His birth had taken her by surprise. Months too early. And he came so fast. She couldn't get to a hospital. Not that they would have taken her. She was in the midst of changing her identity. She had no health insurance.

 

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But because he was so small, the birth was easy. He just... came out. And small as he was, he didn't have any problems. He didn't even look like one of those premature babies, the ones who looked so ... fetal. Fishlike. Not her boy. He was beautiful, completely normal looking. Just... small.

 

Small and brilliant. It almost frightened her sometimes. He had said his first word just a couple of days ago. "Mama," of course—who else did he know? And when she spoke to him, explained things to him, told him about his father, he seemed to be listening intently. He seemed to understand. Was that possible?

 

Of course it was. Achilles's child would be wiser than normal. And if he was small, well, Achilles himself had been born with a twisted foot. An abnormal body to contain extraordinary gifts.

 

Secretly, she had named the baby Achilles Flandres II. But she was careful. She didn't write that name anywhere but in her heart. Instead the birth certificate called him Randall Firth. She was going by the name Nichelle Firth now. The real Nichelle Firth was a retarded woman in a special school where she had worked as an aide. Randi looked old enough, she knew, to pass for the right age—being on the run and working so hard and worrying all the time gave her a kind of tired look that aged her. But what did she care about vanity? She wasn't trying to attract a man. She knew men well enough to know that none of them would want to marry a woman only to have her spend all her care on another man's baby.

 

So she made herself up only enough to be hirable in decent jobs that didn't require a long resume. They'd say, Where have you worked before, and she'd say, Nothing since college, they wouldn't even remember me, I was a stay-at-home mom, but my husband wasn't a sleep-at-home guy, so here I am, no resume except my baby's healthy and my house is clean and I know how to work like my life depended on it cause now it does. That line got her hired anywhere she bothered to apply. She'd never be an executive but she didn't want to be. Just put in her hours, get "Randall" out of daycare, and then talk to him, sing to him, and study about how to be a good mother and raise a healthy, confident baby who would have the strength of character to overcome the bigotry against his father and take on the whole world.

 

But these wars, and Peter Wiggin's hideous face on the camera, announcing this nation was now in the FPE and that nation was allied with the FPE, it worried her. She couldn't hide forever. Her fingerprints couldn't be changed, and there was that shoplifting arrest when she was in college. It was so stupid. She really had sort of forgotten that she took the thing. If she'd remembered she would have changed her mind and paid for it, like the other times. But she forgot and they stopped her outside the store so she had actually done the theft, they said, and she wasn't a minor so she got the whole arrest treatment. They let her off, but her prints were in the system. So someday somebody would know who she really was. And the man who approached her, who gave her Achilles's baby—how could she be sure he wouldn't tell them? Between what he told them and her fingerprints, they could find her no matter how often she changed her name.

 

That was when she decided that for the first time in human history, when a person was not safe anywhere on Earth, he had somewhere else to go.

 

Why should her little Achilles Flandres II be raised here, in hiding, with bloodthirsty monsters out to kill him in order to punish his father for being better than them? When instead he could grow up on a clean new colony world, where no one would care that the baby wasn't really hers or that he was small, if he was smart and worked hard and she raised him right? They promised that there would be trade back and forth between colony worlds, and visits from starships. When the time was right for Achilles II to claim his heritage, his legacy, his throne, she would bring him aboard one of those starships and they'd come back to Earth.

 

She had studied the relativistic effects of star travel. It might be as much as a hundred years or more—fifty years out and fifty years back, say—but it would only be three or four years of voyaging. So all of Achilles's enemies would be long since dead. Nobody would bother spreading vicious lies about him anymore. The world would be ready to hear of him with fresh ears, with open minds.

 

She couldn't leave him alone in the apartment. It was a drizzly afternoon, though. Was it worth risking him catching cold?

 

She bundled him well and carried him in a sling in front of her. He was so small, it felt like he was lighter than her purse. Her umbrella shielded them both from the rain. They'd be fine.

 

It was a long walk to the Metro station, but that was the best—and the driest—way to get to the liaison office of the Ministry of Colonization, where she could sign up. That would be a risk, of course. They might fingerprint her. They might run a check. But... surely they knew that many people would choose to go on a colony ship because they needed to get away from their old lives. And if they found that she had changed her name, the shoplifting arrest might explain it. She had been drifting into crime and ... what would they assume? Drugs, probably ... but now she wanted a fresh start, under a new name.

 

Or maybe she should use her real name.

 

No, because under that name she had no baby. And if they questioned whether "Randall" was really hers and ran a genetic test, they'd find that he had none of her genes. They'd wonder where she had kidnapped him. He was so small they'd think he was a newborn. And the birth had been so easy, there'd been no tearing—did they have tests to determine if she had ever given birth? Nightmares, nightmares. No, she'd give them her new name and then be prepared to run if they came looking for her. What else could she do?

 

It was worth the risk, to get him off planet.

 

On the way to the Metro she walked past a mosque, but there were cops outside, directing traffic. Had there been a bombing? Those were happening in other places—Europe, she kept hearing—but not in America, surely. Not lately, anyway.

 

No, not a bombing. Just a speaker. Just...

 

"Caliph Alai." She heard someone say it, almost as if they had been speaking to her.

 

Caliph Alai! The one man on Earth who seemed to have the courage to stand against Peter Wiggin.

 

Luckily she had a scarf over her head—she looked Muslim enough for this secular town, where plenty of Muslims wore no special clothing at all. Nobody challenged her, a woman with a baby, though they did make everybody leave things like umbrellas and purses and jackets at the security counter.

 

She walked into the women's section of the mosque. She was surprised at how the carved and decorated latticework interfered with her ability to see what was going on in the men's part of the mosque. Apparently even liberal American mosques still thought women did not need to see the speaker for themselves. Randi had heard about such things, but the only church she had ever attended was Presbyterian and families sat together there.

