“As proud as we’ve ever been of Ender,” Mother added.

  Peter almost staggered under the emotional blow. They had just told him the thing that he had wanted most to hear his entire life, without ever quite admitting it to himself. Tears sprang to his eyes.

  “Thanks,” he murmured. Then he closed the door and fled to his room. Somehow, fifteen minutes later, he got enough control of his emotions that he could write the letters he had to write to Thailand, and begin writing his self-exposure essay.

  They knew. And far from thinking him a second-rater, a disappointment, they were as proud of him as they had ever been of Ender.

  His whole world was about to change, his life would be transformed, he might lose everything, he might win everything. But all he could feel that night, as he finally went to bed and drifted off to sleep, was utter, foolish happiness.

  Part Three

  MANEUVERS

  11

  BANGKOK

  Posted on Military History Forum by HectorVictorious@firewall.net

  Topic: Who Remembers Briseis?

  When I read the Iliad, I see the same things everyone else does—the poetry, of course, and the information about heroic bronze-age warfare. But I see something else, too. It might have been Helen whose face launched a thousand ships, but it was Briseis who almost wrecked them. She was a powerless captive, a slave, and yet Achilles almost tore the Greek alliance apart because he wanted her.

  The mystery that intrigues me is: Was she extraordinarily beautiful? Or was it her mind that Achilles coveted? No, seriously: Would she have been happy for long as Achilles’ captive? Would she, perhaps, have gone to him willingly? Or remained a surly, resistant slave?

  Not that it would have mattered to Achilles—he would have used his captive the same way, regardless of her feelings. But one imagines Briseis taking note of the tale about Achilles’ heel and slipping that information to someone within the walls of Troy . . .

  Briseis, if only I could have heard from you!

  —HectorVictorious

  Bean amused himself by leaving messages for Petra scattered all over the forums that she might visit—if she was alive, if Achilles allowed her to browse the nets, if she realized that a topic heading like “Who Remembers Briseis?” was a reference to her, and if she was free to reply as his message covertly begged her to do. He wooed her under other names of women loved by military leaders: Guinevere, Josephine, Roxane—even Barsine, the Persian wife of Alexander that Roxane murdered soon after his death. And he signed himself with the name of a nemesis or chief rival or successor: Mordred, Hector, Wellington, Cassander.

  He took the dangerous step of allowing these identities to continue to exist, each consisting only of a forwarding order to another anonymous net identity that held all mail it received as encrypted postings on an open board with no-tracks protocols. He could visit and read the postings without leaving a trace. But firewalls could be pierced, protocols broken.

  He could afford to be a little more careless now about his online identities, if only because his real-world location was now known to people whose trustworthiness he could not assess. Do you worry about the fifth lock on the back door, when the front door is open?

  They had welcomed him generously in Bangkok. General Naresuan promised him that no one would know his real identity, that he would be given soldiers to train and intelligence to analyze and his advice would be sought constantly as the Thai military prepared for all kinds of future contingencies. “We are taking seriously Locke’s assessment that India will soon pose a threat to Thai security, and we will of course want your help in preparing contingency plans.” All so warm and courteous. Bean and Carlotta were installed in a general-officer-level apartment on a military base, given unlimited privileges concerning meals and purchases, and then . . . ignored.

  No one called. No one consulted. The promised intelligence did not flow. The promised soldiers were never assigned.

  Bean knew better than to even inquire. The promises were not forgotten. If he asked about them, Naresuan would be embarrassed, would feel challenged. That would never do. Something had happened. Bean could only imagine what.

  At first, of course, he feared that Achilles had gotten to the Thai government somehow, that his agents now knew exactly where Bean was, that his death was imminent.

  That was when he sent Carlotta away.

  It was not a pleasant scene. “You should come with me,” she said. “They won’t stop you. Walk away.”

  “I’m not leaving,” said Bean. “Whatever has gone wrong is probably local politics. Somebody here doesn’t like having me around—maybe Naresuan himself, maybe someone else.”

  “If you feel safe enough to stay,” said Sister Carlotta, “then there’s no reason for me to go.”

  “You can’t pass yourself off as my grandmother here,” said Bean. “The fact that I have a guardian weakens me.”

  “Spare me the scene you’re trying to play,” said Carlotta. “I know there are reasons why you’d be better off without me, and I know there are ways that I could help you greatly.”

  “If Achilles knows where I am already, then his penetration of Bangkok is deep enough that I’ll never get away,” said Bean. “You might. The information that an older woman is with me might not have reached him yet. But it will soon, and he wants you dead as much as he wants to kill me. I don’t want to have to worry about you here.”

  “I’ll go,” said Carlotta. “But how do I write to you, since you never keep the same address?”

  He gave her the name of his folder on the no-tracks board he was using, and the encryption key. She memorized it.

  “One more thing,” said Bean. “In Greensboro, Peter said something about reading your memos.”

  “I think he was lying,” said Carlotta.

  “I think the way you reacted proved that whether he read them or not, there were memos, and you don’t want me to read them.”

  “There were, and I don’t,” said Carlotta.

