Shadow of the Giant (8 page)

“Don’t push any harder than you can.”

“My wife helps me,” said Anton. “She’s very patient with this old man. And you know what? She’s pregnant. In the natural way!”

“Congratulations,” Bean said, knowing how hard this was for Anton, whose sexual desires did not tend in the same direction as his reproductive plans.

“My body knows how, even at this old age.” He laughed. “Doing what comes unnaturally.”

But his personal happiness aside, the picture Anton began to paint looked worse and worse. “His plan was simple enough,” said Anton. “He planned to destroy the human race.”

“Why? That makes no sense. Vengeance?”

“No, no. Destroy and
replace
. The virus he chose would go straight to the reproductive cells in the body. Every sperm, every ovum. They infest, but they don’t kill. They just snip and replace. All kinds of changes. Strength and speed of an East African. A few changes I don’t understand because nobody’s really mapped that part of the genome—not for function. And some I don’t even know where they fit on the human genome. I’d have to try them out and I can’t do that. That would be real science. Someone else. Later.”

“You’re sidestepping the big change,” said Bean.

“My little key,” said Anton. “His virus turns the key.”

“So he has no cure. No way to switch the key for intellectual ability without also triggering this perpetual growth pattern.”

“If he had it, he’d use it. There’s no advantage not to.”

“So it
is
a biological weapon.”

“Weapon? Something that affects only your children? Makes them die of giantism before they’re twenty? Oh, that would make armies run in panic.”

“What then?”

“Volescu thinks he’s God. Or at least he’s playing dress-up with God’s clothing. He’s trying to jump the whole human race to the next stage of evolution. Spread this disease so that
no
normal children can be born, ever again.”

“But that’s insane. Everybody dying so young—”

“No, no, Julian. No, not insane. Why do humans live so long? Mathematicians and poets, they burn out in their mid-twenties anyway. We live so long because of grandchildren. In a difficult world, grandparents can help ensure the survival of their grandchildren. The societies that kept their old people around and listened to them and respected them—that
fed
them—always do better. But that’s a community on the edge of starvation. Always at risk. Are we at risk so much today?”

“If these wars keep getting worse—”

“Yes, war,” said Anton. “Kill off a whole generation of men, yet the grandfathers keep their sexual potency. They can propagate the next generation even if the young ones are dead. But Volescu thinks we’re ready to move beyond planning for the deaths of young men.”

“So he doesn’t mind having generations that are less than twenty years.”

“Change society’s patterns. When were you ready to assume an adult role, Bean? When was your brain ready to go to work and change the world?”

“Age ten. Earlier, if I’d had good education.”

“So you get good education. All our schools change because children are ready to learn at age three. Age two. By age ten, if Volescu’s gene change takes place, the new generation is completely ready to take over for the old. Marry as early as possible. Breed like bunnies. Become giants. Irresistible in war. Until they keel over from heart attacks. Don’t you see? Instead of spending the young men in violent death, we send the old men—the eighteen-year-olds. While all the work in science, technology, building, planting, everything—all done by the young men. The ten-year-olds. All of them like you.”

“Not human anymore.”

“A different species, yes. The children of Homo sapiens. Homo lumens, maybe. Still capable of interbreeding, but the old style of human—they grow to be old, but they are never big. And they are never very smart. How can they compete? They are gone, Bean. Your people rule the world.”

“They wouldn’t be my people.”

“It’s good that you’re loyal to old humans like me. But you are something new, Bean. And if you have any children with my little key turned, no, they won’t be fast like what Volescu has designed, but they’ll be brilliant. Something new in the world. When they can talk to each other, instead of being alone like you, will you be able to keep up with them? Well, maybe yes, for
you
. But will
I
be able to keep up with them?”

Bean laughed bitterly. “Will Petra? That’s what you’re saying.”

“You had no parents to be humiliated when they found out that you were learning faster than they can teach.”

“Petra will love them just as much.”

“Yes, she will. But all her love won’t turn them human.”

“And here you told me that I’m definitely human. Not true after all.”

“Human in your loves, your hungers. In what makes you good and not evil. But in the speed of your life, the intellectual heights, are you not alone in this world?”

“Unless that virus is released.”

“How do you know it won’t still be released?” asked Anton. “How do you know he hasn’t already completed a batch and disseminated it? How do you know he didn’t infect himself and now he spreads it wherever he goes? In these past weeks since he got here, how many people in the Hegemony compound have had a cold? Sniffly nose, itchy penis, tender nipples—yes, he used
that
virus as his base, he has a sense of humor, an ugly kind.”

