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

  “I think it was the Greeks,” said Achilles. ”Perfection arouses the envy of the gods.”

  “Or the Communists,” said Peter. “Snick off the heads of any blades of grass that rise higher than the rest of the lawn.”

  “If you think I have any value,” said Achilles, “I’d be glad to do whatever is within my abilities.”

  “Thank you for not saying ‘my poor abilities,’” said Peter. “We both know you’re a master of the great game, and I, for one, never intend to try to play head-to-head against you.”

  “I’m sure you’d win handily,” said Achilles.

  “Why would you think that?” said Peter, disappointed at what seemed, for the first time, like flattery.

  “Because,” said Achilles, “it’s hard to win when your opponent holds all the cards.”

  Not flattery, then, but a realistic assessment of the situation.

  Or. . . maybe flattery after all, because of course Peter did not hold all the cards. Achilles almost certainly had plenty of them left, once he was in a position to get to them.

  Peter found that Achilles could be very charming. He had a sort of reticence about him. He walked rather slowly-perhaps a habit that originated before the surgery that fixed his gimp leg-and made no effort to dominate a conversation, though he was not uncomfortably silent, either. He was almost nondescript. Charmingly nondescript- was such a thing possible?

  Peter had lunch with him three times a week and each time gave him various assignments. Peter gave him a letterhead and a net identity that anointed him “Assistant to the Hegemon,” but of course that only meant that, in a world where the Hegemon’s power consisted of the fading remnants of the unity that had been forced on the world during the Formic Wars, Achilles had been granted the shadow of a shadow of power

  “Our authority,” Peter remarked to him at their second lunch, “lies very lightly on the reins of world government.”

  “The horses seem so comfortable it’s almost as though they were not being guided at all,” said Achilles, entering into the joke without a smile.

  “We govern so skilfully that we never need to use spurs.”

  “Which is a good thing,” said Achilles. “Spurs being in short supply around here these days.”

  But just because the Hegemony was very nearly an empty shell in terms of actual power did not mean there was no real work to do. Quite the contrary. When one has no power, Peter knew, then the only influence one has comes, not from fear, but from the perception that one has useful favours to offer. There were plenty of institutions and customs left over from the decades when the Triumvirate of Hegemon, Polemarch, and Strategos had governed the human race.

  Newly formed governments in various countries were formed on shaky legal ground; a visit from Peter was often quite helpful in giving the illusion of legitimacy. There were countries that owed money to the Hegemony, and since there was no chance of collecting it, the Hegemon could win favor by making a big deal of forgiving the accruing interest because of various noble actions on the part of a government. Thus when Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia rushed aid to Italy, sending a fleet when Venice was plagued with a flood and an earthquake at the same time, they were all given amnesty on interest. “Your generous assistance helps bind the world together, which is all that the Hegemony hopes to achieve.” It was a chance for the heads of government to get their positive coverage and face time in the vids.

  And they also knew that as long as it didn’t cost them much, keeping the Hegemony in play was a good idea, since it and the Muslims were the only groups openly opposing China’s expansionism. What if China turned out to have ambitions beyond the empire it had already conquered? What if the world beyond the Great Wall suddenly had to unite just to survive? Wouldn’t it be good to have a viable Hegemon ready to assume leadership? And the Hegemon, young as he might be, was the brother of the great Ender Wiggin, wasn’t he?

  There were lesser tasks to be accomplished, too. Hegemony libraries that needed to try to secure local funding. Hegemony police stations all over the world whose archives from the old days needed to stay under Hegemony control even though all the funding came from local sources. Some nasty things had been done as part of the war effort, and there were still plenty of people alive who wanted those archives sealed. Yet there were also powerful people who wanted to make sure the archives were not destroyed. Peter was very careful not to let anything uncomfortable come to light from any of the archives-but was not above letting an uncooperative government know that even if they seized the archive within their own boundaries, there were other archives with duplicate records that were under the control of rival nations.

  Ah, the balancing act. And each negotiation, each trade-off, each favor done and favor asked for, Peter treated very carefully, for it was vital that he always get more than he gave, creating the illusion in other nations of more influence and power than he actually had.

  For the more influence and power they believed he had, the more influence and power he actually had. The reality lagged far behind the illusion, but that’s why it became all the more important to maintain the illusion perfectly.

  Achilles could be very helpful at that.