 

There were cameras all over the men's section, so maybe the view from here was as good as most men were getting. She wasn't converting to Islam, anyway, she just wanted to catch a glimpse of Caliph Alai.

 

He was speaking in Common, not Arabic. She was glad of that.

 

"I remain Caliph, no matter where I live. I will take with me in my colony only Muslims who believe in Islam as a religion of peace. I leave behind me the bloodthirsty false Muslims who called their Caliph a black dog and tried to murder me so they could make war on their harmless neighbors.

 

"Here is the law of Islam, from the time of Muhammed and forever: God gives permission to go to war only when we are attacked by an enemy. As soon as a Muslim raises his hand against an enemy who has not attacked him, then he is not engaged in jihad, he has become shaitan himself. I declare that all those who plotted the invasion of China and Armenia are not Muslims and any good Muslim who finds these men must arrest them.

 

"From now on Muslim nations may only be governed by leaders who were freely elected. Non-Muslims may vote in these elections. It is forbidden to molest any non-Muslim, even if he used to be a Muslim, or deprive him of any of his rights, or put him at any disadvantage. And if a Muslim nation votes to join the Free People of Earth and abide by its constitution, that is permitted by God. There is no offense in it."

 

Randi was heartsick. This was just like Vlad's speech. A complete capitulation to Peter Wiggin's phony "ideals." They had apparently blackmailed or drugged or frightened even Caliph Alai.

 

She picked her way carefully over and around the woman seated and standing and leaning in the packed women's chamber. Many of them looked at her as if she were sinning by leaving; many others were looking toward Caliph Alai with love and longing.

 

Your love is misplaced, thought Randi. Only one man was pure in his embrace of power, and that was my Achilles.

 

And to one woman who glared at her with special ferocity, Randi pointed to baby Achilles's diaper and made a face. The woman at once relaxed her grimace. Of course, the baby had messed himself, a woman had to take care of her baby even before she heard the words of the Caliph.

 

If the Caliph cannot stand against Peter Wiggin, then there is nowhere on Earth for me to raise my son.

 

She walked the rest of the way to the Metro as the rain came down harder and harder. Her umbrella did its job, though, and the baby stayed dry. Then she was in the Metro station and the rain had stopped.

 

That's how it will be in space. All the sheltering of this baby will be needless then. I can put away the umbrella and he will have nothing to fear. And on the new world, he can walk in the open, in the light of a new sun, like the free spirit he was born to be.

 

When he returns to Earth, he will be a great man, towering over these moral dwarfs.

 

By then, Peter Wiggin will be dead, like Julian Delphiki. That's the only disappointment—that my son will never be able to face his father's murderers directly.

 

 

 

 

24

 

 

SACRIFICE

 

 

 

From: Mosca%Molo@FilMil.gov.ph

 

To: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

 

Re: My ticket

 

 

Just when things were getting interesting here on Earth, I keep getting this nagging feeling that you were right. I hate it when that happens.

 

 

They came to me today, excited as babies. Petra took Moscow with a ragtag army traveling by passenger train! Han Tzu wiped out the entire Russian Army without taking more than a few dozen casualties! Bean was able to decoy the Turkish forces toward Armenia and keep them from getting involved in China! And of course Bean also gets the credit for Suriyawong's victory in China—everybody wants to assign all glory to the boys and girl of Ender's Jeesh.

 

 

You know what they wanted from me?

 

 

I'm supposed to conquer Taiwan. No joke. I'm supposed to draw up the plans. Because, you see, my poor little ragtag island nation has me, Jeeshboy, and that makes them a great power! How dare those Muslim troops remain on Taiwan!

 

 

I pointed out that now that Han Tzu had won against the Russians and the Muslims probably wouldn't dare attack, he'd probably be looking to put Taiwan back in his fold. And even if he didn't, did they really think Peter Wiggin would sit idly by while the Philippines committed an act of unprovoked aggression against Taiwan?

 

 

They wouldn't listen. It was: Do as you're told, genius boy.

 

 

So what's left for me, Hyrum? (I feel so wicked calling you by your first name.) Do as Vlad did, and draw up their plans, and let them fall into their own pit? Do as Alai did and repudiate them openly and call for revolution? (That is what he did, isn't it?) Or do as Han did and stage an internal coup and become Emperor of the Philippines and Master of the Tagalog-Speaking World?

 

 

I don't want to leave my home. But there's no peace for me on Earth. I'm not sure I want the burden of running a colony. But at least I won't be drawing up blueprints for death and oppression. Just don't put me in the same colony with Alai. He thinks he's so the man because he's the successor of the Prophet.

 

 

 

Even the tanks had been washed downstream, some of them for kilometers. Where the Russians had been spreading out for their offensive against Han Tzu's forces on the high ground, there was nothing, not a sign that they had been there.

 

Not a sign that the villages and fields had been there either.

 

It was a muddy version of the moon. Except for a couple of deep-rooted trees, there was nothing. It would take a long time and a lot of work to restore this land.

 

But now there was work to do. First, they had to glean the survivors, if there were any, from the countryside downstream. Second, they had to clean up the corpses and gather up the tanks and other vehicles— and, most important, the live armaments.

 

And Han Tzu had to swing a large part of his army north, to retake Beijing and sweep away whatever remnants of the Russian invasion might be left behind. Meanwhile, the Turks might decide to come back.

 

The work of war wasn't over yet.

 

But the grinding, bloody campaign he had feared, the one that would tear China apart and bleed a generation to death, that had been averted. Both here in the north and in the south as well.

 

And then what? Emperor of China indeed. What would the people expect? Now that he had won this great victory, was he supposed to go back and subjugate the Tibetans again? Force the Turkic-speakers of Xinjiang back under the Chinese heel? Spill Chinese blood on the beaches of Taiwan to satisfy old claims that the Chinese had some inherent right to rule over the racially-Malay majority on that island? And then invade any nation that mistreated its Chinese minorities? Where would it stop? In the jungles of Papua? Back in India? Or at the old western border of Genghis's empire, the lands of the Golden Horde on the steppes of Ukraine?

