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"I know."
"Let's leave it at this: they didn't get him to Command School a day too soon. And maybe a couple of years too late."
13
VALENTINE
"Children?"
"Brother and sister. They'd layered themselves five times through the nets--writing for companies that paid for their membershi
ps, that sort of thing. Devil of a time tracking them down. "
"Wha t are they hiding?"
"Could be anything. The most obvious thing to hide, though, is their ages. The boy is fourteen, the girl is twelve."
"Which one is Demosthenes?"
"The girl. The twelve-year-old."
"Pardon me. I don't really think it's funny, but I can't help but laugh. All this time we've been worried, all the time we've been trying to persuade the Russians not to take Demosthenes too seriously, we held up Locke as proof that Americans weren't all crazy warmongers. Brother and sister, pubescent--"
"An d their last name is Wiggin."
"Ah . Coincidence?"
"The Wiggin is a third. They are one and two. "
"Oh , excellent. The Russians will never believe--"
"That Demosthenes and Locke aren't as much under our control as the Wiggin. "
"Is there a conspiracy? Is someone controlling them?"
"W e have been able to detect no contact between these two children and any adult who might be directing them."
"That is not to say that someone might not have invented some method you can't detect. It's hard to believe that two children-- "
"I interviewed Colonel Graff when he arrived from the Battle School. It is his best judgment that nothing these children have done is out of their reach. Their abilities are virtually identical with--the Wiggin. Only their temperaments are different. What surprised him, however, was the orientation of the two personas. Demosthenes is definitely the girl, but Graff says the girl was rejected for Battle School because she was too pacific, too conciliatory, and above all, too empathic."
"Definitely not Demosthenes."
"And the boy has the soul of a jackal."
"Wasn't it Locke that was recently praised as 'The only truly open mind in America'?"
"It's hard to know what's really happening. But Graff recommended, and I agree, that we should leave them alone. Not expose them. Make no report at this time except that we have determined that Locke and Demosthenes have no foreign connections and have no connections with any domestic group, either, except those publicly declared on the nets."
"In other words, give them a clean bill of health."
"I know Demosthenes seems dangerous, in part because he--or she--has such a wide following. But I think it's significant that the one of the two of them who is most ambitious has chosen the moderate, wise persona. And they're still just talking. They have influence, but no power."
"In my experience, influence is power."
"If we ever find them getting out of line, we can easily expose them."
"Only in the next few years. The longer we wait, the older they get, and the less shocking it is to discover who they are."
