Chapter Seventeen

On A Bridge

TO: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov From: Wiggin%resistance@haiti.gov

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Re: For the sake of India, please do not set foot on Earth

Esteemed Polemarch Chamrajnagar,

For reasons that will be made clear by the attached essay, which I will soon publish, I fully expect that you will return to Earth just in time to be caught up in India's complete subjugation by China.

If your return to India had any chance of preserving her independence, you would bear any risk and return, regardless of any advice. And if your establishing a government in exile could accomplish anything for your native land, who would try to persuade you to do otherwise?

But India's strategic position is so exposed, and China's relentlessness in conquest is so well known, that you must know both courses of action are futile.

Your resignation as Polemarch does not take effect until you reach Earth. If you do not board the shuttle, but instead return to IFCom, you remain Polemarch. You are the only possible Polemarch who could secure the International Fleet. A new commander could not distinguish between Chinese who are loyal to the Fleet and those whose first allegiance is to their now-dominant homeland. The I.F. must not fall under the sway of Achilles. You, as Polemarch, could reassign suspect Chinese to innocuous postings, preventing any Chinese grab for control. If you return to Earth, and Achilles has influence over your successor as Polemarch, the I.F. will become a tool of conquest.

If you remain as Polemarch, you will be accused, as an Indian, of planning to pursue vengeance against China. Therefore, to prove your impartiality and avoid suspicion, you will have to remain utterly aloof from all Earthside wars and struggles. You can trust me and my allies to maintain the resistance to Achilles regardless of the apparent odds, if for no other reason than this: His ultimate triumph means our immediate death.

Stay in space and, by doing so, allow the possibility of humanity escaping the domination of a madman. In return, I vow to do all in my power to free India from Chinese rule and return it to self-rule.

Sincerely, Peter Wiggin

The soldiers around her knew perfectly well who Virlomi was. They also knew the reward that had been offered for her capture--or her dead body. The charge was treason and espionage. But from the start, as she passed through the checkpoint at the entrance of the base at Hyderabad, the common soldiers had believed in her and befriended her.

"You will hear me accused of spying or worse," she said, "but it isn't true. A treacherous foreign monster rules in Hyderabad, and he wants me dead for personal reasons. Help me."

Without a word, the soldiers walked her away from where the cameras might spot her, and waited. When an empty supply truck came up, they stopped it and while some of them talked to the driver, the others helped her get in. The truck drove through, and she was out.

Ever since, she had turned to the footsoldiers for help. Officers might or might not let compassion or righteousness interfere with obedience or ambition-the common soldiers had no such qualms. She was transported in the midst of a crush of soldiers on a crowded train, offered so much food smuggled out of mess halls that she could not eat it all, and given bunk space while weary men slept on the floor. No one laid a hand on her except to help her, and none betrayed her.

She moved across India to the east, toward the war zone, for she knew that her only hope, and the only hope for Petra Arkanian, was for her to find, or be found by, Bean.

Virlomi knew where Bean would be: making trouble for Achilles wherever and however he could. Since the Indian Army had chosen the dangerous and foolish strategy of committing all its manpower to battle, she knew that the effective counterstrategy would be harassment and disruption of supply lines. And Bean would come to whatever point on the supply line was most crucial and yet most difficult to disrupt.

So, as she neared the front, Virlomi went over in her mind the map she had memorized. To move large amounts of supplies and munitions quickly from India to the troops sweeping through the great plain where the Irrawaddy flowed, there were two general routes. The northern route was easier, but far more exposed to raids. The southern route was harder, but more protected. Bean would be working on disrupting the southern route.

Where? There were two roads over the mountains from Imphal in India to Kalemyo in Burma. They both passed through narrow canyons and crossed deep gorges. Where would it be hardest to rebuild a blown bridge or a collapsed highway? On both routes, there were candidate locations. But the hardest to rebuild was on the western route, a long stretch of road carved out of rock along the edge of a steep defile, leading to a bridge over a deep gorge. Bean would not just blow up this bridge, Virlomi thought, because it would not be that hard to span. He would also collapse the road in several places, so the engineers wouldn't be able to get to the place where the bridge must be anchored without first blasting and shaping a new road.

So that is where Virlomi went, and waited.

Water she found flowing cleanly through the side ravines. She was given food by passing soldiers, and soon learned that they were looking for her. Word had spread that the Woman-in-hiding needed food. And still no officer knew to look for her, and still no assassin from Achilles came to kill her. Poor as the soldiers were, apparently the reward did not tempt them. She was proud of her people even as she mourned for them, to have such a man as Achilles rule over them.