  And because he would almost certainly use his opportunities for his own advantage, letting him have a broad range of action would invite him to expose his plans in ways that Peter’s spy systems would surely catch. “You won’t catch a fish if you hold the hook in one hand and the bait in the other. You need to put them together, and give them a lot of string.” Peter’s father had said this, and more than once, too, which implied that the poor fellow thought it was clever rather than obvious. But it was obvious because it was true. To get Achilles to reveal his secrets, Peter had to give him the ability to communicate with the outside world at will.

  But he couldn’t make it too easy, either, or Achilles would guess what Peter really wanted. Therefore Peter, with a great show of embarrassment, put severe restrictions on Achilles’s access to the nets. “I hope you realise that there’s too much history for me simply to give you carte blanche,” he explained. “In time, of course, these restrictions might be lifted, but for now you may write only messages that pertain directly to your assigned tasks, and all your requests to send emails will need to he cleared by my office.”

  Achilles smiled. “I’m sure your added sense of safety will more than compensate for the delays in what I accomplish.”

  “I hope we’ll all stay safe,” said Peter.

  This was about as close as Peter and Achilles came to admitting that their relationship was that of jailer to prisoner, or perhaps that of a monarch to a thrice-traitorous courtier.

  But to Peter’s chagrin, his spy systems turned up. . . nothing. If Achilles sent coded messages to old confederates, Peter could not detect how. The Hegemony compound was in a broadcast bubble, so that no electronic transmissions could enter or leave except through the instruments controlled and monitored by Peter.

  Was it possible that Achilles was not even attempting to contact the network of contacts he had been using during his astonishing (and, with luck, permanently terminated) career?

  Maybe all his contacts had been burned by one betrayal or another. Certainly Achilles’s Russian network had to have given up on him in disgust. His Indian and Thai contacts were obviously useless now. But wouldn’t he still have some kind of network in place in Europe and the Americas?

  Did he already have someone within the Hegemony who was his ally? Someone who was sending messages for him, bringing him information, carrying out his errands?

  At that point Peter could not help but remember his mother’s actions back when Achilles first arrived. It began during Peter’s first meeting with him, when the head custodian of all the compound buildings reported to him that Mrs. Wiggin had attempted at first simply to take a key to Achilles’s room, and when she was caught at it, to ask for and finally demand it. Her excuse, she said, was that she had to make sure the empregadas had done a better
job cleaning the room of such an important guest than they did on her house.

  When Peter emailed her a query about her behaviour, she got snippy. Mother had long been frustrated by the fact that she was unable to do any meaningful work. In vain did he point out that she could continue her researches and writing, and consult with colleagues by email, as many in her field did by preference. She kept insisting that she wanted to be involved in Hegemony affairs. “Everyone else is,” she said. Peter had interpreted this housekeeping venture as more of the same.

  Now her actions offered a different possible meaning. Was she trying to leave a message for Achilles? Was she on a more definite errand, like sweeping the room for bugs? That was absurd-what did Mother know of electronic surveillance?

  Peter watched the vid of Mother’s attempt to steal the key, and her attitude during the confrontation with the empregada who caught her and, after a short time, the housekeeper. Mother was imperious, demanding, impatient.

  He had never seen this side of her.

  The second time he watched the scene, though, he realised that from the beginning she was tense. Upset. Whatever she was doing, she wasn’t used to it. Was reluctant to do it. And when she was confronted, she was not reacting honestly, as Mother normally would. She instead seemed to become someone else. The cliché of the mother of a ruler, vain about her close association with his power.

  She was acting.

  And acting quite well, since the housekeeper and empregada believed the performance, and Peter had believed it, too, on the first viewing.

  It had never occurred to him that Mother might be good at acting.

  So good that the only way he knew that it was an act was because she had never shown him the slightest sign of being impressed by his power, or of enjoying it in any way. She had always been irritated by the things that his position required her and Father to do.

  What if the Theresa Wiggin on this vid was the real Theresa Wiggin, and the one he had seen at home for all these years was the act- the performance, literally, of a lifetime?

  Was it possible that Mother was somehow involved with Achilles? Had he corrupted her somehow? It might have happened a year ago, or even earlier. It certainly wouldn’t have been a bribe. But perhaps it was extortion that turned her. A threat from Achilles: I can kill your son at any time, so you’d better cooperate with me.

  But that was absurd, too. Now that Achilles was in Peter’s power, why would she continue to fear such a threat? It was something else.

