Shadow puppets the shado.., p.32
Shadow Puppets (The Shadow Saga Book 3),
p.32
“I knew I was taking my life in my hands picking out the house without you,” said Bean. “The furniture is up to you.”
“Good,” said Petra. “I’ll make you sleep in a frilly pink room.”
“Will you be sleeping there with me?”
“Of course.”
“Then frilly pink is fine with me, if that’s what it takes.”
Peter, unsentimental as he was, saw no reason to hold a funeral for Achilles. But Bean insisted on at least a graveside service, and he paid for the carving of the monument. Under the name “Achilles de Flandres,” the year of his birth, and the date of his death, the inscription said:
Born crippled in body and spirit,
He changed the face of the world.
Among all the hearts he broke
And lives he ended far too young
Were his own heart
And his own life.
May he find peace.
It was a small group gathered there in the cemetery in Ribeirão Preto. Bean and Petra, the Wiggins, Peter. Graff had gone back to space. Suriyawong had led his little army back to Thailand, to help their homeland drive out the conquerors and restore itself.
No one had anything much to say over Achilles’s grave. They could not pretend that they weren’t all glad that he was dead. Bean read the inscription he had written, and everyone agreed that it wasn’t just fair to Achilles, it was generous.
In the end it was only Peter who had something he could say from the heart.
“Am I the only one here who sees something of himself in the man who’s lying in this box?”
No one had an answer for him, either yes or no.
Three bloody weeks later, the war ended. If the Chinese had accepted the terms the Caliph had offered in the first place, they would have lost only their new conquests, plus Xinjiang and Tibet. Instead, they waited until Canton had fallen, Shanghai was besieged, and the Turkic troops were surrounding Beijing.
So when the Caliph drew the new map, the province of Inner Mongolia was given to the nation of Mongolia, and Manchuria and Taiwan were given their independence. And China had to guarantee the safety of teachers of religion. The door had been opened to Muslim proselytizing.
The Chinese government promptly fell. The new government repudiated the ceasefire terms, and the Caliph declared martial law until new elections could be held.
And somewhere in the rugged terrain of easternmost India, the goddess of the bridge lived among her worshipers, biding her time, watching to see whether India was going to be free or had merely changed one tyranny for another.
In the aftermath of war, while Indians, Thais, Burmese, Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians searched their onetime conquerors’ land for family members who had been carried off, Bean and Petra also searched as best they could by computer, hoping to find some record of what Volescu and Achilles had done with their lost children.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing this sequel to Ender’s Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon, I faced two new problems. First, I was expanding the roles of several minor characters from earlier books, and ran the serious risk of inventing aspects of their appearance or their past that would contradict some long-forgotten detail in a previous volume. To avoid this as much as possible, I relied on two online communities.
The Philotic Web (www.philoticweb.net) carries a timeline combining the story flows of Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, which proved invaluable to me. It was created by Nathan M. Taylor with the help of Adam Spieckermann.
On my own website, Hatrack River (www.hatrack.com), I posted the first five chapters of the manuscript of this novel, in the hope that readers who had read the other books in the series more recently than I might be able to catch inadvertent inconsistencies and other problems. The Hatrack River community did not disappoint me. Among the many who responded—and I thank them all—I found particular value in the suggestions of Keiko A. Haun (“accio”), Justin Pullen, Chris Bridges, Josh Galvez (“Zevlag”), David Tayman (“Taalcon”), Alison Purnell (“Eaquae Legit”), Vicki Norris (“CKDexter-Haven”), Michael Sloan (“Papa Moose”), and Oliver Withstandley.
In addition, I had the help, chapter by chapter through the whole book, of my regular crew of first readers—Phillip and Erin Absher, Kathryn H. Kidd, and my son Geoffrey. My wife, Kristine A. Card, as usual read each chapter while the pages were still warm from the LaserJet. Without them I could not have proceeded with this book.
The second problem posed by this novel was that I wrote it during the war in Afghanistan between the U.S. and its allies and the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. Since in Shadow Puppets I had to show the future state of relations between the Muslim and Western worlds, and between Israel and its Muslim neighbors, I had to make a prediction about how the current hate-filled situation might someday be resolved. Since I take quite seriously my responsibility to the nations and peoples I write about, I was dependent for much of my understanding of the causes of the present situation on Bernard Lewis’s What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford University Press, 2001).
This book is dedicated to my wife’s parents. Besides the fact that much of the peace and joy in Kristine’s and my lives comes from our close and harmonious relationship with both our extended families, I owe an additional debt to James B. Allen, for his excellent work as a historian, yes, but more personally for having taught me to approach history fearlessly, going wherever the evidence leads, assuming neither the best nor the worst about people of the past, and adapting my personal worldview wherever it needs adjustment, but never carelessly throwing out previous ideas that remain valid.
To my assistants, Kathleen Bellamy and Scott Allen, I owe much more than I pay them. As for my children, Geoffrey, Emily, and Zina, and my wife, Kristine, they are the reason it’s worth getting out of bed each day.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SHADOW PUPPETS
Copyright © 2002 by Orson Scott Card
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Beth Meacham
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-5674-1
Tor Books by Orson Scott Card
Note: Within series, books are best read in listed order.
—–
ENDER UNIVERSE
Ender Series
Ender Wiggin: The finest general the world could hope to find or breed.
Ender's Game
Ender in Exile
Speaker for the Dead
Xenocide
Children of the Mind
Ender's Shadow Series
Parallel storylines to Ender's Game from Bean: Ender's right hand, his strategist, and his friend.
Ender's Shadow
Shadow of the Hegemon
Shadow Puppets
Shadow of the Giant
Shadows in Flight
The First Formic War Series
One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death.
These are the stories of the First Formic War.
Earth Unaware
Earth Afire
Ender novellas
A War of Gifts
First Meetings
The Authorized Ender Companion by Jake Black
A complete and in-depth encyclopedia of all the persons, places, things, and events in Orson Scott Card's Ender Universe.
THE MITHER MAGES SERIES
Danny North is different from his magical family. And when he discovers his gift, it is greater than he ever imagined—which could earn him a death sentence.
The Lost Gate
The Gate Thief
THE TALES OF ALVIN MAKER SERIES
Visit the magical America that might have been, marvel as the tale of Alvin Maker unfolds.
Seventh Son
Red Prophet
Prentice Alvin
Alvin Journeyman
Heartfire
The Crystal City
HOMECOMING SERIES
Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. But it is still vital.
The Memory of Earth
The Call of Earth
The Ships of Earth
Earthfall
Earthborn
WOMEN OF GENESIS SERIES
Fiction exploring the human side of Biblical women.
Sarah
Rebekah
Rachel & Leah
THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD
Experience Card's full versatility, from science fiction to fantasy, from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction.
Keeper of Dreams
The Changed Man
Cruel Miracles
Flux
Monkey Sonatas
STAND-ALONE FICTION
Hart's Hope: Dark and powerful fantasy.
Lovelock (with Kathryn Kidd): A startling look at the ethics of bioengineering.
Pastwatch: In this novel of time travel, can the past be changed?
Saints: A novel of the early days of the Mormon Church.
Songmaster: An SF classic and a haunting story of power and love.
The Worthing Saga: The tale of a seed ship sent out to save the human race.
Wyrms: The story of a young woman's journey to confront her destiny, and her world's.
The Folk of the Fringe: When America is destroyed, it's up to those on the fringes to rebuild.
—–
www.tor-forge.com
Orson Scott Card, Shadow Puppets (The Shadow Saga Book 3)