She heard of daring raids at easier spots on the eastern road, and traffic on the western road grew heavier, the roads trembling day and night as India burned up her fuel reserves supplying an army far larger than the war required. She asked the soldiers if they had heard of Thai raiders led by a child, and they laughed bitterly. "Two children," they said. "One white, one brown. They come in their helicopters, they destroy, they leave. Whomever they touch, they kill. Whatever they see, they destroy."

Now she began to worry. What if the one that came to take this bridge was not Bean, but the other one? No doubt another Battle School grad-Suriyawong came to mind-but would Bean have told him about her letter? Would he have any idea that she held within her head the plan of the base at Hyderabad? That she knew where Petra was?

Yet she had no choice. She would have to show herself, and hope.

So the days passed, waiting for the sound of the helicopters coming, bringing the strike force that would destroy this road.

Suriyawong had never been a commander in Battle School. They closed down the program before he rose to that position. But he had dreamed of command, studied it, planned it, and now, working with Bean in command of this or that configuration of their strike force, he finally understood the terror and exhilaration of having men listen to you, obey you, throw themselves into action and risk death because they trust you. Each time, because these men were so well-trained and resourceful and their tactics so effective, he brought back his whole complement. Injuries, but no deaths. Aborted missions, sometimes-but no deaths.

"It's the aborted missions," said Bean, "that earn you their trust. When you see that it's more dangerous than we anticipated, that it requires attrition to get the objective, then show the men you value their lives more than the objective of the moment. Later, when you have no choice but to commit them to grave risk, they'll know it's because this time it's worth dying. They know you won't spend them like a child, on candy and trash."

Bean was right, which hardly surprised Suriyawong. Bean was not just the smartest, he had also watched Ender close at hand, had been Ender's secret weapon in Dragon Army, had been his backup commander on Eros. Of course he knew what leadership was.

What surprised Suriyawong was Bean's generosity. Bean had created this strike force, and trained these men, had earned their trust. Throughout that time, Suriyawong had been of little help, and had shown outright hostility at times. Yet Bean included Suriyawong, entrusted him with command, encouraged the men to help Suriyawong learn what they could do. Through it all, Bean had never treated Suriyawong as a subordinate or inferior, but rather had deferred to him as his superior officer.

In return, Suriyawong never commanded Bean to do anything. Rather they reached a consensus on most things, and when they could not agree, Suriyawong deferred to Bean's decision and supported him in it.

Bean has no ambition, Suriyawong realized. He has no wish to be better than anyone else, or to rule over anyone, or to have more honor.

Then, on the missions where they worked together, Suriyawong saw something else: Bean had no fear of death.

Bullets could be flying, explosives could be near detonation, and Bean would move without fear and with only token concealment. It was as if he dared the enemy to shoot him, dared their own explosives to defy him and go off before he was ready.

Was this courage? Or did he wish for death? Had Sister Carlotta's death taken away some of his will to live? To hear him talk, Suriyawong would not have supposed it. Bean was too grimly determined to rescue Petra for Suriyawong to believe that he wanted to die. He had something urgent to live for. And yet he showed no fear of battle.

It was as if he knew the day that he would die, and this was not that day.

He certainly hadn't stopped caring about anything. Indeed, the quiet, icy, controlled, arrogant Bean that Suriyawong had known before had become, since the day Carlotta died, impatient and agitated. The calm he showed in battle, in front of the men, was certainly not there when he was alone with Suriyawong and Phet Noi. And the favorite object of his curses was not Achilles-he almost never spoke of Achilles-but Peter Wiggin.

"He's had everything for a month! And he does these little things-persuading Chamrajnagar not to return to Earth yet, persuading Ghaffar Wahabi not to invade Iran-and he tells me about them, but the big thing, publishing Achilles' whole treacherous strategy, he won't do that-and he tells me not to do it myself! Why not? If the Indian government could be forced to see how Achilles plans to betray them, they might be able to pull enough of their army out of Burma to make a stand against the Chinese. Russia might be able to intervene. The Japanese fleet might threaten Chinese trade. At the very least, the Chinese themselves might see Achilles for what he is, and jettison him even as they follow his plan! And all he says is, It's not the right moment, it's too soon, not yet, you have to trust me, I'm with you on this, right to the end."

He was scarcely kinder in his execrations of the Thai generals running the war--or ruining it, as he said. Suriyawong had to agree with him-the whole plan depended on keeping Thai forces dispersed, but now that the Thai Air Force had control of the air over Burma, they had concentrated their armies and airbases in forward positions. "I told them what the danger was," said Bean, "and they still gather their forces into one convenient place."

