body off the men he had fallen on. There were only two wounds on his body, but one of them was right into the center of his chest. Chinma reached down and took the pistol out of his hand. Mark hadn't dropped the pistol, even as he died.

  Chinma went back to where the box of ammo was and took out a couple of clips and put them in the pockets of his pants. Then he walked to the door. "Stop them at the stairs," he said to the radio man.

  "Good idea." And the man followed him out into the corridor. The radio man paused at the body of the enemy soldier. "What about using his automatic?"

  "I don't know how," said Chinma. "How many bullets are left?"

  "I don't know," said the radio man, and he walked on, leaving the automatic where it lay.

  They came to the top of the stairs as the shooting became a wild flurry outside—but farther away, or maybe it was just that Chinma's blood was pounding in his ears. He was more frightened now than he had been before. Maybe because now he knew he was going to be doing the shooting, and before, he had only realized it at the last second.

  If I had been as smart as Mark, I would already have had my pistol ready, I could have shot the second man the moment he appeared. Mark had just shot a man, and yet he fired in time, and only missed because he was off balance. If I had shot at the same time, my friend would not be dead.

  They waited at the head of the stairs, but the radio man said, "I think I heard choppers a minute ago. I think the Marines are here."

  The
door downstairs banged open, and there was the sound of many feet, some running, some walking. Too many for them to fight off on the stairs.

  "They're our boys," said the radio man. "They're talking English."

  From the next floor down, there were voices, and now Chinma tried to understand them. He had been expecting foreign babble before, and English was not his native language. But he knew the words now.

  "We're too late, they got this floor."

  "Only a few," said another. "They must have taken them up, everyone who could go."

  Then silence, but a lot more boots coming up the stairs to the floor just below.

  Suddenly the radio man started shouting. "Nobody but Americans up here, men!"

  A voice came from below. "Who are you! State your name!"

  "Rusty Humphries, dammit, don't you know my voice? What, is your radio broken? 'If I didn't say it, it's prob'ly a lie! Rusty! Heck yeah!'"

  And a couple of men from below began to sing along. " 'Rusty! Heck yeah!'"

  Humphries stopped their singing. "Okay, rock stars, that's enough. Two of 'em got up here, but they're dead now. Got a lot of sick soldiers up here, guys. Do you have masks? You really don't want to catch this thing."

  "Doesn't sound like you're wearing a mask, Rusty!" shouted a man from below.

  "Yeah, but I'm stupid," said Rusty. "So I probably caught it and I'm as contagious as anybody else. So when you come up, make sure you're wearing protection, just like they taught you in high school."

  That got another laugh.

  A couple of men appeared on the landing below. They were wearing face masks—not the white surgical masks that the caregivers used, but the larger green masks that Chinma had seen in the foot-lockers.

  "Who's the boy?" asked a soldier. "You said nobody but Americans."

  "His whole village was wiped out and President Torrent gave him asylum. I got his story from the folks back in the room where we were holed up, and I got to tell you, if he wasn't American before, when he dropped that enemy soldier he became an American as far as I'm concerned."

  Chinma dropped his pistol. He didn't need it now. He ran back to the room. He wasn't sure why. Mark was dead. There was no more danger. But he needed to be there.

  He came into the room and saw how frightened everyone still looked. Hadn't they heard the shouting and talking? "American soldiers here now," he said. "All safe."

  Everyone began talking softly to one another and to Chinma.

  "Do you think they could help us carry these men back down to their rooms?"

  "What about the people we had to leave on the floor below?"

  "Are you all right?"

  But Chinma didn't know the answer to any of their questions. He walked toward Arty. The man's eyes were closed, so Chinma started past him, toward Mark's body.

  Arty caught feebly at his leg, at his hand. Chinma stopped, knelt. Arty couldn't talk loudly enough for Chinma to make out what he was saying, above the noise of other people's talking. He leaned closer still, so his ear was just above Arty's mouth.

  But instead of saying anything, Arty leaned up his head and twisted it so he could kiss Chinma on the cheek. Then Arty dropped his head back onto the pillow that Chinma himself had brought up the stairs with them when they fled up here only ten minutes before. Arty's eyes were open and filled with tears. "You did right," he whispered. Chinma didn't really hear him so much as read his lips.

  "Mark is dead," Chinma said softly.

  "I know," said Arty. Chinma leaned close to hear. "Very brave," added Arty.

  "Very smart, too," said Chinma. "He knew what to do. I didn't know what to do, but he did."

  "Son of a soldier," said Arty. Then he closed his eyes, worn out.

  I am not the son of a soldier. That's why I didn't know what to do.

  Chinma walked back to Mark's body. This time there was no pistol to retrieve, just the body of his friend. Someone will have to tell Mrs. Malich that he is dead. And the story of how he died. His story will have to be told, and I will have to tell it. But I don't know his story. I only know how it ended. Still, I can tell the part I know. I can tell his mother that he died as well as his father did, because he brought down the enemy and saved the lives of everyone in that room, everyone on that floor, everyone in that building who survived.

