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Shadow of the Giant
| Author: | Orson Scott Card |
| Publisher: |
Tor, 2005 |
| Series: | Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 4 |
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1. Ender's Shadow |
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| Book Type: | Novel |
| Genre: | Science-Fiction |
| Sub-Genre Tags: | Military SF Dying Earth Near-Future |
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Synopsis
Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else. He knew he could not survive through strength; he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older. Then he was discovered by the recruiters for the Battle School.
For Earth was at war -- a terrible war with an inscrutable alien enemy. A war that humanity was near to losing. But the long distances of interstellar space has given hope to the defenders of Earth -- they had time to train military geniuses up from childhood, forging them into an irresistible force in the high-orbital facility called the Battle School. That story is told in two books, the beloved classic Ender's Game, and its parallel, Ender's Shadow.
Bean was the smallest student at the Battle School, but he became Ender Wiggins' right hand. Since then he has grown to be a power on Earth. He served the Hegemon as strategist and general in the terrible wars that followed Ender's defeat of the alien empire attacking Earth. Now he and his wife Petra yearn for a safe place to build a family -- something he has never known -- but there is nowhere on Earth that does not harbor his enemies -- old enemies from the days in Ender's Jeesh, new enemies from the wars on Earth. To find security, Bean and Petra must once again follow in Ender's footsteps. They must leave Earth behind, in the control of the Hegemon, and look to the stars.
Excerpt
Chapter One
Mandate of Heaven
From: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov
To: Soup%battleboys@strategyandplanning.han.gov
Re: Free Vacation Offer
Destination of your choice in the known universe. And...we pick you up!
Han Tzu waited until the armored car was completely out of sight before he ventured out into the bicycle-and-pedestrian-packed street. Crowds could make you invisible, but only if you were moving in the same direction, and that's the thing Han Tzu had never really been able to do, not since he came home to China from Battle School.
He always seemed to be moving, not upstream, but crossways. As if he had a completely different map of the world from the one everyone around him was using.
And here he was again, dodging bikes and forward-pressing people on their ten thousand errands in order to get from the doorway of his apartment building to the door of the tiny restaurant across the street.
But it was not as hard as it would have been for most people. Han Tzu had mastered the art of using only his peripheral vision, so his eyes stared straight ahead. Without eye contact, the others on the street could not face him down, could not insist that he yield the right of way. They could only dodge him, as if he were a boulder in the stream.
He put his hand to the door and hesitated. He did not know why he had not been arrested and killed or sent for retraining already, but if he was photographed taking this meeting, then it would be easy to prove that he was a traitor.
Then again, his enemies didn't need evidence to convict---all they needed was the inclination. So he opened the door, listened to the tinkle of the little bell, and walked toward the back of the narrow corridor between booths.
He knew he shouldn't expect Graff himself. For the Minister of Colonization to come to Earth would be news, and Graff avoided news unless it was useful to him, which this would certainly not be. So whom would Graff send? Someone from Battle School, undoubtedly. A teacher? Another student? Someone from Ender's Jeesh? Would this be a reunion?
To his surprise, the man in the last booth sat with his back toward the door, so all Han Tzu could see was his curly steel-grey hair. Not Chinese. And from the color of his ears, not European. The pertinent fact, though, was that he was not facing the door and could not see Han Tzu's approach. However, once Han Tzu sat down, he would be facing the door, able to observe the whole room.
That was the smart way to do it---after all, Han Tzu was the one who would recognize trouble if it came in the door, not this foreigner, this stranger. But few operatives on a mission this dangerous would have the brass to turn their backs on the door just because the person they were meeting would be a better observer.
The man did not turn as Han Tzu approached. Was he unobservant, or supremely confident?
"Hello," the man said softly just as Han Tzu came up beside him. "Please sit down."
Han Tzu slid into the booth opposite him and knew that he knew this old man but could not name him.
"Please don't say my name," said the man softly.
"Easy," said Han Tzu. "I don't remember it."
"Oh, yes you do," said the man. "You just don't remember my face. You haven't seen me very often. But the leader of the Jeesh spent a lot of time with me."
Now Han Tzu remembered. Those last weeks in Command School---on Eros, when they thought they were in training but were really leading far-off fleets in the endgame of the war against the Hive Queens. Ender, their commander, had been kept separate from them, but they learned afterward that an old half-Maori cargo-ship captain had been working closely with him. Training him. Goading him. Pretending to be his opponent in simulated games.
Mazer Rackham. The hero who saved the human race from certain destruction in the Second Invasion. Everyone thought he was dead, but he had been sent out on a meaningless voyage at near-lightspeed, so that relativistic effects would keep him alive so he'd be there for the last battles of the war.