Phet Noi listened patiently; Suriyawong, too, gave up trying to argue with him. Bean was right. People were behaving foolishly, and not out of ignorance. Though of course they would say, later, "But we didn't know Bean was right."

To which Bean already had his answer: "You didn't know I was wrong! So you should have been prudent!"

The only thing different in Bean's diatribes was that he went hoarse for a week, and when his voice came back, it was lower. For a kid who had always been so tiny, even for his age, puberty-if that's what this was--certainly had struck him young. Or maybe he had just stretched out his vocal cords with all his ranting.

But now, on a mission, Bean was silent, the calm of battle already on him. Suriyawong and Bean boarded their choppers last, making sure all their men were aboard; one last salute to each other, and then they ducked inside and the door closed and the choppers rose into the air. They jetted along near the surface of the Indian Ocean, the chopper blades folded and enclosed until they got near Cheduba Island, today's staging area. Then the choppers dispersed, rose into the air, cut the jets, and opened their blades for vertical landing.

Now they would leave behind their reserves-the men and choppers that could bring out anyone stranded by a mechanical problem or unforeseen complication. Bean and Suriyawong never rode together-one chopper failure should not behead the mission. And each of them had redundant equipment, so that either could complete the whole mission. More than once, the redundancy had saved lives and missions-Phet Noi made sure they were always equipped because, as he said, "You give the materiel to the commanders who know how to use it."

Bean and Suriyawong were too busy to chat in the staging area, but they did come together for a few moments, as they watched the reserve team camouflage their choppers and scrim their solar collectors. "You know what I wish?" said Bean.

"You mean besides wanting to be an astronaut when you grow up?" said Suriyawong.

"That we could scrub this mission and take off for Hyderabad."

"And get ourselves killed without ever seeing a sign of Petra, who has probably already been moved to someplace in the Himalayas."

"That's the genius of my plan," said Bean. "I take a herd of cattle hostage and threaten to shoot a cow a day till they bring her back."

"Too risky. The cows always make a break for it." But Suriyawong knew that to Bean, the inability to do anything for Petra was a constant ache. "We'll do it. Peter's looking for someone who'll give him current information about Hyderabad."

"Like he's working on publishing Achilles' plans." The favorite diatribe. Only because they were on mission, Bean remained calm, ironic rather than furious.

"All done," said Suriyawong.

"See you in the mountains."

It was a dangerous mission. The enemy couldn't watch every kilometer of highway, but they had learned to converge quickly when the Thai choppers were spotted, and their strike force was having to finish their missions with less and less time to spare. And this spot was likely to be defended. That was why Bean's contingent-four of the five companies-would be deployed to clear away any defenders and protect Suriyawong's group while they laid the charges and blew up the road and the bridge.

All was going according to plan-indeed, better than expected, because the enemy seemed not to know they were there-when one of the men pointed out, "There's a woman on the bridge."

"A civilian?"

"You need to see," said the soldier.

Suriyawong left the spot where the explosives were being placed and climbed back up to the bridge. Sure enough, a young Indian woman was standing there, her arms stretched out toward either side of the ravine.

"Has anyone mentioned to her that the bridge is going to explode, and we don't actually care if anyone's on it?"

"Sir," said the soldier, "she's asking for Bean."

"By name?"

He nodded.

Suriyawong looked at the woman again. A very young woman. Her clothing was filthy, tattered. Had it once been a military uniform? It certainly wasn't the way local women dressed.

She looked at him. "Suriyawong," she called.

Behind him, he could hear several soldiers exhale or gasp in surprise or wonder. How did this Indian woman know? It worried Suriyawong a little. The soldiers were reliable in almost everything, but if they once got godstuff into their heads, it could complicate everything.

"I'm Suriyawong," he said.

"You were in Dragon Army," she said. "And you work with Bean."

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"I want to talk with you privately, here on the bridge."

"Sir, don't go," said the soldier. "Nobody's shooting, but we've spotted a half-dozen Indian soldiers. You're dead if you go out there."

What would Bean do?

Suriyawong stepped out onto the bridge, boldly but not in any hurry. He waited for the gunshot, wondering if he would feel the pain of impact before he heard the sound. Would the nerves of his ears report to his brain faster than the nerves of whatever body part the bullet tore into? Or would the sniper hit him in the head, mooting the point?

No bullet. He came near her, and stopped when she said, "This is as close as you should come, or they'll worry and shoot you."

"You control those soldiers?" asked Suriyawong

"Don't you know me yet?" she said. "I'm Virlomi. I was ahead of you in Battle School."