 

What frightened him most about these scenarios was that he knew he could do it. He knew that with China he had a people with the intelligence, the vigor, the resources, and unified will—everything a ruler needed to go out into the world and make everything he saw his own. And because it was possible, there was a part of him that wanted to play it out, see where this path led.

 

I know where it leads, thought Han Tzu. It leads to Virlomi leading her pathetic army of half-armed volunteers to certain death. It leads to Julius Caesar bleeding to death on the floor of the Senate, muttering about how he was betrayed. It leads to Adolf and Eva dead in an underground bunker while their empire crumbles in explosions above their corpses. Or it leads to Augustus, casting about him for a successor, only to realize that it all has to be handed over to his revolting pervert of a ... stepson? What was Tiberius, really? A sad statement about how empires are inevitably led. Because what rises to the top in an empire are the bureaucratic infighters, the assassins, or the warlords.

 

Is that what I want for my people? I became Emperor because that's how I could bring down Snow Tiger and keep him from killing me first. But China doesn't need an empire. China needs a good government. The Chinese people need to stay home and make money, or travel through the world and make even more money. They need to do science and create literature and be part of the human race.

 

They need to have no more of their sons die in battle. They need to have no more of them cleaning up the bodies of the enemy. They need peace.

 

 

 

The news of Bean's death spread slowly out of Armenia. It came to Petra, incredibly enough, on her cellphone in Moscow, where she was still directing her troops in the complete takeover of the city. The news of Han's devastating victory had reached her, but not the general public. She needed to be in complete control of the city before the people learned of the disaster. She needed to make sure they could contain the reaction.

 

It was her father on the telephone. His voice was very husky, and she knew at once what he was calling to tell her.

 

"The soldiers who were rescued from Tehran. They came back by way of Israel. They saw ... Julian didn't come back with them."

 

Petra knew perfectly well what had happened. And, more to the point, what Bean would have made sure people thought they had seen happen. But she let the scene play out, saying the lines expected of her. "They left him behind?"

 

"There was ... nothing to bring back." A sob. It was good to know that her father had come to love Bean. Or maybe he only wept in pity for his daughter, already widowed, and only barely a woman. "He was caught in the explosion of a building. The whole thing was vaporized. He could not have lived."

 

"Thank you for telling me, Father."

 

"I know it's—what about the babies? Come home, Pet, we—"

 

"When I'm through with the war, Father, then I'll come home and grieve for my husband and care for my babies. They're in good hands right now. I love you. And Mother. I'll be all right. Good-bye."

 

She cut off the connection.

 

Several officers around her looked at her questioningly. What she had said about grieving for her husband. "This is top-secret information," she said to the officers. "It would only encourage the enemies of the Free People. But my husband was ... he entered a building in Tehran and it blew up. No one in that building could possibly have survived."

 

They did not know her, these Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians. Not well enough to say more than a heartfelt but inadequate, "I'm sorry."

 

"We have work to do," she said, relieving them of the responsibility to care for her. They could not know that what she was showing was not iron self-control, but cold rage. To lose your husband in war, that was one thing. But to lose him because he refused to take you with him....

 

That was unfair. In the long run, she would have decided the same way. There was one baby unfound. And even if that baby was dead or had never existed—how did they know how many there were, except what Volescu told them?—the five normal babies shouldn't have their lives so drastically deformed. It would be like making a healthy twin spend his life in a hospital bed just because his brother was in a coma.

 

I would have chosen the same if I'd had time.

 

There was no time. Bean's life was too fragile already. She was losing him.

 

And she had known right from the start that one way or another, she would lose him. When he begged her not to marry him, when he insisted he wanted no babies, it was to avoid having her feel as she felt now.

 

Knowing it was her own fault, her own free choice, all for the best—it didn't ease the pain one bit. If anything, it made it worse.

 

So she was angry. At herself. At human nature. At the fact that she was a human and therefore had to have that nature whether she wanted it or not. The desire to have the babies of the best man she knew, the desire to hold on to him forever.

 

And the desire to go into battle and win, outwitting her enemies, cutting them off, taking all their power away from them and standing astride them in victory.

 

It was a terrible thing to realize about herself—that she loved the contest of war every bit as much as she missed her husband and children, so that doing the one would take her mind off the loss of the others.

 

 

 

When the gunfire began, Virlomi felt a thrill of excitement. But also a sick sense of dread. As if she knew some terrible secret about this campaign that she had not allowed herself to hear until the gunfire brought the message to her consciousness.

 

Almost at once, her driver tried to take her out of harm's way. But she insisted on heading toward the thick of the fighting. She could see where the enemy was gathered, in the hills on either side. She immediately recognized the tactics that were being used.

 

She started to issue orders. She ordered them to notify the other two columns to withdraw up their valleys and reconnoiter. She sent her elite troops, the ones that had fought with her for years, up the slopes to hold the enemy off while she withdrew the rest of her troops.

 

But the mass of untrained soldiers were too frightened to understand their orders or execute them under fire. Many of them broke and ran—straight up the valley, where they were exposed to fire. And Virlomi knew that not far behind them would be the trailing force which they had carelessly passed by.

 

All because she didn't expect Han Tzu, preoccupied with the Russians, to be able to send a force of any size here to the south.

 

She kept reassuring her officers—this is only a small force, we can't let them stop us. But the bodies were falling steadily. The firing only seemed to increase. And she realized that what she was facing was not some aging Home Guard unit thrown together to pester them as they marched. It was a disciplined force that was systematically herding her troops—her hundreds of thousands of soldiers—into a killing ground along the road and the riverbank.

 

And yet the gods still protected her. She walked among the cowering troops, standing upright, and not a bullet struck her. Soldiers fell all around her, but she was untouched.

 

She knew how the soldiers interpreted it: The gods protect her.

 

But she understood something completely different: The enemy has given orders not to harm me. And these soldiers are so well trained and disciplined that they are obeying the order.

