Ambul was one of those who discovered that if you’re tired enough, you can indeed sleep sitting up on a hard bench in a truck with no springs on a rough road. You just can’t sleep for very long at a time.
He woke up once to find them moving smoothly along a well-paved road. He stayed awake just long enough to think, Is our commander an idiot, using a highway like this? But he didn’t care enough about it to stay awake.
The trucks stopped after only three hours of driving. Everyone was still exhausted, but they had much to do before they could get a real meal, and genuine sleep. The commander had called a halt beside
a bridge. He had the men unload everything from the trucks. Then they pushed them off the bridge into the stream.
Ambul thought: That was a foolish mistake. They should have left them neatly parked, and not together, so that air surveillance would not recognize them.
But no, speed was more important than concealment. Besides, the Chinese air force was otherwise engaged. Ambul doubted there’d be many planes available for surveillance any time soon.
While the noncoms were distributing captured supplies among the men, they were told some of what their commander had learned from listening to the captured radios during the drive. The enemy kept speaking of them as paratroopers and assumed they were heading for a major military objective or some rendezvous point. “They don’t know who we are or what we’re doing, and they’re looking for us in all the wrong places,” said the commander. “That won’t last long, but it’s the reason we weren’t blown while we were driving along. Plus, they think we’re at least a thousand men.”
They had made good progress inland, those hours on the road. The terrain was almost hilly here, and despite the fact that every arable inch of China had been under cultivation for millennia, there was some fairly wild country here. They might actually get far enough from this road before night that they could get a decent sleep before taking off again.
Of course, they would do most of their movement by night, most of their sleeping by day.
If they lived through the night. If they survived another day.
Carrying more now than they had when they first came ashore the previous night, they staggered off the road and into the woods alongside the stream. Heading west. Upstream. Inland.
To: Porto%[email protected]
From: Locke%[email protected]
Re: Ripe
Encryption seed: *********
Decryption key: ****************
Is this Bean or Petra? Or both?
After all his subtle strategies and big surprises, it was a petty murder attempt that tagged him. I don’t know if the news of the shooting down of an IF shuttle even penetrated the war coverage where you are, but he thought I was aboard. I wasn’t, but the Chinese named him as the smoke, and suddenly the IF has legal basis for an Earthside operation. The Brazilian government is cooperating, has the compound on lockdown.
The only trouble is, the compound seems to be defended by your little army. We want to do this without loss of life, but
you trained your soldiers very well, and Suri doesn’t respond to my feeble attempts to contact him. Before I left, he seemed to be in Achilles’s pocket. That might have been protective coloration, but who knows what happened on that return trip from China?
Achilles has a way of getting to people. An Indian officer at MinCol who had known Graff for years was the one who fingered me for the shuttle, because the fact that his family was in a camp in China was used to control him. Does Achilles have a way to control Suri? If Suri commands the soldiers to protect Achilles, will they?
Would it make a difference if you were there? I will be there, but I’m afraid I never quite trusted your assurance that the soldiers would absolutely obey me. I have a feeling that I lost face when I fled the compound. But you know them, I don’t.
Your advice would be appreciated. Your presence would be very helpful. I will understand if you choose to provide neither. You owe nothing to me—you were right when I was wrong, and I jeopardized everybody. But at this point, I’d like to do this without killing any of your soldiers, and especially without being killed myself—I wouldn’t want to pretend my motives are entirely altruistic. I have no choice but to be there myself. If I’m not on the ground for the penetration of the compound, I can kiss my future as Hegemon good-bye.
Meanwhile, the Chinese don’t seem to be doing so well, do they? My congratulations to the Caliph. I hope he will be more generous to his conquered foes than the Chinese were.
Petra found it hard to concentrate on her search of the nets. It was too tempting to switch to the news stories about the war. It was the genetic disease that the doctors had found in her as a child, the disease that sent her into space to spend her formative years in Battle School. She just couldn’t leave war alone. Appalling as it was, combat still held irresistible allure. The contest of two armies, each striving for mastery, with no rules except those forced on them by the limitations of their forces and their fear of reprisal in kind.
Bean had insisted that they search for some signal from Achilles. It seemed absurd to her, but Bean was positive that Achilles wanted them to come to him.
“He’s on his last legs,” said Bean. “Everything’s turned against him. He thought he’d positioned himself to take my place. Then he reached too far in shooting down that shuttle, just at the moment that the Crescent League pulled China out from under him. He can’t go back there, can’t even leave Ribeirão. So he’s going to make whatever plays he has left to make. We’re loose ends. He doesn’t want to leave us dangling. So…he’s going to call us in.”
