Bean laughed. “You don’t get it, do you? Peter is going to succeed. The world is going to be united. International war will end. And along with it, the sense of loyalty among the military will also die. There’ll just be…colony ships and trading ships and scientific research institutes that will be scandalized at the thought of wasting money doing a personal favor for a soldier who lived a hundred years ago. Or two hundred. Or three hundred.”

  “The funding won’t be contingent,” said Rackham. “We’re funding it using the same investment software. It’s really good, Bean. This is going to be one of the best-funded projects ever, in a few years.”

  Bean laughed. “Mazer, you just don’t understand how far people will go to get their hands on money that they think is being wasted on pure research. You’ll see. But no, I take that back. You won’t see. It’ll happen after you’re dead. I’ll see. And I’ll raise a glass to you, among my little children, and I’ll say, Here’s to you, Mazer Rackham, you foolish old optimist. You thought humans were better than they are, which is why you went to all the trouble of saving the human race a couple of times.”

  Mazer put an arm around Bean’s waist and clinched tight for a moment. “Kiss the babies good-bye.”

  “I will not,” said Bean. “Do you think I want them to have nightmares of a giant bending over them and trying to eat them?”

  “Eat them!”

  “Babies fear being eaten,” said Bean. “There’s a sound evolutionary reason for it, considering that in our ancestral homeland in Africa hyenas would always have been happy to carry off a human baby and eat it. I guess you’ve never read the child-rearing literature.”

  “Sounds more like Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”

  Bean walked from bed to bed, touching each child in return. Perhaps spending a bit longer with Ramón, since he had spent so much time with him, compared to mere minutes with the others.

  Then he left the room and followed Rackham out to the enclosed van that was waiting for him.

  Suriyawong heard the report and the order: The press conference has been held; Thai participation in the FPE has been announced; now begin active operations against the enemy.

  Suri timed the departure of all six contingents so that they would arrive simultaneously, more or less. He also ordered the Chinese battle choppers into position, ready to join in the battle as soon as surprise was achieved.

  One of them would take him to where Virlomi would be.

  If there are any gods looking out for her, thought Suriyawong, then let her live. Even if a hundred thousand soldiers die for her pride, please let her live. The good she did, the greatness in her, should count for something. The mistakes of generals can kill many thousands, but they’re still mistakes. She set out for victory, not destruction. She should be punished only for her intent, not the result.

  Not that her intent was all that good.

  But you—you gods of war! Shiva, you destroyer!—what was Virlomi, ever, except your servant? Will you let your servant be destroyed, solely because she was so good at her job?

  St. Petersburg had fallen more quickly than anyone expected. The resistance hadn’t even been enough to count as “token.” Even the police had fled, and the Finns and Estonians ended up working to maintain public order rather than fight a determined enemy.

  But that was all just a matter of reports to Petra, who was improvising her way across Russia. Without a huge air force, there was no way to airlift her army of Brazilians and Rwandans to Moscow. So she was bringing them in on passenger trains, carefully watching from what looked like recreational aircraft so she’d know as soon as there was any kind of problem. The heavier ordnance was being carried on the highway by big Polish and German moving vans, of the kind that plied the highways across Europe all the time, stopping only to eat and pee and visit roadside whores. Now they carried the war that the Russians had begun straight to Moscow.

  If the enemy was determined, they would be able to track Petra’s army’s progress. After all, there was no concealing what the trains were carrying as they raced through stations without stopping and demanded that the tracks be cleared in front of them “or we’ll blast you and your station and your stupid little village of baby-killing Russians to smithereens!” All rhetoric—a single telephone pole dropped across the tracks here and there would have slowed them down considerably. And they weren’t about to start killing civilians.

  But the Russians didn’t know that. Peter had told her that Vlad was sure the commanders who were left in Moscow would panic. “They’re runners, not fighters. That doesn’t mean nobody will fight—but it will be local people. Scattered. Wherever you meet resistance, just go around. If the Russian army in China is stopped and international vids show Moscow and St. Petersburg in your hands, either the government will sue for peace or the people will revolt. Or both.”

  Well, it had worked for the Germans in France in 1940. Why not here?

  The loss of Vlad had a devastating effect on Russian morale. Especially because the Russians all knew that Julian Delphiki himself had planned the counterattack, and Petra Arkanian was leading the army that was “sweeping across Russia.”

  More like “chugging across Russia.”

  At least it wasn’t winter.

  Han Tzu gave the orders, and his retreating troops moved to their positions. He had timed his retreat exactly right, to lure the Russians to the exact spot he needed them to reach at the exact time he wanted them there. Well ahead of Vlad’s original schedule—the only deviation from his plan.

  The satellite information forwarded to him by Peter Wiggin assured him that the Turks had withdrawn westward, heading toward Armenia. As if they could get there in time to make any difference at all! Caliph Alai had apparently not solved the perpetual problem of Muslim armies. Unless they were under iron control, they were easily distracted. Alai was supposed to be that control. It made Han Tzu wonder if Alai was even in command anymore.

