Petra. meanwhile, was trying to guess how Alai must look to the Muslim people watching him. She knew his face so well, so that she had to try to separate the boy she had known from the man he now was. The compa.s.sion she had noticed before was more visible than ever. His eyes were full of love. But there was fire in him, too, and dignity. He did not smile-which was proper for the leader of nations which were now at war, and whose sons were dying in combat, and killing, too. Nor did he rant, whipping them up into some kind of dangerous enthusiasm.

Will these people follow him into battle? Yes, of course, at first, when he has a tale of easy victories to tell them. But later, when times are hard and fortune does not favor them, will they still follow him?

Perhaps yes. Because what Petra saw in him was not so much a great general-though yes, she could imagine Alexander might have looked like this, or Caesar-as a prophet-king. Saul or David, both young men when first called by prophecy to lead their people into war in G.o.d's name. Joan of Arc.

Of course, Joan of Arc ended up dying at the stake, and Saul fell on his own sword-or no, that was Brutus or Ca.s.sius, Saul commanded one of his own soldiers to kill him, didn't he? A bad end for both of them. And David died in disgrace, forbidden by G.o.d to build the holy temple because he had murdered Uriah to get Bathsheba into a state of marriageable widowhood.

Not a good list of precedents, that.

But they had their glory, didn't they, before they fell.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE WAR ON THE GROUND

To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Re: Official statement coming My esteemed friend and colleague, It grieves me that you would even suppose that in this time of trouble, when China is a.s.sailed by unprovoked a.s.saults from religious fanatics, we would have either the desire or the resources to provoke the International Fleet. We have nothing but the highest esteem for your inst.i.tution, which so recently saved all humankind from the onslaught of the stardrogons.

Our official statement, which wih be released forthwith, does not include our speculations on who is in fact responsible for the tragic shooting down of the IF shuttle while it overflew Brazilian territory. While we do not admit to having any partic.i.p.ation in or foreknowledge of the event, we have performed our own preliminary investigation and we believe you will find that the equipment in question may in fact have originated with the Chinese military.

This causes us excruciating embarra.s.sment, and we beg you not to publicize this information. Instead, we provide you with the attached doc.u.mentation showing that our one missile launcher which is not accounted for, and which therefore may have been used to commit this crime, was released into the control of a certain Achilles de Flandres, ostensibly for military operations in connection with our preemptive defensive action against the Indian aggressor as it ravaged Burma. We believed this materiel had been returned to us, but we discover upon investigation that it was not.

Achilles de Flandres at one time was under our protection, having rendered us a service in connection with forewarning us of the danger that India posed to peace in Southeast Asia. However, certain crimes be committed prior to this service came to our attention, and we arrested him (see doc.u.mentation). As he was being conveyed to his place of reeducation, unknown forces raided the convoy and released Achilles de Flandres, killing all of the escorting soldiers.

Since Achilles de Flandres ended up almost immediately in the Hegemony compound in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, and he has been in a position to do much mischief there since the hasty departure of Peter Wiggin, and since the missile was fired from Brazilian territory and the shuffle was shot down over Brazil, we suggest that the place to look for responsibility for this attack on the IF is in Brazil, specifically the Hegemony compound.

Ultimate responsibility for all of de Flandress actions after his abscondment from our custody must lie with those who took him, namely, Hegemon Peter Wiggin and his military forces, headed by julian Delphiki and, more recently, the Thai national, Suriyawong, who is regarded by the Chinese government as a terrorist.

I hope that this information, provided to you off the record, will prove useful to you in your investigation. If we can be of any other service that is not inconsistent with our desperate struggle for survival against the onslaught of the barbarian hordes from Asia, we will be glad to provide it.

Your humble and unworthy colleague, Ancient Fire From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Re: Who will take the blame?Dear Hyrum, You see from the attached message from the esteemed bead of the Chinese government that they have decided to offer up Achilles as the sacrificial lamb. I think they'd be glad if we got rid of him for them. Our investigators will officially report that the launcher is of Chinese manufacture and has been traced back to Achilles de Flandres without mentioning that it was originally provided to him by the Chinese government. When asked, we will refuse to speculate. That's the best they can hope for from us.