“Let’s not go,” Petra had said then, but Bean only laughed. “If I thought you meant that,” he said, “I might consider it. But I know you don’t. He has our babies. He knows we’ll come.”
Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t. What good would it do those embryos if their parents walked into a trap and died?
And it would be a trap. Not a fair trade, not a bargain, my freedom for your babies. No, Achilles was not capable of that, not even to save his own life. Bean had trapped him once before, forced a confession out of him, which led to his being put in a mental institution. He’d never go back there again. Like Napoleon, he’d escaped from one captivity, but from the next there’d be no more escaping. So he wouldn’t go. That much both Bean and Petra agreed on. He would only summon them to kill them.
Yet still she searched, wondering how they’d even know when they found what they were looking for.
And while she searched, the war kept drawing her. The campaign in Xinjiang had already moved eastward into the fringes of Han China. The Persians and Pakistanis were on the verge of encircling both halves of the Chinese army in western India.
The news about the Indonesians and Arabs operating inside China was a little more oblique. The Chinese were complaining loudly about Muslim paratroopers performing terrorist attacks inside China, and threatening that they would be treated as spies and war criminals when they were caught. The caliph responded immediately by declaring that these were regular troops, in uniform, and the only thing that bothered the Chinese was that the war they had been so willing to inflict on others had finally come home. “We will hold every level of the Chinese military and the Chinese government personally and individually responsible for each crime against our captured soldiers.”
That was the language that only the presumed victors could afford to use, but the Chinese clearly took it to heart, immediately announcing that they had been completely misunderstood, and any soldiers found to be in uniform would be treated as prisoners.
To Petra, though, the most entertaining aspect of the Chinese posturing was that they kept referring to the Indonesian and Arab troops as paratroopers. They simply could not believe that troops landed on the coasts had got so far inland so quickly.
And one other little bit of information. One of the American newsnets had a commentary by a retired general who almost certainly was being given briefings about what American spy satellites were showing. What caught Petra’s attention was when he said, “What I can’t understand is why the Chinese troops that were moved out of India a few days ago, to meet the threat in Xinjiang, are not being used in Xinjiang or being sent back into India. Fully a quarter of the Chinese military is just sitting there not being used.”
Petra showed this to Bean, who smiled. “Verlomi is very good.
She’s pinned them down for three days. How long before the Chinese army inside India simply runs out of ammunition?”
“You can’t really start a betting pool with just the two of us,” said Petra.
“Stop watching the war and get back to work.”
“Why wait for Achilles to send this signal that I still don’t think he’s going to send?” asked Petra. “Why not just accept Peter’s invitation and join him for the storming of the compound?
“Because if Achilles thinks he’s luring us into a trap, he’ll let us get inside without firing a shot. Nobody dies.”
“Except us.”
“First, Petra, there’s no us. You’re a pregnant woman, and I don’t care how brilliant you are at military affairs, I can’t possibly deal with Achilles if the woman who’s carrying my baby is standing there in jeopardy.”
“So I’m supposed to sit outside watching, not knowing what’s going on, whether you’re alive or dead?”
“Do we have to have the argument about how I’m going to die in a few years anyway, and you’re not, and if I’m dead but we rescue the embryos you can still have babies, but if you’re dead, we can’t even have the baby you’ve already got inside you?”
“No, we don’t have to have that argument,” said Petra angrily.
“And second, you won’t be sitting outside watching, because you’ll be here in Damascus, following the war news and reading the Q’uran.”
“Or clawing my own eyes out in the agony of not knowing. You’d really leave me here?”
“Achilles himself may be trapped inside the Hegemony compound, but he has people to run his errands everywhere. I doubt that many of them were lost when the China connection dried up.
If
it dried up. I don’t want you leaving here because it would be just like Achilles to kill you long before you came anywhere near the compound.”
“So why don’t you think he’ll kill
you?
”
“Because he wants me to watch the babies die.”
Petra couldn’t help it. She burst into tears and bowed over her desk.
“I’m sorry,” said Bean. “I didn’t mean to make you—”
“Of course you didn’t mean to make me cry,” said Petra. “I didn’t mean to cry, either. Just ignore this.”
“I can’t ignore it,” said Bean. “I can barely understand what you’re saying, and you’re about to drip snot on your desk.”
“It’s not snot!” Petra shouted at him, then touched her nose and discovered that it was. She sniffed and then laughed and ran into the bathroom and blew her nose and finished crying by herself.
When she came out, Bean was lying on the bed, his eyes closed.
“I’m sorry,” said Petra.
“I’m sorrier,” said Bean softly.
“I know you have to go alone. I know I have to stay here. I know all of that, but I hate it, that’s all.”
