"Defended himself because you left him alone," said Mother.
"I've already faced trial on those charges, and I was acquitted."
"But you were asked to resign your commission," said Mother.
"But I was then given this much higher position as Minister of Colonization. Let's not quibble over the past. Bean got Achilles here, not to kill him, but to induce him to confess. He did confess, very convincingly, and because I heard him do it, I'm on his death list, too."
"Then why are you still alive?" asked Peter.
"Because, contrary to widespread belief, Achilles is not a genius and he makes mistakes. His reach is not infinite and his power can be blocked. He doesn't know everything. He doesn't have everything planned. I think half the time he's winging it, putting himself in the way of opportunity and seizing it when he sees it."
"If he's not a genius, then why does he keep beating geniuses?" asked Peter.
"Because he does the unexpected," said Graff. "He doesn't actually do things remarkably well, he simply does things that no one thought he would do. He stays a jump ahead. And our finest minds were not even thinking about him when he brought off his most spectacular successes. They thought they were civilians again when he had them kidnapped. Bean wasn't trying to oppose Achilles's plans during the war, he was trying to find and rescue Petra. You see? I have Achilles's test scores. He's a champion suckup, and he's very smart or he wouldn't have got here. He knew how to ace a psych test, for instance, so that his violent tendencies remained hidden from us when we chose him to come in the last group we brought to Battle School. He's dangerous, in other words. But he's never had to face an opponent, not really. What the Formics faced, he's never had to face."
"So you're confident," said Peter.
"Not at all," said Graff. "But I'm hopeful."
"You brought us here just to show us this place?" said Father.
"Actually, no. I brought you here because I came up earlier in the day and swept it personally for eavesdropping devices. Plus, I installed a sound damper here, so that our voices are not carrying down the ventilation shaft."
"You think MinCol has been penetrated," said Peter.
"I know it has," said Graff. "Uphanad was doing his routine scan of the logs of outgoing messages, and he found an odd one that was sent within hours of your arrival here. The entire message consisted of the single word on. Uphanad's routine scan, of course, is more thorough than most people's desperate search. He found this one simply by looking for anomalies in message length, language patterns, etc. To find codes, you see."
"And this was in code?" asked Father.
"Not a cipher, no. And impossible to decode for that reason. It could simply mean 'affirmative,' as in 'the mission is on.' It might be a foreign word--there are several dozen common languages in which 'on' has meaning by itself. It might be 'no' backward. You see the problem? What alerted Uphanad, besides its brevity, was the fact that it was sent within hours of your arrival--after your arrival--and both the sender and the receiver of the message were anonymous."
"How could the sender be anonymous from a secure military-designed facility?" asked Peter.
"Oh, it's quite simple, really," said Graff. "The sender used someone else's sign-on."
"Whose?"
"Uphanad was quite embarrassed when he showed me the printout of the message. Because as far as the computer was concerned, it was sent by Uphanad himself."
"Someone got the log-on of the head of security?" said Father.
"Humiliating, you may be sure," said Graff.
"You've fired him?" asked Mother.
"That would not make us more secure, to lose the man who is our best defense against whatever operation that message triggered."
"So you think it is the English word 'on' and it means somebody is preparing to move against us."
"I think that's not unlikely. I think the message was sent in the clear. It's only undecipherable because we don't know what is 'on.'"
"And you've taken into account," said Mother, "the possibility that Uphanad actually sent this message himself, and is using the fact that he told you about it as cover for the fact that he's the perpetrator."
Graff looked at her a long time, blinked, and then smiled. "I was telling myself, 'suspect everybody,' but now I know what a truly suspicious person is."
Peter hadn't thought of it either. But now it made perfect sense.
"Still, let's not leap to conclusions, either," said Graff. "The real sender of the message might have used Major Uphanad's sign-on precisely so that the chief of security would be our prime suspect."
"How long ago did he find this message?" asked Father.
"A couple of days," said Graff. "I was already scheduled to come, so I stuck to my schedule."
"No warnings?"
"No," said Graff. "Any departure from routine would let the sender know his signal was discovered and perhaps interpreted. It would lead him to change his plans."
"So what do we do?" asked Peter.
"First," said Graff, "I apologize for thinking you'd be perfectly safe here. Apparently Achilles's reach--or perhaps China's--is longer than we thought."
"So do we go home?" asked Father.
"Second," said Graff, "we can't do anything that would play into their hands. Going home right now, before the threat can be identified and neutralized, would expose you to greater danger. Our betrayer could give another signal that would tell them when and where you were going to arrive on Earth. What your trajectory of descent is going to be. That sort of thing."
"Who would risk killing the Hegemon by downing a shuttle?" said Peter. "The world would be outraged, even the people who'd be happy to see me dead."
"Anything we do that changes our pattern would let the traitor know his signal was intercepted. It might rush the project, whatever it is, before we're ready. No, I'm sorry to say this, but...our best course of action is to wait."
"And what if we disagree?" said Peter.
"Then I'll send you home on the shuttle of your choosing, and pray for you all the way down."
"You'd let us go?"