Meanwhile, we now have the legal basis firmly established for an Earthside intervention-and from evidence provided by the nation most likely to complain about such an intervention. We will do nothing to affect the outcome or progress of the war in Asia. We will first seek the cooperation of the Brazilian government but will make it clear that such cooperation is not required, legally or militarily. We will ask them to isolate the Hegemony compound so that no one can get in or out, pending the arrival of our forces.

I ask that you inform the Hegemon and that you make your plans accordingly. Whether Mr. Wiggin should be present at the taking of the compound is a matter on which I have no opinion.Virlomi never went into town herself. Those days were over. When she had been free to wander, a pilgrim in a land where people either lived their whole lives in one village or cut themselves loose and spent their whole lives on the road, she had loved coming to villages, each one an adventure, filled with its own tapestry of gossip, tragedy, humor, romance, and irony.

In the college she had briefly attended, between coming home from s.p.a.ce and being brought into Indian military headquarters in Hyderabad, she had quickly realized that intellectuals seemed to think that their life-the life of the mind, the endless self-examination, the continuous autobiography afflicted upon all comers-was somehow higher than the repet.i.tive, meaningless lives of the common people.

Virlomi knew the opposite to be true. The intellectuals in the university were all the same. They had precisely the same deep thoughts about exactly the same shallow emotions and trivial dilemmas. They knew this, unconsciously, themselves. When a real event happened, something that shook them to the heart, they withdrew from the game of university life, for reality had to be played out on a different stage.

In the villages, life was about life, not about one-[?]upmanship and display. Smart people were valued because they could solve problems, not because they could speak pleasingly about them. Everywhere she went in India, she constantly heard herself thinking, I could live here. I could stay among these people and marry one of these gentle peasant men and work beside him all my life.

And then another part of her answered, No you couldn't. Because like it or not, you are one of those university people after all. You can visit in the real world, but you don't belong there. You need to live in Plato's foolish dream, where ideas are real and reality is shadow. That is the place you were born for, and as you move from village to village, it is only to learn from them, to teach them, to manipulate them, to use them to achieve your own ends.

But my own ends, she thought, are to give them gifts they need: wise government, or at least self-government.

And then she laughed at herself, because the two were usually opposites. Even if an Indian ruled over Indians, it was not selfgovernment, for the ruler governed the people, and the people governed the ruler. It was mutual government. That's the best that could be aspired to.

Now, though, her pilgrim days were over. She had returned to the bridge where the soldiers stationed to protect it and the nearby villagers had made a kind of G.o.d of her.

She came back without fanfare, walking into the village that had taken her most to heart and falling into conversation with women at the well and in the market. She went to the washing stream and lent a hand with the washing of clothes; someone offered to share clothing with her so she could wash her dirty traveling rags, but she laughed and said that one more washing would rub them into dust, but she would like to earn some new clothing by helping a family that had a bit they could spare for her.

"Mistress," said one shy woman, "did we not feed you at the bridge, for nothing?"

So she was recognized.

"But I wish to earn the kindness you showed me there."

"You have blessed us many times, lady," said another.

"And now you bless us by coming among us.

"And washing clothes."

So she was still a G.o.d.

"I'm not what you think I am," she said. "I am more terrible than your worst fear."

"To our enemies, we pray, lady," said a woman.

"Terrible to them, indeed," said Virlomi. "But I will use your sons and husbands to fight them, and some of them will die."

"Half our sons and husbands were already taken in the war against the Chinese."

"Killed in battle."

"Lost and could not find their way home."

"Carried off into captivity by the Chinese devils."

Virlomi raised a hand to still them. "I will not waste their lives, if they obey me."

"You shouldn't go to war, lady," said one old crone. "There's no good in it. Look at you, young, beautiful. Lie down with one of our young men, or one of our old ones if you want, and make babies."

"Someday," said Virlomi, "I'll choose a husband and make babies with him. But today my husband is India, and he has been swallowed by a tiger. I must make the tiger sick, so he will throw my husband up."