He knew the name. He would never have recognized her face. "You left before I got there."

"Not many girls in Battle School. I thought the legend would live on."

"I heard of you."

"I'm a legend here, too. My people aren't firing because they think I know what I'm doing out here. And I thought you recognized me, because your soldiers on both sides of this ravine have refrained from shooting any of the Indian soldiers, even though I know they've spotted them."

"Maybe Bean recognized you," said Suriyawong. "In fact, I've heard your name more recently. You're the one who wrote back to him, aren't you? You were in Hyderabad."

"I know where Petra is."

"Unless they've moved her."

"Do you have any better sources? I tried to think of any way I could to get a message to Bean without getting caught. Finally I realized there was no computer solution. I had to bring the message in my head."

"So come with us."

"Not that simple," she said. "If they think I'm a captive, you'll never get out of here. Handheld g-to-a."

"Ouch," said Suriyawong. "Ambush. They knew we were coming?"

"No," said Virlomi. "They knew I was here. I didn't say anything, but they all knew that the Woman-in-hiding was at this bridge, so they figured that the gods were protecting this place."

"And the gods needed g-to-a missiles?"

"No, I'm the one they're protecting. The gods have the bridge, the men have me. So here's the deal. You pull your explosives off the bridge. Abort the mission. They see that I have the power to make the enemy go away without harming anything. And then they watch me call one of your departing choppers down to me, and I get on of my own free will. That's the only way you're getting out of here. Not really anything I designed, but I don't see any other way out."

"I always hate aborting missions," said Suriyawong. But before she could argue, he laughed and said, "No, don't worry, it's fine. It's a good plan. If Bean were down here on this bridge, he'd agree in a heartbeat."

Suriyawong walked back to his men. "No, it's not a god or a holy woman. She's Virlomi, a Battle School grad, and she has intelligence that's more valuable than this bridge. We're aborting the mission."

The soldier took this in, and Suriyawong could see him trying to factor the magical element in with the orders.

"Soldier," said Suriyawong, "I have not been bewitched. This woman knows the groundplan of the Indian Army high command base in Hyderabad."

"Why would an Indian give that to us?" the soldier asked.

"Because the bunduck who's running the Indian side of the war has a prisoner there who's vital to the war."

Now it was making sense to the soldier. The magic element receded. He pulled his satrad off his belt and punched in the abort code. All the other satrads immediately vibrated in the preset pattern.

At once the explosives teams began dismantling. If they were to evacuate without dismantling, a second code, for urgency, would be sent. Suriyawong did not want any part of their materiel to fall into Indian hands. And he thought a more leisurely pace might be better.

"Soldier, I need to seem to be hypnotized by this woman," he said. "I am not hypnotized, but I'm faking it so the Indian soldiers all around us will think she's controlling me. Got that?"

"Yes sir."

"So while I walk back toward her, you call Bean and tell him that I need all the choppers but mine to evacuate, so the Indians can see they're gone. Then say 'Petra.' Got that? Tell him nothing else, no matter what he asks. We may be monitored, if not here, then in Hyderabad." Or Beijing, but he didn't want to complicate things by saying that.

"Yes sir."

Suriyawong turned his back on the soldier, walked three paces closer to Virlomi, and then prostrated himself before her.

Behind him, he could hear the soldier saying exactly what he had been told to say.

And after a very little while, choppers began to rise into the air from both sides of the ravine. Bean's troops were on the way out.

Suriyawong got up and returned to his men. His company had come in two choppers. "All of you get in the chopper with the explosives," he said. "Only the pilot and co-pilot stay in the other chopper."

The men obeyed immediately, and within three minutes Suriyawong was alone at his end of the bridge. He turned and bowed once again to Virlomi, then walked calmly to his chopper and climbed aboard.

"Rise slowly," he told the pilot, "and then pass slowly near the woman in the middle of the bridge, doorside toward her. At no point is any weapon to be trained on her. Nothing remotely threatening."

Suriyawong watched through the window. Virlomi was not signaling.

"Rise higher, as if we were leaving," said Suriyawong.

The pilot obeyed.

Finally, Virlomi began waving her arms, beckoning with both of them, slowly, as if she were reeling them back in with each movement of her arms.

"Slow down and then begin to descend toward her. I want no chance of error. The last thing we need is some downdraft to get her caught in the blades."

The pilot laughed grimly and brought the chopper like a dancer down onto the bridge, far enough away that Virlomi wasn't actually under the blades, but close enough that it would be only a few steps for her to come aboard.

