Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card Page A

that’s why it became all the more important to maintain the illusion perfectly.
    Achilles could be very helpful at that.
    And because he would almost certainly use his opportunities for his own advantage, letting him have a broad range of action wouldinvite him to expose his plans in ways that Peter’s spy systems would surely catch. “You won’t catch a fish if you hold the hook in one hand and the bait in the other. You need to put them together, and give them a lot of string.” Peter’s father had said this, and more than once, too, which implied that the poor fellow thought it was clever rather than obvious. But it was obvious because it was true. To get Achilles to reveal his secrets, Peter had to give him the ability to communicate with the outside world at will.
    But he couldn’t make it too easy, either, or Achilles would guess what Peter really wanted. Therefore Peter, with a great show of embarrassment, put severe restrictions on Achilles’s access to the nets. “I hope you realize that there’s too much history for me simply to give you carte blanche,” he explained. “In time, of course, these restrictions might be lifted, but for now you may write only messages that pertain directly to your assigned tasks, and all your requests to send emails will need to be cleared by my office.”
    Achilles smiled. “I’m sure your added sense of safety will more than compensate for the delays in what I accomplish.”
    “I hope we’ll all stay safe,” said Peter.
    This was about as close as Peter and Achilles came to admitting that their relationship was that of jailer to prisoner, or perhaps that of a monarch to a thrice-traitorous courtier.
    But to Peter’s chagrin, his spy systems turned up…nothing. If Achilles sent coded messages to old confederates, Peter could not detect how. The Hegemony compound was in a broadcast bubble, so that no electronic transmissions could enter or leave except through the instruments controlled and monitored by Peter.
    Was it possible that Achilles was not even attempting to contact the network of contacts he had been using during his astonishing (and, with luck, permanently terminated) career?
    Maybe all his contacts had been burned by one betrayal or another. Certainly Achilles’s Russian network had to have given up on him in disgust. His Indian and Thai contacts were obviously uselessnow. But wouldn’t he still have some kind of network in place in Europe and the Americas?
    Did he already have someone within the Hegemony who was his ally? Someone who was sending messages for him, bringing him information, carrying out his errands?
    At that point Peter could not help but remember his mother’s actions back when Achilles first arrived. It began during Peter’s first meeting with him, when the head custodian of all the compound buildings reported to him that Mrs. Wiggin had attempted at first simply to take a key to Achilles’s room, and when she was caught at it, to ask for and finally demand it. Her excuse, she said, was that she had to make sure the empregadas had done a better job cleaning the room of such an important guest than they did on her house.
    When Peter emailed her a query about her behavior, she got snippy. Mother had long been frustrated by the fact that she was unable to do any meaningful work. In vain did he point out that she could continue her researches and writing, and consult with colleagues by email, as many in her field did by preference. She kept insisting that she wanted to be involved in Hegemony affairs. “Everyone else is,” she said. Peter had interpreted this housekeeping venture as more of the same.
    Now her actions offered a different possible meaning. Was she trying to leave a message for Achilles? Was she on a more definite errand, like sweeping the room for bugs? That was absurd—what did Mother know of electronic surveillance?
    Peter watched the vid of Mother’s attempt to steal the key, and her attitude during the