 

The force opposing them was not huge—the firepower wasn't overwhelming. But most of her soldiers weren't shooting at all. How could they? They couldn't see a target to shoot at. And the enemy would concentrate its fire on any force that tried to leave the road and get up the hills to sweep over the enemy lines.

 

As far as she could see, if any of the enemy had died, it was by accident.

 

I am Varus, she thought. I have led my troops, as Varus led the Roman Legions, into a trap, where we will all die. Die without even damaging the enemy.

 

What was I thinking? This terrain was made for ambush. Why didn't I see that? Why was I so sure the enemy couldn't attack us here? Whatever you're sure the enemy can't do, but which would destroy you if they did it anyway, you must plan to counter. This was elementary.

 

No one from Ender's Jeesh would have made such a mistake.

 

Alai knew. He had warned her from the start. Her troops weren't ready for such a campaign. It would be a slaughter. And here they were now, dying all around her, the whole highway thick with corpses. Her men had been reduced to piling up the dead as makeshift bulwarks against enemy fire. There was no point in her issuing commands, because they would not be understood or obeyed.

 

And yet her men fought on.

 

Her cellphone rang.

 

She knew at once that it was the enemy, calling her to ask her to surrender. But how could they know her cellphone number?

 

Was it possible that Alai was with them?

 

"Virlomi."

 

Not Alai. But she knew the voice.

 

"This is Suri."

 

Suriyawong. Were these FPE troops? Or Thai? How could Thai troops get across Burma and all the way up here?

 

Not Chinese troops at all. Why was it suddenly so clear now? Why hadn't it been clear before, when Alai was warning her? In their private talks, Alamandar said it would all work because the Russians would have the Chinese army fully involved in the north. Whichever attack Han Tzu defended against, the other side would be able to rampage through China. Or if he tried to fight both, then each would destroy that part of his army in turn.

 

What neither of them had realized was that Han Tzu was just as capable of finding allies as they were.

 

Suriyawong, whose love she had spurned. It felt like so many years ago. When they were children. Was this his vengeance, because she had married Alai instead of him?

 

"Can you hear me, Vir?"

 

"Yes," she said.

 

"I would rather capture these men," he said. "I don't want to spend the rest of the day killing them all."

 

"Then stop."

 

"They won't surrender while you're still fighting. They worship you. They're dying for you. Tell them to surrender, and let the survivors go home to their families when the war is over."

 

"Tell Indians to surrender to Siamese?"

 

As soon as she said it, she regretted it. Once she had cared first for the lives of her men. Now, suddenly, she found herself speaking out of injured pride.

 

"Vir," said Suri. "They're dying for nothing. Save their lives."

 

She broke the connection. She looked at the men around her, the ones that were alive, crouching behind piles of their comrades' bodies, searching for some kind of target out in the trees, up the slopes ... and seeing nothing.

 

"They've stopped shooting," said one of her surviving officers.

 

"Enough men have died for my pride," said Virlomi. "May the dead forgive me. I will live a thousand lives to make up for this one vain, stupid day." She raised her voice. "Lay down your weapons. Virlomi says: Lay down your weapons and stand up with your hands in the air. Take no more lives! Lay down your weapons!"

 

"We will die for you, Mother India!" cried one of the men.

 

"Satyagraha!" shouted Virlomi. "Bear what must be borne! Today what you must bear is surrender! Mother India commands you to live so you can go home and comfort your wives and make babies to heal the great wounds that have been torn in the heart of India today!"

 

Some of her words and all of the meaning of her message were passed up and down the highway of corpses.

 

She set the example by raising her hands and walking out beyond the wall of bodies, into the open. Of course no one shot at her, because no one had during the whole battle. But soon others joined her. They lined up on the same side of the corpse wall that she had chosen, leaving their weapons behind them.

 

From out of the trees on both sides of the highway, wary Thai soldiers emerged, guns still at the ready. They were covered with sweat and the frenzy of killing was only just leaving them.

 

Virlomi turned and looked behind her. Emerging from the trees on the other side of the road was Suriyawong. She walked back over the walls of corpses to meet him in the grass on the other side. They stopped when they were three paces apart.

 

She gestured up and down the road. "So. This is your work."

 

"No, Virlomi," he said sadly. "It's yours."

 

"Yes," she said. "I know."

 

"Will you come with me to tell the other two armies to stop fighting? They'll only give up when you tell them to."

 

"Yes," she said. "Now?"

 

"Phone them and see if they obey. If I try to lead you away right now, these soldiers will take up arms again to stop me. For some reason they still worship you."

 

"In India we worship the Destroyer along with Vishnu and Brahma."

 

"But I never knew that you served Shiva," said Suriyawong.

 

She had no answer for him. She used her cellphone and made the calls. "They're trying to stop the men from fighting."

 

Then there was silence between them for a while. She could hear the barked commands of the Thai soldiers, forming her men into small groups and beginning their march down the valley.

 

"Aren't you going to ask about your husband?" said Suri.

 

"What about him?"

 

"Are you so sure your Muslim co-conspirators killed him, then?"

 

"Nobody was going to kill him," she said. "They were only going to confine him until after the victory."

 

Suri laughed bitterly. "You spent this long fighting the Muslims, Vir, and you still don't understand them any better than that? This isn't a chess game. The person of the king is not sacred."

 

"I never sought his death."

 

"You took away his power," said Suri. "He tried to stop you from doing this and you plotted against your own husband. He was a better friend to India than you ever were." His voice cracked with passion.

 

"You cannot say anything to me that's crueler than what I am now saying to myself."

 

"The girl Virlomi, so brave, so wise," said Suri. "Does she still exist? Or has the goddess destroyed her too?"

 

"The goddess is gone," said Virlomi. "Only the fool, only the murderer remains."

 

A field radio crackled at his waist. Something was said in Thai.

 

"Please come with me now, Virlomi. One army is surrendering, but the other shot the officer you telephoned when he tried to give the order."

 

A chopper approached them. Landed. They got on.

