SHADOW OF THE GIANT

 

 

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Orson Scott Card

 

 

 

 

 

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

 

This is a work of fiction

 

All the characters and events portrayed in this novel

 

are either fictitious or are used fictitiously

 

SHADOW OF THE GIANT

 

Copyright ? 2005 by Orson Scott Card

 

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions

 

thereof in any form

 

This book is printed on acid-free paper

 

Edited by Beth Meacham

 

A Tor Book

 

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

 

175 Fifth Avenue

 

New York, NY 10010

 

www tor com

 

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

 

ISBN 0-312 85758-6 (regular edition)

 

EAN 978-0312 85758 5

 

ISBN 0-765 30749 9 (limited edition)

 

EAN 978-0765-30749-1

 

ISBN 0-765-31422 3 (international trade paperback edition)

 

EAN 978-0765-31422 2

 

First Edition March 2005

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

0987654321

 

 

 

 

To ED and KAY MCVEY,

 

who are saving the world

 

one kindness at a time

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

1. MANDATE OF HEAVEN

 

2. MOTHER

 

3. COUP

 

4. BARGAIN

 

5. SHIVA

 

6. EVOLUTION

 

7. AN OFFER

 

8. ENDER

 

9. PENSION

 

10. GRIEF

 

11. AFRICAN GOD

 

12. ALLAHU AKBAR

 

13. FOUND

 

14. VIRLOMI'S VISITORS

 

15. RATIFICATION

 

16. JEESH

 

17. BOATS

 

18. YEREVAN

 

19. ENEMIES

 

20. PLANS

 

21. PAPERS

 

22. RUMORS OF WAR

 

23. COLONIST

 

24. SACRIFICE

 

25. LETTERS

 

26. SPEAK FOR ME

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

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 us 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 died in the war, 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.

 

"Everyone knows you piloted the first colony ship," said Han Tzu.

 

"We lied," 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 multimillion-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.

 

There had even been a coup, right after the ceasefire—but it was a sham, a reshuffling of the politicians. Nothing but an excuse for repudiating the terms of the ceasefire.

 

No one in the military bureaucracy had lost his job. It was the military that had been driving China's new expansionism. It was the military that had failed.

 

Only Han Tzu had been relieved of his duties and sent home.

 

They could not forgive him for having named their stupidity for what it was. He had warned them every step of the way. They had ignored every warning. Each time he had shown them a way out of their self-induced dilemmas, they had ignored his offered plans and proceeded to make decisions based on bravado, face-saving, and delusions of Chinese invincibility.

 

At his last meeting he had left them with no face at all. He had stood there, a very young man in the presence of old men of enormous authority, and called them the fools they were. He laid out exactly why they had failed so miserably. He even told them that they had lost the mandate of heaven—the traditional excuse for a change of dynasty. This was the unforgivable sin, since the present dynasty claimed not to be a dynasty at all, not to be an empire, but rather to be a perfect expression of the will of the people.

 

What they forgot was that the Chinese people still believed in the mandate of heaven—and knew when a government no longer had it.

 

Now, as he showed his expired i.d. at the gate of the complex and was admitted without hesitation, he realized that there was only one fathomable reason why they hadn't already arrested him or had him killed:

 

They didn't dare.

 

It confirmed that Rackham was right to hand him a four-shot weapon and call it the mandate of heaven. There were forces at work here within the defense department that Han Tzu could not see, waiting in his apartment for someone to decide what to do with him. They had not even cut off his salary. There was panic and confusion in the military and now Han Tzu knew that he was at the center of it. That his silence, his waiting, had actually been a pestle constantly grinding at the mortar of military failure.

 

He should have known that his j'accuse speech would have more effects than merely to humiliate and enrage his "superiors." There were aides standing against the walls listening. And they would know that every word that Han Tzu said was true.

 

For all Han Tzu knew, his death or arrest had already been ordered a dozen times. And the aides who had been given those orders no doubt could prove that they had passed them along. But they would also have passed along the story of Han Tzu, the former Battle Schooler who had been part of Ender's Jeesh. The soldiers ordered to arrest him would have also been told that if Han Tzu had been heeded, China would not have been defeated by the Muslims and their strutting boy-Caliph.

 

The Muslims won because they had the brains to put their member of Ender's Jeesh, Caliph Alai, in charge of their armies—in charge of their whole government, their religion itself.

 

But the Chinese government had rejected their own Enderman, and now were giving orders for his arrest.

 

In these conversations, the phrase "mandate of heaven" would certainly have been spoken.

 

And the soldiers, if they left their quarters at all, seemed unable to locate Han Tzu's apartment.

 

For all these weeks since the war ended, the leadership must already have come face to face with their own powerlessness. If the soldiers would not follow them on such a simple matter as arresting the political enemy who had shamed them, then they were in grave danger.

 

That's why Han Tzu's i.d. was accepted at the gate. That's why he was allowed to walk unescorted among the buildings of the defense department complex.

 

Not completely unescorted. For he saw through his peripheral vision that a growing number of soldiers and functionaries were shadowing him, moving among the buildings in paths parallel to his own. For of course the gate guards would have spread the word at once: He's here.

 

So when he walked up to the entrance of the highest headquarters, he paused at the top step and turned around. Several thousand men and women were already in the space between buildings, and more were coming all the time. Many of them were soldiers under arms.

 

Han Tzu looked them over, watching as their numbers grew. No one spoke.

 

He bowed to them.

 

They bowed back.

 

Han Tzu turned and entered the building. The guards inside the doors also bowed to him. He bowed to each of them and then proceeded to the stairs leading to the second floor office suites where the highest officers of the military were certainly waiting for him.

 

Sure enough, he was met on the second floor by a young woman in uniform who bowed and said, "Most respectfully, sir, will you come to the office of the one called Snow Tiger?"

 

Her voice was devoid of sarcasm, but the name "Snow Tiger" carried its own irony these days. Han Tzu looked at her gravely. "What is your name, soldier?"

 

"Lieutenant White Lotus," she said.

 

"Lieutenant," said Han Tzu, "If heaven should bestow its mandate upon the true emperor today, would you serve him?"

 

"My life will be his," she said.

 

"And your pistol?"

 

She bowed deeply.

 

He bowed to her, then followed her to Snow Tiger's office.

 

They were all gathered there in the large anteroom—the men who had been present weeks ago when Han Tzu had scorned them for having lost the mandate of heaven. Their eyes were cold now, but he had no friends among these high officers.

 

Snow Tiger stood in the doorway of his inner office. It was unheard of for him to come out to meet anyone except members of the Politburo, none of whom were present.

 

"Han Tzu," he said.

 

Han Tzu bowed slightly. Snow Tiger bowed almost invisibly in return.

 

"I am happy to see you return to duty after your well-earned vacation," said Snow Tiger.

 

Han Tzu only stood in the middle of the room, regarding him steadily.

 

"Please come into my office."

 

Han Tzu walked slowly toward the open door. He knew that Lieutenant White Lotus stood at the door, watching to make sure that no one raised a hand to harm him.

 

Through the open door, Han Tzu could see two armed soldiers flanking Snow Tiger's desk. Han Tzu stopped, regarding each of the soldiers in turn. Their faces showed nothing; they did not even look back at him. But he knew that they understood who he was. They had been chosen by Snow Tiger because he trusted them. But he should not have.

 

Snow Tiger took Han Tzu's pause as an invitation for him to enter the office first. Han Tzu did not follow him inside until Snow Tiger was seated at his desk.

 

Then Han Tzu entered.

 

"Please close the door," said Snow Tiger.

 

Han Tzu turned around and pulled the door all the way open.

 

Snow Tiger took his disobedience without blinking. What could he do or say without making himself seem pathetic?

 

Snow Tiger pushed a paper toward Han Tzu. It was an order, giving him command over the army that was slowly starving in Sichuan province. "You have proved your great wisdom many times," said Snow Tiger. "We ask you now to be the salvation of China and lead this great army against our enemy."

 

Han Tzu did not even bother to answer. A hungry, ill-equipped, demoralized, surrounded army was not going to accomplish miracles. And Han Tzu had no intention of accepting this or any other assignment from Snow Tiger.

 

"Sir, these are excellent orders," said Han Tzu loudly. He glanced at each of the soldiers standing beside the desk. "Do you see how excellent these orders are?"

 

Unused to being spoken to directly in such a high-level meeting, one of the soldiers nodded; the other merely shifted uncomfortably.

 

"I see only one error," said Han Tzu. His voice was loud enough to be heard in the anteroom as well.

 

Snow Tiger grimaced. "There is no error."

 

"Let me take my pen and show you," said Han Tzu. He took the pen from his shirt pocket and uncapped it. Then he drew a line through his own name at the top of the paper.

 

Turning around to face the open door, Han Tzu said, "There is no one in this building with the authority to command me."

 

It was his announcement that he was taking control of the government, and everyone knew it.

 

"Shoot him," said Snow Tiger behind him.

 

Han Tzu turned around, putting the pen to his mouth as he did.

 

But before he could fire a dart, the soldier who had refused to nod had blown out Snow Tiger's head, covering the other soldier with a smear of blood and brains and bone fragments.

 

The two soldiers bowed deeply to Han Tzu.

 

Han Tzu turned back around and strode out into the anteroom. Several of the old generals were heading for the door. But Lieutenant White Lotus had her pistol out and they all froze in place. "Emperor Han Tzu has not given the honorable gentlemen his permission to leave," she said.

 

Han Tzu spoke to the soldiers behind him. "Please assist the lieutenant in securing this room," he said. "It is my judgment that the officers in this room need time to contemplate upon the question of how China came into her current difficult situation. I would like them to remain in here until each of them has written a complete explanation of how so many mistakes came to be made, and how they think matters should have been conducted."

 

As Han Tzu expected, the suck-ups immediately went to work, dragging their compatriots back to their places against the walls. "Didn't you hear the emperor's request?" "We will do as you ask, Steward of Heaven." Little good it would do them. Han Tzu already knew perfectly well which officers he would trust to lead the Chinese military.

 

The irony was that the "great men" who were now humiliated and writing reports on their own mistakes were never the source of those errors. They only believed they were. And the underlings who had really originated the problems saw themselves as merely instruments of their commanders' will. But it was in the nature of underlings to use power recklessly, since blame could always be passed either upward or downward.

 

Unlike credit, which, like hot air, always rose.

 

As it will rise to me from now on.

 

Han Tzu left the offices of the late Snow Tiger. In the corridor, soldiers stood at every door. They had heard the single gunshot, and Han Tzu was pleased to see that they all looked relieved to learn that it was not Han Tzu himself who had been shot.

 

He turned to one soldier and said, "Please enter the nearest office and telephone for medical attention for the honorable Snow Tiger." To three others, he said, "Please help Lieutenant White Lotus secure the cooperation of the former generals inside this room who have been asked to write reports for me."

 

As they rushed to obey, Han Tzu gave assignments to the other soldiers and bureaucrats. Some of them would later be purged; others would be elevated. But at this moment, no one even thought of disobeying him. Within only a few minutes he had given orders to have the perimeter of the defense complex sealed. Until he was ready, he wanted no warning going to the Politburo.

 

But his precaution was in vain. For when he went down the stairs and walked out of the building, he was greeted by a roar from the thousands and thousands of military people who completely surrounded the headquarters building.

 

"Han Tzu!" they chanted. "Chosen of Heaven!"

 

There was no chance the noise would not be heard outside the complex. So instead of rounding up the Politburo all at once, he would have to waste time tracking them down as they fled to the countryside or tried to get to the airport or onto the river. But of one thing there could be no doubt: With the new emperor enthusiastically supported by the armed forces, there would be no resistance to his rule by any Chinese, anywhere.

 

That's what Mazer Rackham and Hyrum Graff had understood when they gave him his choice. Their only miscalculation was how completely the story of Han Tzu's wisdom had swept through the military. He hadn't needed the blowgun after all.

 

Though if he hadn't had it, would he have had the courage to act as boldly as he did?

 

One thing Han Tzu did not doubt. If the soldier had not killed Snow Tiger first, Han Tzu would have done it after—and would have killed both soldiers if they had not immediately submitted to his rule.

 

My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.

 

As he made his way to the department of Planning and Strategy, where he would make his temporary headquarters, he could not help but ask himself: What if I had taken their initial offer, and fled into space? What would have happened to China then?

 

And then a more sobering question: What will happen to China now?

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

MOTHER

 

 

From: HMebane%GeneticTherapy@MayoFlorida.org.us

 

To: JulianDelphiki%Carlotta@DelphikiConsultations.com Re: Prognosis

 

 

Dear Julian,

 

 

I wish I had better news. But yesterday's tests are conclusive. Estrogen therapy has had no effect on the epiphyses. They remain open, even though you definitely do not have any defect in the estrogen receptors on the growth plates of your bones.

 

 

As to your second request, of course we will continue to study your DNA, my friend, whether any of your missing embryos are found or not. What was done once can be done again, and Volescu's mistakes may be repeated with some other genetic alteration in the future. But the history of genetic research is fairly consistent. It takes time to map and isolate an unusual sequence and then perform animal experiments in order to determine what each portion of it does and how to counteract its effects.

 

 

There is no way to expedite such research. If we had ten thousand working on the problem, they would perform the same experiments in the same order and it would take the same amount of time. Someday we will understand why your astonishing intellect is so incurably linked with uncontrolled growth. Right now, to be candid, it seems to be almost malicious on the part of nature, as if there were some law that the price for the unleashing of human intellect is either autism or giantism.

 

 

If only, instead of military training, you had been taught biochemistry so that at your present age you could be up to speed in this field. I have no doubt that you would be more likely to have the kind of insights we need than we of fettered intellect. That is the bitter irony of your condition and your personal history. Even Volescu could not have anticipated the consequence of his alteration of your genes.

 

 

I feel like a coward, delivering this information in an email instead of face to face, but you insisted on no delay and a written report. The technical data will, of course, be forwarded to you as the final reports become available.

 

 

If only cryogenics had not proven to be such a barren field.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Howard

 

 

 

As soon as Bob left for his shift as night manager of the grocery store, Randi sat down in front of the screen and started the special on Achilles Flandres over again from the beginning.

 

It galled her to hear how they slandered him, but by now she was adept at tuning it out. Megalomaniac. Madman. Murderer.

 

Why couldn't they see him as he really was? A genius like Alexander the Great, who came this close to uniting the world and ending war forever.

 

Now the dogs would fight over the scraps of Achilles's achievements, while his body rested in an obscure grave in some miserable tropical village in Brazil.

 

And the assassin who had ended Achilles's life, who had thwarted his greatness, he was being honored as if there were something heroic about putting a bullet into the eye of an unarmed man. Julian Delphiki. Bean. The tool of the evil Hegemon Peter Wiggin.

