Orson Card - Shadow Puppets

Not until they were down one spoke of the wheel to a level where there was a definite floor to walk on did they meet anyone of real status in the station. A man in the grey suit that served MinCol as a uniform waited at the foot of the elevator, his hand outstretched. "Mr. and Mrs. Raymond," he said. "I'm Underminister Dimak. And this must be your son, Dick."

Peter smiled wanly at the faint humor in the pseudonym Graff had arbitrarily assigned to him.

"Please tell me that you know who we really are so we don't have to keep up this charade," said Peter.

"I know," said Dimak softly, "but nobody else on this station does, and I'd like to keep it that way for now.

"Graff isn't here?"

"The Minister of Colonization is returning from his inspection of the outfitting of the newest colony ship. We're two weeks away from first leg on that one, and starting next week you won't believe the traffic that'll come through here, sixteen shuttles a day, and that's just for the colonists. The freighters go directly to the dry dock."

"Is there," said Father innocently, "a wet dock?"

Dimak grinned. "Nautical terminology dies hard."

Dimak led them along a corridor to a down tube. They slid down the pole after him. The gravity wasn't so intense yet as to make this a problem, even for Peter's parents, who were, after all, in their forties. He helped them step out of the shaft into a lower-and therefore "heavier"-corridor.

There were old-fashioned directional stripes along the walls. "Your palm prints have already been keyed," said Dimak. "Just touch here, and it will lead you to your room."

"This is left over from the old days, isn't it?" said Father "Though I don't imagine you were here when this was still-"

"But I was here," said Dimak. "I was mother to groups of new kids. Not your son, I'm afraid. But an acquaintance of yours, I believe."

Peter did not want to put himself in the pathetic position of naming off Battle School graduates he knew. Mother had no such qualms.

"Petra?" she said. "Suriyawong?"

Dimak leaned in close, so his voice would not have to be pitched loud enough that it might be overheard. "Bean," he said.

"He must have been a remarkable boy," said Mother.

"Looked like a three-year-old when he got here," said Dimak. "Nobody could believe he was old enough for this place."

"He doesn't look like that now," said Peter dryly.

"No, I ... I know about his condition. It's not public knowledge, but Colonel Graff-the minister, I mean-he knows that I still care what happens to-well, to all my kids, of course-but this one was ... I imagine your son's first trainer felt much the same way about him."

"I hope so," said Mother.

The sentimentality was getting so sweet Peter wanted to brush his teeth. He palmed the pad by the entrance and three strips lit up. "Green green brown," said Dimak. "But soon you won't be needing this. It's not as if there's miles of open country here to get lost in. The stripe system always assumes that you want to go back to your room, except when you touch the pad just outside the door of your room, and then it thinks you want to go to the bathroom-none inside the rooms, I'm afraid, it wasn't built that way. But if you want to go to the mess hall, just slap the pad twice and it'll know."

He showed them to their quarters, which consisted of a single long room with bunks in rows along both sides of a narrow aisle. "I'm afraid you'll have company for the week we're loading up the ship, but nobody'll be here very long, and then you'll have the place to yourself for three more weeks."

"You're doing a launch a month?" said Peter "How, exactly, are you funding a pace like that?"

Dimak looked at him blankly. "I don't actually know," he said.

Peter leaned in close and imitated the voice Dimak used for secrets. "I'm the Hegemon," he said. "Officially, your boss works for me.

Dimak whispered back, "You save the world, we'll finance the colony program."

"I could have used a little more money for my operations, I can tell you," said Peter.

"Every Hegemon feels that way," said Dimak. "Which is why our funding doesn't come through you."

Peter laughed. "Smart move. If you think the colonization program is very very important."

"It's the future of the human race, said Dimak simply. "The Buggers-pardon me, the Formics-had the right idea. Spread out as far as you can, so you can't be wiped out in a single disastrous war. Not that it saved them, but... we aren't hive creatures."

"Aren't we?" said Father.

"Well, if we are, then who's the queen?" asked Dimak.

"In this place," said Father, "I suspect it's Graff."

"And we're all just his little arms and legs?"

"And mouths and... well, yes, of course. A little more independent and a little less obedient than the individual Formics, of course, but that's how a species comes to dominate a world the way we did, and they did. Because you know how to get a large number of individuals to give up their personal will and subject themselves to a group mind."

"So this is philosophy we're doing here," said Dimak.

"Or very cutting-edge science," said Father "The behavior of humars in groups. Degrees of allegiance. I think about it a lot."

"How interesting."

"I see that you're not interested at all," said Father. "And that I'm now in your book as an eccentric who brings up his theories. But I never do, actually. I don't know why I did just now. I just... it's the first time I've been in Graff's house, so to speak. And meeting you was very much like visiting with him."

"I'm... flattered," said Dimak.

"John Paul," said Mother, "I do believe you're making Mr Dimak uncomfortable."

"When people feel great allegiance to their community, they start to take on the mannerisms as well as the morals of their leader," said Father, refusing to give up.

"If their leader has a personality," said Peter

"How do you get to be a leader without one?" asked Father.

"Ask Achilles," said Peter "He's the opposite. He takes on the mannerisms of the people he wants to have follow him."

"I don't remember that one," said Dimak. "He was only here a few days before he-before we discovered he had a track record of murder back on Earth."

"Someday you have to tell me how Bean got him to confess. He won't tell."

"If he won't tell, neither will I," said Dimak.

"How loyal," said Father.

"Not really," said Dimak. "I just don't know myself. I know it had something to do with a ventilation shaft."

"That confession," said Peter "The recordings wouldn't still be here, would they?"

"No, they wouldn't," said Dimak. "And even if they were, they're part of a sealed juvenile record."

"Of a mass murderer"

"We only notice laws when they act against our interest," said Dimak.

"See?" said Father. "We've traded philosophies."

"Like tribesmen swapping at a potlatch," said Dimak. "If you don't mind, I'd like to have you talk with Security Chief Uphanad before dinner"

"What about?"

"The colonists aren't a problem-they have a one-way flow and they can't easily communicate planetside. But you're probably going to be recognized here. And even if you're not, it's hard to maintain a false story for long."

"Then let's not have a false story," said Peter.

"No. let's have a really good one," said Mother.

"Let's just not talk to anybody," said Father.

"Those are precisely the issues that Major Uphanad wants to discuss with you."

Once Dimak had left, they chose bunks at the back of the long room. Peter took a top bunk, of course, but while he was unloading his bags into the locker in the wall behind the bunk, Father discovered that each set of six bunks-three on each side-could be separated from the others by a privacy curtain.