 

In the air, Suriyawong asked her, "What will you do now?"

 

"I'm your prisoner. What will you do?"

 

"You're Peter Wiggin's prisoner. Thailand has joined the Free People."

 

She knew what that would mean to Suriyawong. Thailand—even the name meant "land of the free." Peter's new "nation" had coopted the name of Suriyawong's homeland. And now, his homeland would no longer be sovereign. They had given up their independence. Peter Wiggin would be master of all.

 

"I'm sorry," she said.

 

"Sorry? Because my people will be free within their borders, and there'll be no more wars?"

 

"What about my people?" she asked.

 

"You're not going back to them," said Suri.

 

"How could I, even if you let me? How could I possibly face them?"

 

"I was hoping that you would face them. By vid. To help undo some of the damage you've done today."

 

"What could I possibly say or do?"

 

"They still worship you. If you disappear now, if they never hear of you again, India will be ungovernable for a hundred years."

 

Virlomi answered truthfully: "India has always been ungovernable."

 

"Less governable than ever," said Suri. "But if you speak to them. If you tell them—"

 

"I will not tell them to surrender to yet another foreign power, not after they've been conquered and occupied by Chinese and then Muslims!"

 

"If you ask them to vote. To freely decide whether to live in peace, within the Free People—"

 

"And give Peter Wiggin the victory?"

 

"Why are you angry with Peter? What did he ever do but help you win your nation's freedom in every way that was possible to him?"

 

It was true. Why was she so angry?

 

Because he had beaten her.

 

"Peter Wiggin," said Suriyawong, "has the right of conquest. His troops destroyed your army in combat. He showed mercy he didn't have to show."

 

"You showed mercy."

 

"I followed Peter's instructions," said Suriyawong. "He does not want any foreign occupiers in India. He wants the Muslims out. He wants only Indians to govern Indians. Joining the FPE means exactly that. A free India. But an India that doesn't need, and therefore doesn't have, a military."

 

"A nation without an army is nothing," said Virlomi. "Any enemy can destroy them."

 

"That's the Hegemon's work in the world. He destroys the aggressors, so peaceful nations can remain free. India was the aggressor. Under your leadership, India was the invader. Now, instead of punishing your people, he offers them freedom and protection, if they only give up their weapons. Isn't that Satyagraha, Vir? To give up what you once valued, because now you serve a greater good?"

 

"Now you teach me about Satyagraha?"

 

"Hear the arrogance in your voice, Vir."

 

Abashed, she looked away from him.

 

"I teach you about Satyagraha because I lived it for years. Hiding myself utterly so that I would be the one Achilles trusted in the moment when I could betray him and save the world from him. I had no pride at the end of that. I had lived in filth and shame for ... forever. But Bean took me back and trusted me. And Peter Wiggin acted as if he had known all along who I really was. They accepted my sacrifice.

 

"Now I ask you, Vir, for your sacrifice. Your Satyagraha. Once you put everything on the altar of India. Then your pride nearly undid what you had accomplished. I ask you now, will you help your people live in peace, the only way that peace can be had in this world? By joining with the Free People of Earth?"

 

She felt the tears streaming down her face.

 

Like that day when she was making the video of the atrocities.

 

Only today she was the one who had caused the deaths of all these Indian boys. They came here to die because they loved and served her. She owed their families something.

 

"Whatever will help my people live in peace," she said, "I'll do."

 

 

 

 

25

 

 

LETTERS

 

 

 

From: Bean@Whereverthehelliam

 

To: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

 

Re: Did we actually do it?

 

 

I can't believe you still have me hooked up to the nets. This continues by ansible after we're moving at relativistic speeds?

 

 

The babies are fine here. There's room enough for them to crawl. A library big enough I think they won't lack for interesting reading or viewing material for... weeks. It will only be weeks, right?

 

 

What I'm wondering is: did we do it? Did I fulfill your goal? I look at the map, and there's still nothing inevitable about it. Han Tzu gave his farewell speech, just like Vlad and Alai and Virlomi. Makes me feel cheated. They got to bid the world farewell before they disappeared into this good night. Then again, they had nations to try to sway. I never really had anybody who followed me. Never wanted them. That's the thing, I guess, that set me apart from the rest of the Jeesh—I was the only one who didn't wish I were Ender.

 

 

So look at the map, Hyrum. Will they buy Han Tzu's plan of dividing China into six nations and all of them joining the Free Peoples? Or will they stay unified and still join? Or look for another Emperor? Will India recover from the humiliation of Virlomi's defeat? Will they follow her advice and embrace the FPE? Nothing's assured, and I have to go.

 

 

I know, you'll tell me by ansible when anything interesting happens. And in a way, I don't care. I'm not going to be there, I'm not going to have any effect on it.

 

 

In another way, I care even less than that. Because I never did care.

 

 

Yet I also care with my whole heart. Because Petra is there with the only babies I actually wanted—the ones that don't have my defects. With me I have only the cripples. And my only fear is that I'll die before I've taught them anything.

 

 

Don't be ashamed when you see your life coming to an end and you haven't found a cure for me yet. I never believed in the cure. I thought there was enough of a chance to take this leap into the night, and cure or not, I knew that I didn't want my defective children to live long enough to make my mistake and reproduce, and keep this valuable, terrible curse going on, generation after generation. Whatever happens, it's all right.

 

 

And then it occurs to me. What if Sister Carlotta was right? What if God is waiting for me with open arms? Then all I'm doing is postponing my reunion. I think of meeting God. Will it be like when I met my father and mother? (I almost wrote: Nikolai's parents.) I liked them. I wanted to love them. But I knew that Nikolai was the child she bore, the child they raised. And I was ... from nowhere. And for me, my father was a little girl named Poke, and my mother was Sister Carlotta, and they were dead. Who were these other people really?

 

 

Will meeting God be like that? Will I be disappointed with the real thing, because I prefer the substitute I made do with?