  No matter. Han Tzu’s objective was the huge, overextended, weary Russian Army that was still rigidly following Vlad’s plan despite the fact that their pincer movements had encountered an empty Beijing, with no Chinese forces to crush or Chinese government to seize. And despite the fact that panicky reports must be coming from Moscow as they kept hearing rumors of Petra’s advance without knowing where she was.

  The Russian commander he was facing was not wrong to persist in his campaign. Petra’s advance on Moscow was ultimately cosmetic, as Petra no doubt knew: designed to cause panic, but without sufficient force to hold any objective for long.

  In the south, too, Suri’s Thai army would do important work, but India’s army wasn’t a serious threat in the first place; Bean, in Armenia, had drawn off the Turkish armies, but they could easily come back.

  Everything came down to this battle.

  As far as Han Tzu was concerned, it had better not be a battle at all.

  They were in the wheatfield country near Jinan. Vlad’s plan assumed that the Chinese would seize the high ground to the southeast of the Hwang Ho and dispute the river crossing. Therefore the Russians were prepared with portable bridges and rafts to move across the river at unexpected places and then surround the supposed Chinese redoubt.

  And, just as Vlad’s plan predicted, Han Tzu’s forces were indeed gathered on that high ground, and were shelling the approaching Russian troops with reassuring ineffectiveness. The Russian commander had to feel confident. Especially when he found the bridges over the Hwang Ho ineptly “destroyed,” so repairs were quick.

  Han Tzu couldn’t afford to have a grinding battle, matching gun for gun, tank for tank. Too much materiel had been lost in the previous wars, and while Han’s soldiers were battle-hardened veterans, and the Russian army hadn’t fought in years, Han’s inability to get his army back to full material strength in the short time he had been emperor would inevitably be decisive. Han was not going to use human waves to overwhelm the Russians with numbers. He couldn’t afford to waste this army. He had to keep it intact to deal with the much more dangerous Muslim armies, should they get their act together and join in the war.

  The Russian drones were easily a match for the Chinese; both commanders would have an accurate picture of the battlefield. This was wheatfield country, perfect for the Russian tanks. Nothing Han Tzu did could possibly surprise his enemy. Vlad’s plan was going to work. The Russian commander had to be sure of it.

  His forces that had been concealed behind the Russian advance now reported that the last of the Russians had passed the checkpoints without realizing what the small red tags on fences, bushes, trees, and signposts signified.

  For the next forty minutes, Han Tzu’s army had only one task: To confine the Russian army between those little red flags and the highlands across the Hwang, while none of the Chinese army strayed into that zone.

  Didn’t the Russians notice that every single civilian had been evacuated? That not a civilian vehicle was to be found? That the houses had been emptied of belongings?

  Hyrum Graff had once taught a class in which he told them that God would teach them how to destroy their enemy, using the forces of nature. His prime example was the way God used a flood of the Red Sea to destroy Pharaoh’s chariots.

  The little red flags were the highwater mark.

  Han Tzu gave the order for the dam to be blown up. It would take the wall of water forty minutes to reach the Russian army and destroy it.

  The Armenian soldiers had achieved all their objectives. They had forced a panicky Iranian government to demand the recall of their troops from India. Soon an overwhelming force would arrive and they would all be lost.

  They thought, when the black choppers came flying low over the city, that their time had come.

  Instead, the soldiers that emerged from the choppers were Thais in the uniform of the FPE. The original strike force trained by Bean and led in so many raids by him or Suriyawong.

  Then Bean himself stepped out of the chopper. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.

  Within minutes, the FPE troops had secured the perimeter and the Armenian troops were embarking on the choppers. “You’re going to be taking the long way home,” one of the Thais said, laughing.

  Bean made a big deal about how he was going to go down the hill to see how things were going with the forward defense. The Armenians watched as Bean ducked to go through the door of a half-bombed-out building. A few moments later, the building blew up. Nothing left standing. No walls, no chimney. And no Bean.

  The chopper took off then. The Armenians were so happy to have been rescued that it was hard to remember the terrible news they were going to have to take to Petra Arkanian. Her husband was dead. They’d seen it. There was no way anyone in that building could have survived.

  23

  COLONIST

  From: BlackDog%Salaam@IComeAnon.com

  To: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

  Encrypted using code: *******

  Decrypted using code: *********

  Re: Vlad’s farewell message

  Why I’m writing to you from hiding should be obvious; I’ll give you the detailed story at a later date.

  I want to take you up on your invitation, if it’s still open. I learned recently that while I’m a real whiz at military strategy, I’m a dimwit about what motivates my own people—even those I thought were closest to me. For instance, who would have guessed that they would hate a modernizing, consensus-building black African Caliph a lot more than they hated a dictatorial, idolatrous, immodest Hindu woman?

  I was going to simply disappear from history, and was feeling quite sorry for myself in my exile, while grieving for a dear friend who gave his life to save mine in Hyderabad, when I realized that the news reports that endlessly replayed Vlad’s message were showing me what I needed to do.