They giggled, some of them, at this image. But others were very grave.

"How will you do this?"

"I will prepare the men so they don't die because of mistakes. I will a.s.semble all the weapons we need, so no man is wasted because he is unarmed. I will bide my time, so we don't bring down the wrath of the tiger upon us, until we're ready to hurt them so badly that they never recover from the blow."

"You didn't happen to bring a nuclear weapon with you, lady?" asked the crone. Clearly something of an unbeliever.

"It's an offense against G.o.d to use such things," said Virlomi. "The Muslim G.o.d was burned out of his house and turned his face against them because they used such weapons against each other"

"I was joking," said the crone, ashamed.

"I am not," said Virlomi. "If you don't want me to use your men in the way I have described, tell me, and I'll go away and find another place that wants me. Perhaps your hatred of the Chinese is not so fierce as mine. Perhaps you are content with the way things are in this land."

But they were not content, and their hatred was hot enough, it seemed.

There wasn't much time for training, despite her promise, but then, she wasn't going to use these men for firefights. They were to be saboteurs, thieves, demolition experts. They conspired with construction workers to steal explosives; they learned how to use them; they built dry storage pits in the jungles that clung to the steep hills.

And they went to nearby towns and recruited more men, and then went farther and farther afield, building a network of saboteurs near every key bridge that could be blown up to block the Chinese from the use of the roads they would need to bring troops and supplies back and forth, in and out of India.

There could be no rehearsals. No dry runs. Nothing was done to arouse suspicion of any kind. She forbade her men to make any gestures of defiance, or do anything to interfere with the smooth running of the Chinese transportation network through their hills and mountains.

Some of them chafed at this, but Virlomi said, "I gave my word to your wives and mothers that I would not waste your lives. There will be plenty of dying ahead, but only when your deaths will accomplish something, so that those who live can bear witness: We did this thing, it was not done for us."

Now she never went to town, but lived where she had lived before, in a cave near the bridge that she would blow up herself, when the time came.

But she could not afford to be cut off from the outside world. So three times a day, one of her people would sign on to the nets and check her dead drop sites, print out the messages there, and bring them to her. She made sure they knew how to wipe the information out of the computer's memory, so no one else could see what the computer had shown, and after she read the messages they brought, she burned them.

She got Peter Wiggin's message in good time. So she was ready when her people started coming to her, running, out of breath, excited.

"The war with the Turks is going badly for the Chinese," they said. "We have it on the nets, the Turks have taken so many airfields that they can put more planes in the sky in Xinjiang than the Chinese can. They have dropped bombs on Beijing itself, lady!"

"Then you should weep for the children who are dying there," said Virlomi. "But the time for us to fight is not yet."

And the next day, when the trucks began to rumble across the bridges, and line up b.u.mper to b.u.mper along the narrow mountain roads, they begged her, "Let us blow up just one bridge, to show them that India is not sleeping while the Turks fight our enemy for us!"

She only answered them, "Why should we blow up bridges that our enemy is using to leave our land?"

"But we could kill many if we timed the explosion just right!"

"Even if we could kill five thousand by blowing up all the bridges at exactly the right moment, they have five million. We will wait. Not one of you will do anything to warn them that they have enemies in these mountains. The time is soon, but you must wait for my word."

Again and again she said it, all day long, to everyone who came, and they obeyed. She sent them to telephone their comrades in faraway towns near other bridges, and they also obeyed.

For three days. The Chinese-controlled news talked about how devastating armies were about to be brought to bear against the Turkic hordes, ready to punish them for their treachery. The traffic across the bridges and along the mountain roads was unrelenting. Then came the message she was waiting for.

Now.

No signature, but it was in a dead drop that she had given to Peter Wiggin. She knew that it meant that the main offensive had been launched in the west, and the Chinese would soon begin sending troops and equipment back from China into India.

She did not burn the message. She handed it to the child who had brought it to her and said, "Keep this forever. It is the beginning of our war."

"Is it from a G.o.d?" asked the child.

"Perhaps the shadow of the nephew of a G.o.d," she answered with a smile. "Perhaps only a man in a dream of a sleeping G.o.d."

