Shadow Puppets Part 20

That was what Lankowski meant when he said that he worked for the Syrian government "as often as not." Because as often as not he worked for a government higher than that of Syria.

They already have their own rival to the Hegemon.

"Perhaps someday," she said, "my children will be trained and used to help defend some nation from Muslim conquest."

"Since Muslims do not invade other nations anymore, I wonder how such a thing could happen?"

"You have Alai sequestered here somewhere. What is he doing, making baskets or pottery to sell at the fair?"

"Are those the only choices you see? Pottery-making or aggressive war?"

But his denials did not interest her. She knew her a.n.a.lysis was as correct as it could be without more data-his denial was not a disproof, it was more likely to be an inadvertent confirmation.

What interested her now was Bean. Where was he? When would he get to Damascus? What would he do about the missing embryos?

Or at least that was what she tried to pretend to herself that she was interested in.

Because all she could really think, in an undercurrent monologue that kept shouting at her from deep inside her mind, was: He has my babies. Not the Pied Piper, prancing them away from town. Not Baba Yaga, luring them into her house on chicken legs. Not the witch in the gingerbread cottage, keeping them in cages and fattening them up. None of those grey fantasies. Nothing of fog and mist. Only the absolute black of a place where no light shines, where light is not even remembered.

That's where her babies were.

In the belly of the Beast.The car came to a stop at a simple platform. The underground road went on, to destinations Petra did not bother trying to guess. For all she knew, the tunnel ran to Baghdad, to Amman, under the mountains to Ankara, maybe even under the radioactive desert to arise in the place where the ancient stone waits for the half-life of the half-life of the half-life of death to pa.s.s, so pilgrims can come again on haj[?].

Lankowski reached out a hand and helped her from the car, though she was young and he was old. His att.i.tude toward her was strange, as if he had to treat her very carefully. As if she was not robust, as if she could easily break.

And it was true. She was the one who could break. Who broke.

Only I can't break now. Because maybe I still have one child. Maybe putting this one inside me did not kill it, but gave it life. Maybe it has taken root in my garden and will blossom and bear fruit, a baby on a short twisted stem. And when the fruit is plucked, out will come stem and root as well, leaving the garden empty. And where will the others be then? They have been taken to grow in someone else's plot. Yet I will not break now, because I have this one, perhaps this one.

"Thank you," she said to Lankowski. "But I'm not so fragile as to need help getting out of a car."

He smiled at her, but said nothing. She followed him into the elevator and they rose up into...

A garden. As lush as the Philippine jungle clearing where Peter gave the order that would bring the Beast into their house, driving them out.

She saw that the courtyard was gla.s.sed over. That's why it was so humid here. That's how it stayed so moist. Nothing was given up to the dry desert air.

Sitting quietly on a stone chair in the middle of the garden was a tall, slender man, his skin the deep cacao brown of the upper Niger where he had been born.

She did not walk up to him at once, but stood admiring what she saw. The long legs, clad not in the business suit that had been the uniform of westerners for centuries now, but in the robes of a sheik. His head was not covered, however And there was no beard on his chin. Still young, and yet also now a man.

"Alai," she murmured. So softly that she doubted he could hear.

And perhaps he did not hear, but chose that moment only by coincidence, to turn and see her. His brooding expression softened into a smile. But it was not the boyish grin that she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.

She realized then why Alai had disappeared from view.

He is Caliph. They have chosen a Caliph again, all the Muslim world under the authority of one man, and it is Alai.

She could not know this, not just from his place here in a garden. Yet she knew from the way he sat in it that this was a throne. She knew from the way she was brought here, with no trappings of power, no guards, no pa.s.swords, just a simple man of elegant courtesy leading her to the boy-man seated on the ancient throne. Alai's power was spiritual. In all of Damascus there was no safer place than here. No one would bother him. Millions would die before letting an uninvited stranger set foot here.

He beckoned to her, and it was the gentle invitation of a holy man. She did not have to obey him, and he would not mind if she did not come. But she came.

"Salaam," said Alai.

"Salaam," said Petra.

"Stone girl," he said.

"Hi," she said. The old joke between them, him punning on the meaning of her name in the original Greek, her punning on the jai of jai chat.

"I'm glad you're safe," he said.

"Your life has changed since you regained your freedom."

"And yours, too," said Alai. "Married now.

"A good Catholic wedding."

"You should have invited me," he said.

"You couldn't have come," she said.

"No," he agreed. "But I would have wished you well."

"Instead you have done well by us when we needed it most."

"I'm sorry that I did nothing to protect the other... children. But I didn't know about them in time. And I a.s.sumed that Bean and you would have had enough security... no, no, please, I'm sorry, I'm reminding you of pain instead of soothing you.

She sank down and sat on the ground before his throne, and he leaned over to gather her into his arms. She rested her head and arms on his lap, and he stroked her hair "When we were children, playing the greatest computer game in the world, we had no idea."

"We were saving the world."

"And now we're creating the world we saved."

"Not me," said Petra. "I'm no longer a player."

"Are any of us players?" said Alai. "Or are we only the pieces moved in someone else's game?"

"Inshallah," said Petra.

She had rather expected Alai to chuckle, but he only nodded. "Yes, that is our belief, that all that happens comes from the will of G.o.d. But I think it is not your belief."

"No. we Christians have to guess the will of G.o.d and try to bring it to pa.s.s.

"It feels the same, when things are happening," said Alai. "Sometimes you think that you're in control, because you make things change by your own choices. And then something happens that sweeps all your plans away as if they were nothing, just pieces on a chessboard."