  What I can't tell Mrs. Malich or anyone is my story. Because I did not kill to save anyone. I'm glad they were saved, but I killed that man because he was like the men who killed my family. He was the kind of man who would put bullets into old men and women and children, who would kill helpless sick people as they lay on their beds or on the floor. I killed him because if I could, I would kill every such man in the world. I am not a good Christian like Mark, who didn't want to kill anybody. I wanted that soldier dead. I wanted him dead by my hand. I wanted to put bullets in every one of them.

  A bullet for every member of my family. Even the ones who didn't love me. Even the ones who left me to die when I was sick. Because they were my family and they had lived through the monkey sickness and there was no reason for them to be murdered and burned like that. No reason.

  And then, also for no reason, as Chinma knelt beside Mark's body and held his still-warm hand, all his rage fled away, and all his fear. What was left was the body of a friend. And what he had not let himself feel about his family, his village, his people, he could feel about this boy who had chosen to come to a country filled with disease in order to try to save the lives of strangers.

  "You should be alive," said Chinma. "I should be dead."

  A couple of nearby people heard him talking and stopped their own conversations to hear. Nearer the door, the Marines were helping bring out the sick, so the room was loud. But Chinma was not talking so that the living could hear him. He knew that Mark could hear him, however loud or soft his voice might be.

  "God kept me alive again," said Chinma. "Now I have to be as good as you, so I deserve to live." He knew he could never be as good as Mark—as brave, as kind, as smart—and he began to weep. He could not do it. It was too hard. Why couldn't he have died instead of Mark? The world would be a better place if he had.

  Chinma knelt up and leaned back his head and began to cry out the names of the dead in his village. His father, his mother, his brothers and sisters, the other wives, the other children, everyone whose name he could think of.

  He was still wailing their names, crying out so that everybody could hear the names of the dead, when a Marine touched him on the shoulder. Chinma glanced at him but did not stop.

  The radio man, Humphries, pulled the Marine away. "This is his country, son, and this was his friend, and between them they saved us all. He gets to show his grief however he wants."

  RECOVERY

  The former colonial nation of Nigeria has ceased to exist, unless the new Hausa nation chooses to retain that name. No matter what they call themselves, that government is in a state of war with the United States, as Congress has just affirmed.

  The southeastern, Ibo-speaking portion of Nigeria has declared itself the independent nation of Biafra, and the United States extends provisional recognition to the new government. Provisional recognition is also extended to the new Yoruba-speaking nation in the west of Nigeria and the newly independent Ijaw- and Efik-speaking delta lands.

  These new borders are rationally based on the distribution of the speakers of the dominant languages, taking into account the history of the various ethnic groups in the area.

  With more than three hundred languages in Nigeria, it was impossible to consider giving every language national status. The full recognition of the United States will be extended when each of the new nations adopts a constitution permanently affirming the rights of the speakers of minority languages.

  Most of the oil in the former Nigeria was and is within the new boundaries of Ijaw-land and Efik-land in the delta. Nevertheless, the delta government has promised the new Yoruba and Ibo governments a share of oil revenue for ten years, in recognit
ion of the fact that they were equally deprived by the previous government of any significant benefit from oil revenues in the past decades.

  Peace with the Hausa government of the north will only be possible upon the following terms: the renunciation of any claim on any other portion of the former Nigeria, a commitment to make restitution to Biafra, Yoruba-land, and the delta for revenues unlawfully withheld from them during the period of Hausa rule over the south. They must also extradite to an international tribunal those members of the former government whom the Departments of State and Defense have identified as being most responsible for atrocities, genocide, and the theft of public moneys, both before and after the nictovirus outbreak.

  Now we come to the serious business of the Sudanese attack on the American establishment in Calabar four days ago. Our NATO allies have all responded vigorously, and have joined us in declaring Sudan to be a rogue nation and an aggressor against us, against Nigeria, and against their own citizens. What is now to be decided is whether the state and government of Sudan shall be permitted to continue to exist.

  We gave the Sudanese ambassador pictures of the dead soldiers in Sudanese uniform and copies of the identification papers found with or on their bodies, but the official Sudanese response is that these are forgeries. Since we know that they are not, we regard the Sudanese denials as defiance and as an attempt to escape the consequences of their own illegal actions.

  These forces were chosen from, under the orders of, and supplied by, the armed forces of Sudan, with the full knowledge and approval of the highest echelons of the Sudanese government. Therefore we hold Sudan fully accountable.

  We demand the extradition, within twenty-four hours, of all Sudanese officials responsible for the decision to attack American soldiers and civilians on a mission of mercy in Nigeria.

  We also demand the immediate withdrawal of Sudanese forces and government officials behind the line of Malakal, Kaduqli, and Al Ubayyid, opening the way for NATO forces to provide security and provisional government for the long-oppressed African people of that region.

  Whether that area will become one or more separate nations is a matter for the people who live there to decide for themselves, after order has been restored and basic human needs are met. NATO promises that this occupation is temporary and that local government will begin to function as soon as it can be established.