Taking the child by the hand, she walked down into the village. The people swarmed around her. She smiled at them, patted the children's heads, hugged the women and kissed them.

Then she led this parade of citizens to the office of the local Chinese administrator and walked inside the building. Only a few of the women came with her. She walked right past the desk of the protesting officer on duty and into the office of the Chinese official, who was on the telephone.

He looked up at her and shouted, first in Chinese, then in Common. "What are you doing! Get out of here."

But Virlomi paid no attention to his words. She walked up to him, smiling, reached out her arms as if to embrace him.

He raised his hands in protest, to fend her off with a gesture.

She took his arms, pulled him off balance, and while he staggered to regain his footing, she flung her arms around him, gripped his head, and twisted it sharply.

He fell dead to the floor.

She opened a drawer in his desk, took out his pistol, and shot both of the Chinese soldiers who were rushing into the office. They, too, fell dead to the floor She looked calmly at the women. "It is time. Please get on the telephones and call the others in every city. It is one hour till dark. At nightfall, they are to carry out their tasks. With a short fuse. And if anyone tries to stop them, even if it's an Indian, they should kill them as quietly and quickly as possible and proceed with their work."

They repeated the message to her, then set to work at the telephones.

Virlomi went outside with the pistol hidden in the folds of her skirt. When the other two Chinese soldiers in this village came running, having heard the shots, she started jabbering to them in her native dialect. They did not realize that it was not the local language at all, but a completely unrelated tongue from the Dravidian south. They stopped and demanded that she tell them in Common what had happened. She answered with a bullet into each man's belly before they even saw that she had a gun. Then she made sure of them with a bullet to each head as they lay on the ground.

"Can you help me clean the street?" she asked the people who were gawking.

At once they came out into the road and carried the bodies back inside the office.

When the telephoning was done, she gathered them all together at the door of the office. "When the Chinese authorities come and demand that you tell them what happened, you must tell them the truth. A man came walking down the road, an Indian man but not from this village. He looked like a woman, and you thought he must be a G.o.d, because he walked right into this office and broke the neck of the magistrate. Then he took the magistrate's pistol and shot the two guards in the office, and then the two who came running up from the village. Not one of you had time to do anything but scream. Then this stranger made you carry the bodies of the dead soldiers into the office and then ordered you to leave while he made telephone calls."

"They will ask us to describe this man."

"Then describe me. Dark. From the south of India."

"They will say, if he looked like a woman, how do you know she was not a woman?"

"Because he killed a man with his bare hands. What woman could do that?"

They laughed.

"But you must not laugh," she said. "They will be very angry. And even if you do not give them any cause, they may punish you very harshly for what happened here. They may think you are lying and torture you to try to get you to tell the truth. And let me tell you right now, you are perfectly free to tell them that you think it may have been the same person who lived in that little cave near the bridge. You may lead them to that place."

She turned to the child who had brought her Peter Wiggin's message. "Bury that paper in the ground until the war is over. It will still be there when you want it."

She spoke to them all once more. "None of you did anything except carry the bodies of the dead to the places I told you to carry them. You would have told the authorities, but the only authorities you know are dead."

She stretched out her arms. "Oh, my beloved people, I told you I would bring terrible days to you." She did not have to pretend to be sad, and her tears were real as she walked among them, touching hands, cheeks, shoulders one more time. Then she strode out along the road and out of the village. The men who were a.s.signed to do it would blow up the nearby bridge an hour from now. She would not be there. She would be walking along paths in the woods, heading for the command post from which she would run this campaign of sabotage.

For it would not be enough to blow up these bridges. They had to be ready to kill the engineers who would come to repair them, and kill the soldiers who would come to protect them, and then, when they brought enough soldiers and enough engineers that they could not be stopped from rebuilding the bridges, they would have to cause rockfalls and mudslides to block the narrow canyons.

If they could seal this border for three days. the advancing Muslim armies would have time, if they were competently led, to break through and cut off the huge Chinese army that still faced them, so that the reinforcements, when they finally made it through, would be far, far too late. They, too, would be cut off in their turn.