 

Delphiki and Wiggin. Unworthy to be on the same planet with Achilles. And yet they claimed to be his heirs, the rightful rulers of the world.

 

Well, poor fools, you're the heirs of nothing. Because I know where Achilles's true heir is.

 

She patted her stomach, though that was a dangerous thing to do, what with her puking at a moment's notice ever since the pregnancy really took hold. She didn't show yet, and when she did, it was a fifty-fifty chance whether Bob would throw her out or keep her and accept the child as his own. Bob knew he couldn't father children—they'd had enough tests—and there was no point in pretending since he'd ask for a DNA test and then he'd know anyway.

 

And she had sworn never to tell that she had received an implant after all. She would have to pretend that she had had an affair with somebody and wanted to keep the baby. Bob would not like that at all. But she knew that her baby's life depended on keeping the secret.

 

The man who interviewed her at the fertility clinic had been adamant about that. "It doesn't matter whom you tell, Randi. The enemies of the great man know that this embryo exists. They'll be searching for it. They'll be watching all the women in the world who give birth within a certain timeframe. And any rumor that a baby was implanted rather than naturally conceived will bring them like hounds. Their resources are unlimited. They will spare no effort in their search. And when they find a woman that they even think might be the mother of his child, they will kill her, just in case."

 

"But there must be hundreds. Thousands of women who have babies implanted," Randi protested.

 

"Are you a Christian?" asked the man. "You've heard of the slaughter of the innocents? However many you have to kill, it's worth it to these monsters, as long as it means they can prevent the birth of this child."

 

Randi watched the stills of Achilles during his Battle School days and soon after, during his time at the asylum where his enemies had him confined after it became clear that he was a better commander than their precious Ender Wiggin. She had read it on the nets in many places, the fact that Ender Wiggin actually used plans devised by Achilles in order to beat the Buggers. They could glorify their phony little hero all they wanted—but everyone knew it was only because he was Peter Wiggin's little brother that Ender was given all the credit.

 

It was Achilles who had saved the world. And Achilles who had fathered the baby she had been chosen to bear.

 

Randi's only regret was that she could not be the biological mother as well, and that the child could not have been naturally conceived. But she knew that the bride of Achilles must have been very carefully chosen—a woman who could contribute the right genes so as not to dilute his brilliance and goodness and creativity and drive.

 

But they knew about the woman Achilles loved, and if she had been pregnant when he died, they would have torn the womb out of her so she could lie there in agony and watch them burn the fetus before her eyes.

 

So to protect the mother and the baby, Achilles had arranged for their embryo to be taken secretly and implanted in the womb of a woman who could be trusted to take the child to term and give him a good home and raise him with full awareness of his vast potential. To teach him secretly who he really was and whose cause he served, so he could grow up to fulfill his father's cruelly-blocked destiny. It was a sacred trust, and Randi was worthy of it.

 

Bob was not. It was that simple. Randi had always known that she married beneath herself. Bob was a good provider, but he hadn't the imagination to understand anything more important than making a living and planning his next fishing trip. She could just imagine how he would respond if she told him that not only was she pregnant, but the baby was not even hers.

 

Already she had found several places on the web where people were searching for "lost" or "kidnapped" embryos. She knew—the man who spoke to her had warned her—that these were likely to originate from Achilles's enemies, trolling for information that would lead them to... to her.

 

She wondered if maybe the very act of searching for people searching for embryos would alert them. The search companies claimed that no government had access to their databases, but it was possible that the International Fleet was intercepting all the messages and monitoring all the searches. People said that the I.F. was really under the control of the United States government, that America's isolationism was a facade and it ran everything through the I.F. Then there were the people who said that it was the other way around—the U.S. was isolationist because that was the way the I.F. wanted it, since most of the space technology they depended on was developed and built in the U.S.

 

It couldn't be an accident that Peter the Hegemon was American himself.

 

She would stop searching for information about kidnapped embryos. It was all lies and traps and tricks. She knew she would seem paranoid to anyone else, but that's only because they didn't know what she knew. There really were monsters in the world, and those who kept secrets from them had to live with constant vigilance.

 

There on the screen was that terrible picture. They showed it over and over again: Achilles's poor broken body lying on the floor in the Hegemon's palace, looking so peaceful, not a wound on his body. Some on the nets said that Delphiki didn't shoot him through the eye at all; that if he had, Achilles's face would have been powder-burned and there would have been an exit wound and blood all over.

 

No, Delphiki and Wiggin imprisoned Achilles and faked some kind of phony standoff with the police, pretending that Achilles was taking hostages or something, so they'd have an excuse for killing him. But in fact they gave him a lethal injection. Or poisoned his food. Or infected him with a hideous disease so he died writhing on the floor in agony while Delphiki and Wiggin looked on.

 

Like Richard III murdering those poor princes in the tower.

 

But when my son is born, Randi told herself, then all these false histories will be destroyed. The liars will be eliminated, and so will their lies.

 

Then this footage will be used in a true story. My son will see to that. No one will ever even hear the lies they're telling now. And Achilles will be known as the great one, even greater than the son who will have completed his life's work.

 

And I will be remembered and honored as the woman who sheltered him and gave him birth and raised him up to rule the world.

 

All I have to do to accomplish that is: nothing.

 

Nothing that calls attention to me. Nothing that makes me unusual or strange.

 

Yet the one thing she couldn't bear to do was nothing. Just to sit here, watching the television, worrying, fretting—it had to be harmful for the baby, to have so much adrenalin coursing through her system.

 

It was the waiting that was making her crazy. Not waiting for the baby—that was natural and she would love every day of her pregnancy.

 

It was waiting for her life to change. Waiting ... for Bob.

 

Why should she wait for Bob?

 

She got up from the couch, switched off the television, went into the bedroom, and started packing her clothing and other things into cardboard boxes. She emptied out Bob's obsessive financial records in order to empty the boxes—let him amuse himself by sorting them out later.

 

Only after she had packed and taped up the fourth box did it occur to her that the normal pattern would have been to tell him about the baby and then make him move out.

 

But she didn't want a connection with him. Didn't want any dispute about paternity. She just wanted to be gone. Out of his ordinary, meaningless life, out of this pointless town.

 

Of course she couldn't just disappear. Then she'd be a missing person. She'd be added to databases. Someone would be alerted.

 

So she took her boxes of clothing and a few favorite pots, pans, and recipe books and loaded them into the car that she had owned before she married Bob and that was still in her name alone. Then she spent half an hour writing different versions of a letter to Bob explaining that she didn't love him anymore and was leaving and didn't want him to look for her.

 

No. Nothing in writing. Nothing that can be reported to anyone.

 

She got in the car and drove to the grocery store. On the way in from the parking lot she took a cart that someone had left blocking a parking space and pushed it into the store. Helping keep the parking lot clear of abandoned carts proved that she wasn't vindictive. She was a civilized person who wanted to help Bob do well in his business and his ordinary, ordinary, ordinary life. It would help him not to have such an extraordinary woman and child in that life.

 

He was out on the floor and instead of waiting in his office, she went in search of him. She found him supervising the unloading of a truck that was late because of a breakdown on the highway, making sure that the frozen foods were at a low enough temperature to be safely offloaded and shelved.

 

"Can you wait just a minute?" he said. "I know it's important or you wouldn't have come down here, but..."

 

"Oh, Bob, it won't take more than a second." She leaned close to him. "I'm pregnant and it's not yours."

 

Being a two-part message, it didn't entirely register right away. For a moment he looked happy. Then his face started to turn red.

 

She leaned in close again. "Don't worry, though. I'm leaving you. I'll let you know where to mail the divorce papers. Now, you get back to work."

 

She started to walk away. "Randi," he called after her.

 

"Not your fault, Bob!" she called over her shoulder. "Nothing was your fault. You're a great guy."

 

She felt liberated as she walked back through the store. Her mood was so generous and expansive that she bought a little container of lip balm and a bottle of water. The tiny amount of profit from the sale would be her last contribution to Bob's life.

 

Then she got into the car and drove south, because that way was a right turn coming out of the parking lot, and traffic was too heavy to wait for a chance to go left. She'd drive wherever the currents of the traffic led her. She wouldn't try to hide from anybody. She'd let Bob know where she was as soon as she decided she was there, and she'd divorce him in a perfectly ordinary way. But she wouldn't bump into anyone she knew or anyone who knew her. She would become effectively invisible, not like someone trying to hide, but like someone who had nothing to hide at all but who never became important to anyone.

 

Except to her beloved son.

 

 

 

 

3

 

 

COUP

 

 

 

From: JulianDelphiki%milcom@hegemon.gov

 

To: Volescu%levers@plasticgenome.edu

 

Re: Why keep hiding when you don't have to?

 

 

Look, if we wanted you dead or punished, don't you think it would have happened already? Your protector is gone and there's not a country on Earth that will protect you if we lay out the facts of your "achievements."

 

 

What you did, you did. Now help us find our children, wherever you've hidden them.

 

 

 

Peter Wiggin had brought Petra Arkanian with him because she knew Caliph Alai. They had both been in Ender's Jeesh together. And it was Alai who had sheltered her and Bean in the weeks before the Muslim invasion of China—or liberation of Asia, depending on which propaganda mill you shopped at.

 

But now it seemed that having Petra with him meant nothing at all. Nobody in Damascus acted as if it even mattered that the Hegemon had come like a supplicant to see the Caliph. Not that Peter had arrived with any publicity—this was a private visit, with him and Petra passing themselves off as a tourist couple.

 

Complete with bickering. Because Petra had no patience with him. Everything he did and said and even thought was wrong. And last night, when he finally demanded, "Tell me what you really hate about me, Petra, instead of pretending it's all this trivial stuff."

 

Her answer had been devastating: "Because the only difference I ever saw between you and Achilles was that you let others do your killing for you."

 

It was so patently unfair. Peter had devoted himself to trying to avoid war.

 

At least now he knew why she was so furious at him. When Bean went into the besieged Hegemony compound to face Achilles alone, Peter understood that Bean was putting his own life on the line and that it was extremely unlikely that Achilles would give him what he had promised—the embryos of Bean's and Petra's children that had been stolen from a hospital soon after in vitro fertilization.

 

So when Bean put a .22 slug through Achilles's eye and let it bounce around a few dozen times inside his skull, the only person who absolutely got everything he needed was Peter himself. He got the Hegemony compound back; he got all the hostages safely returned; he even regained his tiny army trained by Bean and led by Suriyawong, who had turned out to be loyal after all.

 

While Bean and Petra did not get their babies, and Bean was dying, Peter couldn't do a thing to help either of them except provide office space and computers for them to conduct their search. He also used all his connections to get them whatever cooperation he could from the nations where they needed access to records.

 

Right after Achilles's death, Petra had simply been relieved. Her irritation with Peter had developed—or merely resurfaced—in the weeks after, as she saw him trying to reestablish the prestige of the office of Hegemon and try to put together a coalition. She began making snotty little comments about Peter playing in his "geopolitical sandbox" and "outstrutting the heads of state."

 

He should have expected that actually having her travel along with him would only make it worse. Especially because he wasn't following her advice about anything.

 

"You can't just show up," she told him.

 

"I have no choice."

 

"It's disrespectful. As if you think you can drop in on the Caliph. It's treating him like a servant."

 

"That's why I brought you" Peter patiently explained. "So you can see him and explain that the only way this can happen is if it's a secret meeting."

 

"But he already told me and Bean that we couldn't have access to him like we used to. We're infidels. He's Caliph."

 

"The Pope sees non-Catholics all the time. He sees me."

 

"The Pope isn't Muslim," said Petra.

 

"Just be patient," said Peter. "Alai knows we're here. Eventually he'll decide to see me."

 

"Eventually? I'm pregnant, Mr. Hegemon, and my husband is dying in a big way, ha ha ha, and you're wasting some of the time we have together and that pisses me off."

 

"I invited you to come. I didn't compel you."

 

"It's a good thing you didn't try."

 

But now it was out. In the open. Clear at last. Of course she was really irritated at all the things she complained about. But underneath it all was resentment about how Peter had let Bean do his killing for him.

 

"Petra," said Peter. "I'm not a soldier."

 

"Neither is Bean!"

 

"Bean is the finest military mind alive," said Peter.

 

"So why isn't he Hegemon?"

 

"Because he doesn't want to be."

 

"And you do. And that's why I hate you, since you asked."

 

"You know why I wanted this office and what I'm trying to do with it. You've read my Locke essays."

 

"I also read your Demosthenes essays."

 

"Those also needed to be written. But I intend to govern as Locke."

 

"You govern nothing. The only reason you even have your little army is because Bean and Suriyawong created it and decided to let you have the use of it. You only have your precious compound and all your staff because Bean killed Achilles and gave it back to you. And now you're back to putting on your little show of importance, but you know what? Nobody's fooled. You're not even as powerful as the Pope. He's got the Vatican and a billion Catholics. You've got nothing but what my husband gave you."

 

Peter didn't think this was quite accurate—he had labored for years to build up his network of contacts, and he had kept the office of Hegemon from being abolished. Over the years he had made it mean something. He had saved Haiti from chaos. Several small nations owed their independence or freedom to his diplomatic and, yes, military intervention.

 

But certainly he was on the verge of losing it all to Achilles— because of his own stupid mistake. A mistake that Bean and Petra had warned him about before he made it. A mistake that Bean had rectified only at a grave risk.

 

"Petra," said Peter, "you're right. I owe everything to you and Bean. But that doesn't change the fact that whatever you think of me and whatever you think of the office of Hegemon, I hold that office, and I'm trying to use it to avoid another bloody war."

 

"You're trying to use your office to make your office into 'dictator of the world.' Unless you can figure out a way to extend your reach out to the colonies and become 'dictator of the known universe.' "

 

"We don't actually have any colonies yet," said Peter. "The ships are all still in transit and will be until we're all dead. But by the time they arrive, I'd like them to send their ansible messages back home to an Earth that is united under a single democratic government."

 

"It's the democratic part I missed," said Petra. "Who elected you?"

 

"Since I don't have any actual authority over anybody, Petra, how can it possibly matter if I'm not legitimately authorized?"

 

"You argue like a debater," she said. "You don't actually have to have an idea, you just have to have a seemingly clever refutation."

 

"And you argue like a nine-year-old," said Peter. "Sticking your fingers in your ears and going 'La la la' and 'same to you.' "

 

Petra looked like she wanted to slap him. Instead she put her fingers in her ears and said, "Same to you" and "La la la."

 

He did not laugh. Instead he reached out a hand, intending to pull her arm away from her ear. But she whirled around and kicked his hand so hard that he thought she might have broken his wrist. As it was, he staggered and stumbled over the corner of the bed in his hotel room and ended up on his butt on the floor.

 

"There's the Hegemon of Earth," said Petra.

 

"Where's your camera? Don't you want this to be public?"

 

"If I wanted to destroy you, you'd be destroyed."