  Or nothing else. It was unthinkable that Mother could be betraying him for any reason. She would have told him. Mother was like a child that way, showing everything-excitement, dismay, anger, disappointment, surprise-the moment she felt it, saying whatever came to mind. She could never sustain a secret like that. Peter and Valentine used to laugh about how obvious Mother was in everything she did-they had never yet been surprised by their birthday and Christmas gifts, not by the main gift, anyway, because Mother just couldn’t keep a secret, she kept letting hints slip out.

  Or was that, too, an act?

  No, no, that would be madness, that would imply that Mother had been acting his whole life, and why would she do that?

  It made no sense, and he had to make sense of it. So he invited his father to his office.

  “What did you want to see me about, Peter?” asked Father, standing near the door.

  “Sit down, Dad, for heaven’s sake, you’re standing there like a junior employee expecting to be sacked.”

  “Laid off, anyway,” said Father with a thin smile. “Your budget shrinks month by month.”

  “I thought we’d solve that by printing our own money,” said Peter.

  “Good idea,” said Father. “A sort of international money that could be equally worthless in every country, so that it becomes the benchmark against which all other currencies are weighed. The dollar is worth a hundred billion ‘hedges’-that’s a good name for it, don’t you think? The ‘hedge’?-and the yen is worth twenty trillion, and so on.”

  “That’s assuming that we could keep the value just above zero, said Peter. “The computers would all crash if it ever became truly worthless.”

  “But here’s the danger,” said Father. “What if it accidentally became worth something? It might cause a depression as other currencies actually fell against the hedge.”

  Peter laughed.

  “We’re both busy,” said Father. “What did you want to see me about?”

  Peter showed him the vid.

  Father shook his head through most of it. “Theresa, Theresa,” he murmured at the end.

  “What is she trying to do?” asked Peter.

  “Well, obviously, she’s figured out a way to kill Achilles and it requires getting into his room. Now she’ll have to think of another way.”

  Peter was astounded. “Kill Achilles? You can’t be serious.”

  “Well, I can’t think of any other reason for her to be doing this. You don’t think she actually cares if his room is clean, do you? More likely she’d carry a basketful of roaches and disease-carrying lice into the room.”

  “She hates him? She never said anything about that.”

  “To you,” said Father

  “So she’s told you she wants to kill him?”

  “Of course not. If she had, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to you. I don’t betray her confidences. But since she hasn’t seen fit to tell me what’s going on, I’m perfectly free to give you my best guess, and my best guess is that Theresa has decided that Achilles poses a danger to you-not to mention the whole human race-and so she’s decided to kill him. It really makes sense, once you know how your mother thinks.”

  “Mother doesn’t even kill spiders.”

  “Oh, she kills them just fine when you and I aren’t there. You don’t think she stands in the middle of the room and goes eek-eekeek until we come home, do you?”

  “You’re telling me that my mother is capable of murder?”

  “Pre-emptive assassination,” said Father. “And no, I don’t think she’s capable of it. But I think she thinks she’s capable of it.” He thought for a moment. “And she might be right. The female of the species is more deadly than the male, as they say.”

  “That makes no sense,” said Peter.

  “Well, then, I guess you wasted your time and mine bringing me down here. I’m probably wrong anyway. There’s probably a much more rational explanation. Like... she really cares how well the maids do their work. Or... she’s hoping to have a love affair with a serial killer who wants to rule the world.”

  “Thanks, Father,” said Peter. “You’ve been very helpful. Now I know that I was raised by an insane woman and I never knew it.”

  “Peter, my boy, you don’t know either of us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You study everybody else, but your mother and I are like air to you: you just breathe us without noticing we’re there. But that’s all right, that’s how parents are supposed to be in their children’s lives. Unconditional love, right? Don’t you suppose that’s the difference between Achilles and you? That you had parents who loved you, and he didn’t?”

  “You loved Ender and Valentine,” said Peter. It slipped out before he realised what he was saying.

  “And not you?” said Father. “Oh. My mistake. I guess there is no difference between your upbringing and Achilles’s. Too bad, really. Have a nice day, son!”

  Peter tried to call him back, but Father pretended not to have heard him and went on his way, whistling the Marseillaise, of all things.

  All right, so his suspicions of Mother were absurd, though Father had a twisted way of saying so. What a clever family he had, everybody always making a puzzle or a drama out of everything. Or a comedy. That’s what he’d just played out with his father, wasn’t it? A farce. An absurdity.