"You'll just be a person who can sign on through CalNet. Father's citizen's access doesn't get involved. What I can't figure out is why they wanted Demosthenes before Locke."
"Talent rises to the top."
As a game, it was fun. But Valentine didn't like some of the positions Peter made Demosthenes take. Demosthenes began to develop as a fairly paranoid anti-Russian writer. It bothered her because Peter was the one who knew how to exploit fear in his writing--she had to keep coming to him for ideas on how to do it. Meanwhile, his Locke followed her moderate, empathic strategies. It made sense, in a way. By having her write Demosthenes, it meant he also had some empathy, just as Locke also could play on others' fears. But the main effect was to keep her inextricably tied to Peter. She couldn't go off and use Demosthenes for her own purposes. She wouldn't know how to use him. Still, it worked both ways. He couldn't write Locke without her. Or could he?
"I thought the idea was to unify the world. If I write this like you say I should, Peter, I'm pretty much calling for war to break up the Warsaw Pact."
"Not war, just open nets and prohibition of interception. Free flow of information. Compliance with the League rules, for heaven's sake."
Without meaning to, Valentine started talking in Demosthenes' voice, even though she certainly wasn't speaking Demosthenes' opinions. "Everyone knows that from the beginning of the League the Second Warsaw Pact was to be regarded as a single entity where those rules were concerned. International free flow is still open. But between the Warsaw Pact nations these things are internal matters. That was why they were willing to allow American hegemony in the League."
"You're arguing Locke's part, Val. Trust me. You have to call for the Warsaw Pact to lose official status. You have to get a lot of people really angry. Then, later, when you begin to recognize the need for compromise--"
"Then they stop listening to me and go off and fight a war."
"Val, trust me. I know what I'm doing."
"How do you know? You're not any smarter than me, and you've never done this before either."
"I'm thirteen and you're ten."
"Almost eleven."
"And I know how these things work."
"All right, I'll do it your way. But I won't do any of these liberty or death things,"
"You will too."
"And someday when they catch us and they wonder why your sister was such a warmonger, I can just bet you'll tell them that you told me to do it."
"Are you sure you're not having a period, little woman?"
"I hate you, Peter Wiggin."
What bothered Valentine most was when her column got syndicated into several other regional newsnets, and Father started reading it and quoting from it at table. "Finally, a man with some sense," he said. Then he quoted some of the passages Valentine hated worst in her own work. "It's fine to work with these hegemonist Russians with the buggers out there, but after we win, I can't see leaving half the civilized world as virtual serfs in the Russian Empire, can you, dear?"
"I think you're taking this all too seriously," said Mother.
"I like this Demosthenes. I like the way he thinks. I'm surprised he isn't in the major nets--I looked for him in the international relations debates and you know, he's never taken part in any of them."
Valentine lost her appetite and left the table. Peter followed her after a respectable interval.
"So you don't like lying to Father," he said. "So what? You're not lying to him. He doesn't think that you're really Demosthenes, and Demosthenes isn't saying things you really believe. They cancel each other out, they amount to nothing."
"That's the kind of reasoning that makes Locke such an ass." But what really bothered her was not that she was lying to Father-- it was the fact that Father actually agreed with Demosthenes. She had thought that only fools would follow him.
A few days later Locke got picked up for a column in a New England newsnet, specifically to provide a contrasting view for their popular column from Demosthenes. "Not bad for two kids who've only got about eight pubic hairs between them," Peter said.
"It's a long way between writing a newsnet column and ruling the world," Valentine reminded him. "It's such a long way that no one has ever done it."
"They have, though. Or the moral equivalent. I'm going to say snide things about Demosthenes in my first column."
"Well, Demosthenes isn't even going to notice that Locke exists. Ever."
"For now."
With their identities now fully supported by their income from writing columns, they used Father's access now only for the throwaway identities. Mother commented that they were spending too much time on the nets. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," she reminded Peter.