Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card

almost nondescript. Charmingly nondescript—was such a thing possible?
    Peter had lunch with him three times a week and each time gave him various assignments. Peter gave him letterhead and a net identity that anointed him “Assistant to the Hegemon,” but of course that only meant that, in a world where the Hegemon’s power consisted of the fading remnants of the unity that had been forced on the world during the Formic Wars, Achilles had been granted the shadow of a shadow of power.
    “Our authority,” Peter remarked to him at their second lunch, “lies very lightly on the reins of world government.”
    “The horses seem so comfortable it’s almost as though they were not being guided at all,” said Achilles, entering into the joke without a smile.
    “We govern so skillfully that we never need to use spurs.”
    “Which is a good thing,” said Achilles. “Spurs being in short supply around here these days.”
    But just because the Hegemony was very nearly an empty shell in terms of actual power did not mean there was no real work to do. Quite the contrary. When one has no power, Peter knew, then the only influence one has comes, not from fear, but from the perception that one has useful favors to offer. There were plenty of institutions and customs left over from the decades when the Triumvirate of Hegemon, Polemarch, and Strategos had governed the human race.
    Newly formed governments in various countries were formed on shaky legal ground; a visit from Peter was often quite helpful in giving the illusion of legitimacy. There were countries that owed money to the Hegemony, and since there was no chance of collecting it, the Hegemon could win favor by making a big deal of forgiving the accruing interest because of various noble actions on the part of a government. Thus when Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia rushed aid to Italy, sending a fleet when Venice was plagued with a flood and an earthquake at the same time, they were all given amnesty on interest. “Your generous assistance helps bind the world together, which is all that the Hegemony hopes to achieve.” It was a chance for the heads ofgovernment to get their positive coverage and face time in the vids.
    And they also knew that as long as it didn’t cost them much, keeping the Hegemony in play was a good idea, since it and the Muslims were the only groups openly opposing China’s expansionism. What if China turned out to have ambitions beyond the empire it had already conquered? What if the world beyond the Great Wall suddenly had to unite just to survive? Wouldn’t it be good to have a viable Hegemon ready to assume leadership? And the Hegemon, young as he might be, was the brother of the great Ender Wiggin, wasn’t he?
    There were lesser tasks to be accomplished, too. Hegemony libraries that needed to try to secure local funding. Hegemony police stations all over the world whose archives from the old days needed to stay under Hegemony control even though all the funding came from local sources. Some nasty things had been done as part of the war effort, and there were still plenty of people alive who wanted those archives sealed. Yet there were also powerful people who wanted to make sure the archives were not destroyed. Peter was very careful not to let anything uncomfortable come to light from any of the archives—but was not above letting an uncooperative government know that even if they seized the archive within their own boundaries, there were other archives with duplicate records that were under the control of rival nations.
    Ah, the balancing act. And each negotiation, each trade-off, each favor done and favor asked for, Peter treated very carefully, for it was vital that he always get more than he gave, creating the illusion in other nations of more influence and power than he actually had.
    For the more influence and power they believed he had, the more influence and power he actually had. The reality lagged far behind the illusion, but