Bean nodded.
“So why aren’t you searching the nets?”
“Because the message just came.”
She walked over to his desk and looked into the display. Bean had connected to an auction site, and there it was:
Wanted: A good womb.
Five human embryos ready for implantation. Battle-School-graduate parents, died in tragic accident. Estate needs to dispose of them immediately. Likely to be extraordinarily brilliant children. Trust fund will be set up for each child successfully implanted and brought to term. Applicants must prove they do not need the money. Top five bidders will have their funds held in escrow by certified accounting firm, pending evaluation.
“Did you reply?” asked Petra. “Or bid?”
“I sent an inquiry in which I suggested that I’d like to have all five, and I’ll pick them up in person. I told him to reply to one of my dead drop sites.”
“And you’re not checking your mail to see if your dead drop has forwarded anything yet?”
“Petra, I’m scared.”
“That’s a relief. It suggests you aren’t insane.”
“He’s the best survivor I’ve ever known. He’ll have a way out of this.”
“No,” said Petra. “You’re a survivor. He’s a killer.”
“He’s not dead,” said Bean. “That makes him a survivor.”
“Nobody’s been trying to kill him for half his life,” said Petra. “His survival is no big deal. You’ve had a pathological killer on your trail for years, and yet here you are.”
“It’s not so much that I’m afraid of him killing me,” said Bean, “though I don’t find it an appealing way to go. I still plan to die by growing so tall I’m hit by a low-flying plane.”
“I’m not playing your macabre little how-I’d-like-to-die game.”
“But if he does kill me, and then gets out of there alive somehow, what will happen to you?”
“He won’t get out of there alive.”
“So maybe not. But what if I’m dead, and all the babies are dead?”
“I’ll have this one.”
“You’ll wish you hadn’t loved me. I still haven’t figured out why you do.”
“I’ll never wish I hadn’t loved you, and I’ll always be glad that after I pestered you long enough, you finally decided you loved me too.”
“Don’t let anybody call the kid by some stupid nickname based on how small she is.”
“No legume names?”
The incoming-mail icon flashed on his desk.
“You’ve got mail,” said Petra.
Bean sighed, sat up, slid over onto the chair, and opened the letter.
My oldest friend. I have five little presents with your name written all over them, and not much time left in which to give them to you. I wish you trusted me more, because I’ve never meant you any harm, but I know you don’t, and so you are free to bring an armed escort with you. We’ll meet in the open air, the east garden. The east gate will be open. You and the first five with you can come in; any more than that try to come in and you’ll all be shot.
I don’t know where you are, so I don’t know how long it will take for you to get here. When you come, I’ll have your property in a refrigerated container, good for six hours at the right temperature. If one of your escort is a specialist with a microscope, you are free to examine the specimens on the spot, and then have the specialist carry them out.
But I hope you and I can chat for a while about old times. Reminisce about the good old days, when we brought civilization to the streets of Rotterdam. We’ve been down a good long road since then. Changed the world, both of us. Me more than you, kid. Eat your heart out.
Of course, you married the only woman I ever loved, so maybe things balance out in the end.
Naturally, our conversation will be more pleasant if it ends with you taking me out of the compound and giving me safe passage to a place of my own choosing. But I realize that may not be within your power. We really are limited crea
tures, we geniuses. We know what’s best for everybody, but we still don’t get our way until we can persuade the lesser creatures to do our bidding. They just don’t understand how much happier they’d be if they stopped thinking for themselves. They’re so unequipped for it.
Relax, Bean. That was a joke. Or an indecorous truth. Often the same thing.
Give Petra a kiss for me. Let me know when to open the gate.
“Does he really expect you to believe that he’ll just let you take the babies?”
“Well, he does imply a swap for his freedom,” said Bean.
“The only swap he implies is your life for theirs,” said Petra.
“Oh,” said Bean. “Is that how you read it?”
“That’s what he’s saying and you know it. He expects the two of you to die together, right there.”
“The real question,” said Bean, “is whether he’ll really have the embryos there.”
“For all we know,” said Petra, “they’re in a lab in Moscow or Johannesburg or already in the garbage somewhere in Ribeirão.”
“Now who’s the grim one?”
“It’s obvious that he wasn’t able to place them out for implantation. So to him they represent failure. They have no value now. Why should he give them to you?”
“I didn’t say I’d accept his terms,” said Bean.
“But you will.”
“The hardest thing about a kidnapping is always the swap, ransom for hostage. Somebody always has to trust somebody, and give up their piece before they’ve received what the other one has. But this case is really weird, because he’s not really asking for anything from me.”