  “And that’s the other reason I want you to leave,” said Bean.

  The expression on her face turned fierce. “You can’t trust me when I tell you that there is nothing in those memos that you need to know right now?”

  “I need to know everything about myself. My strengths, my weaknesses. You know things about me that you told Graff and you didn’t tell me. You’re still not telling me. You think of yourself as my master, able to decide things for me. That means we’re not partners after all.”

  “Very well,” said Carlotta. “I am acting in your best interest, but I understand that you don’t see it that way.” Her manner was cold, but Bean knew her well enough to recognize that it was not anger she was controlling, but grief and frustration. It was a cold thing to do, but for her own sake he had to send her away and keep her from being in close contact with him until he understood what was going on here in Bangkok. The contretemps about the memos made her willing to go. And he really was annoyed.

  She was out the door in fifteen minutes and on her way to the airport. Nine hours later he found a posting from her on his encrypted board: She was in Manila, where she could disappear within the Catholic establishment there. Not a word about their quarrel, if that’s what it had been. Only a brief reference to “Locke’s confession,” as the newspeople were calling it. “Poor Peter,” wrote Carlotta. “He’s been hiding for so long, it’s going to be hard for him to get used to having to face the consequences of his words.”

  To her secure address at the Vatican, Bean replied, “I just hope Peter has the brains to get out of Greensboro. What he needs right now is a small country to run, so he can get some administrative and political experience. Or at least a city water department.”

  And what I need, thought Bean, is soldiers to command. That’s why I came here.

  For weeks after Carlotta left, the silence continued. It became obvious, soon enough, that whatever was going on had nothing to do with Achilles, or Bean would be dead by now. Nor could it have had anything to do with Locke being revealed as Peter Wiggin—the freeze-out had already begun before Peter published his declaration.

  Bean busied himself with whatever tasks seemed meaningful. Though he had no access to military-level maps, he could still access the publicly available satellite maps of the terrain between India and the heart of Thailand—the rough mountain country of northern and eastern Burma, the Indian Ocean coastal approaches. India had a substantial fleet, by Indian Ocean standards—might they attempt to run the Strait of Malacca and strike at the heart of Thailand from the gulf? All possibilities had to be prepared for.

  Some basic intelligence about the makeup of the Indian and Thai military was available on the nets. Thailand had a powerful air force—there was a chance of achieving air dominance, if they could protect their bases. Therefore it would be essential to have the capability of laying down emergency airstrips in a thousand different places, an engineering feat well within the reach of the Thai military—if they trained for it now and dispersed crews and fuel and spare parts throughout the country. That, along with mines, would be the best protection against a coastal landing.

  The other Indian vulnerability would be supply lines and lanes of advance. Since India’s military strategy would inevitably depend on throwing vast, irresistible armies against the enemy, the defense was to keep those vast armies hungry and harry them constantly from the air and from raiding parties. And if, as was likely, the Indian Army reached the fertile plain of the Chao Phraya or the Aoray Plateau, they had to find the land utterly stripped, the food supplies dispersed and hidden—those that weren’t destroyed.

  It was a brutal strategy, because the Thai people would suffer along with the Indian Army—indeed, they would suffer more. So the destruction had to be set up so it would only take place at the last minute. And, as much as possible, they had to be able to evacuate women and children to remote areas or even to camps in Laos and Cambodia. Not that borders would stop the Indian army, but terrain might. Having many isolated targets for the Indians would force them to divide their forces. Then—and only then—would it make sense for the Thai military to take on smaller portions of the Indian army in hit-and-run engagements or, where possible, in pitched battles where the Thai side would have temporary numerical parity and superior air support.

  Of course, for all Bean knew this was already the longstanding Thai military doctrine and if he made these suggestions he would only annoy them—or make them feel that he had contempt for them.

  So he worded his memo very carefully. Lots of phrases like, “No doubt you already have this in place,” and “as I’m sure you have long expected.” Of course, even those phrases could backfire, if they hadn’t thought of these things—it would sound patronizing. But he had to do something to break this stalemate of silence.

  He read the memo over and over, revising each time. He waited days to send it, so he could see it in new perspectives. Finally, certain that it was as rhetorically inoffensive as he could make it, he put it into an email and sent it to the Office of the Chakri—the supreme military commander. It was the most public and potentially embarrassing way he could deliver the memo, since mail to that address was inevitably sorted and read by aides. Even printing it out and carrying it by hand would have been more subtle. But the idea was to stir things up; if Naresuan wanted him to be subtle, he would have given him a private email address to write to.

  Fifteen minutes after he sent the memo, his door unceremoniously opened and four military police came in. “Come with us, sir,” said the sergeant in charge.

  Bean knew better than to delay or to ask questions. These men knew nothing but the instructions they had been given, and Bean would find out what those were by waiting to see what they did.

  They did not take him to the office of the Chakri. Instead he was taken to one of the temporary buildings that had been set up on the old parade grounds—the Thai military had only recently given up marching as part of the training of soldiers and the display of military might. Only three hundred years after the American Civil War had proven that the days of marching in formation into battle were over. For military organizations, that was about the normal time lag. Sometimes Bean half-expected to find some army somewhere that was still training its soldiers to fight with sabers from horseback.