He was ancient history twice over. That time on Eros as a part of Ender's Jeesh seemed like another lifetime. And Mazer Rackham had been the most famous man in the world for decades before that.
Most famous man in the world, but almost nobody knew his face.
"Our friend has exquisite taste in messenger boys," said Han Tzu.
"No time for chat," said Mazer Rackham.
Han Tzu accepted that and waited in silence.
"There is a place for you as head of a colony," said Rackham. "A former Hive world, with mostly Han Chinese colonists and many interesting challenges for a leader. The ship leaves as soon as you board it."
That was the offer. The dream. To be out of the turmoil of Earth, the devastation of China. Instead of waiting to be executed by the angry and feeble Chinese government, instead of watching the Chinese people writhe under the heel of the Muslim conquerors, he could board a beautiful clean starship and let them fling him out into space, to a world where human feet had never stepped, to be the founding leader of a colony that would hold his name in reverence forever. He would marry, have children, and, in all likelihood, be happy.
"How long do I have to decide?" asked Han Tzu.
Rackham glanced at his watch, then looked back at him without answering.
"Not a very long window of opportunity," said Han Tzu.
Rackham shook his head.
"It's a very attractive offer," said Han Tzu.
Rackham nodded.
"But I wasn't born for such happiness," said Han Tzu. "The present government of China has lost the mandate of heaven. If I live through the transition, I might be useful to the new government."
"And that's what you were born for?" asked Rackham.
"They tested me," said Han Tzu, "and I'm a child of war."
Rackham nodded. Then he reached inside his jacket and took out a pen and laid it on the table.
"What's that?" asked Han Tzu.
"The mandate of heaven," said Rackham.
Han Tzu knew then that the pen was a weapon. Because the mandate of heaven was always bestowed in blood and war.
"The items in the cap are extremely delicate," said Rackham. "Practice with round toothpicks."
Then he got up and walked out the back door of the restaurant.
No doubt there was some kind of transport waiting there.
Han Tzu wanted to leap to his feet and run after him so he could be taken out into space and set free of all that lay ahead.
Instead he put his hand over the pen and slid it across the table, then put it into the pocket of his trousers. It was a weapon. Which meant Graff and Rackham expected him to need a personal weapon soon. How soon?
Han Tzu took six toothpicks out of the little dispenser that stood on the table against the wall, beside the soy sauce. Then he got up and went to the toilet.
He pulled the cap off the pen very carefully, so he didn't spill out the four feather-ended poison darts bunched in it. Then he unscrewed the top of the pen. There were four holes there, besides the central shaft that held the tube of ink. The mechanism was cleverly designed to rotate automatically with each discharge. A blow-gun revolver.
He loaded four toothpicks into the four slots. They fit loosely. Then he screwed the pen back together.
The fountain pen writing tip covered the hole where the darts would emerge. When he held the top of the pen in his mouth, the point of the writing tip served as the sighting device. Point and shoot.
Point and blow.
He blew.
The toothpick hit the back wall of the bathroom more or less where he was aiming, only a foot lower. Definitely a close-range weapon.
He used up the rest of the toothpicks learning how high to aim in order to hit a target six feet away. The room wasn't large enough for him to practice aiming at anything farther. Then he gathered up the toothpicks, threw them away, and carefully loaded the pen with the real darts, handling them only by the feathered part of the shaft.
Then he flushed the toilet and reentered the restaurant. No one was waiting for him. So he sat down and ordered and ate methodically. No reason to face the crisis of his life with an empty stomach and the food here wasn't bad.
He paid and walked out into the street. He would not go home. If he waited there to be arrested, he would have to deal with any number of low-level thugs who would not be worth wasting a dart on.
Instead, he flagged down a bicycle taxi and headed for the ministry of defense.
The place was as crowded as ever. Pathetically so, thought Han Tzu. There was a reason for so many military bureaucrats a few years ago, when China was conquering Indochina and India, its millions of soldiers spread out to rule over a billion conquered people.
But now, the government had direct control only over Manchuria and the northern part of Han China. Persians and Arabs and Indonesians administered martial law in the great port cities of the south, and large armies of Turks were poised in Inner Mongolia, ready to slice through Chinese defenses at a moment's notice. Another large Chinese army was isolated in Sichuan, forbidden by the government to surrender any portion of their troops, forcing them to sustain a multi-million-man force from the production of that single province. In effect, they were under siege, getting weaker---and more hated by the civilian population---all the time.
Copyright © 2005 by Orson Scott Card
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