 

"Petra, I didn't send Bean into that compound. Bean sent himself."

 

"You let him go."

 

"Yes I did, and in any event I was proven right."

 

"But you didn't know he'd live. I was carrying his baby and you sent him in to die."

 

"Nobody sends Bean anywhere," said Peter, "and you know it."

 

She whirled away from him and stalked out of the room. She would have slammed the door, but the pneumatics prevented it.

 

He had seen, though. The tears in her eyes.

 

She didn't hate Peter. She wanted to hate him. But what she really was furious about was that her husband was dying and she had agreed to this mission because she knew it would be important. If it worked, it would be important. But it wasn't working. It probably wouldn't work.

 

Peter knew that. But he also knew that he had to talk to Caliph Alai, and he had to do it now if the conversation was to have any good effect. If possible, he'd like to have the conversation without risking the prestige of the office of Hegemon. But the longer they delayed, the greater the likelihood of word of his trip to Damascus getting out. And then if Alai rebuffed him, the humiliation would be public, and the office of Hegemon would be greatly diminished.

 

So Petra's judgment of him was obviously unfair. If all he cared about was his own authority, he wouldn't be here.

 

And she was clever enough to know that. She got into Battle School, didn't she? She was the only girl among Ender's Jeesh. That certified her as his superior—at least in the area of strategy and leadership. Surely she must see that he was putting the goal of preventing a bloody war above his own career.

 

As soon as he thought of this, he heard her voice inside his head, saying, "Oh, isn't that fine and noble of you, to put the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers ahead of your own indelible place in history. Do you think you get a prize for that?" Or else she'd say, "The only reason I'm along is specifically so you can avoid risking anything." Or else, "You've always been bold as a risk-taker—when the stakes are high enough and your own life isn't on the line."

 

This is great, Peter, he thought. You don't even need her in the room with you and you can still carry on an argument with her.

 

How did Bean stand her? No doubt she didn't treat him like this.

 

No. It was impossible to imagine that being nasty was something she could switch on and off. Bean had to have seen this side of her. And yet he stayed with her.

 

And loved her. Peter wondered what it would be like, to have Petra look at him the way she looked at Bean.

 

Then he corrected himself at once. Wonderful to have a woman look at him the way Petra looked at Bean. The last thing he wanted was a lovelorn Petra making googly eyes at him.

 

The telephone rang.

 

The voice made sure it was "Peter Jones" and then said, "Five in the morning, be downstairs outside the north lobby doors." Click.

 

Well, what brought that on? Something in Petra's and his argument? Peter had swept the room for bugs, but that didn't mean they couldn't have some low-tech device like somebody in the next room with his ear pressed against the wall.

 

What did we say to make them let me see the Caliph?

 

Maybe it was what he said about avoiding another bloody war.

 

Or perhaps it was because they heard him admit to Petra that maybe he didn't have any legitimate authority.

 

What if they recorded that? What if it suddenly surfaced on the web?

 

Then it would happen, and he'd do his best to recover from the blow, and either he'd succeed or he'd fail. No point fretting about it now. Somebody was meeting him at the north door of the lobby tomorrow morning before daylight. Maybe they'd lead him to Alai, and maybe he'd achieve what he needed to achieve, save all that he needed to save.

 

He toyed with the idea of not telling Petra about the meeting. After all, she had no pertinent office at all. She had no particular right to be at the meeting, especially after their quarrel tonight.

 

Don't be spiteful and petty, Peter told himself. One spiteful act brings too much pleasure—it just makes you want to do another, and another. And sooner each time.

 

So he picked up the phone and on the seventh ring she picked it up.

 

"I'm not going to apologize," she said curtly.

 

"Good," he said. "Because I don't want some smarmy I'm-sorry-you-got-so-upset fake apology. What I want is for you to join me at five A.M. at the north door of the lobby."

 

"What for?"

 

"I don't know," said Peter. "I'm just passing along what I was just told on the telephone."

 

"He's going to let us see him?"

 

"Or he's sending thugs to escort us back to the airport. How can I possibly know? You're the one who's his friend. You tell me what he's planning."

 

"I haven't the slightest idea," said Petra. "It's not like Alai and I were ever close. And are you sure they want me to come to the actual meeting? There are plenty of Muslims who would be horrified at the thought of an unveiled married woman speaking face to face with a man—even the Caliph."

 

"I don't know what they want," said Peter. "I want you at the meeting."

 

 

 

They were ushered into a closed van and driven along a route that Peter assumed was convoluted and deceptively long. For all he knew, the Caliph's headquarters was next door to their hotel. But Alai's people knew that without the Caliph there was no unity, and without unity Islam had no strength, so they were taking no chances on letting outsiders know where the Caliph lived.

 

They were driven far enough that they might be outside Damascus. When they emerged from the van, it was not in daylight, it was indoors ... or underground. Even the porticoed garden into which they were ushered was artificially lighted, and the sound of running and trickling and falling water masked any faint noises that might have seeped in from outside and hinted where they were.

 

Alai did not so much greet them as notice their presence as he walked in the garden. He did not even face them, but sat a few meters away, facing a fountain, and began to speak.

 

"I have no desire to humiliate you, Peter Wiggin," he said. "You should not have come."

 

"I appreciate your letting me speak with you at all," Peter answered.

 

"Wisdom said that I should announce to the world that the Hegemon had come to see the Caliph, and the Caliph refused to see him. But I told Wisdom to be patient, and let Folly be my guide today in this garden."

 

"Petra and I are here to—"

 

"Petra is here," said Alai, "because you thought her presence might get you in to see me, and you needed a witness that I would be reluctant to kill, and because you want her to be your ally after her husband is dead."

 

Peter did not let himself glance at Petra to see how she took this sally from Alai. She knew the man; Peter did not. She would interpret his words as she saw fit, and nothing he could see in her face right now would help him understand anything. It would only weaken him to show he cared.

 

"I'm here to offer my help," said Peter.

 

"I command armies that rule over more than half the population of the world," said Alai. "I have united Muslim nations from Morocco to Indonesia, and liberated the oppressed peoples in between."

 

"It's the difference between 'conquered' and 'liberated' that I wanted to talk about."

 

"So you came to rebuke me, not to help after all," said Alai.

 

"I see I'm wasting my time," said Peter. "If we can't speak together without petty debate, then you are past receiving help."

 

"Help?" said Alai. "One of my advisers said to me, when I told them I wanted to see you, 'How many soldiers does this Hegemon have?' "

 

"How many divisions has the Pope?" quoted Peter.

 

"More than the Hegemon has," said Alai, "if the Pope should ask for them. As the old dead United Nations found out long ago, religion always has more warriors than some vague international abstraction."

 

Peter realized then that Alai was not speaking to him. He was speaking past him. This was not a private conversation after all.

 

"I do not intend to be disrespectful to the Caliph," said Peter. "I have seen the majesty of your achievement and the generosity of spirit with which you have dealt with your enemies."

 

Alai visibly relaxed. They were now playing the same game. Peter had finally understood the rules. "What is to be gained from humiliating those who believe they stand outside the power of God?" asked Alai. "God will show them his power in his own good time, and until then we are wise to be kind."

 

Alai was speaking as the true believers around him required him to speak—always asserting the primacy of the Caliphate over all non-Muslim powers.

 

"The dangers I came to speak of," said Peter, "will not ever come from me or because of the small influence I have in the world. Though I was not chosen by God, and there are few who listen to me, I also seek, as you seek, the peace and happiness of the children of God on Earth."

 

Now was the time, if Alai was completely the captive of his supporters, for him to rant about how it was blasphemous for an infidel like Peter to invoke the name of God or pretend that there could be peace before all the world was under the rule of the Caliphate.

 

Instead Alai said, "I listen to all men, but obey only God."

 

"There was a day when Islam was hated and feared throughout the world," said Peter. "That era ended long ago, before either of us were born, but your enemies are reviving those old stories."

 

"Those old lies, you mean," said Alai.

 

"The fact that no man can make the Hajj in his own skin and live," said Peter, "suggests that not all the stories are lies. In the name of Islam terrible weapons were acquired and in the name of Islam they were used to destroy the most sacred place on Earth."

 

"It is not destroyed," said Alai. "It is protected."

 

"It's so radioactive that nothing can live within a hundred kilometers," said Peter. "And you know what the explosion did to Al-hajar Al-aswad."

 

"The stone was not sacred in itself," said Alai, "and Muslims never worshipped it. We only used it as a marker to remember the holy covenant between God and his true followers. Now its molecules are powdered and spread over the whole Earth, as a blessing to the righteous and a curse to the wicked, while we who follow Islam still remember where it was, and what it marked, and bow toward that place when we pray."

 

It was a sermon he had surely said many times before.

 

"Muslims suffered more than anyone in those dark days," said Peter. "But that is not what most people remember. They remember bombs that killed innocent women and children, and fanatical self-murderers who hated any freedom except the freedom to obey the very narrowest interpretation of Shari'ah."

 

He could see Alai stiffen. "I make no judgment myself," Peter immediately said. "I was not alive then. But in India and China and Thailand and Vietnam, there are people who fear that the soldiers of Islam did not come as liberators, but as conquerors. That they'll be arrogant in victory. That the Caliphate will never allow freedom to the people who welcomed him and aided him in overcoming the Chinese conquerors."

 

"We do not force Islam on any nation," said Alai, "and those who claim otherwise are liars. We ask them only to open their doors to the teachers of Islam, so the people can choose."

 

"Forgive my confusion, then," said Peter. "The people of the world see that open door, and notice that no one passes through it except in one direction. Once a nation has chosen Islam, then the people are never allowed to choose anything else."

 

"I hope I do not hear the echo of the Crusades in your voice."

 

The Crusades, thought Peter, that old bugbear. So Alai really has joined himself to the rhetoric of fanaticism. "I only report to you what is being said among those who are seeking to ally against you in war," said Peter. "That war is what I hope to avoid. What those old terrorists tried, and failed, to achieve—a worldwide war between Islam and everyone else—may now be almost upon us."

 

"The people of God are not afraid of the outcome of such a war," said Alai.

 

"It's the process of the war that I hope to avoid," said Peter. "Surely the Caliph also seeks to avoid needless bloodshed."

 

"All who die are at the mercy of God," said Alai. "Death is not the thing to fear most in life, since it comes to all."

 

"If that's how you feel about the carnage of war," said Peter, "then I've wasted your time." Peter leaned forward, preparing to rise to his feet.

 

Petra put her hand on his thigh, pressing down, urging him to remain seated. But Peter had had no intention of leaving.

 

"But." said Alai.

 

Peter waited.

 

"But God desires the willing obedience of his children, not their terror."

 

It was the statement Peter had been hoping for.

 

"Then the murders in India, the massacres—"

 

"There have been no massacres."

 

"The rumors of massacre," said Peter, "which seem to be supported by smuggled vids and eyewitness accounts and aerial photographs of the alleged killing fields—I am relieved that such things would not be the policy of the Caliphate."

 

"If someone has slain innocents for no other crime than believing in the idols of Hinduism and Buddhism, then such a murderer would be no Muslim."

 

"What the people of India wonder—"

 

"You do not speak for the people of any place except a small compound in Ribeir?o Preto," said Alai.

 

"What my informants in India tell me that the people of India wonder is whether the Caliph intends to repudiate and punish such murderers or merely pretend they didn't happen? Because if they cannot trust the Caliph to control what is done in the name of Allah, then they will defend themselves."

 

"By piling stones in the road?" asked Alai. "We are not the Chinese, to be frightened by stories of a 'Great Wall of India.' "

 

"The Caliph now controls a population that has far more non-Muslims than Muslims," said Peter.

 

"So far," said Alai.

 

"The question is whether the proportion of Muslims will increase because of teaching, or because of the slaughter and oppression of unbelievers?"

 

For the first time, Alai turned his head, and then his body, to face them. But it was not Peter he looked at. He only had eyes for Petra.

 

"Don't you know me?" he said to her.

 

Peter wisely did not answer. His words were doing their work, and now it was time for Petra to do what he had brought her to do.

 

"Yes," she said.

 

"Then tell him," said Alai.

 

"No," she said.

 

Alai sat in wounded silence.

 

"Because I don't know whether the voice I hear in this garden is the voice of Alai or the voice of the men who put him into office and control who may or may not speak to him."

 

"It is the voice of the Caliph," said Alai.

 

"I've read history," said Petra, "and so have you. The Sultans and Caliphs were rarely anything but holy figureheads, when they allowed their servants to keep them within walls. Come out into the world, Alai, and see for yourself the bloody work that's being done in your name."

 

They heard footsteps, loud ones, many footsteps, and soldiers trotted out of concealment. Within moments, rough hands held Petra and were dragging her away. Peter did not raise a hand to interfere. He only faced Alai, staring at him, demanding silently that he show who ruled in his house.

 

"Stop," said Alai. Not loudly, but clearly.

 

"No woman speaks to the Caliph like that!" shouted a man who was behind Peter. Peter did not turn. It was enough to know that the man had spoken in Common, not in Arabic, and that his accent bore the marks of a superb education.

 

"Let go of her," Alai said to the soldiers, ignoring the man who had shouted.

 

There was no hesitation. The soldiers let go of Petra. At once she came back to Peter's side and sat down. Peter also sat down. They were spectators now.

 

The man who had shouted, dressed in the flowing robes of an imitation sheik, strode up to Alai. "She uttered a command to the Caliph! A challenge! Her tongue must be cut out of her mouth."

 

Alai remained seated. He said nothing.

 

The man turned to the soldiers. "Take her!" he said.

 

The soldiers began to move.

 

"Stop," said Alai. Quietly but clearly.

 

The soldiers stopped. They looked miserable and confused.

 

"He doesn't know what he's saying," the man said to the soldiers. "Take the girl and then we'll discuss it later."

 

"Do not move except at my command," said Alai.

 

The soldiers did not move.

 

The man faced Alai again. "You're making a mistake," he said.

 

"The soldiers of the Caliph are witnesses," said Alai. "The Caliph has been threatened. The Caliph's orders have been countermanded. There is a man in this garden who thinks he has more power in Islam than the Caliph. So the words of this infidel girl are correct. The Caliph is a holy figurehead, who allows his servants to keep him within walls. The Caliph is a prisoner and others rule Islam in his name."

 

Peter could see in the man's face that he now realized that the Caliph was not just a boy who could be manipulated.

 

"Don't go down this road," he said.

 

"The soldiers of the Caliph are witnesses," said Alai, "that this man has given a command to the Caliph. A challenge. But unlike the girl, this man has ordered armed soldiers, in the presence of the Caliph, to disobey the Caliph. The Caliph can hear any words without harm, but when soldiers are ordered to disobey him, it does not require an imam to explain that treason and blasphemy are present here."