  There was no label, not even a number, on the door they led him to. And when he came inside, none of the soldier-clerks even looked up at him. His arrival was both expected and unimportant, their attitude said. Which meant, of course, that it was very important, or they would not be so studiously perfect about not noticing him.

  He was led to an office door, which the sergeant opened for him. He went in; the military police did not. The door closed behind him.

  Seated at the desk was a major. This was an awfully high rank to have manning a reception desk, but today, at least, that seemed to be the man’s duty. He depressed the button on an intercom. “The package is here,” he said.

  “Send it in.” The voice that came back sounded young. So young that Bean understood the situation at once.

  Of course. Thailand had contributed its share of military geniuses to Battle School. And even though none of Ender’s jeesh had been of Thai parentage, Thailand, like many east and south Asian countries, was overrepresented in the population of Battle School as a whole.

  There had even been three Thai soldiers who served with Bean in Dragon Army. Bean remembered every kid in that army very well, along with his complete dossier, since he was the one who had drawn up the list of soldiers who should make up Ender’s army. Since most countries seemed to value their returning Battle School graduates in proportion to their closeness to Ender Wiggin, it was most likely one of those three who had been given a position of such influence here that he would be able to intercept a memo to the Chakri so quickly. And of the three, the one Bean would expect to see in the most prominent position, taking the most aggressive role, was . . .

  Surrey. Suriyawong. “Surly,” as they called him behind his back, since he always seemed to be pissed off about something.

  And there he was, standing behind a table covered with maps.

  Bean saw, to his surprise, that he was actually almost as tall as Suriyawong. Surrey had not been very big, but everyone towered over Bean in Battle School. Bean was catching up. He might not spend his whole life hopelessly undersized. It was a promising thought.

  There was nothing promising about Surrey’s attitude, though. “So the colonial powers have decided to use India and Thailand to fight their surrogate wars,” he said.

  Bean knew at once what had gotten under Suriyawong’s skin. Achilles was a Belgian Walloon by birth, and Bean, of course, was Greek. “Yes, of course,” said Bean. “Belgium and Greece are bound to fight out their ancient differences on bloody battlefields in Burma.”

  “Just because you were in Ender’s jeesh,” said Suriyawong, “does not mean that you have any understanding of the military situation of Thailand.”

  “My memo was designed to show how limited my knowledge was, because Chakri Naresuan has not provided me with the access to intelligence that he indicated I would receive when I arrived.”

  “If we ever need your advice, we’ll provide you with intelligence.”

  “If you only provide me with the intelligence you think I need,” said Bean, “then my advice will only consist of telling you what you already know, and I might as well go home now.”

  “Yes,” said Suriyawong. “That would be best.”

  “Suriyawong,” said Bean, “you don’t really know me.”

  “I know you were always an emossin’ little showoff who always had to be smarter than everybody else.”

  “I was smarter than everybody else,” said Bean. “I’ve got the test scores to prove it. So what? That didn’t mean they made me commander of Dragon Army. It didn’t mean Ender made me a toon leader. I know just how worthless being smart is, compared with being good at command. I also know just how ignorant I am here in Thailand. I didn’t come here because I thought Thailand would be prostrate without my brilliant mind to lead you into battle. I came here because the most dangerous human on this planet is running the show in India and by my best calculations, Thailand is going to be his primary target. I came here because if Achilles is going to be stopped from setting up his tyranny over the world, this is where it has to be done. And I thought, like George Washington in the American revolution, you might actually welcome a Lafayette or a Steuben to help in the cause.”

  “If your foolish memo was an example of your ‘help,’ you can leave now.”

  “So you already have the capability of making temporary airstrips within the amount of time that a fighter is in the air? So they can land at an airstrip that didn’t exist when they took off?”

  “That is an interesting idea and we’re having the engineers look at it and evaluate the feasibility.”

  Bean nodded. “Good. That tells me all I needed to know. I’ll stay.”

  “No, you will not!”

  “I’ll stay because, despite the fact that you’re pissed off that I’m here, you still recognized a good idea when you heard it and put it into play. You’re not an idiot, and therefore you’re worth working with.”

  Suriyawong slapped the table and leaned over it, furious. “You condescending little oomay, I’m not your moose.”

  Bean answered him calmly. “Suriyawong, I don’t want your job. I don’t want to run things here. I just want to be useful. Why not use me the way Ender did? Give me a few soldiers to train. Let me think of weird things to do and figure out how to do them. Let me be ready so that when the war comes, and there’s some impossible thing you need done, you can call me in and say, Bean, I need you to do something to slow down this army for a day, and I’ve got no troops anywhere near there. And I’ll say, Are they drawing water from a river? Good, then let’s give their whole army dysentery for a week. That should slow them down. And I’ll get in there, get a bioagent into the water, bypass their water purification system, and get out. Or do you already have a water-drugging diarrhea team?”