“I haven’t checked on the subtler symptoms, but we’ve had the normal number of colds.”

“Probably not,” said Anton. “He probably didn’t make himself a carrier. What would be the point? He wants other people to spread it.”

“You’re saying that it’s already out there.”

“Or he has a website that he has to check every week or every month. And then one month he doesn’t do it. So a signal is sent out to some of Achilles’s old network. The virus gets broken out and used. And all Volescu had to do to trigger it was…be a captive with no access to computers.”

“Was his research that complete?
Could
he have a working virus?”

“I don’t know. All his records were changed when he moved. When you sent him a message, you told me about that, yes? You sent him a message and he moved to Rwanda. Before that maybe he had an earlier version of the virus. Maybe not. Maybe this is the first time he put the changed human genes into the virus. If that’s the case, then no, it has not been released. But it could be. It’s ready. Ready
enough
. Maybe you caught him just in time.”

“And if it
is
out there, what?”

“Then I hope the baby my wife is pregnant with, I hope it’s one like you, and not one like me.”

“Why?”

“Your tragedy, Bean, is that you are the only one. If all the world will soon be like you, then you know what that makes you.”

“A damn fool.”

“It makes you Adam.”

Anton was unbearably complaisant about this. What Bean was, what was happening to him, he wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Not his child, and not Anton’s. But Anton could be forgiven for his idiotic wish. He had not been so small; he had not been this large. He could not know how…how larval the early stage was.

Like silkworms, the larva of my species does all the work of its life while it’s young. Then the big butterfly, that’s what people see, but all it has left to do in its life is get laid, then lay eggs, then die.

Bean talked it through with Petra, and then they went to Ferreira and Peter. Now the computer search was geared—with some urgency—toward detecting any kind of dead-man switch that Volescu was signing on to every day or every week. No doubt the dead-man switch was set to destroy itself as soon as its message was sent. Which meant that if it
was
already sent, it wouldn’t be there anymore. But somewhere there were tracks. Backups. Records of one kind or another. Nobody traveled the networks clean.

Not even Bean. He had made himself untraceable by constantly changing everything. But Volescu had stayed rooted in a lab here or a lab there, as long as he could. He might not have been as careful in his maneuvers through the nets. After all, Volescu might think he was brilliant, but he was no Bean.

Peter arrived in St. Petersburg ostensibly to be an observer and consultant at the Warsaw Pact trade talks that were part of Russia’s ongoing effort to set up an economic union to rival the western European one. And he did attend several meetings and kept his suite humming with conversations. Of course, his agenda was quite different from the official one, and he made good headway with—as expected—representatives from some of the smaller or less prosperous countries. Latvia. Estonia. Slovakia. Bulgaria. Bosnia. Albania. Croatia. Georgia. Every piece in the puzzle counted.

Not every piece was a country. Sometimes it was an individual.

That’s why Peter found himself walking in a park—not one of the magnificent parks in the heart of St. Petersburg, but a smallish park in Kohtla-Järve, a town in northeastern Estonia with delusions of city-hood. Peter wasn’t sure why Vlad had chosen a town that involved crossing borders—nothing could have made their encounter more obvious. And being in Estonia meant there’d be two intelligence services watching them, Estonia’s
and
Russia’s. Russia hadn’t forgotten history: They still watched over Estonia using their domestic spy service rather than the foreign one.

This park was, perhaps, the reason. There was a lake—no, a pond, a skating pond in winter, Peter was sure, since it was almost perfectly round and over-equipped with benches. Now, in the summer, it was undoubtedly advertised with a “suck blood and lay eggs all in one place” campaign among the mosquitos, which had shown up in profusion.

“Close your eyes,” said Vlad.

Peter expected some kind of spy ritual and, sighing, complied. His sigh left his mouth open, however, just enough to get a good taste of the insect repellant that Vlad sprayed in his face.

“Hands,” said Vlad. “Tastes bad but doesn’t kill. Hands.”

Peter held out his hands. They were sprayed, too.

“Don’t want you to lose more than a pint during our conversation. Horrible place. Nobody comes here in summer. So it isn’t prewired. Lots of clear meadows. We can see if anybody’s watching us.”

“Are you that closely watched?”

“Russian government not as understanding as Hegemon. Suriyawong stays in your confidence because you believe he always opposed Achilles. But me? Not trusted. So if you think I have influence, very wrong thinking, my friend.”

“Not why I’m here.”

“Yes, I know, you’re here for the trade talks.” Vlad grinned.

“Not much point to trade talks when smuggling and bribery make any kind of customs collection a joke anyway,” said Peter.