 

"If you move against me," the man said, "then the others—"

 

"The soldiers of the Caliph are witnesses," said Alai, "that this man is part of a conspiracy against the Caliph. There are 'others.' "

 

One soldier came forward and laid a hand on the man's arm.

 

He shook it off.

 

Alai smiled at the soldier.

 

The soldier took the man's arm again, but not gently. Other soldiers stepped forward. One took the man's other arm. The rest faced Alai, waiting for orders.

 

"We have seen today that one man of my council thinks he is the master of the Caliph. Therefore, any soldier of Islam who truly wishes to serve the Caliph will take every member of the council into custody and hold them in silence until the Caliph has decided which of them can be trusted and which must be discarded from the service of God. Move quickly, my friends, before the ones who are spying on this conversation have time to escape."

 

The man wrenched one hand free and in a moment held a wicked-looking knife.

 

But Alai's hand was already firmly gripping his wrist.

 

"My old friend," said Alai, "I know that you were not raising that weapon against your Caliph. But suicide is a grave and terrible sin. I refuse to allow you to meet God with your own blood on your hands." With a twist of his hand, Alai made the man groan with pain. The knife clattered on the flagstones.

 

"Soldiers," said Alai. "Make me safe. Meanwhile, I will continue my conversation with these visitors, who are under the protection of my hospitality."

 

Two soldiers dragged the prisoner away, while the others took off at a run.

 

"You have work to do," said Peter.

 

"I've just done it," said Alai. He turned to Petra. "Thank you for seeing what I needed."

 

"Being a provocateur comes naturally to me," she said.

 

"I hope we've been helpful."

 

"Everything you said has been heard," said Alai. "And I assure you that when it's actually in my power to control the armies of Islam, they will behave as true Muslims, and not as barbarian conquerors. Meanwhile, however, I'm afraid that bloodshed is likely, and I believe you will be safest here with me in this garden for the next half hour or so."

 

"Hot Soup has just taken over in China," said Petra.

 

"So I've heard."

 

"And he's taking the title of emperor," she added.

 

"Buck to the good old days."

 

"A new dynasty in Beijing now faces the restored Caliphate in Damascus," said Petra. "It would be a terrible thing, for members of the Jeesh to have to choose up sides and wage war against each other. Surely that's not what Battle School was ever meant to accomplish."

 

"Battle School?" said Alai. "They may have identified us, but we already were who we were before they laid a hand on us. Do you think that without Battle School, I could not be where I am, or Han Tzu where he is? Look at Peter Wiggin—he didn't go to Battle School, but he got himself appointed Hegemon."

 

"An empty title," said Peter.

 

"It was when you got it," said Alai. "Just as my title was until two minutes ago. But when you sit in the chair and wear the hat, some people don't understand that it's just a play and start obeying you as if you had real power. And then you have real power. Neh?"

 

"Eh," said Petra.

 

Peter smiled. "I'm not your enemy, Alai," he said.

 

"You're not my friend, either," said Alai. But then he smiled. "The question is whether you'll turn out to be a friend to humanity. Or whether I will." He turned back to Petra. "And so much depends on what your husband chooses to do before he dies."

 

Petra nodded gravely. "He'd prefer to do nothing except enjoy the months or perhaps years he'll have with me and our child."

 

"God willing," said Alai, "that's all he'll be required to do."

 

A soldier came pounding across the flagstones. "Sir, the compound is secure and none of the council have escaped."

 

"I'm happy to hear that," said Alai.

 

"Three councilmen are dead, sir," said the soldier. "It could not be helped."

 

"I'm sure that's the truth," said Alai. "They are now in God's hands. The rest are in mine, and now I must try to do what God would have me do. Now, my son, will you take these two friends of the Caliph safely back to their hotel? Our conversation is finished, and I wish them to be free to leave Damascus, unhindered and unrecognized. No one will speak of their presence in this garden on this day."

 

"Yes, my Caliph," said the soldier. He bowed, and then turned to Peter and Petra. "Will you come with me, friends of the Caliph?"

 

"Thank you," Petra said. "The Caliph is blessed with true servants in this house."

 

The man did not acknowledge her praise. "This way," he said to Peter.

 

As they followed him back to the enclosed van, Peter wondered whether he might have unconsciously planned for the events that happened here today, or whether it was just dumb luck.

 

Or whether Petra and Alai planned it, and Peter was nothing more than their pawn, thinking foolishly that he was making his own decisions and conducting his own strategy.

 

Or are we, as the Muslims believe, only acting out the script of God?

 

Not likely. Any God worth believing in could make up a better plan than the mess the world was in now.

 

In my childhood I set my hand to improving the world, and for a while I succeeded. I stopped a war through words I wrote on the nets, when people didn't know who I was. But now I have the empty title of Hegemon. Wars are swirling back and forth across swathes of the Earth like a reaper's scythe, vast populations are seething under the whips of new oppressors, and I am powerless to change a thing.

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

BARGAIN

 

 

 

From: PeterWiggin%private@hegemon.gov

 

To: SacredCause%OneMan@FreeThai.org

 

Re: Suriyawong's actions concerning Achilles Flandres

 

 

Dear Ambul,

 

 

At all times during Achilles Flandres's infiltration of the Hegemony, Suriyawong acted as my agent inside Flandres's growing organization. It was at my instructions that he pretended to be Flandres's staunch ally, and that was why, at the crucial moment when Julian Delphiki faced the monster, Suriyawong and his elite soldiers acted for the good of all humankind—including Thailand—and made possible the destruction of the man who, more than any other, was responsible for the defeat and occupation of Thailand.

 

 

This is the "public story," as you pointed out. Now I point out that in this case the public story also happens to be the complete truth.

 

 

Like you, Suriyawong is a Battle School graduate. China's new Emperor and the Muslim Caliph are both Battle School graduates. But they are two of those chosen to take part in my brother Ender's famous Jeesh. Even if you discount their actual brilliance as military commanders, the public perception of their powers is at the level of magic. This will affect the morale of your soldiers as surely as of theirs.

 

 

How do you suppose you will keep Thailand free if you reject Suriyawong? He is no threat to your leadership; he will be your most valuable tool against your enemies.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Peter, Hegemon

 

 

 

Bean stooped to pass through the doorway. He wasn't actually tall enough to bang his head. But it had happened often enough, in other doorways that once would have given him plenty of room, that now he was overcautious. He didn't know what to do with his hands, either. They seemed too big for any job he might need them for. Pens were like toothpicks; his finger filled the trigger guard of many a pistol. Soon he'd have to butter his finger to get it out, as if the pistol were a too-tight ring.

 

And his joints ached. And his head hurt sometimes like it was going to split in two. Because, in fact, it was trying to do exactly that. The soft spot on the top of his head could not seem to expand fast enough to make room for his growing brain.

 

The doctors loved that part. To find out what it did to the mental function of an adult to have the brain grow. Did it disrupt memory? Or merely add to capacity? Bean submitted to their questions and measurements and scans and bloodlettings because he might not find all his children before he died, and anything they learned from studying him might help them.

 

But at times like this he felt nothing but despair. There was no help for him, and none for them, either. He would not find them. And if he did, he could not help them.

 

What difference has my life made? I killed one man. He was a monster, but I had it in my power to kill him at least once before, and failed to do it. So don't I share in the responsibility for what he did in the intervening years? The deaths, the misery.

 

Including Petra's suffering when she was his captive. Including our own suffering over the children he stole from us.

 

And yet he went on searching, using every contact he could think of, every search engine on the nets, every program he could devise for manipulating the public records in order to be ready to identify which births were of his children, implanted in surrogates.

 

For of that much he was certain. Achilles and Volescu had never intended to give the embryos back to him and Petra. That promise had only been a lure. A man of less malice than Achilles might have killed the embryos—as he pretended to do when he broke test tubes during their last confrontation in Ribeir?o Preto. But for Achilles, killing itself was never a pleasure. He killed when he thought it was necessary. When he actually wanted to make someone suffer, he made sure the suffering lingered as long as possible.

 

Bean's and Petra's children would be born to mothers unknown to them, probably scattered throughout the world by Volescu.

 

But Achilles had done his work well. Volescu's travels were completely erased from the public record. And there was nothing about the man to make him particularly memorable. They could show his picture to a million airline workers and another million cab drivers throughout the world and half of them might remember seeing a man who looked "like that" but none of them would be sure of anything and Volescu's path could not be retraced.

 

And when Bean had tried to appeal to Volescu's lingering shreds of decency—which he hoped existed, against all evidence—the man had gone underground and now all Bean could hope for was that somebody, some agency somewhere, would find him, arrest him, and hold him long enough for Bean to...

 

To what? Torture him? Threaten him? Bribe him? What could possibly induce Volescu to tell him what he needed to know?

 

Now the International Fleet had sent him some officer to give him "important information." What could they possibly know? The I.F. was forbidden to operate on the surface of Earth. Even if they had agents who had discovered Volescu's whereabouts, why would they risk exposing their own illegal activities just to help Bean find his babies? They had made a big deal about how loyal they were to the Battle School graduates, especially to Ender's Jeesh, but he doubted it went that far. Money, that's what they offered. All the Battle School grads had a nice pension. They could go home like Cincinnatus and farm for the rest of their lives, without even having to worry about the weather or the seasons or the harvest. They could grow weeds and still prosper.

 

Instead, I stupidly allowed children of my deformed and self-destructive genes to be created in vitro and now Volescu has planted them in foreign wombs and I must find them before he and people like him can exploit them and use them up and then watch them die of giantism, like me, before they turn twenty.

 

Volescu knows. He would never leave it to chance. Because he still imagined himself to be a scientist. He would want to gather data about the children. To him, it was all one big experiment, with the added inconvenience of being illegal and based on stolen embryos. To Volescu, those embryos belonged to him by right. To him, Bean was nothing but the experiment that got away. Anything he produced was part of Volescu's long-term study.

 

An old man sat at the table in the conference room. It took Bean a moment to decide whether his skin was naturally dark or merely weathered into a barnwood color and texture. Both, probably.

 

I know him, thought Bean. Mazer Rackham. The man who saved humanity in the Second Bugger Invasion. Who should have been dead many decades ago, but who surfaced long enough to train Ender himself for the last campaign.

 

"They send you to Earth?"

 

"I'm retired," said Rackham.

 

"So am I," said Bean. "So is Ender. When does he come to Earth?"

 

Rackham shook his head. "Too late to be bitter about that," he said. "If Ender had been here, do you think there's any chance he would be both alive and free?"

 

Rackham had a point. Back when Achilles was arranging for all of Ender's Jeesh to be kidnapped, the greatest prize of all would have been Ender himself. And even if Ender had evaded capture—as Bean had done—how long before someone else tried to control him or exploit him in order to achieve some imperial ambition? With Ender, being an American as he was, maybe the United States would have stirred from its torpor and now, instead of China and the Muslim world being the main players in the great game, America would be flexing its muscles again and then the world really would be in turmoil.

 

Ender would have hated that. Hated himself for being part of it. It really was better that Graff had arranged to send him off on the first colony ship to a former Bugger world. Right now, each second of Ender's life aboard the starship was a week to Bean. While Ender read a paragraph of a book, a million babies would be born on Earth, a million old people and soldiers and sick people and pedestrians and drivers would die and humanity would move forward another small step in its evolution into a starfaring species.

 

Starfaring species. That was Graff's program.

 

"You're not here for the fleet, then," said Bean. "You're here for Colonel Graff."

 

"For the Minister of Colonization?" Rackham nodded gravely. "Informally and unofficially, yes. To inform you of an offer."

 

"Graff has nothing that I want. Before any starship could arrive on a colony world, I'd be dead."

 

"You'd undoubtedly be an ... interesting choice to head a colony," said Rackham. "But as you said, your term in office would be too brief to-be effective. No, it's a different kind of offer."

 

"The only things I want, you don't have."

 

"Once upon a time, I believe, you wanted nothing more than survival."

 

"It's not within your power to offer me."

 

"Yes it is," said Rackham.

 

"Oh, from the vast medical research facilities of the International Fleet there comes a cure for a condition that is suffered by only one person on Earth?"

 

"Not at all," said Rackham. "The cure will have to come from others. What we offer you is the ability to wait until it's ready. We offer you a starship, and lightspeed, and an ansible so you can be told when to come home."

 

Precisely the "gift" they gave Rackham himself, when they thought they might need him to command all the fleets when they arrived at the various Bugger worlds. The chance of survival rang inside him like the tolling of a great bell. He couldn't help it. If there was anything that had ever driven him, it was that hunger to survive. But how could he trust them?

 

"And in return, what do you want from me?"

 

"Can't this be part of your retirement package from the fleet?"

 

Rackham was good at keeping a straight face, but Bean knew he couldn't be serious. "When I come back, there's going to be some poor young soldier I can train?"

 

"You're not a teacher," said Rackham.

 

"Neither were you."

 

Rackham shrugged. "So we become whatever we need to be. We're offering you life. We'll continue to fund research on your condition."

 

"What, using my children as your guinea pigs?"

 

"We'll try to find them, of course. We'll try to cure them."

 

"But they won't get their own starships?"

 

"Bean," said Rackham. "How many trillions of dollars do you think your genes are worth?"

 

"To me," said Bean, "They're worth more than all the money in the world."

 

"I don't think you could pay even the interest on that loan."

 

"So I don't have as high a credit rating as I hoped."

 

"Bean, take this offer seriously. While there's still time. Acceleration is hard on the heart. You have to go while you're still healthy enough to survive the voyage. As it is, we'll be cutting it rather fine, don't you think? A couple of years to accelerate, and at the end, a couple more to decelerate. Who gives you four years?"

 

"Nobody," said Bean. "And you're forgetting. I have to come home. That's four more years. It's already far too late."

 

Rackham smiled. "Don't you think we've taken that into account?"

 

"What, you've figured out a way to turn while traveling at light-speed?"

 

"Even light bends."

 

"Light is a wave."

 

"So are you, when you're traveling that fast."

 

"Neither of us is a physicist."

 

"But the people who planned our new generation of messenger ship are," said Rackham.

 

"How can the I.F. afford to build new ships?" asked Bean. "Your funding comes from Earth and the emergency is over. The only reason the nations of Earth even pay your salaries and continue to supply you is because they're buying your neutrality."

 

Rackham smiled.

 

"Somebody's paying you to keep developing new ships," said Bean.

 

"Speculation is pointless."

 

"There's only one nation that could afford to do that, and it's the one nation that could never keep it secret."

 

"So it's not possible," said Rackham.

 

"Yet you're promising me a kind of ship that couldn't exist."

 

"You go through acceleration in a compensatory gravity field, so there's no additional strain on your heart. That lets us accelerate in a week instead of two years."

 

"And if the gravity fails?"

 

"Then you're torn to dust in an instant. But it doesn't fail. We've tested it."

 

"So messengers can go from world to world without losing more than a couple of weeks of their lives."