 

 

Like it or not, Hyrum, you were God in my life. I didn't invite you, I didn't even like you, but you kept MEDDLING. And now you've sent me into outer darkness with a promise to save me. A promise I don't believe you can keep. But at least YOU aren't a stranger. I know you. And I think that you honestly meant well. If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right.

 

 

Why am I writing like this? We can email whenever we want. The thing is, nothing's going to happen here, so I'll have nothing to tell you. And nothing you have to tell me is going to matter to me all that much, the farther I get from Earth. So this is the right time for these valedictories.

 

 

I hope Peter succeeds in uniting the world in peace I believe he's still got a couple of big wars ahead of him.

 

 

I hope Petra remarries. When she asks you what you think, tell her I said this: I want my children to have a father in their lives. Not some absent legend of a father—a real one. So as long as she chooses somebody who'll love them and tell them they've done ok, then do it. Be happy.

 

 

I hope you live to see colonies established and the human race thriving on other worlds. It's a good dream.

 

 

I hope these crippled children I have with me find something interesting to do with their lives after I'm dead.

 

 

I hope Sister Carlotta and Poke are there to meet me when I die. Sister Carlotta can tell me I told you so. And I can tell them both how sorry I am that I couldn't save their lives, after all the trouble they went to, to save mine.

 

 

Enough. Time to switch on the gravity regulator and get this boat out to sea.

 

 

From: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

 

To: Bean@Whereverthehelliam

 

Re: You did enough

 

 

You did enough, Bean. You only had a little time, and you sacrificed so much of it to helping Peter and me and Mazer. All that time that could have belonged to Petra and you and your babies. You did enough. Peter can take it from here.

 

 

As for all that God business—I don't think the real God has as bad a track record as you think. Sure, a lot of people have terrible lives, by some measure. But I can't think of anybody who's had it tougher than you. And look what you've become. You don't want to give God the credit because you don't think he exists. But if you're going to blame him for all the crap, kid, you got to give him credit for what grows from that fertilized soil.

 

 

What you said about Petra getting a real father for your kids. I know you weren't talking about yourself. But I have to say it, because it's true, and you deserve to hear it.

 

 

Bean, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of myself because I actually got to know you. I remember sitting there after you figured out what was really going on in the war against the Buggers. What do I do with this kid? We can't keep a secret from him.

 

 

What I decided was: I'll trust him.

 

 

You lived up to my trust. You exceeded it. You're a great soul. I looked up to you long before you got so tall.

 

 

You did ok.

 

 

 

The plebiscite was over in Russia and it joined the FPE. The Muslim League was broken up and the most belligerent nations had been subdued, for now. Armenia was safe.

 

Petra sent her army home on the same civilian trains that had brought them to Moscow.

 

It had taken a year.

 

During that time she missed her babies. But she couldn't bear to see them. She refused to let them be brought to her. She refused to take even a brief leave to see them.

 

Because she knew that when she came home, there would only be five of them. And the two she knew the best and therefore loved the best would not be there.

 

Because she knew that she would have to face the rest of her life without Bean.

 

So she kept herself busy—and there was no shortage of important work to do. She told herself—next week I'll take a leave and go home.

 

Then her father came to her and bulled his way past the aides and clerks that fenced her off from the outside world. Truth to tell, they were probably glad to see him and let him through. Because Petra was hell on wheels and terrified everybody around her.

 

Father came to her with an attitude of steel. "Get out of here," he said.

 

"What are you talking about?"

 

"Your mother and I lost half your childhood because they took you away. You're cheating yourself out of some of the sweetest time in the lives of your children. Why? What are you afraid of? The great soldier, and babies terrify you?"

 

"I don't want this conversation," she said. "I'm an adult. I make my own decisions."

 

"You don't grow out of being my daughter." Father said. Then he loomed over her, and for a moment she had a childish fear that he was going to ... to ... spank her.

 

All he did was put his arms around her and hug her. Tight.

 

"You're suffocating me, Papa."

 

"Then it's working."

 

"I mean it."

 

"If you have breath to argue with me, then I'm not done."

 

She laughed.

 

He let her out of the hug but still held her shoulders. "You wanted these children more than anything, and you were right. Now you want to avoid them because you think you can't bear the grief of the ones that aren't there. And I tell you, you're wrong. And I know. Because I was there for Stefan, during all the years you were gone. I didn't hide from him because I didn't have you."

 

"I know you're right," said Petra. "You think I'm stupid? I didn't decide not to see them. I just kept putting it off."

 

"Your mother and I have written to Peter, begging him to order you home. And all he said was, She'll come when she can't help it."

 

"You couldn't listen to him? He is the Hegemon of the whole world."

 

"Not even half the world yet," said Father. "And he might be Hegemon of nations, but he's got no authority inside my family."

 

"Thank you for coming, Papa. I'm demobilizing my troops tomorrow and sending them home across borders where they won't need passports because it's all part of the Free People of Earth. I did something while I was here. But now I'm done. I was going home anyway. But now I'll do it because you told me to. See? I'm willing to be obedient, as long as you order me to do what I was going to do anyway."

 

 

 

The Free People of Earth had four capitals now—Bangkok had been added to Rwanda, Rotterdam, and Blackstream. But it was Blackstream—Ribeir?o Preto—where the Hegemon lived. And that was where Peter had had her children moved. He hadn't even asked her permission and it made her furious when he informed her what he had done. But she was busy in Russia and Peter said that Rotterdam wasn't home to her and it wasn't home to him and he was going home, and keeping her kids where he could make sure they were getting cared for. So it was Brazil she came home to. And it did feel good. Moscow's winter had been a nightmare, even worse than Armenia's winters. And she liked the feel of Brazil, the pace of life, the way they moved, the football in the streets, the way they were never quite dressed, the music of the Portuguese language coming out of the neighborhood bars along with batuque and samba and laughter and the pungent smell of pinga.

 

She took a car part of the way but then paid him and told him to deliver her bags to the compound and she walked the rest of the way. Without actually planning it, she found herself walking past the little house where she and Bean had lived when they weren't inside the compound.

