Shadow Puppets (7 page)

She was seeing comprehension in some of the eyes around her.

“Who can build such a wall?” asked one of the women.

“Don’t all of you add to it? It’s built a stone or two at a time. Every time you pass, you bring a stone, you drop it there.” She was filling her pitchers now. “Before I carry these pitchers back, I pick up a small stone in each hand. When I pass over the wall, I drop the stones. That’s how I’ve seen it done in the other villages with walls.”

“Which other villages?” demanded the man.

“I don’t remember their names,” said Virlomi. “I only know that they had Walls of India. But I can see that none of you knew about it, so perhaps it was only some child playing a prank, and not a wall after all.”

“No,” said one of the women. “I’ve seen people add to it before.” She nodded firmly. Even though Virlomi had made up this wall only this morning, and no one but her had ever added to one, she understood what the woman meant by the lie. She wanted to be part of it. She wanted to help create this new flag of India.

“It’s all right, then, for women to do it?” asked one of the women doubtfully.

“Oh, of course,” said Virlomi. “Men are fighters. Women build the walls.”

She picked up her stones and gripped them between her palms and the jar handles. She did not look back to see if any of the others also picked up stones. She knew, from their footfalls, that many of them—perhaps all—were following her, but she did not look back. When she reached what was left of her wall, she did not try to restore any of the stones the man had kicked away. Instead she simply
dropped her two stones in the middle of the largest gap in the line. Then she walked on, still without looking back.

But she heard a few plunks of stones being dropped into the dusty road.

She found occasion twice more during the day to walk back for more water, and each time found more women at the well, and went through the same little drama.

The next day, when she left the town, she saw that the wall was no longer a few stones making a broken line. It crossed the road solidly from side to side, and it was as much as two hands high in places. People made a point of stepping over it, never walking around, never kicking it. And most dropped a stone or two as they passed.

Virlomi went from village to village, each time pretending that she was only passing along a custom she had seen in other places. In a few places, angry men swept away the stones, too proud of their well-kept road to catch the vision she offered. But in those places she simply made, not a wall, but a pile of stones on both sides of the road, and soon the village women began to add to her piles so they grew into sizable heaps of stone, narrowing the road, the stones too numerous to be kicked or swept out of the way. Eventually they, too, would become walls.

In the third week she came for the first time to a village that really did already have a wall. She did not explain anything to them, for they already knew—the word was spreading without her intervention. She only added to the wall and moved quickly on.

It was still only one small corner of southern India, she knew. But it was spreading. It had a life of its own. Soon the Chinese would notice. Soon they would begin tearing down the walls, sending bulldozers to clear the road—or conscripting Indians to move the stones themselves.

And when their walls were torn down, or the people were forced to remove their walls, the real struggle would begin. For now the Chinese would be reaching down into every village, destroying some
thing that the people wanted to have. Something that meant “India” to them. That’s what the secret meaning of the wall had been from the moment she started dropping stones to make the first one.

The wall existed precisely so that the Chinese would tear it down. And she named the wall the “flag of India” precisely so that when the people saw their walls destroyed, they would see and feel the destruction of India. Their nation. A nation of wallbuilders.

And so, as soon as the Chinese turned their backs, the Indians walking from place to place would carry stones and drop them in the road, and the wall would grow again.

What would the Chinese do about it? Arrest everyone who carried stones? Make stones illegal? Stones were not a riot. Stones did not threaten soldiers. Stones were not sabotage. Stones were not a boycott. The walls were easily bypassed or pushed aside. It caused the Chinese no harm at all.

Yet it would provoke them into making the Indian people feel the boot of the oppressor.

The walls were like a mosquito bite, making the Chinese itch but never bleed. Not an injury, just an annoyance. But it infected the new Chinese Empire with a disease. A fatal one, Virlomi hoped.

On she walked through the heat of the dry season, working her way back and forth, avoiding big cities and major highways, zigzagging her way northward. Nowhere did anyone identify her as the inventor of the walls. She did not even hear rumors of her existence. All the stories spoke of the wall-building as having begun somewhere else.

They were called by many names, these walls. The Flag of India. The Great Indian Wall. The Wall of Women. Even names that Virlomi had never imagined. The Wall of Peace. The Taj Mahal. The Children of India. The Indian Harvest.

All the names were poetry to her. All the names said freedom.

When Suriyawong brought Achilles out of China, Peter knew exactly what he meant to do with Achilles.

He would study him for as long as he considered him harmless, and then turn him over to, say, Pakistan for trial.

Peter had prepared very carefully for Achilles’s arrival. Every computer terminal in the Hegemony already had shepherds installed, recording every keystroke and taking snapshots of every text page and picture displayed. Most of this was discarded after a fairly short time, but anything Achilles did would be kept and studied, as a way of tracing all his connections and identifying his networks.

Meanwhile, Peter would offer him assignments and see what he did with them. There was no chance that Achilles would, even for a
moment, act in the interest of the Hegemony, but he might be useful if Peter kept him on a short enough tether. The trick would be to get as much use out of him as possible, learn as much as possible, but then neutralize him before he could dish up the betrayal he would, without question, be cooking up.

Peter had toyed with the idea of keeping Achilles locked up for a while before actually letting him take part in the operations of the Hegemony. But that sort of thing was only effective if the subject was susceptible to such human emotions as fear or gratitude. It would be wasted on Achilles.

So as soon as Achilles had had a chance to clean up after his flights across the Pacific and over the Andes, Peter invited him to lunch.

Achilles came, of course, and rather surprised Peter by not seeming to do anything at all. He thanked him for rescuing him and for lunch in virtually the same tone—sincerely but not extravagantly grateful. His conversation was informal, pleasant, sometimes funny but never seeming to try for humor. He did not bring up anything about world affairs, the recent wars, why he had been arrested in China, or even a single question about why Peter had rescued him or what he planned to do with him now.

He did not ask Peter if there was going to be a war crimes trial.

And yet he did not seem to be evading anything at all. It seemed as though Peter had only to ask what it had been like, betraying India and subverting Thailand so all of south Asia dropped into his hands like a ripe papaya, and Achilles would tell several interesting anecdotes about it and then move on to discuss the kidnapping of the children from Ender’s group at Command School.

But because Peter did not bring it up, Achilles modestly refrained from talking about his achievements.

“I wondered,” said Peter, “if you wanted to take a break from working for world peace, or if you’d like to lend a hand around here.”

Achilles did not bat an eye at the bitter irony, but instead he
seemed to take Peter’s words at face value. “I don’t know that I’d be much use,” he said. “I’ve been something of an orientalist lately, but I’d have to say that the position your soldiers found me in shows that I wasn’t a very good one.”

“Nonsense,” said Peter, “everyone makes an error now and then. I suspect your only error was too much success. Is it Buddhism, Taoism, or Confucianism that teaches that it is a mistake to do something perfectly? Because it would provoke resentment, and therefore wouldn’t be perfect after all?”

“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 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 skillfully 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 favors 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 realize 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 be 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 behavior, 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 realized 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 cliche of the mother of a ruler, vain about her close association with his power.