 

"Of their own lives," said Rackham. "But when we send someone out on such a voyage, thirty or fifty lightyears, everyone they ever knew is dead long before they come back. Volunteers are few."

 

Everyone they ever knew. If he got on this starship, he'd leave Petra behind and never see her again.

 

Was he heartless enough for that?

 

Not heartless at all. He could still feel the pain of losing Sister Carlotta, the woman who saved him from the streets of Rotterdam and watched over for him for years, until Achilles finally murdered her.

 

"Can I take Petra with me?"

 

"Would she go?"

 

"Not without our children," said Bean.

 

"Then I suggest you keep searching," said Rackham. "Because even though the new technology buys you a bit more time, it's not forever. Your body imposes a deadline that we can't put off."

 

"And you'll let me bring Petra, if we find our children."

 

"If she'll go," said Rackham.

 

"She will," said Bean. "We have no roots in this world, except our children."

 

"Already they're children in your imagination," said Rackham.

 

Bean only smiled. He knew how Catholic it made him sound, but that's how it felt to him and Petra both.

 

"We ask only one thing," said Rackham.

 

Bean laughed. "I knew it."

 

"As long as you're waiting around anyway, searching for your children," said Rackham. "We'd like you to help Peter unite the world under the office of the Hegemon."

 

Bean was so astonished he stopped laughing. "So the fleet intends to meddle in earthside affairs."

 

"We aren't meddling at all," said Rackham. "You are."

 

"Peter doesn't listen to me. If he did, he would have let me kill Achilles back in China when we first had the chance. Peter decided to 'rescue' him instead."

 

"Maybe he's learned from his mistake."

 

"He thinks he learned from it," said Bean, "but Peter is Peter. It wasn't a mistake, it's who he is. He can't listen to anyone else if he thinks he has a better plan. And he always thinks he has a better plan."

 

"Nevertheless."

 

"I can't help Peter because Peter won't be helped."

 

"He took Petra along on his visit to Alai."

 

"His top secret visit that the I.F. couldn't possibly know about."

 

"We keep track of our alumni."

 

"Is that how you pay for your new-model starships? Alumni donations?"

 

"Our best graduates are still too young to be at the really high salary levels."

 

"I don't know. You have two heads of state."

 

"Doesn't it intrigue you, Bean, to imagine what the history of the world would have been like if there had been two Alexanders at the same time?"

 

"Alai and Hot Soup?" asked Bean. "It'll all boil down to which of them has the most resources. Alai has most at the moment, but China has staying power."

 

"But then you add to the two Alexanders a Joan of Arc here and there, and a couple of Julius Caesars, maybe an Attila, and..."

 

"You see Petra as Joan of Arc?" asked Bean.

 

"She could be."

 

"And what am I?"

 

"Why, Genghis Khan of course, if you choose to be," said Rackham.

 

"He has such a bad reputation."

 

"He doesn't deserve it. His contemporaries knew he was a man of might who exercised his power lightly upon those who obeyed him."

 

"I don't want power. I'm not your Genghis."

 

"No," said Rackham. "That's the problem. It all depends on who has the disease of ambition. When Graff took you into Battle School, it was because your will to survive seemed to do the same job as ambition. But now it doesn't."

 

"Peter's your Genghis," said Bean. "That's why you want me to help him."

 

"He might be," said Rackham. "And you're the only one who can help him. Anybody else would make him feel threatened. But you..."

 

"Because I'm going to die."

 

"Or leave. Either way, he can have the use of you, as he thinks, and then be rid of you."

 

"It's not as he thinks. It's what you want. I'm a book in a lending library. You lend me to Peter for a while. He turns me in, then you send me out on another chase after some dream or other. You and Graff, you still think you're in charge of the human race, don't you?"

 

Rackham looked off into the distance. "It's a job that, once you take it on, it's hard to let go. One day out in space I saw something no one else could see, and I fired a missile and killed a Hive Queen and we won that war. From then on, the human race was my responsibility."

 

"Even if you're no longer the best qualified to lead it."

 

"I didn't say I was the leader. Only that I have the responsibility. To do whatever it takes. Whatever I can. And what I can do is this: I can try to persuade the most brilliant military mind on Earth to help unify the nations under the leadership of the only man who has the will and the wit to hold them all together."

 

"At what price? Peter's not a great fan of democracy."

 

"We're not asking for democracy," said Rackham. "Not at first. Not until the power of nations is broken. You have to tame the horse before you can let it have its head."

 

"And you say you're just the servant of humanity," said Bean. "Yet you want to put a bridle and saddle on the human race, and let Peter ride."

 

"Yes," said Rackham. "Because humanity isn't a horse. Humanity is a breeding ground for ambition, for territorial competitors, for nations that do battle, and if the nations break down, then tribes, clans, households. We were bred for war, it's in our genes, and the only way to stop the bloodshed is to give one man the power to subdue all the others. All we can hope for is that it be a decent enough man that the peace will be better than the wars, and last longer."

 

"And you think Peter's the man."

 

"He has the ambition you lack."

 

"And the humanity?"

 

Rackham shook his head. "Don't you know by now how human you are?"

 

Bean wasn't going to go down that road. "Why don't you and Graff just leave the human race alone? Let them go on building empires and tearing them down."

 

"Because the Hive Queens aren't the only aliens out there."

 

Bean sat up.

 

"No, no, we haven't seen any, we have no evidence. But think about it. As long as humans seemed to be unique, we could live out our species history as we always had. But now we know that it's possible for intelligent life to evolve twice, and in very different ways. If twice, then why not three times? Or four? There's nothing special about our corner of the galaxy. The Hive Queens were remarkably close to us. There could be thousands of intelligent species in our galaxy alone. And not all of them as nice as we are."

 

"So you're dispersing us."

 

"As far and wide as we can. Planting our seed in every soil."

 

"And for that you want Earth united."

 

"We want Earth to stop wasting its resources on war, and spend them on colonizing world after world, and then trading among them so that the whole species can profit from what each one learns and achieves and becomes. It's basic economics. And history. And evolution. And science. Disperse. Vary. Discover. Publish. Explore."

 

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," said Bean. "How noble of you. Who's paying for all this now?"

 

"Bean," said Rackham. "You don't expect me to tell you, and I don't expect you to have to ask."

 

Bean knew. It was America. Big sleepy do-nothing America. Burned out from trying to police the world back in the twenty-first century, disgusted at the way their efforts earned them nothing but hatred and resentment, they declared victory and went home. They kept the strongest military in the world and closed their doors to immigration.

 

And when the Buggers came, it was American military might that finally blew up those first exploratory ships that scoured the surface of some of the best agricultural land in China, killing millions. It was America that mostly funded and directed the construction of the interplanetary warships that resisted the Second Invasion long enough for New Zealander Mazer Rackham to find the Hive Queen's vulnerability and destroy the enemy.

 

It was America that was secretly funding the I.F. now, developing new ships. Getting its hand into the business of interstellar trade at a time when no other nation on Earth could even attempt to compete.

 

"And how will it be in their interest for the world to be united, except under their leadership?"

 

Rackham smiled. "So now you know how deep our game has to be."

 

Bean smiled back. So Graff had sold his colony program to the Americans—probably on the basis of future trade and a probable American monopoly. And in the meantime, he was backing Peter in the hope that he could unite the world under one government. Which would mean, eventually, a showdown between America and the Hegemon.

 

"And when the day comes," said Bean, "when America expects the I.F., which it's been paying for and researching for, to come to its aid against a powerful Hegemon, what will the I.F. do?"

 

"What did Suriyawong do when Achilles ordered him to kill you?"

 

"Gave him a knife and told him to defend himself." Bean nodded. "But will the I.F. obey you? If you're counting on the reputation of Mazer Rackham, remember that hardly anybody knows you're alive."

 

"I'm counting on the I.F. living up to the code of honor that every soldier has drummed into him from the start. No interference on Earth."

 

"Even as you break that code yourself."

 

"We're not interfering," said Rackham. "Not with troops or ships. Just a little information here and there. A dollop of money. And a little, tiny bit of recruitment. Help us, Bean. While you're still on Earth. The minute you're ready to go, we'll send you, no delays. But while you're here..."

 

"What if I don't believe Peter's as decent a man as you think he is?"

 

"He's better than Achilles."

 

"So was Augustus," said Bean. "But he laid the foundation for Nero and Caligula."

 

"He laid a foundation that survived Caligula and Nero and lasted for a millennium and a half, in one form or another."

 

"And you think that's Peter?"

 

"We do," said Rackham. "I do."

 

"As long as you understand that Peter won't do a thing I say, won't listen to me or anyone, and will go on making idiotic mistakes that I can't prevent, then ... yes. I'll help him, as much as he'll let me."

 

"That's all we ask."

 

"But I'll still give my first priority to finding my children."

 

"How about this," said Rackham. "How about if we tell you where Volescu is?"

 

"You know?"

 

"He's in one of our safe houses," said Rackham.

 

"He accepted the protection of the I.F.?"

 

"He thinks it's part of Achilles's old network."

 

"Is it?"

 

"Somebody had to take over his assets."

 

"Somebody could only do that if they knew where his assets were."

 

"Who do you think maintains all the communications satellites?" asked Rackham.

 

"So the I.F. is spying on Earth."

 

"Just as a mother spies on her children at play in the yard."

 

"Good to know you're looking out for us, Mummy."

 

Rackham leaned forward. "Bean, we make our plans, but we know we might fail. Ultimately, it all comes down to this. We've seen human beings at their best, and we think our species is worth saving."

 

"Even if you have to have the help of non-humans like me."

 

"Bean, when I spoke of human beings at their best, whom do you think I was talking about?"

 

"Ender Wiggin," said Bean.

 

"And Julian Delphiki," said Rackham. "The other little boy we trusted to save the world."

 

Bean shook his head and stood up. "Not so little now," said Bean. "And dying. But I'll take your offer because it gives me a hope for my little family. And apart from that, I have no hope at all. Tell me where Volescu is, and I'll go see him."

 

"You'll have to secure him yourself," said Rackham. "We can't have I.F. agents involved."

 

"Give me the address and I'll do the rest."

 

Bean ducked again to leave the room. And he was trembling as he walked through the park, back toward his office in the Hegemony compound. Huge armies prepared to clash, in a struggle for supremacy. And off to one side, not even on the surface of Earth, there were a handful of men who intended to turn those armies to their own purposes.

 

They were Archimedes, preparing to move the Earth because they finally had a lever big enough.

 

I'm the lever.

 

And I'm not as big us they think I am. Not as big as I seem. It can't be done.

 

Yet it might just be worth doing.

 

So I'll let them use me to try to pry the world of men loose from its age-old path of competition and war.

 

And I'll use them to try to save my life and the lives of my children who share my disease.

 

And the chance of both projects succeeding is so slim that the odds are much better of the Earth being hit by a disastrously huge meteor first.

 

Then again, they probably already have a plan to deal with a meteor strike. They probably have a plan for everything. Even a plan they can turn to if ... when ... I fail.

 

 

 

 

5

 

 

SHIVA

 

 

 

From: Figurehead%Parent@hegemon.gov

 

To: PeterWiggin%Private@hegemon.gov

 

Password: ********

 

Re: Speaking as a mother

 

 

 

After all these years of posing as the Madonna in your little Pieta, it occurs to me that I might whisper something in your oh-so busy ear:

 

 

Ever since Achilles's little kidnapping venture, the not-so-secret weapon in everyone's arsenal is whatever array of Battle School graduates they're able to acquire, keep, and deploy. Now it's even worse. Alai is Caliph in fact as well as name. Han Tzu is emperor of China. Virlomi is ... what, a goddess? That's what I hear, coming out of India.

 

 

Now they will go to war against each other.

 

 

What are YOU doing? Betting on the winner and choosing up sides?

 

 

Quite apart from the fact that many of these children were Ender's friends and fellow soldiers, the whole human race owes them our very survival. We took away their childhood. When do they get a life they can call their own?

 

 

Peter, I've read history. Men like Genghis and Alexander were deprived of a normal childhood and absolutely focused on war and you know what? It deformed them. They were unhappy all the days of their lives. Alexander didn't know who he was when he stopped conquering people. If he stopped moving forward, slaughtering all the way, he died.

 

 

So how about setting these children free? Have you given any thought to that? Talk to Graff. He'll listen to you. Give these children an out. A chance. A life.

 

 

If for no other reason than because they're Andrew's friends. They're like Andrew. They didn't choose themselves for Battle School.

 

 

You, on the other hand, didn't go to Battle School. You volunteered to save the world. So you have to stay and see it through.

 

 

Your loving and ever-supportive mother

 

 

 

A woman's face appeared on the screen. She was dressed in the simple work-stained clothing of a Hindu peasant woman. But she bore herself like a lady of the highest caste—a concept that still had meaning, despite the long-ago banning of all outward markers of caste.

 

Peter did not know her. But Petra did. "It's Virlomi."

 

"All this time," said Bean, "she hasn't shown her face. Till now."

 

"I wonder," said Petra, "how many thousands of people in India already know her face."

 

"Let's listen," said Peter. He moused the PLAY button.

 

"No one is faithful to God who has no choice. That is why Hindus are truly faithful, for they may choose not to be Hindus and no harm comes to them.

 

"And that is why there are no true Muslims in the world, because they may not choose to cease to be Muslims. If a Muslim tries to become a Hindu or a Christian or even a simple unbeliever, some fanatical Muslim will kill him."

 

Pictures were flashed on the screen of beheaded bodies. Well-known images, but still potent as propaganda.

 

"Islam is a religion that has no believers," she said. "Only people who are compelled to call themselves Muslims and live as Muslims under fear of death."

 

Standard pictures of Muslims en masse, bowing down to pray—the very footage that was often used to show the piety of Muslim populations. But now, framed as Virlomi had framed it, the images seemed to be those of puppets, acting in unison out of fear.

 

Her face reappeared on the screen. "Caliph Alai: We welcomed your armies as liberators. We sabotaged and spied and blocked Chinese supply routes to help you defeat our enemy. But your followers seem to think they conquered India rather than liberating us. You did not conquer India. You will never conquer India."

 

Now there was new footage: Ragged Indian peasants bearing modern Chinese arms, marching like old-fashioned soldiers.

 

"We have no need of false Muslim soldiers. We have no need of false Muslim teachers. We will never accept any Muslim presence on Indian soil until Islam becomes a true religion and allows people the freedom to choose not to be Muslim, without any penalty."

 

Virlomi's face again. "Do you think your mighty armies can conquer India? Then you do not know the power of God, for God will always help those who defend their homeland. Any Muslim that we kill on Indian soil will go straight to hell, for he does not serve God, he serves Shaitan. Any imam who tells you otherwise is a liar and a shaitan himself. If you obey him, you will be condemned. Be true Muslims and go home to your families and live at peace, and let us live in peace with our own families, in our own land."