 

The house had been changed. She realized: It was connected to the house next door by a couple of rooms added in, and the garden wall between them had been torn down. It was one big house now.

 

What a shame. They can't leave well enough alone.

 

Then she saw the name on the little sign on the wall beside the gate.

 

Delphiki.

 

She opened the gate without clapping hands for permission. She knew now what had happened, but she also couldn't believe that Peter had gone to such trouble.

 

She opened the door and walked in and...

 

There was Bean's mother in the kitchen, making something that had a lot of olives and garlic in it.

 

"Oh," said Petra. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you—I thought you were in Greece."

 

The smile on Mrs. Delphiki's face was all the answer Petra needed. "Of course you come in, it's your house. I'm the visitor. Welcome home!"

 

"You came to—you're here to take care of the babies."

 

"We work for the FPE now. And our jobs brought us here. But I couldn't stand to be away from my grandchildren. I took a leave of absence. Now I cook, and change nasty diapers, and scream at the empregadas."

 

"Where are the..."

 

"Naptime!" said Mrs. Delphiki. "But I promise you, little Andrew, he's only faking. He never sleeps, whenever I go in his eyes are just a little tiny bit open."

 

"They won't know me," said Petra.

 

She dismissed that with a wave. "Of course not. But you think they're going to remember that? Nothing that happens before age three."

 

"I'm so glad to see you. Did ... did he say good-bye to you?"

 

"He wasn't sentimental that way," said Mrs. Delphiki. "But yes, he called us. And sent us nice letters. I think it hit Nikolai harder than us, because he knew Julian better. From Battle School, you know. But Nikolai is married now, did you know? So pretty soon, maybe another grandchild. Not that we have a shortage. You and Julian did very well by us."

 

"If I'm very quiet and don't wake them, can I go see them?"

 

"We divided them into two rooms. Andrew shares one room with Bella, because he never sleeps, but she can sleep through anything. Julian and Petra and Ramon are in the other room. They need it dimmer. But if you wake them, it's not a problem. All their cribs have the sides down because they climb out anyway."

 

"They're walking?"

 

"Running. Climbing. Falling off things. They're more than a year old, Petra! They're normal children!"

 

It almost set her off, because it reminded her of the children who weren't normal. But that wasn't what Mrs. Delphiki meant, and there was no reason to punish her for a chance remark by bursting into tears.

 

So the two who bore the names of the children she grieved for most were sharing a room. She had courage enough to face this. She went there first.

 

Nothing about these babies reminded her of the ones who were gone. They were so big. Toddlers, not babies now. And, true to reputation, Andrew's eyes were already open. He turned to look at her.

 

She smiled at him.

 

He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

 

Well, let him retreat and decide what he thinks of me. I'm not going to demand that they love me when they don't even know me.

 

She walked to Bella's crib. She was sleeping hard, her black curls tight and wet against her head. The Delphiki genetic heritage was so complicated. Bella really showed Bean's African roots. Whereas Andrew looked Armenian, period.

 

She touched one of Bella's curls and the girl didn't stir. Her cheek was hot and damp.

 

She's mine, thought Petra.

 

She turned and saw that Andrew was sitting up in bed, regarding her soberly. "Hello, Mama," he said.

 

It took her breath away.

 

"How did you know me?"

 

"Picture," he said.

 

"Do you want to get up?"

 

He looked at the clock on the top of the dresser. "Not time."

 

These were normal children?

 

How would Mrs. Delphiki know what normal was, anyway? Nikolai wasn't exactly stupid.

 

Though they weren't so brilliant. They were both wearing diapers.

 

Petra walked over to Andrew and held out her hand. What do I think he is, a dog that I give my hand to sniff?

 

Andrew took hold of a couple of her fingers, just for a moment, as if to make sure she was real. "Hello, Mama."

 

"May I kiss you?"

 

He lifted his face and puckered up. She leaned down and kissed him.

 

The touch of his hands. The feel of his little kiss. The curl on Bella's cheek. What had she been waiting for? Why had she been afraid? Fool. I'm a fool.

 

Andrew lay back down and closed his eyes. As Mrs. Delphiki had warned, it was completely unbelievable. She could see the whites of his eyes through the partly-open slits.

 

"I love you," she whispered.

 

"Loveyoutoo," murmured Andrew.

 

Petra was glad that someone had said those words to him so often that the answer came by rote.

 

She crossed the hall into the other room. It was much darker. She couldn't see well enough to dare to cross the room. It took a few moments for her eyes to grow used to the dark and make out the three beds.

 

Would she know Ramon when she saw him?

 

Someone moved to her left. She was startled, and she was a soldier. In a moment she was in a defensive crouch, ready to spring.

 

"Only me," whispered Peter Wiggin.

 

"You didn't have to come and—"

 

He held a finger to his lips. He walked over to the farthest crib. "Ramon," he whispered.

 

She came and stood over the crib.

 

Peter reached down and flipped something. A paper.

 

"What is it?" she asked. In a whisper.

 

He shrugged.

 

If he didn't know what it was, why had he pointed it out to her?

 

She pulled it out from under Ramon. It was an envelope, but it didn't contain much.

 

Peter took her gently by the elbow and guided her out the door. Once they were in the hall, he said softly, "You can't read in that light. And when Ramon wakes up, he's going to look for it and be very upset if it isn't there."

 

"What is it?"

 

"Ramon's paper," said Peter. "Petra, Bean put it there before he left. I mean, not there. It was in Rotterdam. But he tucked it under Ramon's diaper as he was lying asleep in bed. He meant you to find it there. So it's been there every night of his life. It's only been peed on twice."

 

"From Bean."

 

The emotion she could deal with best was anger. "You knew he had written this and—"

 

Peter kept the both of them moving out of the hall and into the parlor. "He didn't give it to me or anyone else to deliver. Unless you count Ramon. He gave it to Ramon's butt."

