Shadow of the Giant (7 page)

“You’re treating it like…like I was asking advice about a cruise. Which cruise line to go on. Or…or a poem, whether the rhymes are good.”

Again they looked at each other.

“And when you look at each other like that,” said Peter. “It’s like you’re laughing, only you’re too polite to show it.”

“We’re not polite people,” said Petra. “Especially not Julian.”

“No, that’s right, it’s not that you’re polite. It’s that you’re so much wrapped up in each other that you don’t
have
to laugh, it’s like you already laughed and only you two know about it.”

“This is all so interesting, Peter,” said Bean. “Can we go now?”

“He’s right,” said Petra. “We aren’t involved. Like he is, I mean. But it’s not that we don’t care, Peter. We care even more than you do. We just don’t want to get involved in
doing
anything about it because….”

They looked at each other again and then, without saying another word, they started to leave.

“Because you’re married,” said Peter. “Because you’re pregnant. Because you’re going to have a baby.”

“Babies,” said Bean. “And we’d like to get on with trying to find out what happened to them.”

“You’ve resigned from the human race is what you’ve done,” said Peter. “Because you invented marriage and children, suddenly you don’t have to be part of anything.”

“Opposite,” said Petra. “We’ve
joined
the human race. We’re like most people. Our life together is everything. Our children are everything. The rest is—we do what we have to. Anything to protect our children. And then beyond that, what we have to. But it doesn’t matter to us as much. I’m sorry that bothers you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” said Peter. “It did before I understood what I was seeing. Now I think…sure, it’s normal. I think my parents are like that. I think that’s why I thought they were stupid. Because they didn’t seem to care about the outside world. All they cared about was each other and us kids.”

“I think the therapy is proceeding nicely,” said Bean. “Now say three Hail Marys while we get on with our limited domestic concerns, which involve attack helicopters and getting to Volescu before he makes another change of address and identity.”

And they were gone.

Peter seethed. They thought they knew something that nobody else knew. They thought they knew what life was about. But they could only
have
a life like that because people like Peter—and Han Tzu and Alai and that wacko self-deifying Virlomi—actually concentrated on important matters and tried to make the world a better place.

Then Peter remembered that Bean had said almost exactly what his mother said. That Peter chose to be Hegemon, and now he had to work it out on his own.

Like a kid who tries out for the school play but he doesn’t like the part he’s been given. Only if he backs out now the show can’t go on because he has no understudy. So he’s got to stick it out.

Got to figure out how to save the world, now that he’s got himself made Hegemon.

Here’s what I want to have happen, thought Peter. I want every damn Battle School graduate off Earth.
They
are the complicating factor in every country. Mother wants them to have a life? Me too—a nice long life on another planet.

But to get them offplanet would require getting the cooperation of Graff. And Peter had the sneaking suspicion that Graff didn’t actually want Peter to be an effective, powerful Hegemon. Why should Graff accept the Battle School kids into colony ships? They’d be a disruptive force in any colony they were in.

What about this? A colony of nothing
but
Battle School grads. If they bred true, they’d be the smartest military minds in the galaxy.

Then they’d come home and take over Earth.

OK, not that.

Still, it was the seed of a good idea. In the eyes of the people, it was the Battle School that won the war against the Buggers. They all wanted their armies to be led by Battle Schoolers. Which was why the Battle Schoolers were virtually the slaves of their nations’ military.

So I’ll do as Mother suggested. I’ll set them free.

Then they can all marry like Bean and Petra and live happily ever after while other people—responsible people—did the hard work of running the world.

In India, the response to Virlomi’s message was immediate and fierce. That very night, in a dozen incidents scattered across India, Muslim soldiers committed acts of provocation—or, as they saw it, retaliation or defiance to Virlomi’s blasphemous, outrageous accusation. Thereby, of course, proving those accusations in the eyes of many.

But it wasn’t riots they faced this time. It was an implacable mob determined to destroy them no matter what the cost. It was Shiva. So yes, the streets were littered with the dead bodies of Hindu civilians. But the Muslim soldiers’ bodies could not be found. Or at least, could not be reassembled.

Reports of the bloodshed flowed into Virlomi’s mobile headquarters. Including plenty of video. She had a selected version out on the web within hours. Lots of pictures of Muslims committing acts of provocation, and then firing on the rioters. No footage of human waves swarming over the machine-gun-firing Muslim soldiers and tearing them to pieces. What the world would
see
was Muslims offending Hindu religion and then massacring civilians. They would only hear about the fact that among the Muslim soldiers, there were no survivors.

Bean and Petra boarded attack helicopters and headed out across the ocean to Africa. Bean had heard from Rackham and knew where Volescu was.

It would have to be Fortress Rwanda, of course. The Switzerland of Africa, they called it sometimes—but it only maintained its independence and neutrality because meter for meter, it was probably the most fortified nation on Earth.