 

Her face looked calm and sweet as she uttered these condemnations and threats. Now she smiled. Peter thought she must have practiced the smile for hours, for days in front of a mirror, because she absolutely looked like a god, even though he had never seen a god and did not know how one should look. She was radiant. Was it a trick of the light?

 

"My blessing upon India. I bless the Great Wall of India. I bless the soldiers who fight for India. I bless the farmers who feed India. I bless the women who give birth to India and raise India to manhood and womanhood. I bless the great powers of the Earth who unite to help us regain our stolen freedom. I bless the Indians of Pakistan who have embraced the false religion of Islam: Make your religion true by going home and letting us choose not to be Muslim. Then we will live at peace with you, and God will bless you.

 

"My blessing above all blessings on Caliph Alai. O noble of heart, prove that I am wrong. Make Islam a true religion by giving freedom to all Muslims. Only when Muslims can choose not to be Muslims are there any Muslims on Earth. Set your people free to serve God instead of being captives of fear and hate. If you are not the conqueror of India, then you will be the friend of India. But if you intend to be the conqueror of India, then you will make yourself nothing in the eyes of God."

 

Great tears rolled out of her eyes and down her cheeks. This was all done in a single take, so the tears were real enough. What an actress, thought Peter.

 

"Oh, Caliph Alai, how I long to embrace you as a brother and friend. Why do your servants make war on me?"

 

She made a strange series of movements with her hands, then drew three fingers backhanded across her forehead.

 

"I am Mother India," she said. "Fight for me, my children."

 

Her image remained on the screen as all motion stopped.

 

Peter looked from Bean to Petra and back again. "So my question is simple enough. Is she insane? Does she really believe she's a god? And will this work?"

 

"What was that business at the end, with the fingers on her forehead?" asked Bean.

 

"She was drawing the mark of Shiva the Destroyer on her forehead," said Peter. "It was a call to war." He sighed. "They'll be destroyed."

 

"Who?" said Petra.

 

"Her followers," said Peter.

 

"Alai won't let them," said Bean.

 

"If he tries to stop them, he'll fail," said Peter. "Which may be what she wants."

 

"No," said Petra. "Don't you see? The Muslim occupation of India absolutely counts on supplying their armies from Indian produce and Indian revenues. But Shiva will be there first. They'll destroy their own crops rather than let the Muslims have it."

 

"Then they'll die in famine," said Peter.

 

"And they'll absorb many bullets," said Petra, "and beheaded Hindu bodies will litter the ground. But then the Muslims will run out of bullets and they'll discover that they can't get more because the roads are blocked. And for every Hindu they killed, there will be ten more to overwhelm them with their bare hands. Virlomi understands her nation. Her people."

 

"And all of this you understand," said Peter, "because you were a prisoner in India for a few months?"

 

"India has never been led into war by a god," said Petra. "India has never gone to war with perfect unity."

 

"A guerrilla war," insisted Peter.

 

"You'll see," said Petra. "Virlomi knows what she's doing."

 

"She wasn't even part of Ender's Jeesh," said Peter. "Alai was. So he's smarter, right?"

 

Petra and Bean looked at each other.

 

"Peter, it's not about brains," said Bean. "It's about playing the hand you're dealt."

 

"Virlomi has the stronger hand," said Petra.

 

"I don't see it," said Peter. "What am I missing?"

 

"Han Tzu won't just sit there while the Muslim armies try to subdue India. The Muslim supply lines either run across the vast Asian desert or through India or by sea from Indonesia. If the Indian supply lines are cut, how long can Alai hold his armies there in numbers sufficient to keep Han Tzu contained?"

 

Peter nodded. "So you think Alai will run out of food and bullets before Virlomi runs out of Indians."

 

"I think," said Bean, "that what we just saw was a marriage proposal."

 

Peter laughed. But since Bean and Petra weren't laughing ... "What are you talking about?"

 

"Virlomi is India," said Bean. "She just said so. And Han Tzu is China. And Alai is Islam. So will it be India and China against the world, or Islam and India against the world? Who can sell that marriage to their own people? Which throne will sit beside the throne of India? Whichever one it is, that's more than half the population of the world, united."

 

Peter closed his eyes. "So we don't want either to happen."

 

"Don't worry," said Bean. "Whichever happens, it won't last."

 

"You're not always right," said Peter. "You can't see that far ahead."

 

Bean shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me. I'll be dead before it all shakes out."

 

Petra growled and stood up and paced.

 

"I don't know what to do," said Peter. "I tried to talk to Alai, and all I did was provoke a coup. Or rather, Petra did that." He couldn't hide his annoyance. "I wanted him to control his people, but they're out of control. They're roasting cows in the streets of Madras and Bombay and then killing the Hindus who riot. They're beheading any Indian that someone accuses of being a lapsed Muslim—or even the grandchild of lapsed Muslims. Do I just sit here and watch the world collapse into war?"

 

Petra snapped at him. "I thought that was part of your plan. To make yourself seem indispensable."

 

"I don't have a great plan," said Peter. "I just... respond. And I'm asking you about it instead of figuring things out on my own because the last time I ignored your advice it was a disaster. But now I find out you don't actually have any advice. Just predictions and assumptions."

 

"I'm sorry," said Bean. "It didn't cross my mind you were asking for advice."

 

"Well, I am," said Peter.

 

"Here's my advice," said Bean. "Your goal isn't to avoid war."

 

"Yes it is," said Peter.

 

Bean rolled his eyes. "So much for listening."

 

"I'm listening," said Peter.

 

"Your goal is to establish a new order in which war between nations becomes impossible. But to get to that Utopian place, there's going to have to be enough war that people will know the thing they're desperate to avoid."

 

"I'm not going to encourage war," said Peter. "It would discredit me completely as a peacemaker. I got this job because I'm Locke!"

 

"If you stop objecting and listen," said Petra, "you'll eventually get Bean's advice."

 

"I'm the great strategist, after all," said Bean with a wry smile. "And the tallest man in the Hegemony compound."

 

"I'm listening," said Peter again.

 

"You're right, you can't encourage war. But you also can't afford to try to stop wars that can't be stopped. If you're seen to try and fail, you're weak. The reason Locke was able to broker a peace between the Warsaw Pact and the West was that neither side wanted war. America wanted to stay home and make money, and Russia didn't want to run the risk of provoking I.F. intervention. You can only negotiate peace when both sides want it—badly enough to give up something in order to get it. Right now, nobody wants to negotiate. The Indians can't— they're occupied, and their occupiers don't believe they pose a threat. The Chinese can't—it's politically impossible for a Chinese ruler to settle for any boundary short of the borders of Han China. And Alai can't because his own people are so flushed with victory that they can't see any reason to give anything up."

 

"So I do nothing."

 

"You organize relief efforts for the famine in India," said Petra.

 

"The famine that Virlomi is going to cause."

 

Petra shrugged.

 

"So I wait until everybody's sick of war," said Peter.

 

"No," said Bean. "You wait until the exact moment when peace is possible. Wait too long, and the bitterness will run too deep for peace."

 

"How do I know when the time is right?"

 

"Beats me," said Bean.

 

"You're the smart ones," said Peter. "Everyone says so."

 

"Stop the humble act," said Petra. "You understand perfectly what we're saying. Why are you so angry? Any plan we make now will crumble the first time somebody makes a move that isn't on our script."

 

Peter realized that it wasn't them he was angry at. It was his mother and her ridiculous letter. As if he had the power to "rescue" the Caliph and the Chinese emperor and this brand new Indian goddess and "set them free" when they had all clearly maneuvered themselves into the positions they were in.

 

"I just don't see," said Peter, "how I can turn any of this to my advantage."

 

"You just have to watch and keep meddling," said Bean, "until you see a place where you can insert yourself."

 

"That's what I've been doing for years."

 

"And very well, too," said Petra. "Can we go now?"

 

"Go!" said Peter. "Get your evil scientist. I'll save the world while you're out."

 

"We expect no less," said Bean. "Just remember that you asked for the job. We didn't."

 

They got up. They started for the door.

 

"Wait a minute," said Peter.

 

They waited.

 

"I just realized something," Peter said.

 

They waited some more.

 

"You don't care."

 

Bean looked at Petra. Petra looked at Bean. "What do you mean we don't care?" said Bean.

 

"How can you say that?" said Petra. "It's war, it's death, it's the fate of the world."

 

"You're treating it like ... like I was asking advice about a cruise. Which cruise line to go on. Or ... or a poem, whether the rhymes are good."

 

Again they looked at each other.

 

"And when you look at each other like that," said Peter. "It's like you're laughing, only you're too polite to show it."

 

"We're not polite people," said Petra. "Especially not Julian."

 

"No, that's right, it's not that you're polite. It's that you're so much wrapped up in each other that you don't have to laugh, it's like you already laughed and only you two know about it."

 

"This is all so interesting, Peter," said Bean. "Can we go now?"

 

"He's right," said Petra. "We aren't involved. Like he is, I mean. But it's not that we don't care, Peter. We care even more than you do. We just don't want to get involved in doing anything about it because...."

 

They looked at each other again and then, without saying another word, they started to leave.

 

"Because you're married," said Peter. "Because you're pregnant. Because you're going to have a baby."

 

"Babies," said Bean. "And we'd like to get on with trying to find out what happened to them."

 

"You've resigned from the human race is what you've done," said Peter. "Because you invented marriage and children, suddenly you don't have to be part of anything."

 

"Opposite," said Petra. "We've joined the human race. We're like most people. Our life together is everything. Our children are everything. The rest is—we do what we have to. Anything to protect our children. And then beyond that, what we have to. But it doesn't matter to us as much. I'm sorry that bothers you."

 

"It doesn't bother me," said Peter. "It did before I understood what I was seeing. Now I think ... sure, it's normal. I think my parents are like that. I think that's why I thought they were stupid. Because they didn't seem to care about the outside world. All they cared about was each other and us kids."

 

"I think the therapy is proceeding nicely," said Bean. "Now say three Hail Marys while we get on with our limited domestic concerns, which involve attack helicopters and getting to Volescu before he makes another change of address and identity."

 

And they were gone.

 

Peter seethed. They thought they knew something that nobody else knew. They thought they knew what life was about. But they could only have a life like that because people like Peter—and Han Tzu and Alai and that wacko self-deifying Virlomi—actually concentrated on important matters and tried to make the world a better place.

 

Then Peter remembered that Bean had said almost exactly what his mother said. That Peter chose to be Hegemon, and now he had to work it out on his own.

 

Like a kid who tries out for the school play but he doesn't like the part he's been given. Only if he backs out now the show can't go on because he has no understudy. So he's got to stick it out.

 

Got to figure out how to save the world, now that he's got himself made Hegemon.

 

Here's what I want to have happen, thought Peter. I want every damn Battle School graduate off Earth. They are the complicating factor in every country. Mother wants them to have a life? Me too—a nice long life on another planet.

 

But to get them offplanet would require getting the cooperation of Graff. And Peter had the sneaking suspicion that Graff didn't actually want Peter to be an effective, powerful Hegemon. Why should Graff accept the Battle School kids into colony ships? They'd be a disruptive force in any colony they were in.

 

What about this? A colony of nothing but Battle School grads. If they bred true, they'd be the smartest military minds in the galaxy.

 

Then they'd come home and take over Earth.

 

OK, not that.

 

Still, it was the seed of a good idea. In the eyes of the people, it was the Battle School that won the war against the Buggers. They all wanted their armies to be led by Battle Schoolers. Which was why the Battle Schoolers were virtually the slaves of their nations' military.

 

So I'll do as Mother suggested. I'll set them free.

 

Then they can all marry like Bean and Petra and live happily ever after while other people—responsible people—did the hard work of running the world.

 

 

 

In India, the response to Virlomi's message was immediate and fierce. That very night, in a dozen incidents scattered across India, Muslim soldiers committed acts of provocation—or, as they saw it, retaliation or defiance to Virlomi's blasphemous, outrageous accusation. Thereby, of course, proving those accusations in the eyes of many.

 

But it wasn't riots they faced this time. It was an implacable mob determined to destroy them no matter what the cost. It was Shiva. So yes, the streets were littered with the dead bodies of Hindu civilians. But the Muslim soldiers' bodies could not be found. Or at least, could not be reassembled.

 

Reports of the bloodshed flowed into Virlomi's mobile headquarters. Including plenty of video. She had a selected version out on the web within hours. Lots of pictures of Muslims committing acts of provocation, and then firing on the rioters. No footage of human waves swarming over the machine-gun-firing Muslim soldiers and tearing them to pieces. What the world would see was Muslims offending Hindu religion and then massacring civilians. They would only hear about the fact that among the Muslim soldiers, there were no survivors.

 

 

 

Bean and Petra boarded attack helicopters and headed out across the ocean to Africa. Bean had heard from Rackham and knew where Volescu was.

 

 

 

 

6

 

 

EVOLUTION

 

 

 

From: CrazyTom%WackoMack@sandhurst.england.gov

 

To: Magic%Legume@IComeAnon.com

 

Forwarded and Posted by IcomeAnon

 

Encrypted using code ********

 

Decrypted using code ***********

 

Re: England and Europe

 

 

I hope you're still using this address, now that you're official and not hiding from Mr. Tendon anymore. I don't think this should go through channels.

 

 

I keep getting these feelers from Wiggin. I think HE thinks he's got some special affinity for members of the Jeesh, just because he's Ender's brother. Does he? I know he's got his fingers in everything—the items the Hegemony seems to know before we do are sometimes quite amazing—but does he have his fingers in us?

 

 

He's asked me for an assessment of the European willingness to surrender sovereignty to a world government. Given that the whole history of the past two hundred years consists of Europe flirting with a real European government, and always backing away, I wonder if the question comes from an idiot child or a deep thinker who knows more than I do.

 

 

But if you think his question is a legitimate one, then let me say that surrendering sovereignty to any existing world or regional body is laughable. Only little countries like Benelux or Denmark or Slovenia are eager to join. It's like communes—people with nothing are always willing to share. Even though Europe now speaks a version of English as its native tongue (except a few diehard enclaves) we are as far from unity as ever.

 

 

Which is not to say that under the right pressure, at the right time, each proud nation of Europe might not trade sovereignty for safety.

 

 

 

Tom

 

 

 

It would have to be Fortress Rwanda, of course. The Switzerland of Africa, they called it sometimes—but it only maintained its independence and neutrality because meter for meter, it was probably the most fortified nation on Earth.

 

They could never have fought their way into Rwandan airspace. But a chatty phone call from Peter to Felix Starman, the prime minister, won them a safe passage for two Hegemony jet choppers and twenty soldiers—along with uploads of detailed maps of the medical center where Volescu was operating.