"You're my guest," said Graff. "Not my prisoner."
"Then let's test it," said Peter. "We're leaving on the next shuttle. The one that brought you--when it goes back, we'll be on it."
"Too soon," said Graff. "We have no time to prepare."
"And neither does he. I suggest," said Peter, "that you go to Uphanad and make sure he knows that he has to put a complete blanket of secrecy on our imminent departure. He's not even to tell Dimak."
"But if he's the one," said Mother, "then--"
"Then he can't send a signal," said Peter. "Unless he can find a way to let the information slip out and become public knowledge on the station. That's why it's vital, Minister Graff, that you remain with him at all times after you tell him. So if it's him, he can't send the signal."
"But it's probably not him," said Graff, "and now you've let everybody know."
"But now we'll be watching for the outgoing message."
"Unless they simply kill you as you're boarding the shuttle."
"Then our worries will be over," said Peter. "But I think they won't kill us here, because this agent of theirs is too useful to them--or to Achilles, depending on whose man he is--for them to use him up completely on this operation."
Graff pondered this. "So we watch to see who might be sending the message--"
"And you have agents stationed at the landing point on Earth to see if they can spot a would-be assassin."
"I can do that," said Graff. "One tiny problem, though."
"What's that?" said Peter.
"You can't go."
"Why can't I?" said Peter.
"Because your one-man propaganda campaign is working. The people who read your stuff have drifted more strongly into the anti-China camp. It's still a fairly slight movement, but it's real."
"I can write my essays there," said Peter.
"In danger of being
killed at any moment," said Graff.
"That could happen here, too," said Peter.
"Well--but you yourself said it was unlikely."
"Let's catch the mole who's working your station," said Peter, "and send him home. Meanwhile, we're heading for Earth. It's been great being here, Minister Graff. But we've got to go."
He looked at his mother and father.
"Absolutely," said Father.
"Do you think," said Mother, "that when we get back to Earth we can find a place with little tiny beds like these?" She clung more tightly to Father's arms. "It's made us so much closer as a family."
15
WAR PLANS
From: Demosthenes%
[email protected] To: DropBox%
[email protected] Re: *******************
Encrypted using code ********
Decrypted using code ***********
I spend half my memory capacity just holding on to whatever online identity you're using from week to week. Why not rely on encryption? Nobody's broken hyperprime encryption yet.
Here it is, Bean: Those stones in India? Virlomi started it, of course. Got a message from her: >Now you are not in cesspool, can communicate again. Have no email here. Stones are >mine. Back on bridge soon. War in earnest. Post to me only, this site, pickup name >BridgeGirl password not stepstool.
At least I think that's what "stones are mine" means. And what does "password not stepstool" mean? That the password is "not stepstool"? Or that the password is not "stepstool," in which case it's probably not "aardvark," either, but how does that help?
Anyway, I think she's offering to begin war in earnest inside India. She can't possibly have a nationwide network, but then, maybe she doesn't need one. She was certainly enough in tune with the Indian people to get them all piling stones in the road. And now the whole stone wall business has taken off. Lots of skirmishes between angry hungry citizens and Chinese soldiers. Trucks hijacked. Sabotage of Chinese offices proceeding apace. What can she do more than is already happening?
Given where you are, you may have more need of her information and/or help than I do. But I'd appreciate your help understanding the parts of the message that are opaque to me.
From: LostlboBoy%
[email protected] To: Demosthenes%
[email protected] Re: >blank
Encrypted using code ********
Decrypted using code ***********
Here's why I keep changing identities. First, they don't have to decrypt the message to get information if they see patterns in our correspondence--it would be useful for them to know the frequency and timing of our correspondence and the length of our messages. Second, they don't have to decrypt the whole message, they only have to guess our encrypt and decrypt codes. Which I bet you have written down somewhere because you don't actually care whether I get killed because you're too lazy to memorize.
Of course I mean that in the nicest possible way, O right honorable Mr. Hegemon.
Here's what Virlomi meant. Obviously she intended that you not be able to understand the message and correspond with her properly unless you talked to me or Suri. That means she doesn't trust you completely. My guess is that if you wrote to her and left a message using the password "not stepstool," she'd know that you hadn't talked to me. (You don't know how tempting it was just to leave you with that guess.)
When we picked her up from that bridge near the Burmese border, she boarded the chopper by stepping on Suriyawong's back as he lay prostrate before her. The password is not stepstool, it's the real name of her stepstool. And she's going to be back at that bridge, which means she's made her way across India to the Burmese border, where she'll be in a position to disrupt Chinese supply of their troops in India--or, conversely, Chinese attempts to move their troops out of India and back into China or Indochina.
Of course she's only going to be at one bridge. But my guess is that she's already setting up guerrilla groups that are getting ready to disrupt traffic on the other roads between Burma and India, with a strong possibility that she's set up something along the Himalayan border as well. I doubt she can seal the borders, but she can slow and harass their passage, tying up troops trying to protect supply lines and making the Chinese less able to mount offensives or keep their troops supplied with ammunition--always a problem for them.