Suriyawong ran to the door and opened it.

Virlomi did not just walk to the chopper. She danced to it, making ritual-like circling movements with each step.

On impulse, he got out of the chopper and prostrated himself again. When she got near enough, he said-loud enough to be heard over the chopper blades-"Walk on me!"

She did, planting her bare feet on his shoulders and walking down his back. Suriyawong didn't know how they could have communicated more clearly to the Indian soldiers that not only had Virlomi saved their bridge, she had also taken control of this chopper.

She was inside.

He got up, turned slowly, and sauntered onto the chopper.

The sauntering ended the moment he was inside. He rammed the door lever up into place and shouted, "I want jets as fast as you can!"

The chopper rose dizzily. "Strap down," Suriyawong ordered Virlomi. Then, seeing she wasn't familiar with the inside of this craft, he pushed her into place and put the ends of her harness into her hands. She got it at once and finished the job while he hurled himself into his place and got his straps in place just as the chopper cut the blades and plummeted for a moment before the jets kicked in. Then they rocketed down the ravine and out of range of the handheld g-to-a missiles.

"You just made my day," said Suriyawong.

"Took you long enough," said Virlomi. "I thought this bridge was one of the first places you'd hit."

"We figured that's what people would think, so we kept not coming here."

"Greeyaz," she said. "I should have remembered to think completely ass-backward in order to predict what Battle School brats would do."

Bean had known the moment he saw her on the bridge that she had to be Virlomi, the Indian Battle Schooler who had answered his Briseis posting. He could only trust that Suriyawong would realize what was happening before he found the need to shoot somebody. And Surly had not let him down.

When they got back to the staging area, Bean barely greeted Virlomi before he started giving orders. "I want the whole staging area dismantled. Everybody's coming with us." While the company commanders saw to that, Bean ordered one of the chopper communications team to set up a net connection for him.

"That's satellite," the soldier said. "We'll be located right away."

"We'll be gone before anyone can react," said Bean.

Only then did he start explaining to Suriyawong and Virlomi. "We're fully equipped, right?"

"But not fully fueled."

"I'll take care of that," he said. "We're going to Hyderabad right now."

"But I haven't even drawn up the plans."

"Time for that in the air," he said. "This time we ride together, Suriyawong. Can't be helped-we both have to know the whole plan."

"We've waited this long," said Suriyawong. "What's the hurry now?"

"Two things," said Bean. "How long do you think it'll be before word reaches Achilles that our strike force picked up an Indian woman who was waiting for us on a bridge? Second thing-I'm going to force Peter Wiggin's hand. All hell is going to break loose, and we're riding the wave."

"What's the objective?" asked Virlorni. "To save Petra? To kill Achilles?"

"To bring out every Battle School kid who'll come with us."

"They'll never leave India," she said. "I may decide to stay myself "

"Wrong on both counts," said Bean. "I give India less than a week before Chinese troops have control of New Delhi and Hyderabad and any other city they want."

"Chinese?" asked Virlomi. "But there's some kind of--"

"Nonaggression pact?" said Bean. "Arranged by Achilles?"

"He's been working for China all along," said Suriyawong. "The Indian Army is exposed, undersupplied, exhausted, demoralized."

"But . . . if China comes in on the side of the Thai, isn't that what you want?"

Suriyawong gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "China comes in on the side of China. We tried to warn our own people, but they're sure they have a deal with Beijing."

Virlomi understood at once. Battle School-trained, she knew how to think the way Bean and Suriyawong did. "So that's why Achilles didn't use Petra's plan."

Bean and Suriyawong laughed and gave short little bows to each other.

"You knew about Petra's plan?"

"We assumed there'd be a better plan than the one India's using."

"So you have a plan to stop China?" said Virlomi.

"Not a chance," said Bean. "China might have been stopped a month ago, but nobody listened." He thought of Peter and barely stanched the fury. "Achilles himself may still be stopped, or at least weakened. But our goal is to keep the Indian Battle School team from falling into Chinese hands. Our Thai friends already have escape routes planned. So when we get to Hyderabad, we not only need to find Petra, we need to offer escape to anyone who'll come. Will they listen to you?"

"We'll see, won't we?" said Virlomi.

"The connection's ready," said a soldier. "I didn't actually link yet, because that's when the clock starts ticking."

"Do it," said Bean. "I've got some things to say to Peter Wiggin."

I'm coming, Petra. I'm getting you out.

As for Achilles, if he happens to come within my reach, there'll be no mercy this time, no relying on someone else to keep him out of circulation. I'll kill him without discussion. And my men will have orders to do the same.