“I’m glad you understand our way of doing things,” said Vlad. “Trust no one that you haven’t bribed within the last half hour.”

“Don’t tell me you really have that thick a Russian accent, by the way,” said Peter. “You grew up on Battle School. You should speak Common like a native.”

“I do,” said Vlad—still in a thick Russian accent. “Except when my future depends on giving people no reason to remember how different I am. Accents are hard to learn and hard to hold on to. So I will maintain it now. I am not by nature a good actor.”

“May I call you Vlad?”

“May I call you Peter?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes also. Lowly strategic planner cannot be more formal than Hegemon of whole world.”

“You know just how much of the world I’m Hegemon over,” said Peter. “And as I said, that’s not why I’m here. Or not directly.”

“What then? You want to hire me? Not possible. They may not trust me here, but they certainly don’t want me going anywhere else. I’m a hero of the Russian people.”

“Vlad, if they trusted you, what do you think you’d be doing right now?”

Vlad laughed. “Leading the armies of Mother Russia, as Alai and Hot Soup and Virlomi and so many others are already doing. So many Alexanders.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that comparison,” said Peter. “But I see it another way. I see it as being the arms race that led up to World War I.”

Vlad thought for a moment. “And we Battle School brats are the arms race. If one nation has it, then another must have more. Yes, that’s what Achilles’s little venture in kidnapping was about.”

“My point is: Having a Battle School graduate—particularly one of Ender’s Jeesh—makes war more, not less, probable.”

“I don’t think so,” said Vlad. “Yes, Hot Soup and Alai are in the thick of things, but Virlomi wasn’t in the Jeesh. And the rest of the Jeesh—Bean and Petra are with you, struggling for world peace, yes? Like beauty pageant contestants? Dink is in a joint Anglo-American project which means he has had his balls cut off, militarily speaking. Shen is marking time in some ceremonial position in Tokyo. Dumper is a monk, I think, or whatever they call them. A shaman. In the Andes somewhere. Crazy Tom is at Sandhurst confined to a classroom. Carn Carby is in Australia where they may or may not have a military but nobody cares. And Fly Molo…well, he’s a busy boy in the Philippines. But not their president or even an important general.”

“That squares with my tally, though I think Carn would argue with you about the value of the Australian military.”

Vlad waved the objection aside. “My point is, most nations that have this ‘treasured national resource’ are far more concerned to keep us under observation and away from power than to actually use us to make war.”

Peter smiled. “Yes. Either they have you up to your elbows in blood, or they have you locked in a box. Anybody happily married?”

“We’re none of us even twenty-five yet. Well, maybe Dink. He always lied about his age. Most of us are in our teens or barely out of them.”

“They’re afraid of you. All the more so now, because the nations that actually
used
their Jeesh members in war are now governed by them.”

“If you can call ‘worldwide Islam’ a nation. I, personally, call it a riot with scripture.”

“Just don’t say that in Baghdad or Tehran,” said Peter.

“As if I could ever go to those places.”

“Vlad,” said Peter. “How would you like to be free of all this beauty?”

Vlad hooted with laughter. “So you’re here representing
Graff
?”

Peter was taken aback. “Graff came to you?”

“Be head of a colony. Get away from it all. All-expenses-paid vacation…that takes the rest of your life!”

“Not a vacation,” said Peter. “Very hard work. But at least you
have
a life.”

“So Peter the Hegemon wants Ender’s Jeesh offplanet. Forever.”

“Do you want my job?” said Peter. “I’ll resign it today if I thought it would go to you. You or any member of Ender’s Jeesh. You want it? Think you can
hold
it? Then it’s yours. I only have it because I wrote the Locke essays and stopped a war. But what have I done lately? Vlad, I don’t see you as a rival. How could I? What freedom do you have to oppose me?”

Vlad shrugged. “All right, so your motives are pure.”

“My motives are realistic,” said Peter. “Russia is not using you right now, but they haven’t killed you or locked you up. If they ever decide that war is desirable or necessary or unavoidable, how long before you get promoted and put into the thick of things? Especially if the war goes badly for a while. You are their nuclear arsenal.”

“Not really,” said Vlad. “Since my brain is supposed to be the pay-load of this particular missile, and my brain was defective enough to
seem
to trust Achilles, then I must not be as good as the other Jeesh members.”

“In a war against Han Tzu, how long before you commanded an army? Or at least were put in charge of strategy?”

“Fifteen minutes, give or take.”

“So. Is Russia more or less likely to go to war, knowing they have you?”

Vlad smiled a little and ducked his head. “Well, well. So the Hegemon wants me out of Russia so Russia won’t be so adventurous.”

