Orson Card - Shadow Puppets

Now she noticed him, and noticed the balloons, and laughed.

He laughed back and went to her, handed her the balloons.

"Husbands don't usually give their wives balloons," she said.

"I thought having a baby implanted was a special occasion."

"I suppose so," she said, "when it's professionally done. Most babies are implanted at home by amateurs, and the wives don't get balloons."

"I'll remember that and try always to have a few on hand."

He walked beside her as an attendant pushed her wheelchair down the hallway toward the entrance.

"So where is my ticket to?" she asked.

"I got you two," said Bean. "Different airlines, different destinations. Plus this train ticket. If either of the flights gives you a bad feeling, even if you can't decide why you have misgivings, don't get on it. Just go to the other airline. Or leave the airport and take the train. The train ticket is an EU pass so you can go anywhere."

"You spoil me," said Petra.

"What do you think?" asked Bean. "Did the baby hook itself onto the uterine wall?"

"I'm not equipped with an internal camera," said Petra, "and I lack the pertinent nerves to be able to feel microscopically small fetuses implant and start to grow a placenta."

"That's a very poor design," said Bean. "When I'm dead, I'll have a few words with God about that."

Petra winced. "Please don't joke about death."

"Please don't ask me to be somber about it."

"I'm pregnant. Or might be. I'm supposed to get my way about everything."

The attendant pushing Petra's wheelchair started to take her toward the front cab in a line of three. Bean stopped him.

"The driver's smoking," said Bean.

"He'll put it out," said the attendant.

"My wife will not get into a car with a driver whose clothing is giving off cigarette smoke residue."

Petra looked at him oddly. He raised an eyebrow, hoping she'd realize that this was not about tobacco.

"He's the first taxi in line," said the attendant, as if it were an incontrovertible law of physics that the first cab in line had to be the one to get the next passengers.

Bean looked at the other two cabs. The second driver looked at him impassively. The third driver smiled. He looked Indonesian or Malay, and Bean knew that in their culture, a smile was pure reflex when facing someone bigger or richer than you.

Yet for some reason he did not feel the mistrust about the Indonesian driver that he felt about the two Dutch drivers ahead of him.

So he pushed her wheelchair toward the third cab. Bean asked, and the driver said yes, he was from Jakarta. The attendant, truly irritated at this breach of protocol, insisted on helping Petra into the cab. Bean had her bag and put it in the back seat beside her-he never put anything in the trunks of cabs, in case he had to run for it.

Then he had to stand there as she drove off. No time for elaborate good-byes. He had just put everything that mattered in his life into a cab driven by a smiling stranger, and he had to let it drive away.

Then he went to the first cab in line. The driver was showing his outrage at the way Bean had violated the line. The Netherlands was back to being a civilized place, now that it was self-governing again, and lines were respected. Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

Bean handed the driver a twenty-five-dollar coin, which he looked at with disdain. "It's stronger than the Euro right now," said Bean. "And I'm paying you a fare, so you didn't lose anything because I put my wife in another cab."

"What is your destination?" said the driver curtly, his English laced with a prim BBC accent. The Dutch really needed to have better programming in their own language so their citizens didn't have to watch English vids and listen to English radio all the time.

Bean did not answer him until he was inside the cab, the door closed.

"Drive me to Amsterdam," said Bean.

"What?"

"You heard me," said Bean.

"That's eight hundred dollars," said the driver.

Bean peeled a thousand-dollar bill off his roll and gave it to him. "Does the video unit in this car actually work?" he asked.

The driver made a show of scanning the bill to see if it was counterfeit. Bean wish he had used a Hegemony note. You don't like dollars? Well see how you like this! But it was unlikely that anybody would take Hegemony money for any purpose these days. What with Achilles's and Peter's faces on every vid in the city and all the talk about how Peter had embezzled Hegemony funds.

Their faces were on the video in the cab, too, when the driver finally got it working. Poor Peter, thought Bean. Now he knows how the popes and anti-popes felt when there were two with a claim to St. Peter's throne. What a lovely taste of history for him. What a mess for the world.

And to Bean's surprise, he found that he didn't actually care that much whether the world was in a mess-not when the messiness wasn't going to affect his own little family.

I'm actually a civilian now, he realized. All I care about is how these world events will affect my family.

Then he remembered: I used to care about world events only insofar as they affected me. I used to laugh at Sister Carlotta because she was so concerned.

But he did care. He kept track. He paid attention. He told himself it was so he'd know where he'd be safe. Now, though, with far more reason to worry about safety, he found the whole business of Peter and Achilles fundamentally boring. Peter was a fool to think he could control Achilles, a fool to trust a Chinese source on such a matter. How well Achilles must understand Peter, to know that he would rescue Achilles instead of killing him. But why shouldn't Achilles understand Peter? All he had to do was think of what he would do, if he were in Peter's position, but dumber.

Still, even though he was bored, the story from the newspeople began to make sense, when combined with the things Bean knew. The embezzling story was ludicrous, of course, obviously disinformation from Achilles, though all the predictable nations were in an uproar about it, demanding inquiries: China, Russia, France. What seemed to be true was that Peter and his parents slipped out of the Hegemon's compound in Ribeirao Preto just before dawn this morning, drove to Araraquara, then flew to Montevideo, where they got official permission to fly to the United States as guests of the U.S. government.

It was possible, of course, that their sudden flight was precipitated by something Achilles did or some information they learned about Achilles's immediate plans. But Bean was reasonably sure that these events were triggered by the emails he and Petra had sent early this morning when they got Han Tzu's message.

Apparently the Wiggins had been up either very late or very early, because they must have got the letters almost as soon as they were sent. Got them, deciphered the message, realized the implication of Han Tzu's tip, and then, incredibly enough, persuaded Peter to pay attention and get out without a moment's delay.

Bean had assumed it would take days before Peter would realize the significance of what he had been told. Part of the problem would be his relationship with his parents. Bean and Petra knew how smart the Wiggins were, but most people in the Hegemony didn't have a clue, least of all Peter Bean tried to imagine the scene when they explained to him that he had been fooled by Achilles. Peter, believing his parents when they told him he had made a mistake? Unthinkable.

And yet he must have believed them right away.

Or they drugged him.

Bean laughed a little at the thought, and then looked up from the vid because the cab was turning sharply.