Hidden Empire

by Orson Scott Card

  If the Sudanese government does not declare its intention to abide by these conditions within the next twenty-four hours, and does not turn over the officials and officers named in our list nor begin withdrawing forces behind the designated line within forty-eight hours, I will ask Congress for a declaration of war against Sudan.

  If such a war begins, then when it ends there will be no nation called Sudan in the world. Instead, the northern, Arabic-speaking portion of Sudan will become a permanent part of the nation of Egypt, which has accepted that responsibility and the rest of Sudan will become a free and sovereign nation or nations with the right of self-determination that has long been denied these citizens by the criminal government in Khartoum.

  I also ask Congress to declare that August tenth of this year, and July tenth of all subsequent years, be commemorated as a day of national mourning for those American soldiers and charitable workers who were slain on July tenth of this year; and as a day of national gratitude to those Americans, soldiers and civilians, who nobly defended the many who survived the attack; and also to the Nigerian students of the University of Calabar who gave their lives defending, with clubs against automatic weapons, the entrance of the university grounds where our soldiers lay sick and nearly defenseless. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten by the American people.

  Finally, I affirm that the American quarantine of Africa continues in full force. It is encouraging that the treatment techniques developed by American charitable workers in Nigeria have proven effective in reducing by more than half the mortality rate of those infected with the nictovirus. But these techniques are currently being employed only in small portions of the areas affected by the epidemic.

  Even where they are being used, a reduction of mortality from an estimated forty percent to an estimated fifteen percent still leaves us with that staggering mortality rate of fifteen percent. This disease cannot be allowed to leave its continent of origin if we can possibly help it. We will not relax our vigilance.

  This means that despite the anxious wishes and pleas of their friends and family here in the United States, neither the surviving soldiers nor the charitable workers now in Nigeria can be allowed to return to the United States at this time. Only when it is known that someone has had the nictovirus and fully recovered from it can he or she be allowed to leave the epidemic zone and return directly home. Others must wait out a three-week quarantine. This is all the information I have for you right now. Be assured that I will brief you again about the responses of the governments of the Arab portion of Sudan and the Hausa portion of Nigeria as the deadlines approach.

  I will not take questions at this time. Thank you very much.

  Cecily had thought that Reuben's death would destroy her. She had been so close to him, so dependent on him, but to her surprise, she had not been destroyed at all. Grief-stricken, yes. She missed him every day, not just the times she needed him, but also the times she knew he would have loved. She couldn't tell him things, she couldn't show him things. Yet she could go on. His death wasn't debilitating. She finally realized it was because their marriage had been an enterprise; they were entrepreneurs in this little business called a family, and by continuing to provide for and raise the children they had made together, she was keeping the marriage going. She was still doing her part, and in her heart, she could say to him, See what we've done? See how our work is turning out?

  She had thought she understood grief and loss.

  Then she came back onto the campus of the University of Calabar, returned to the headquarters building, saw the hazmat-suited Marines clearing away the bodies of the dead university students and the dead enemy soldiers and thought, the enemy got this far before the Marines came. But they were stopped at the door. Look at all these bodies, stopped at the door.

  But she knew, already, even then, before anyone spoke to her, before the face-masked Marine captain matched her to a photograph and said, "Mrs. Malich?"—she knew that something terrible had happened. The worst had happened. She knew it but held it at bay, because there were so many things it might be. After all, she had been very close to Reuben's jeesh. If one of them had died—or more than one—or all of them—they would treat her like this, wouldn't they? Gently take her arm and lead her into the building. Take her into Cole's office, where Cole most definitely was not, his bed made, no sign of the mess in which he had left his quarters when he got up to go out and face the enemy. They must be preparing to tell me that General Coleman was killed.

  She even asked: How is General Coleman?

  Grave condition, his body badly bruised from repeated bullet strikes on his Kevlar, but his most serious condition is the fever and dysentery from the nictovirus, we have him at the university hospital now with an IV from the fleet and two doctors working with him, he'll probably recover, he's not bleeding at the eyes and nose, we think he'll live. Mrs. Malich, please sit down.

  She knew now.

  "Mark is dead," she whispered.

  Contradict me. Tell me, No, no, of course not, I'm sorry if we gave you that impression, no, Mark is fine, he's upstairs, let's call him down to you right away.

  "Yes, Mrs. Malich," said the Marine captain. "If it is any consolation to you, he died as a hero." He told her a brief account of what Mark had done—calling the enemy soldiers to his room with a single shot, then killing the first man through the door, then dying instantly from two bullets from the second intruder's automatic weapon, one of which passed directly through his heart.

  "The Nigerian boy Chinma then shot the man who killed your son."

  Cecily nodded. She had heard.

  "Is there anything I can do for you?"

  Are you God? Can you bring him back? Then what can you possibly imagine I would want you to do for me?