  So I’ve made arrangements to make a vid inside a nearby mosque. In a country where I’ll be safe showing my face, so don’t worry. I’m not going to let this one be released through you or Peter—that would discredit it immediately. It’s going to move out through Muslim channels only.

  The thing I realized is this: I may have lost the support of the military, but I’m still Caliph. It’s not just a political office, it’s also a religious one. And not one of those clowns has the authority to depose me.

  Meanwhile, I know now what they called me behind my back. “Black dog.” They’re going to hear those words back from me, you can be sure.

  When the vid is released, then I’ll let you know where I am. If you’re still willing to take me.

  Randi watched the news reports avidly. It seemed so hopeful at first, when they heard that Julian Delphiki had been killed in Iran. Maybe the enemies hunting her baby would be crushed, and she’d be able to come out in the open and proclaim that she was carrying Achilles’s son and heir.

  But then she realized: the evil in this world would not die just because a few of Achilles’s enemies were killed or defeated. They had done too good a job of demonizing him. If they knew who her son was, he would at least be scrutinized and tested constantly; at worst, they’d take him away from her. Or kill him. They’d stop at nothing to erase Achilles’s legacy from the earth.

  Randi stood by her son’s little traveling bed in the former motel room that now was as cheap a one-room hot-plate apartment as northern Virginia offered. A traveling bed was all he needed. He was so small.

  His birth had taken her by surprise. Months too early. And he came so fast. She couldn’t get to a hospital. Not that they would have taken her. She was in the midst of changing her identity. She had no health insurance.

  But because he was so small, the birth was easy. He just…came out. And small as he was, he didn’t have any problems. He didn’t even look like one of those premature babies, the ones who looked so…fetal. Fishlike. Not her boy. He was beautiful, completely normal looking. Just…small.

  Small and brilliant. It almost frightened her sometimes. He had said his first word just a couple of days ago. “Mama,” of course—who else did he know? And when she spoke to him, explained things to him, told him about his father, he seemed to be listening intently. He seemed to understand. Was that possible?

  Of course it was. Achilles’s child would be wiser than normal. And if he was small, well, Achilles himself had been born with a twisted foot. An abnormal body to contain extraordinary gifts.

  Secretly, she had named the baby Achilles Flandres II. But she was careful. She didn’t write that name anywhere but in her heart. Instead the birth certificate called him Randall Firth. She was going by the name Nichelle Firth now. The real Nichelle Firth was a retarded woman in a special school where she had worked as an aide. Randi looked old enough, she knew, to pass for the right age—being on the run and working so hard and worrying all the time gave her a kind of tired look that aged her. But what did she care about vanity? She wasn’t trying to attract a man. She knew men well enough to know that none of them would want to marry a woman only to have her spend all her care on another man’s baby.

  So she made herself up only enough to be hirable in decent jobs that didn’t require a long resume. They’d say, Where have you worked before, and she’d say, Nothing since college, they wouldn’t even remember me, I was a stay-at-home mom, but my husband wasn’t a sleep-at-home guy, so here I am, no resume except my baby’s healthy and my house is clean and I know how to work like my life depended on it cause now it does. That line got her hired anywhere she bothered to apply. She’d never be an executive but she didn’t want to be. Just put in her hours, get “Randall” out of daycare, and then talk to him, sing to him, and study about how to be a good mother and raise a healthy, confident baby who would have the strength of character to overcome the bigotry against his father and take on the whole world.

  But these wars, and Peter Wiggin’s hideous face on the camera, announcing this nation was now in the FPE and that nation was allied with the FPE, it worried her. She couldn’t hide forever. Her fingerprints couldn’t be changed, and there was that shoplifting arrest when she was in college. It was so stupid. She really had sort of forgotten that she took the thing. If she’d remembered she would have changed her mind and paid for it, like the other times. But she forgot and they stopped her outside the store so she had actually done the theft, they said, and she wasn’t a minor so she got the whole arrest treatment. They let her off, but her prints were in the system. So someday somebody would know who she really was. And the man who approached her, who gave her Achilles’s baby—how could she be sure he wouldn’t tell them? Between what he told them and her fingerprints, they could find her no matter how often she changed her name.

  That was when she decided that for the first time in human history, when a person was not safe anywhere on Earth, he had somewhere else to go.

  Why should her little Achilles Flandres II be raised here, in hiding, with bloodthirsty monsters out to kill him in order to punish his father for being better than them? When instead he could grow up on a clean new colony world, where no one would care that the baby wasn’t really hers or that he was small, if he was smart and worked hard and she raised him right? They promised that there would be trade back and forth between colony worlds, and visits from starships. When the time was right for Achilles II to claim his heritage, his legacy, his throne, she would bring him aboard one of those starships and they’d come back to Earth.

  She had studied the relativistic effects of star travel. It might be as much as a hundred years or more—fifty years out and fifty years back, say—but it would only be three or four years of voyaging. So all of Achilles’s enemies would be long since dead. Nobody would bother spreading vicious lies about him anymore. The world would be ready to hear of him with fresh ears, with open minds.

  She couldn’t leave him alone in the apartment. It was a drizzly afternoon, though. Was it worth risking him catching cold?