 

Under another name, of course. For Rwanda had been one of the places where Achilles maintained safe houses and spy cells. What Volescu could not have known was that Peter's computer experts had been able to enter Achilles's clandestine computer network through Suriyawong's computer, and cell by cell, Achilles's organization had either been coopted, subverted, or destroyed.

 

Volescu was depending on a Rwandan cell that had been reported to the Rwandan government. Felix Starman had chosen to continue to operate the cell through intermediaries, so the members of the cell did not realize that they were actually working for the Rwandan government.

 

So it was no small thing for Starman—who insisted that his self-chosen name should be translated, so that everyone was aware of the rather odd image he wished to convey—to give up this asset. While Bean and Petra took Volescu, the Rwandan police would be arresting all the other members of Achilles's organization. They even promised that Hegemony experts could monitor the Rwandan deconstruction of the Achillean computers.

 

The beat-beat-beat of chopper blades was as good as a police siren when it came to announcing their approach, so they set down a kilometer away from the medical center. Four soldiers on each chopper were equipped with slimline motorcycles, and they took off to secure all the vehicle exit points. The rest advanced through the yards and parking lots of houses, apartment buildings, and small businesses.

 

Since the entire population of Rwanda was trained as soldiers, they knew enough to stay indoors as they watched the dark-green-clad soldiers of the Hegemony jog cross-lots, from cover to cover. They might try to telephone the government to find out what was happening, but cellphones were getting a "we're making your service better, please have patience" message and landlines were hearing that "all circuits are busy."

 

Petra was pregnant enough now that she didn't jog along with the troops. And Bean was so distinctively large that he, too, remained in the choppers with the pilots. But Bean had trained these men and had no doubt of their ability. Besides, Suriyawong, still trying to rehabilitate himself even though Bean had assured him that he had his full trust, was eager to show that he could fulfill the mission perfectly without Bean's direct supervision.

 

So it was only fifteen minutes before Suriyawong texted them "fa," which either meant fait accompli or the fourth note of the musical scale, depending on what mood Bean was in. This time when he saw the message he sang it out, and the choppers rose into the air.

 

They came down in the parking lot of the medical complex. As befitted a rich country like Rwanda, it was state of the art; but the architecture was designed to make the place feel homelike to its patients. So it looked for all the world like a village, with every room that did not need a controlled environment open to whatever breezes blew.

 

Volescu was being held in the climate-controlled lab where he was arrested. He nodded gravely to Bean and Petra when they came inside. "How nice to see you again," he said.

 

"Was anything you told us true?" asked Petra. Her voice was calm, but she wasn't going to pretend that pleasantries were in order.

 

Volescu gave a little smile and shrug. "Doing what the boy wanted seemed to be a good idea at the time. He promised me ... this."

 

"A place to conduct illegal research?" asked Bean.

 

"Oddly enough," said Volescu, "in our new days of freedom now that the Hegemony is powerless, my research is not illegal here. So I don't have to be prepared to dispose of my subjects at a moment's notice."

 

Bean looked at Petra. "He still says 'dispose of instead of 'murder.' "

 

Volescu's smile grew sad. "How I wish I had all your brothers," he said. "But that's not why you're here. I already served my time and was legally released."

 

"We want our babies back," said Petra. "All eight of them. Unless there are more."

 

"There were never more than eight," said Volescu. "I was observed the whole time, as you arranged, and there is no way I could have faked the number. Nor could I have faked the destruction of the three discards."

 

"I've already thought of several," said Bean. "The most obvious being that the three you pretended to find had Anton's Key turned had already been taken away. What you destroyed were someone else's embryos. Or nothing at all."

 

"If you know so much, why do you need me?" asked Volescu.

 

"Eight names and addresses," said Bean. "The women who are bearing our babies."

 

"Even if I knew," said Volescu, "what purpose would be served by telling? None of them have Anton's Key. They aren't worth studying."

 

"There is no nondestructive test," said Petra. "So you don't know which of them had Anton's Key turned. You would have kept them all. You would have implanted them all."

 

"Again, since you know more than I do, by all means tell me when you find them. I'd love to know what Achilles did with the five survivors."

 

Bean walked up to his biological half-uncle. He towered over him.

 

"My," said Volescu. "What big teeth you have."

 

Bean took him by the shoulders. Volescu's arms seemed so small and fragile within the grasp of Bean's huge hands. Bean probed and pressed with his fingers. Volescu winced.

 

Bean's hands wandered idly along Volescu's shoulders until his right hand nested the back of the man's neck, and his thumb played with the point of Volescu's larynx. "Lie to me again," whispered Bean.

 

"You'd think," said Volescu, "that someone who used to be small would know better than to be a bully."

 

"We all used to be small," said Petra. "Let go of his neck, Bean."

 

"Let me crush his larynx just a little."

 

"He's too confident," said Petra. "He's very sure we'll never find them."

 

"So many babies," said Volescu genially. "So little time."

 

"He's counting on us not torturing him," said Bean.

 

"Or maybe he wants us to," said Petra. "Who knows how his brain works? The only difference between Volescu and Achilles is the size of their ambitions. Volescu's dreams are so very, very small."

 

Volescu's eyes were welling up with tears. "I still think of you as my only son," he said to Bean. "It grieves me that we don't communicate any better than this."

 

Bean's thumb massaged the skin of Volescu's throat in circles around the point of his larynx.

 

"It surprises me that you can always find a place to do your sick little brand of science," said Petra. "But this lab is closed now. The Rwandan government will have its scientists go over it to find out what you were doing."

 

"Always I do the work while others get the credit," said Volescu.

 

"Do you see how I nearly encircle his throat with just one hand?" said Bean.

 

"Let's take him back to Ribeir?o Preto, Julian."

 

"That would be nice," said Volescu. "How are my sister and her husband doing? Or do you see them anymore, now that you've got to be so important?"

 

"He's talking about my family," said Bean, "as if he were not the monster who cloned my brother illegally and then murdered all but one of the clones."

 

"They've gone back to Greece," said Petra. "Please don't kill him, Bean. Please."

 

"Remind me why."

 

"Because we're good people," said Petra.

 

Volescu laughed. "You live by murder. How many people have you both killed? And if we add in all the Buggers you slaughtered out in space...."

 

"All right," said Petra. "Go ahead and kill him."

 

Bean tightened his fingers. Not that much, really. But Volescu made a strangled sound in his throat and in moments his eyes were bugging out.

 

At that moment Suriyawong entered the lab. "General Delphiki, sir," he said.

 

"Just a minute, Suri," said Petra. "He's killing somebody."

 

"Sir," said Suriyawong. "This is a war materials lab."

 

Bean relaxed his grip. "Still genetic research?"

 

"Several of the other scientists working here had misgivings about Volescu's work and the sources of his grants. They were collecting evidence. Not much to collect. But everything points to Volescu breeding a common-cold virus that would carry genetic alterations."

 

"That wouldn't affect adults," said Bean.

 

"I shouldn't have said war materials," said Suriyawong, "but I thought that would stop your little game of strangulation faster."

 

"What is it, then?" asked Bean.

 

"It's a project to alter the human genome," said Suriyawong.

 

"We know that's what he worked with," said Petra.

 

"But not with viruses as carriers," said Bean. "What were you doing here, Volescu?"

 

Volescu choked out some words. "Fulfilling the terms of my grants."

 

"Grants from whom?"

 

"The grant granters," said Volescu.

 

"Lock this place down," said Bean to Suriyawong. "I'll call the Hegemon to request a Rwandan perimeter guard."

 

"I think," said Petra, "that our brilliant scientist friend had some bizarre notion of remaking the human race."

 

"We need Anton to look at what this sick little disciple of his was doing," said Bean.

 

"Suri," said Petra. "Bean wasn't really going to murder him."

 

"Yes I was," said Bean.

 

"I would have stopped him," said Petra.

 

Suri barked out a little laugh. "Sometimes people need killing. So far, Bean's record is one for one."

 

 

 

Petra stopped going along on the interviews with Volescu. They could hardly be called interrogations—direct questions led nowhere, threats seemed to mean nothing. It was maddening and stressful and she hated the way he looked at her. Looked at her belly, which was showing her pregnancy more and more every day.

 

But she still kept on top of what they were calling, for lack of a better name, the Volescu project. The head of electronic security, Ferreira, was working most intensely on trying to track down everything Volescu had been doing with his computer and tracking his various identities through the nets. But Petra made sure that the database searches and indexes that they already had under way continued. These babies were out there somewhere, implanted in surrogate mothers, and at some point they were going to give birth. Volescu wouldn't risk their lives by forbidding the mothers access to good medical care—in fact, that was bound to be a minimum. So they would be born in hospitals, their births registered.

 

How they would find these babies in the millions that would be born in that timeframe, Petra couldn't begin to guess. But they'd collect the data and index it on every conceivably useful variable so it was there to work with when they finally figured out some identifying marker.

 

Meanwhile, Bean conducted the interviews with Volescu. They were yielding some information that proved accurate, but it was hard for Bean to decide whether Volescu was unconsciously letting useful information slip, or deliberately toying with them by bleeding out little bits of information that he knew would not be terribly useful in the end.

 

When he wasn't with Volescu, Bean was with Anton, who had come away from retirement and accepted a heavy level of drugs to control his aversive reaction to working in his field of science. "I tell myself every day," he said to Bean, "that I'm not doing science, I'm merely grading a student's assignments. It helps. But I still throw up. This is not good for me."

 

"Don't push any harder than you can."

 

"My wife helps me," said Anton. "She's very patient with this old man. And you know what? She's pregnant. In the natural way!"

 

"Congratulations," Bean said, knowing how hard this was for Anton, whose sexual desires did not tend in the same direction as his reproductive plans.

 

"My body knows how, even at this old age." He laughed. "Doing what comes unnaturally."

 

But his personal happiness aside, the picture Anton began to paint looked worse and worse. "His plan was simple enough," said Anton. "He planned to destroy the human race."

 

"Why? That makes no sense. Vengeance?"

 

"No, no. Destroy and replace. The virus he chose would go straight to the reproductive cells in the body. Every sperm, every ovum. They infest, but they don't kill. They just snip and replace. All kinds of changes. Strength and speed of an East African. A few changes I don't understand because nobody's really mapped that part of the genome— not for function. And some I don't even know where they fit on the human genome. I'd have to try them out and I can't do that. That would be real science. Someone else. Later."

 

"You're sidestepping the big change," said Bean.

 

"My little key," said Anton. "His virus turns the key."

 

"So he has no cure. No way to switch the key for intellectual ability without also triggering this perpetual growth pattern."

 

"If he had it, he'd use it. There's no advantage not to."

 

"So it is a biological weapon."

 

"Weapon? Something that affects only your children? Makes them die of giantism before they're twenty? Oh, that would make armies run in panic."

 

"What then?"

 

"Volescu thinks he's God. Or at least he's playing dress-up with God's clothing. He's trying to jump the whole human race to the next stage of evolution. Spread this disease so that no normal children can be born, ever again."

 

"But that's insane. Everybody dying so young—"

 

"No, no, Julian. No, not insane. Why do humans live so long? Mathematicians and poets, they burn out in their mid-twenties anyway. We live so long because of grandchildren. In a difficult world, grandparents can help ensure the survival of their grandchildren. The societies that kept their old people around and listened to them and respected them—that fed them—always do better. But that's a community on the edge of starvation. Always at risk. Are we at risk so much today?"

 

"If these wars keep getting worse—"

 

"Yes, war," said Anton. "Kill off a whole generation of men, yet the grandfathers keep their sexual potency. They can propagate the next generation even if the young ones are dead. But Volescu thinks we're ready to move beyond planning for the deaths of young men."

 

"So he doesn't mind having generations that are less than twenty years."

 

"Change society's patterns. When were you ready to assume an adult role, Bean? When was your brain ready to go to work and change the world?"

 

"Age ten. Earlier, if I'd had good education."

 

"So you get good education. All our schools change because children are ready to learn at age three. Age two. By age ten, if Volescu's gene change takes place, the new generation is completely ready to take over for the old. Marry as early as possible. Breed like bunnies. Become giants. Irresistible in war. Until they keel over from heart attacks. Don't you see? Instead of spending the young men in violent death, we send the old men—the eighteen-year-olds. While all the work in science, technology, building, planting, everything—all done by the young men. The ten-year-olds. All of them like you."

 

"Not human anymore."

 

"A different species, yes. The children of Homo sapiens. Homo lumens, maybe. Still capable of interbreeding, but the old style of human—they grow to be old, but they are never big. And they are never very smart. How can they compete? They are gone, Bean. Your people rule the world."

 

"They wouldn't be my people."

 

"It's good that you're loyal to old humans like me. But you are something new, Bean. And if you have any children with my little key turned, no, they won't be fast like what Volescu has designed, but they'll be brilliant. Something new in the world. When they can talk to each other, instead of being alone like you, will you be able to keep up with them? Well, maybe yes, for you. But will I be able to keep up with them?"

 

Bean laughed bitterly. "Will Petra? That's what you're saying."

 

"You had no parents to be humiliated when they found out that you were learning faster than they can teach."

 

"Petra will love them just as much."

 

"Yes, she will. But all her love won't turn them human."

 

"And here you told me that I'm definitely human. Not true after all."

 

"Human in your loves, your hungers. In what makes you good and not evil. But in the speed of your life, the intellectual heights, are you not alone in this world?"

 

"Unless that virus is released."

 

"How do you know it won't still be released?" asked Anton. "How do you know he hasn't already completed a batch and disseminated it? How do you know he didn't infect himself and now he spreads it wherever he goes? In these past weeks since he got here, how many people in the Hegemony compound have had a cold? Sniffly nose, itchy penis, tender nipples—yes, he used that virus as his base, he has a sense of humor, an ugly kind."

 

"I haven't checked on the subtler symptoms, but we've had the normal number of colds."

 

"Probably not," said Anton. "He probably didn't make himself a carrier. What would be the point? He wants other people to spread it."

 

"You're saying that it's already out there."

 

"Or he has a website that he has to check every week or every month. And then one month he doesn't do it. So a signal is sent out to some of Achilles's old network. The virus gets broken out and used. And all Volescu had to do to trigger it was ... be a captive with no access to computers."

 

"Was his research that complete? Could he have a working virus?"

 

"I don't know. All his records were changed when he moved. When you sent him a message, you told me about that, yes? You sent him a message and he moved to Rwanda. Before that maybe he had an earlier version of the virus. Maybe not. Maybe this is the first time he put the changed human genes into the virus. If that's the case, then no, it has not been released. But it could be. It's ready. Ready enough. Maybe you caught him just in time."

 

"And if it is out there, what?"

 

"Then I hope the baby my wife is pregnant with, I hope it's one like you, and not one like me."

 

"Why?"

 

"Your tragedy, Bean, is that you are the only one. If all the world will soon be like you, then you know what that makes you."

 

"A damn fool."

 

"It makes you Adam."