  Instead of saying any such thing, she shook her head. And then she thought of something she might need. "Where is he?" she said. She was surprised at the calmness of her own voice. But then, she had known Mark was dead for some time. Ever since she arrived at the entrance of the building, she had known it since then. This was not a shock. She could handle this for a moment, for this moment she could stay calm, and then for this next moment, and again, to her surprise, for the moment after.

  "We can't take you to his body, ma'am. Many witnesses report that he exhibited symptoms of the nictovirus before he died. We cannot allow you to risk infection. His body has been sequestered with the other victims."

  "We are all infected," said Cecily. "Sooner or later. And I will see my son, and I will see him now. Will you help me or not?"

  So he helped her. He had Mark's body brought into what had once been a small conference room for the university. He left her there and closed the door.

  She had handled it for long enough. The door closed just as her control burst.

  She cried out his name. She kissed his face. She tore open his shirt and touched the bullet wounds, the one that killed him and the other one through his abdomen about four inches down. She stroked his chest, felt the ribs under the skin, ran her fingers through his hair, all the time calling his name, apologizing to him for letting him come, for not being a better mother, for not forbidding him to put his life at risk.

  Then, after a while, she sat beside his cold body, holding his hand and talking to him. Telling him how proud she was of him, of the way he had lived, the way he had risked his life to help others, and how, at the end, he had been as good a soldier as his father could have hoped he'd be.

  "I'm sorry I wasn't there with you, at the end. But I'm glad you didn't need me to be there in order to know what the right thing was and to do it. You never needed anyone to tell you that."

  And then, stroking his face again, touching every part of his face, the way she had played with him and teased him as an infant, this is your eye, this is your ear, what is this? yes, it's your mouth, and this is your nose. You were such a sweet baby, but you couldn't sleep, it was so hard with you because you wouldn't sleep and I was exhausted all the time and I
thought, being a mother is so much harder than I thought, but I didn't regret it, because you also were such a smiler, you always had a big toothless grin for me when I changed you or fed you. You'd stop nursing, break away, just to smile at me, and then start sucking again, you were such a happy baby, you just didn't sleep for very long at a time, and it was so hard to get you to fall asleep in the first place. I carried you inside me, the first time my body went through all the baby changes, all the surprises and mysteries, the woes and pains of it, were all for you, that first time, I was no more experienced at this birthing thing than you were, but we made it through. I thought it would lead to your growing tall as your father, taking a wife, giving me grandbabies, making it all happen again, the cycle repeating. But instead it was all for this, for this place, to save the lives of these people. That was your choice. I let you have your choice. Even though it terrified me, and now all my worst fears have come true, but it was your choice, it was your life, and even though you didn't use it the way I wanted you to, you used it well.

  She wept until there were no more tears to weep, until she sat beside the table where they had laid his body, her head lying on her arms, her hand still holding his hand. She was exhausted and, perhaps, asleep, though she was not aware of waking up. Only that someone's hand was on her shoulder.

  It was the masked Marine captain. "Ma'am," he said. "May we take his body now? We would like to take your son back to the ship to prepare him for transfer back to the United States."

  "Yes," she said.

  She kissed her son's cold hand for the last time, knowing that once they sealed it into the coffin it would not be opened for any reason.

  "Back to you, Reuben," she murmured. It was what she had said when he got up and brought the baby to her for nursing in the middle of the night, because she got so little rest. Reuben would be asleep again, because he had that ability to fall asleep in an instant, when he decided to. So she'd wake him when the baby was through nursing and say, Back to you, Reuben, and he'd get up and take the baby.

  Now she faced the wall, leaning her forehead on it, sobbing again with all her heart, there were more tears in her after all, as they took her son's sweet hurt body out of the room. She could not watch them put him into a body bag and hoist him into a helicopter. It would be unbearable.

  But even more unbearable was to stay in that room now that he was gone. So she got control of herself again, and ran after them, caught up with them. She watched every bit of it. Putting him into the bag, zipping it closed over his body, over his face. Attaching the documentation, which she checked, making sure that everything was right, that there would be no mistaking who this was and where his body should be sent.

  She followed them to the helicopter, and she knew they took extra care to be gentle because she was watching. These sailors and Marines knew that these bodies all deserved respect and they gave it, but they were even more careful so that they didn't do anything that would cause her any more hurt than she already had. She loved them for their carefulness, she hated them for the terrible thing they were doing, taking her little boy away in a bag that was much too big for him, a man-sized bag.

  She watched them close up the helicopter, watched it rise into the air, continued watching until it was out of sight, and then looked around, surprised that there was still air, still ground, still sunlight beating through the haze of this land where it was always summer. It would rain this afternoon. It was the rainy season. It would rain almost every day. They were all used to it. It was just a fact of Nigerian life in the spring and summer. It would rain this afternoon.

  Again the hand on her shoulder. "Will you come inside with me, Mrs. Malich?"

  But why should I? she wondered. What's the point? What is there for me to do?

  "There are some soldiers who want to see you," he said. "If you'd rather be alone, then of course they'll respect that."

  "I would rather be alone," she said.