They could never have fought their way into Rwandan airspace. But a chatty phone call from Peter to Felix Starman, the prime minister, won them a safe passage for two Hegemony jet choppers and twenty soldiers—along with uploads of detailed maps of the medical center where Volescu was operating.

Under another name, of course. For Rwanda had been one of the places where Achilles maintained safe houses and spy cells. What Volescu could not have known was that Peter’s computer experts had been able to enter Achilles’s clandestine computer network through Suriyawong’s computer, and cell by cell, Achilles’s organization had either been coopted, subverted, or destroyed.

Volescu was depending on a Rwandan cell that had been reported to the Rwandan government. Felix Starman had chosen to continue to operate the cell through intermediaries, so the members of the cell did not realize that they were actually working for the Rwandan government.

So it was no small thing for Starman—who insisted that his self-chosen name should be translated, so that everyone was aware of the rather odd image he wished to convey—to give up this asset. While Bean and Petra took Volescu, the Rwandan police would be arresting all the other members of Achilles’s organization. They even promised that Hegemony experts could monitor the Rwandan deconstruction of the Achillean computers.

The beat-beat-beat of chopper blades was as good as a police siren when it came to announcing their approach, so they set down a kilometer away from the medical center. Four soldiers on each chopper were equipped with slimline motorcycles, and they took off to secure all the vehicle exit points. The rest advanced through the yards and parking lots of houses, apartment buildings, and small businesses.

Since the entire population of Rwanda was trained as soldiers, they knew enough to stay indoors as they watched the dark-green-clad soldiers of the Hegemony jog cross-lots, from cover to cover. They might try to telephone the government to find out what was happening, but cellphones were getting a “we’re making your service better, please have patience” message and landlines were hearing that “all circuits are busy.”

Petra was pregnant enough now that she didn’t jog along with the troops. And Bean was so distinctively large that he, too, remained in the choppers with the pilots. But Bean had trained these men and had no doubt of their ability. Besides, Suriyawong, still trying to rehabilitate himself even though Bean had assured him that he had his full trust, was eager to show that he could fulfil the mission perfectly without Bean’s direct supervision.

So it was only fifteen minutes before Suriyawong texted them “fa,” which either meant
fait accompli
or the fourth note of the musical scale, depending on what mood Bean was in. This time when he saw the message he sang it out, and the choppers rose into the air.

They came down in the parking lot of the medical complex. As befitted a rich country like Rwanda, it was state of the art; but the architecture was designed to make the place feel homelike to its patients. So it looked for all the world like a village, with every room that did not need a controlled environment open to whatever breezes blew.

Volescu was being held in the climate-controlled lab where he was arrested. He nodded gravely to Bean and Petra when they came inside. “How nice to see you again,” he said.

“Was anything you told us true?” asked Petra. Her voice was calm, but she wasn’t going to pretend that pleasantries were in order.

Volescu gave a little smile and shrug. “Doing what the boy wanted seemed to be a good idea at the time. He promised me…this.”

“A place to conduct illegal research?” asked Bean.

“Oddly enough,” said Volescu, “in our new days of freedom now that the Hegemony is powerless, my research is not illegal here. So I don’t have to be prepared to dispose of my subjects at a moment’s notice.”

Bean looked at Petra. “He still says ‘dispose of’ instead of ‘murder.’”

Volescu’s smile grew sad. “How I wish I had all your brothers,” he said. “But that’s not why you’re here. I already served my time and was legally released.”

“We want our babies back,” said Petra. “All eight of them. Unless there are more.”

“There were never more than eight,” said Volescu. “I was observed the whole time, as you arranged, and there is no way I could have faked the number. Nor could I have faked the destruction of the three discards.”

“I’ve already thought of several,” said Bean. “The most obvious being that the three you pretended to find had Anton’s Key turned had already been taken away. What you destroyed were someone else’s embryos. Or nothing at all.”

“If you know so much, why do you need me?” asked Volescu.

“Eight names and addresses,” said Bean. “The women who are bearing our babies.”

“Even if I knew,” said Volescu, “what purpose would be served by telling? None of them have Anton’s Key. They aren’t worth studying.”

“There
is
no nondestructive test,” said Petra. “So you don’t know which of them had Anton’s Key turned. You would have kept them all. You would have implanted them all.”

“Again, since you know more than I do, by all means tell me when you find them. I’d love to know what Achilles did with the five survivors.”

Bean walked up to his biological half-uncle. He towered over him.

“My,” said Volescu. “What big teeth you have.”

Bean took him by the shoulders. Volescu’s arms seemed so small and fragile within the grasp of Bean’s huge hands. Bean probed and pressed with his fingers. Volescu winced.

Bean’s hands wandered idly along Volescu’s shoulders until his right hand nested the back of the man’s neck, and his thumb played with the point of Volescu’s larynx. “Lie to me again,” whispered Bean.

“You’d think,” said Volescu, “that someone who used to be small would know better than to be a bully.”