 

Anton was unbearably complaisant about this. What Bean was, what was happening to him, he wouldn't wish that on anyone. Not his child, and not Anton's. But Anton could be forgiven for his idiotic wish. He had not been so small; he had not been this large. He could not know how ... how larval the early stage was.

 

Like silkworms, the larva of my species does all the work of its life while it's young. Then the big butterfly, that's what people see, but all it has left to do in its life is get laid, then lay eggs, then die.

 

Bean talked it through with Petra, and then they went to Ferreira and Peter. Now the computer search was geared—with some urgency— toward detecting any kind of dead-man switch that Volescu was signing on to every day or every week. No doubt the dead-man switch was set to destroy itself as soon as its message was sent. Which meant that if it was already sent, it wouldn't be there anymore. But somewhere there were tracks. Backups. Records of one kind or another. Nobody traveled the networks clean.

 

Not even Bean. He had made himself untraceable by constantly changing everything. But Volescu had stayed rooted in a lab here or a lab there, as long as he could. He might not have been as careful in his maneuvers through the nets. After all, Volescu might think he was brilliant, but he was no Bean.

 

 

 

 

7

 

 

AN OFFER

 

 

 

From: PeterWiggin%private@hegemon.gov

 

To: Vlad%lmpaled@gcu.ru.gov

 

Re: my brother's friends

 

 

I'd like to have a chance to talk with you. Face to face. For my brother's sake. On neutral territory.

 

 

 

Peter arrived in St. Petersburg ostensibly to be an observer and consultant at the Warsaw Pact trade talks that were part of Russia's ongoing effort to set up an economic union to rival the western European one. And he did attend several meetings and kept his suite humming with conversations. Of course, his agenda was quite different from the official one, and he made good headway with—as expected— representatives from some of the smaller or less prosperous countries. Latvia. Estonia. Slovakia. Bulgaria. Bosnia. Albania. Croatia. Georgia. Every piece in the puzzle counted.

 

Not every piece was a country. Sometimes it was an individual.

 

That's why Peter found himself walking in a park—not one of the magnificent parks in the heart of St. Petersburg, but a smallish park in Kohtla-J?rve, a town in northeastern Estonia with delusions of city-hood. Peter wasn't sure why Vlad had chosen a town that involved crossing borders—nothing could have made their encounter more obvious. And being in Estonia meant there'd be two intelligence services watching them, Estonia's and Russia's. Russia hadn't forgotten history: They still watched over Estonia using their domestic spy service rather than the foreign one.

 

This park was, perhaps, the reason. There was a lake—no, a pond, a skating pond in winter, Peter was sure, since it was almost perfectly round and over-equipped with benches. Now, in the summer, it was undoubtedly advertised with a "suck blood and lay eggs all in one place" campaign among the mosquitos, which had shown up in profusion.

 

"Close your eyes," said Vlad.

 

Peter expected some kind of spy ritual and, sighing, complied. His sigh left his mouth open, however, just enough to get a good taste of the insect repellant that Vlad sprayed in his face.

 

"Hands," said Vlad. "Tastes bad but doesn't kill. Hands."

 

Peter held out his hands. They were sprayed, too.

 

"Don't want you to lose more than a pint during our conversation. Horrible place. Nobody comes here in summer. So it isn't prewired. Lots of clear meadows. We can see if anybody's watching us."

 

"Are you that closely watched?"

 

"Russian government not as understanding as Hegemon. Suriyawong stays in your confidence because you believe he always opposed Achilles. But me? Not trusted. So if you think I have influence, very wrong thinking, my friend."

 

"Not why I'm here."

 

"Yes, I know, you're here for the trade talks." Vlad grinned.

 

"Not much point to trade talks when smuggling and bribery make any kind of customs collection a joke anyway," said Peter.

 

"I'm glad you understand our way of doing things," said Vlad. "Trust no one that you haven't bribed within the last half hour."

 

"Don't tell me you really have that thick a Russian accent, by the way," said Peter. "You grew up on Battle School. You should speak Common like a native."

 

"I do," said Vlad—still in a thick Russian accent. "Except when my future depends on giving people no reason to remember how different I am. Accents are hard to learn and hard to hold on to. So I will maintain it now. I am not by nature a good actor."

 

"May I call you Vlad?"

 

"May I call you Peter?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Then yes also. Lowly strategic planner cannot be more formal than Hegemon of whole world."

 

"You know just how much of the world I'm Hegemon over," said Peter. "And as I said, that's not why I'm here. Or not directly."

 

"What then? You want to hire me? Not possible. They may not trust me here, but they certainly don't want me going anywhere else. I'm a hero of the Russian people."

 

"Vlad, if they trusted you, what do you think you'd be doing right now?"

 

Vlad laughed. "Leading the armies of Mother Russia, as Alai and Hot Soup and Virlomi and so many others are already doing. So many Alexanders."

 

"Yes, I've heard that comparison," said Peter. "But I see it another way. I see it as being the arms race that led up to World War I."

 

Vlad thought for a moment. "And we Battle School brats are the arms race. If one nation has it, then another must have more. Yes, that's what Achilles's little venture in kidnapping was about."

 

"My point is: Having a Battle School graduate—particularly one of Ender's Jeesh—makes war more, not less, probable."

 

"I don't think so," said Vlad. "Yes, Hot Soup and Alai are in the thick of things, but Virlomi wasn't in the Jeesh. And the rest of the Jeesh—Bean and Petra are with you, struggling for world peace, yes? Like beauty pageant contestants? Dink is in a joint Anglo-American project which means he has had his balls cut off, militarily speaking. Shen is marking time in some ceremonial position in Tokyo. Dumper is a monk, I think, or whatever they call them. A shaman. In the Andes somewhere. Crazy Tom is at Sandhurst confined to a classroom. Carn Carby is in Australia where they may or may not have a military but nobody cares. And Fly Molo ... well, he's a busy boy in the Philippines. But not their president or even an important general."

 

"That squares with my tally, though I think Carn would argue with you about the value of the Australian military."

 

Vlad waved the objection aside. "My point is, most nations that have this 'treasured national resource' are far more concerned to keep us under observation and away from power than to actually use us to make war."

 

Peter smiled. "Yes. Either they have you up to your elbows in blood, or they have you locked in a box. Anybody happily married?"

 

"We're none of us even twenty-five yet. Well, maybe Dink. He always lied about his age. Most of us are in our teens or barely out of them."

 

"They're afraid of you. All the more so now, because the nations that actually used their Jeesh members in war are now governed by them."

 

"If you can call 'worldwide Islam' a nation. I, personally, call it a riot with scripture."

 

"Just don't say that in Baghdad or Tehran," said Peter.

 

"As if I could ever go to those places."

 

"Vlad," said Peter. "How would you like to be free of all this beauty?"

 

Vlad hooted with laughter. "So you're here representing Graff?"

 

Peter was taken aback. "Graff came to you?"

 

"Be head of a colony. Get away from it all. All-expenses-paid vacation ... that takes the rest of your life!"

 

"Not a vacation," said Peter. "Very hard work. But at least you have a life."

 

"So Peter the Hegemon wants Ender's Jeesh offplanet. Forever."

 

"Do you want my job?" said Peter. "I'll resign it today if I thought it would go to you. You or any member of Ender's Jeesh. You want it? Think you can hold it? Then it's yours. I only have it because I wrote the Locke essays and stopped a war. But what have I done lately? Vlad, I don't see you as a rival. How could I? What freedom do you have to oppose me?"

 

Vlad shrugged. "All right, so your motives are pure."

 

"My motives are realistic," said Peter. "Russia is not using you right now, but they haven't killed you or locked you up. If they ever decide that war is desirable or necessary or unavoidable, how long before you get promoted and put into the thick of things? Especially if the war goes badly for a while. You are their nuclear arsenal."

 

"Not really," said Vlad. "Since my brain is supposed to be the pay-load of this particular missile, and my brain was defective enough to seem to trust Achilles, then I must not be as good as the other Jeesh members."

 

"In a war against Han Tzu, how long before you commanded an army? Or at least were put in charge of strategy?"

 

"Fifteen minutes, give or take."

 

"So. Is Russia more or less likely to go to war, knowing they have you?"

 

Vlad smiled a little and ducked his head. "Well, well. So the Hegemon wants me out of Russia so Russia won't be so adventurous."

 

"Not quite so simple," said Peter. "There'll come a day when much of the world will have merged their sovereignty—"

 

"By which you mean they will have surrendered it."

 

"Into one government. It won't be the big nations. Just a bunch of little ones. But unlike the United Nations and the League of Nations and even the Hegemony in its previous form, it will not be designed to keep the central government as powerless as possible. The nations in this league will maintain no separate army or navy or air force. They will not have separate control over their own borders—and they will collect no customs. Nor will they maintain a separate merchant marine. The Hegemony will have power over foreign policy, period, without rival. Why would Russia ever join such a confederacy?"

 

"It never would."

 

Peter nodded. And waited.

 

"It never would unless it thought that it was the only safe thing to do."

 

"Add the word 'profitable' into that sentence and you'll be closer to right."

 

"Russians are not Americans like you, Peter Wiggin. We don't do things for profit motive."

 

"So all those bribes go into charitable causes."

 

"They keep the bookmakers and prostitutes of Russia from starving," said Vlad. "Altruism at its finest."

 

"Vlad," said Peter. "All I'm saying is, think about this. Ender Wiggin did two great deeds for humanity. He wiped out the Buggers. And he never returned to Earth."

 

Vlad turned on Peter with real fire in his eyes. "Do you think I don't know who arranged for that?"

 

"I advocated it," said Peter. "I wasn't Hegemon then. But do you dare to tell me I was wrong? What would have happened if Ender himself were here on Earth? Everybody's hostage. And if his homeland managed to keep him safe, what then? Ender Wiggin, the Bugger-slayer, now at the head of the armed forces of the dreaded United States. Think of the jockeying, the alliances, the preemptive attacks, all because this great and terrible weapon was in the hands of the nation that still thinks it has the right to judge and govern all the world."

 

Vlad nodded. "So it's just a happy coincidence that it left you without a rival for the Hegemony."

 

"I have rivals, Vlad. The Caliph has millions of followers who believe that he's the one God chose to be ruler over the earth."

 

"Aren't you making the same offer to Alai?"

 

"Vlad," said Peter. "I don't expect to persuade you. Only to inform you. If there comes a day when you think your best hope of safety is to leave Earth, post a note to me at the website I'll link to you in an email. Or if you realize that the only chance your nation has of peace is for all its Battle School grads to disappear from Earth, tell me, and I'll do all I can to get them safely out and off."

 

"Unless I go to my superiors and tell them all that you just told me."

 

"Tell them," said Peter. "Tell them and lose the last shreds of freedom that you have."

 

"So I won't tell them," said Vlad.

 

"And you'll think about it. It will be there in the back of your mind."

 

"And when all the Battle School grads are gone," said Vlad, "there will be Peter. Brother of Ender Wiggin. The natural ruler of all humankind."

 

"Yes, Vlad. The only chance we have of unity is to have a strong consensus leader. Our George Washington."

 

"And that's you."

 

"It could be a Caliph, and we'd have a future as a Muslim world. Or we might all be made into vassals of the Middle Kingdom. Or—tell me, Vlad—should we prefer to be ruled over by the government that now treats you so kindly?"

 

"I'll think about this," said Vlad. "And you think about something else. Ambition was part of the basis by which we were chosen for Battle School. Just how self-sacrificing do you think we'll be? Look at Virlomi. As shy a person as Battle School could possibly admit. But to achieve her purpose, she made herself into a god. And she does seem to play the part with enthusiasm, doesn't she?"

 

"Ambition balanced against survival instinct," said Peter. "Ambition leads you to great risk. But ambition never leads you to certain destruction."

 

"Unless you're a fool."

 

"There are no fools in this park today," said Peter. "Unless you count the spies lying underwater breathing through straws in order to overhear our conversation."

 

"It's the best the Estonians can do," said Vlad.

 

"I'm glad to know that Russians haven't forgotten their sense of humor."

 

"Everybody knows a few dozen Estonian jokes."

 

"Who do Estonians tell jokes about?" asked Peter.

 

"Estonians, of course. Only they don't realize that they're jokes."

 

Laughing, they left the park and headed back, Peter to his chauffeured car, Vlad to the train back to St. Petersburg.

 

 

 

Some Battle School graduates came to Ribeir?o Preto to hear Peter's invitation. Others, Peter contacted through mutual friends. Members of Ender's Jeesh, Peter met with directly. Carn Carby in Australia. Dink Meeker and Crazy Tom in England. Shen in Tokyo. Fly Molo in Manila. And Dumper amid a council of Quechuas in the ruins of Macchu Picchu, his unofficial headquarters as he worked steadily to organize the Native Americans of South America.

 

None of them accepted his offer. All of them listened and remembered.

 

Meanwhile, the guerrilla fighting in India grew more savage. More and more Persian and Pakistani troops were withdrawn from China. Until the day came when there was no one penning in the starving Chinese army in Sichuan province. Han Tzu set it in motion.

 

The Turks withdrew to Xinjiang province. The Indonesians got back in their boats and withdrew to Taiwan. The Arabs joined in the occupation of India. Han China was free of foreign occupiers, without the Emperor firing a shot.

 

At once, the Americans and Europeans and Latin Americans were back, buying and selling, helping China recover from empty wars of conquest. While the Muslim nations continued to bleed weapons and wealth and men in the ever-more-brutal war to control India.

 

Meanwhile, a new pair of essayists emerged on the nets.

 

One styled himself "Lincoln" and spoke of the need to put an end to bloody wars and oppression, and to secure the rights and freedoms of all societies by giving an honest, law-abiding world government exclusive control of all weapons of war.

 

The other called himself "Martel," harking back to Charles the Hammer, who stopped the Muslim advance into Europe at Poitiers. Martel kept pounding at the grave danger the world faced from the existence of a Caliph. The Muslims, who now made up more than a third of the population of some European countries, would be emboldened, seize power, and force all of Europe to live under brutal Muslim law.

 

There were some commentators who saw in these two new essayists a similarity to the days when Locke and Demosthenes dueled, with a similar division between statesmanlike peace-seeking and warnings of war. Those had turned out to be written by Peter and Valentine Wiggin. Only once did Peter answer a question about "Lincoln": "There are several ways the world could be united. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who hopes it will be through a liberal democracy rather than a conquering despotism."

 

And only once did Peter comment when questioned about "Martel": "I don't believe it helps the cause of peace in the world to stir up the kind of fear and hatred that leads to expulsions and genocide."

 

Both answers only added to the credibility of the two essayists.

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

ENDER

 

 

 

From: Rockette%Armenian@hegemon.gov

 

To: Noggin%Lima@hegemon.gov

 

Re: I'm having fun so don't carp

 

 

Beloved husband,