  "I'll tell them. But would you come inside? It's going to rain."

  She let him lead her inside. And as they went, she sneezed.

  She stopped when she sneezed. Not one sneeze, but two, three, four in rapid succession.

  She wanted to explain to him that it wasn't the nictovirus, it was just the crying, it got mucus moving in her head, and now she was sneezing because of that, that plus the hot, muggy air outside, and the dust churned up by the wind the helicopter made. It's not the nictovirus, but I wish it were.

  She was wrong, however. It was the nictovirus. They had made one miscalculation in all their attempts at keeping the caregivers from getting infected. They wore masks and gloves and never breathed unfiltered air in the presence of the sick. But the nictovirus was hardy, and clung to their clothing, and when they took off their clothes and shook them out or folded them, it stirred the virus back into the air. It was only in small concentrations, and it took time before any particular person might get the virus that happened to thrive inside the lungs, but it would happen to them all. It had happened to her among the first, though she was not the least careful. It had happened to her only a few hours later than it happened to her son.

  She went back into the building, back to Cole's quarters, and without asking permission of anyone, she placed the most terrible telephone call of her life. She called Aunt Margaret and had her bring the children to the telephone and put it on speakerphone so they would all hear it at once, and she told them how Mark died. She got through it with her voice reasonably clear, though she could not hide her grief. Then she told them that she had to stay in Africa for now, because of the quarantine, and they shouldn't worry about her. When they were notified that Mark's body was ready for burial, they should go ahead. "I don't want him waiting for me, Aunt Margaret," she said. "Find a good place for him, please, and hold a service so his brothers and sisters and his friends and my friends can all say good-bye to him."

  Margaret said, "I understand, honey, I do. I'll keep things going here."

  And there was something in the way she said it that let Cecily know that Margaret understood the thing she hadn't said: that she had the nictovirus herself, and she didn't know if she would ever come home.

  The children were all crying and Cecily listened to all of their questions and whatever any of them wanted to say, and when there was no more talking, she said, "Please write to me, even if my own letters to you get held up. Write to me on paper, and send it through the military mail. I won't have much computer time for the next while."

  Then the phone call ended, and Cecily knew that the children would be all right, the ones who were left alive, they would be safe for now, as safe as children could be in this world. She was here and could not go to them, but they would be all right.

  She could not go out and care for the sick anymore. Not because she was sick herself, because for the first days, before the fever came, she was physically capable of doing the work. No, she simply couldn't talk to a mother whose child was dying or might die or had just died, she couldn't offer her any comfort, could say no words of Christian solace. It wasn't in her. Not because she had lost her faith—she hadn't, she knew that Mark was with Reuben now, she felt that with fierce intensity. She simply couldn't talk to them or see them with their grieving faces, because now she had such a face of her own. There was nothing in her to give to them.

  So she stayed in a room in the university hospital, among Nigerian women patients, middle-aged and elderly, and helped them as long as she could. Then the fever came, and she took to her bed the way they had, and someone else came and mopped her brow and gave her water and made her drink and take medications. It was all so familiar, yet all so strange.

  She knew she was going to die, and it was fine with her. She was finished with being a mother, she had been released from that responsibility with Mark's death, and so it was all right to go ahead and die from this virus, she would be only a week or two behind Mark. The other children would be orphans but she knew that they would grow up surrounded by love. G
od would take care of them, because she had let go. When the helicopter rose into the air, she had let go in her heart.

  Not my purpose in life anymore. And therefore I have no purpose, and therefore no life, and the nictovirus comes to me now as a gift.

  Deep into her week with the fever, her head constantly throbbing with pain despite the ibuprofen, her bowels tormented with dysentery trying to void food she hadn't eaten, water she had barely sipped, someone started shouting at her. Wake up and start fighting this thing! he shouted, and he sounded angry. Nobody told you you could quit this job, you signed on for the duration and it's not over. Start cooperating with your treatment! Start caring whether you live or die!

  Go away, she thought. Whoever you are, stop yelling at me.

  But he didn't stop. He came back and talked to her again, sternly, like a father talking to his daughter. He talked about the children who remained, reminded her of little stories about them, what they looked like, how they argued, things they had done and said. They're waiting for you. When you come out of this you'll be immune. No quarantine. You can go home.

  It's not my job anymore, she thought.

  Then she realized that he was talking to her like a soldier. He was an officer, commanding a soldier who had lost her courage. He was Reuben. He was telling her that their partnership had not been dissolved. Just because one of their children was gone didn't mean she had any right to abandon the others. They had five children together, and there were still four. And even if another died, and another—for it was possible, when the nictovirus made it to America, as it surely would—she was still the mother of however many children were left.

  She answered him in her mind, for her lips could not speak. It's easy for you to say that I need to go back to work, you're safely dead, nobody can tell you that your work isn't finished. Why is it always me? My chores are never done. I'm so tired. My head hurts. My mouth is so dry. It's so hot. So cold. So hot. Let me be finished with this.