“We all used to be small,” said Petra. “Let go of his neck, Bean.”

“Let me crush his larynx just a little.”

“He’s too confident,” said Petra. “He’s very sure we’ll never find them.”

“So many babies,” said Volescu genially. “So little time.”

“He’s counting on us not torturing him,” said Bean.

“Or maybe he wants us to,” said Petra. “Who knows how his brain works? The only difference between Volescu and Achilles is the size of their ambitions. Volescu’s dreams are so very, very small.”

Volescu’s eyes were welling up with tears. “I still think of you as my only son,” he said to Bean. “It grieves me that we don’t communicate any better than this.”

Bean’s thumb massaged the skin of Volescu’s throat in circles around the point of his larynx.

“It surprises me that you can always find a place to do your sick little brand of science,” said Petra. “But this lab is closed now. The Rwandan government will have its scientists go over it to find out what you were doing.”

“Always I do the work while others get the credit,” said Volescu.

“Do you see how I nearly encircle his throat with just one hand?” said Bean.

“Let’s take him back to Ribeirão Preto, Julian.”

“That would be nice,” said Volescu. “How are my sister and her husband doing? Or do you see them anymore, now that you’ve got to be so important?”

“He’s talking about my family,” said Bean, “as if he were not the monster who cloned my brother illegally and then murdered all but one of the clones.”

“They’ve gone back to Greece,” said Petra. “Please don’t kill him, Bean. Please.”

“Remind me why.”

“Because we’re good people,” said Petra.

Volescu laughed. “You live by murder. How many people have you both killed? And if we add in all the Buggers you slaughtered out in space….”

“All right,” said Petra. “Go ahead and kill him.”

Bean tightened his fingers. Not that much, really. But Volescu made a strangled sound in his throat and in moments his eyes were bugging out.

At that moment Suriyawong entered the lab. “General Delphiki, sir,” he said.

“Just a minute, Suri,” said Petra. “He’s killing somebody.”

“Sir,” said Suriyawong. “This is a war materials lab.”

Bean relaxed his grip. “Still genetic research?”

“Several of the other scientists working here had misgivings about Volescu’s work and the sources of his grants. They were collecting evidence. Not much to collect. But everything points to Volescu breeding a common-cold virus that would carry genetic alterations.”

“That wouldn’t affect adults,” said Bean.

“I shouldn’t have said war materials,” said Suriyawong, “but I thought that would stop your little game of strangulation faster.”

“What is it, then?” asked Bean.

“It’s a project to alter the human genome,” said Suriyawong.

“We know that’s what he worked with,” said Petra.

“But not with viruses as carriers,” said Bean. “What were you doing here, Volescu?”

Volescu choked out some words. “Fulfilling the terms of my grants.”

“Grants from whom?”

“The grant granters,” said Volescu.

“Lock this place down,” said Bean to Suriyawong. “I’ll call the Hegemon to request a Rwandan perimeter guard.”

“I think,” said Petra, “that our brilliant scientist friend had some bizarre notion of remaking the human race.”

“We need Anton to look at what this sick little disciple of his was doing,” said Bean.

“Suri,” said Petra. “Bean wasn’t really going to murder him.”

“Yes I was,” said Bean.

“I would have stopped him,” said Petra.

Suri barked out a little laugh. “Sometimes people need killing. So far, Bean’s record is one for one.”

Petra stopped going along on the interviews with Volescu. They could hardly be called interrogations—direct questions led nowhere, threats seemed to mean nothing. It was maddening and stressful and she hated the way he looked at her. Looked at her belly, which was showing her pregnancy more and more every day.

But she still kept on top of what they were calling, for lack of a better name, the Volescu project. The head of electronic security, Ferreira, was working most intensely on trying to track down everything Volescu had been doing with his computer and tracking his various identities through the nets. But Petra made sure that the database searches and indexes that they already had under way continued. These babies were out there somewhere, implanted in surrogate mothers, and at some point they were going to give birth. Volescu wouldn’t risk their lives by forbidding the mothers access to good medical care—in fact, that was bound to be a minimum. So they would be born in hospitals, their births registered.

How they would find these babies in the millions that would be born in that timeframe, Petra couldn’t begin to guess. But they’d collect the data and index it on every conceivably useful variable so it was there to work with when they finally figured out some identifying marker.

Meanwhile, Bean conducted the interviews with Volescu. They were yielding some information that proved accurate, but it was hard for Bean to decide whether Volescu was unconsciously letting useful information slip, or deliberately toying with them by bleeding out little bits of information that he knew would not be terribly useful in the end.

When he wasn’t with Volescu, Bean was with Anton, who had come away from retirement and accepted a heavy level of drugs to control his aversive reaction to working in his field of science. “I tell myself every day,” he said to Bean, “that I’m not doing science, I’m merely grading a student’s assignments. It helps. But I still throw up. This is not good for me.”