Personally, I think you should tell her not to tip her hand too soon. I may be able to tell you when to post a reply asking her to start in earnest on a particular date. And no, I won't post myself because I am most certainly watched here, and I don't want them to know about her directly. I've already caught two snoopware intrusions on my desk, which cost me twenty minutes each time, scrambling them so they send back false information to the snoops. Encrypted email like this I can send, but messages posted to dead drops can be picked up by snoopware on the local net.
And yes, these are indeed my friends. But they'd be fools not to keep track of what I'm sending out--if they can.
Bean measured himself in the mirror. He still looked like himself, more or less. But he didn't like the way his head was growing. Larger in proportion to his body. Growing faster.
I should be getting smarter, shouldn't I? More brain space and all?
Instead I'm worrying about what will happen when my head gets too big, my skull and brains too heavy for my neck to hold the whole assemblage in a vertical position.
He measured himself against the coat closet, too. Not all that long ago, he had to stand on tiptoe to reach coat hangers. Then it became easy. Now he was reaching a bit downward from shoulder height.
Door frames were not a problem yet. But he was beginning to feel as though he should duck.
Why should his growth be accelerating now? He already hit the puberty rush.
Petra staggered past him, went into the bathroom, and puked up nothing for about five agonizing minutes.
"They should have drugs for that," he told her afterward.
"They do," said Petra. "But nobody knows how they might affect the baby."
"There've been no studies? Impossible."
"No studies on how they might affect your children."
"Anton's Key is just a couple of code spots on the genome."
"Genes often do double and triple duty, or more."
"And the baby probably doesn't even have Anton's Key. And it's not healthy for the baby if you can't keep any food down."
"This won't last forever," said Petra. "And I'll get fed intravenously if I have to. I'm not doing anything to endanger this baby, Bean. Sorry if my puking ruins your appetite for breakfast."
"Nothing ruins my appetite for breakfast," said Bean. "I'm a growing boy."
She retched again.
"Sorry," said Bean.
"I don't do this," she whispered miserably, "because your jokes are so bad."
"No," said Bean. "It's cause my genes are."
She retched again and he left the room, feeling guilty about leaving, but knowing he'd be useless if he stayed. She wasn't one of those people who need petting when they're sick. She preferred to be left alone in her misery. It was one of the ways they were alike. Sort of like injured animals that slink off into the woods to get better--or die--alone.
Alai was waiting for him in the large conference room. Chairs were gathered around a large holo on the floor, where a map was being projected of the terrain and militarily significant roads of India and western China.
By now the others were used to seeing Bean there, though there were some who still didn't like it. But the Caliph wanted him there, the Caliph trusted him.
They watched as the known locations of Chinese garrison troops were brought up in blue, and then the probable locations of mobile forces and reserves in green. When he first saw this map, Bean made the faux pas of asking where they were getting their information. He was informed, quite coldly, that both Persia and the Israeli-Egyptian consortium had active satellite placement programs, and their spy satellites were the best in orbi
t. "We can get the blood type of individual enemy soldiers," said Alai with a smile. An exaggeration, of course. But then Bean wondered--some kind of spectroanalysis of their sweat?
Not possible. Alai was joking, not boasting.
Now, Bean trusted their information as much as they did--because of course he had made discreet inquiries through Peter and through some of his own connections. Putting together what Vlad could tell him from Russian intelligence and what Crazy Tom was giving him from England, plus Peter's American sources, it was clear that the Muslims--the Crescent League--had everything the others had. And more.
The plan was simple. Massive troop movements along the border between India and Pakistan, bringing Iranian troops up to the front. This should draw a strong Chinese response, with their troops also concentrated along that border.
Meanwhile, Turkic forces were already in place on, and sometimes inside, China's western border, having traveled over the past few months in disguise as nomads. On paper, the western region of China looked like ideal country for tanks and trucks, but in reality, fuel supply lines would be a recurring nightmare. So the first wave of Turks would enter as cavalry, switching to mechanized transport only when they were in a position to steal and use Chinese equipment.
This was the most dangerous aspect of the plan, Bean knew. The Turkic armies, combining forces from the Hellespont to the Aral Sea and the foothills of the Himalayas, were equipped like raiders, yet had to do the job of an invading army. They had a couple of advantages that might compensate for their lack of armor and air support. Having no supply lines meant the Chinese wouldn't have anything to bomb at first. The native people of the western China province of Xinjiang were Turkic too, and like the Tibetans, they had never stopped seething under the rule of Han China.
Above all, the Turks would have surprise and numbers on their side during the crucial first days. The Chinese garrison troops were all massed on the border with Russia. Until those forces could be moved, the Turks should have an easy time, striking anywhere they wanted, taking out police and supply stations--and, with luck, every airfield in Xinjiang.
By the time Chinese troops moved off the Russian border and into the interior to deal with the Turks, the fully mechanized Turkish troops would be entering China from the west. Now there would be supply lines to attack, but deprived of their forward air bases, and forced to face Turkish fighters which would now be using them, China would not have clear air superiority.