“Not quite so simple,” said Peter. “There’ll come a day when much of the world will have merged their sovereignty—”

“By which you mean they will have surrendered it.”

“Into one government. It won’t be the big nations. Just a bunch of little ones. But unlike the United Nations and the League of Nations and even the Hegemony in its previous form, it will
not
be designed to keep the central government as powerless as possible. The nations in this league will maintain no separate army or navy or air force. They will not have separate control over their own borders—and they will collect no customs. Nor will they maintain a separate merchant marine. The Hegemony will have power over foreign policy, period, without rival. Why would Russia ever join such a confederacy?”

“It never would.”

Peter nodded. And waited.

“It never would unless it thought that it was the only safe thing to do.”

“Add the word ‘profitable’ into that sentence and you’ll be closer to right.”

“Russians are not Americans like you, Peter Wiggin. We don’t do things for profit motive.”

“So all those bribes go into charitable causes.”

“They keep the bookmakers and prostitutes of Russia from starving,” said Vlad. “Altruism at its finest.”

“Vlad,” said Peter. “All I’m saying is, think about this. Ender Wiggin did two great deeds for humanity. He wiped out the Buggers. And he never returned to Earth.”

Vlad turned on Peter with real fire in his eyes. “Do you think I don’t know who arranged for that?”

“I advocated it,” said Peter. “I wasn’t Hegemon then. But do you dare to tell me I was wrong? What would have happened if Ender himself were here on Earth? Everybody’s hostage. And if his homeland managed to keep him safe, what then? Ender Wiggin, the Bugger-slayer, now at the head of the armed forces of the dreaded United States. Think of the jockeying, the alliances, the preemptive attacks, all because this great and terrible weapon was in the hands of the nation that still thinks it has the right to judge and govern all the world.”

Vlad nodded. “So it’s just a happy coincidence that it left you without a rival for the Hegemony.”

“I have rivals, Vlad. The Caliph has millions of followers who believe that he’s the one God chose to be ruler over the earth.”

“Aren’t you making the same offer to Alai?”

“Vlad,” said Peter. “I don’t expect to persuade you. Only to inform you. If there comes a day when you think your best hope of safety is to leave Earth, post a note to me at the website I’ll link to you in an email. Or if you realize that the only chance your nation has of peace is for all its Battle School grads to disappear from Earth, tell me, and I’ll do all I can to get them safely out and off.”

“Unless I go to my superiors and tell them all that you just told me.”

“Tell them,” said Peter. “Tell them and lose the last shreds of freedom that you have.”

“So I won’t tell them,” said Vlad.

“And you’ll think about it. It will be there in the back of your mind.”

“And when all the Battle School grads are gone,” said Vlad, “there will be Peter. Brother of Ender Wiggin. The natural ruler of all humankind.”

“Yes, Vlad. The only chance we have of unity is to have a strong consensus leader. Our George Washington.”

“And that’s you.”

“It could be a Caliph, and we’d have a future as a Muslim world. Or we might all be made into vassals of the Middle Kingdom. Or—tell me, Vlad—should we prefer to be ruled over by the government that now treats you so kindly?”

“I’ll think about this,” said Vlad. “And
you
think about something else. Ambition was part of the basis by which we were chosen for Battle School. Just how self-sacrificing do you think we’ll be? Look at Virlomi. As shy a person as Battle School could possibly admit. But to achieve her purpose, she made herself into a god. And she does seem to play the part with enthusiasm, doesn’t she?”

“Ambition balanced against survival instinct,” said Peter. “Ambition leads you to great risk. But ambition never leads you to certain destruction.”

“Unless you’re a fool.”

“There are no fools in this park today,” said Peter. “Unless you count the spies lying underwater breathing through straws in order to overhear our conversation.”

“It’s the best the Estonians can do,” said Vlad.

“I’m glad to know that Russians haven’t forgotten their sense of humor.”

“Everybody knows a few dozen Estonian jokes.”

“Who do Estonians tell jokes about?” asked Peter.

“Estonians, of course. Only they don’t realize that they’re jokes.”

Laughing, they left the park and headed back, Peter to his chauffered car, Vlad to the train back to St. Petersburg.

Some Battle School graduates came to Ribeirão Preto to hear Peter’s invitation. Others, Peter contacted through mutual friends. Members of Ender’s Jeesh, Peter met with directly. Carn Carby in Australia. Dink Meeker and Crazy Tom in England. Shen in Tokyo. Fly Molo in Manila. And Dumper amid a council of Quechuas in the ruins of Macchu Picchu, his unofficial headquarters as he worked steadily to organize the Native Americans of South America.