"Shadows that children make on the wall," said Petra, "and someone turns the light off."

"Or turns a brighter one on," said Alai, "and the shadows disappear.

"Alai," said Petra, "will you let us go again? I know your secret."

"Yes, I'll let you go," said Alai. "The secret can't be kept for long. Too many people know it already."

"We would never tell."

"I know," said Alai. "Because we were once in Ender's jeesh. But I'm in another jeesh now. I stand at the head of it, because they asked me to do it, because they said G.o.d had chosen me. I don't know about that. I don't hear the voice of G.o.d, I don't feel his power inside me. But they come to me with their plans, their questions, the conflicts between nations, and I offer suggestions. And they take them. And things work out. So far at least, they've always worked. So perhaps I am chosen by G.o.d."

"Or you're very clever"

"Or very lucky." Alai looked at his hands. "Still, it's better to believe that some high purpose guides our steps than to think that nothing matters except our own small miseries and happinesses."

"Unless our happiness is the high purpose."

"If our happiness is the purpose of G.o.d," said Alai, "why are so few of us happy?"

"Perhaps he wants us to have the happiness that we can only find for ourselves."

Alai nodded and chuckled. "We Battle School brats, we all have a bit of the imam in us, don't you think?"

"The Jesuit. The rabbi. The lama."

"Do you know how I find my answers? Sometimes, when it's very hard? I ask myself 'What would Ender do?'"

Petra shook her head. "It's the old joke. 'I ask myself What would a person smarter than me do in this circ.u.mstance, and then I do it.'"

"But Ender isn't imaginary. He was with us, and we knew him. We saw how he built us into an army, how he knew us all, found the best in us, pushed us as hard as we could bear, and sometimes harder, but himself hardest of all."

Petra felt once again the old sting, that she was the only one he had pushed harder than she could bear.

It made her sad and angry, and even though she knew that Alai had not even been thinking of her when he said it, she wanted to lash back at him.

But he had been kind to her and Bean. Had saved them, and brought them here, even though he did not need or want non-Muslims helping him, since his new role as the leader of the world's Muslims required a certain purity, if not in his soul, then certainly in his companionship.

Still, she had to offer "We'll help you if you let us," said Petra.

"Help me what?" asked Alai.

"Help you make war against China," she said.

"But we have no plans to make war against China," said Alai. "We have renounced military jihad. The only purification and redemption we attempt is of the soul."

"Do all wars have to be holy wars?"

"No, but unholy wars d.a.m.n all those who take part in them."

"Who else but you can stand against China?"

"The Europeans. The North Americans."

"It's hard to stand when you have no spine."

"They're an old and tired civilization. We were, too, once. It took centuries of decline and a series of bitter defeats and humiliations before we made the changes that would allow us to serve Allah in unity and hope."

"And yet you maintain armies. You have a network of operatives who shoot their guns when they need to."

Alai nodded gravely. "We're prepared to use force to defend ourselves if we're attacked."

Petra shook her head. For a moment she had felt frustrated because the world needed rescuing, and it sounded as though Alai and his people were renouncing war Now she was just as disappointed to realize that nothing had really changed. Alai was planning war-but intended to wait until some attack made his war "defensive." Not that she disagreed with the justness of defensive war. It was the falseness of pretending that he had renounced war when he was in fact planning for it.

Or maybe he meant exactly what he said.

It seemed so unlikely.

"You're tired," said Alai. "Even though the jet lag from the Netherlands is not so bad, you should rest. I understand you were ill on your flight."

She laughed. "You had someone on the plane, watching me?"

"Of course," he said. "You're a very important person."

Why should she be important to the Muslims? They didn't want to use her military talents, and she had no political influence in the world. It had to be her baby that made her valuable-but how would her child, if she even had one, have any value to the Islamic world?

"My child," she said, "will not be raised to be a soldier."

Alai raised a hand. "You leap to conclusions, Petra," he said. "We are led, we hope, by Allah. We have no wish to take your child, and while we hope that there will someday be a world in which all children will be raised to know Allah and serve him, we have no desire to take your child from you or keep him here with us."

"Or her," said Petra, unrea.s.sured. "If you don't want our baby, why am I an important person?"

"Think like a soldier," said Alai. "You have in your womb what our worst enemy wants most. And, even if you don't have a baby, your death is something that he has to have, for reasons deep in the evil of his heart. His need to reach for you makes you important to those of us who fear him and want to block his path."

Petra shook her head. "Alai," she said, "I and my child could die and it would be a mere blip on the rangeflnder[?] to you and your people."

"It's useful for us to keep you alive," said Alai.

"How pragmatic of you. But there's more to it than that."

"Yes," said Alai. "There is."

"Are you going to tell me?"

"it will sound very mystical to you," said Alai.

"But that's hardly a surprise, coming from the Caliph."

"Allah has brought something new into the world-I speak of Bean, the genetic difference between him and the rest of humanity. There are imams who declare him to be an abomination, conceived in evil. There are others who say he is an innocent victim, a child who was conceived as a normal embryo but was altered by evil and can't help what was done to him. But there are others-and the number is by far larger-who say that this could not have been done except by the will of Allah. That Bean's abilities were a key part of our victory over the Formics, so it must have been G.o.d's will that brought him into existence at the time we needed him. And since G.o.d has chosen to bring this new thing into the world, now we must watch and see whether G.o.d allows this genetic change to breed true."

"He's dying, Alai," said Petra.