 

"But to make me wait a year before—"

 

"Nobody thought it would be a year, Petra." He said it very gently, but the truth of it stung. He always had the power to sting her, and yet he never shrank from doing it.

 

"I'll leave you alone to read it," he said.

 

"You mean you didn't come here for my homecoming so you could find out what was in it?"

 

"Petra." Mrs. Delphiki stood in the doorway to the parlor. She looked mildly shocked. "Peter didn't come here for you. He's here all the time."

 

Petra looked at Peter and then back and Mrs. Delphiki. "Why?"

 

"They climb all over him. And he puts them down for their nap. They obey him a lot better than me."

 

The thought of the Hegemon of Earth coming over to play with her children seemed freakish to her. And then it seemed worse than freakish. It seemed completely unfair. She pushed him. "You came to my house and played with my children?"

 

He didn't show any reaction; he also stood his ground. "They're great kids."

 

"Let me find that out, will you? Let me find it out for myself!"

 

"Nobody's stopping you."

 

"You were stopping me! I was doing your work in Moscow, and you were here playing with my kids!"

 

"I offered to bring them to you."

 

"I didn't want them in Moscow, I was busy."

 

"I offered you leave to come home. Time after time."

 

"And let the work fall apart?"

 

"Petra," said Mrs. Delphiki. "Peter has been very good to your children. And to me. And you're behaving very badly."

 

"No, Mrs. Delphiki," said Peter. "This is only slightly badly. Petra's a trained soldier and the fact that I'm still standing—"

 

"Don't tease me out of this." Petra burst into tears. "I've lost a year of my babies' lives and it was my own fault, do you think I don't know that?"

 

There was a crying sound from one of the bedrooms.

 

Mrs. Delphiki rolled her eyes and went down the hall to rescue whoever it was that needed rescuing.

 

"You did what you had to do," said Peter. "Nobody's criticizing you."

 

"But you could take time for my children."

 

"I don't have any of my own," said Peter.

 

"Is that my fault?"

 

"I'm just saying I had time. And ... I owed it to Bean."

 

"You owe more than that."

 

"But this is what I can do."

 

She didn't want Peter Wiggin to be the father figure in her children's lives.

 

"Petra, I'll stop if you want. They'll wonder why I don't come, and then they'll forget. If you don't want me here, I'll understand. This is yours and Bean's, and I don't want to intrude. And yes, I did want to be here when you opened that."

 

"What's in it?"

 

"I don't know."

 

"Didn't have one of your guys steam it open for you?"

 

Peter just looked a little irritated.

 

Mrs. Delphiki came into the room carrying Ramon, who was whimpering and saying, "My paper."

 

"I should have known," said Peter.

 

Petra held up the envelope. "Here it is," she said.

 

Ramon reached for it insistently. Petra handed it to him.

 

"You're spoiling him," said Peter.

 

"This is your mama, Ramon," said Mrs. Delphiki. "She nursed you when you were little."

 

"He was the only one that wasn't biting me by the time..." She couldn't think of a way to finish the sentence that wouldn't involve speaking of Bean or the other two children, the ones that had to go on solid food because they got teeth so incredibly young.

 

Mrs. Delphiki wasn't giving up. "Let your mama see the paper, Ramon."

 

Ramón clutched it tighter. Sharing was not yet on his agenda.

 

Peter reached out, snagged the envelope, and held it out to Petra. Ramon immediately began to wail.

 

"Give it back to him," said Petra. "I've waited this long."

 

Peter got his finger under the corner, tore it open, and extracted a single sheet of paper. "If you let them get their way just because they cry, you'll raise a bunch of whiny brats that nobody can stand." He handed her the paper, and gave the envelope back to Ramon, who immediately quieted down and started examining the transformed object.

 

Petra held the paper and was surprised to see that it was shaking. Which meant her hand was shaking. She didn't feel like she was trembling.

 

And then suddenly Peter was holding her by her upper arms and helping her to the sofa and her legs weren't working very well. "Come on, sit here, it's a shock, that's all."

 

"I've got your snack all ready," said Mrs. Delphiki to Ramon, who was trying to get his whole forearm inside the envelope.

 

"Are you all right?" Peter asked.

 

Petra nodded.

 

"Want me to go now so you can read this?"

 

She nodded again.

 

Peter was in the kitchen saying good-bye to Ramon and Mrs. Delphiki as Andrew padded down the hall. He stopped in the archway of the parlor and said, "Time."

 

"Yes, it's time, Andrew," said Petra.

 

She watched him toddle on toward the kitchen. And then a moment later she heard his voice. "Mama," he announced.

 

"That's right," said Mrs. Delphiki. "Mama's home."

 

"Bye, Mrs. Delphiki," Peter said. A moment later, Petra heard the door open.

 

"Wait a minute, Peter!" she called.

 

He came back inside. He closed the door. As he came back into the parlor she held the paper out to him. "I can't read it."

 

Peter didn't ask why. Any fool could see the tears in her eyes. "You want me to read it to you?"

 

"Maybe I can get through it if it isn't his voice I hear," she said.

 

Peter opened it. "It isn't long."

 

"I know."

 

He started reading aloud, softly so only she could hear.

 

"I love you," he said. "There's one thing we forgot to decide. We can't have two pairs of children with the same name. So I've decided that I'm going to call the Andrew that's with me 'Ender,' because that's the name we called him when he was born. And I'll think of the Andrew that's with you as 'Andrew.' "

 

The tears were streaming down Petra's face now and she could hardly keep herself from sobbing. For some reason it tore her apart to realize that Bean was thinking about such things before he left.

 

"Want me to go on?" asked Peter.

 

She nodded.

 

"And the Bella that's with you, we'll call Bella. Because the one that's with me, I've decided to call her 'Carlotta.' "

 

She lost it. Feelings she'd had pent up inside her for a year, feelings that her underlings had begun to think she didn't have, burst out of her now.

 

But only for a minute. She got control of herself, and then waved to him to continue.

 

"And even though she isn't with me, the little girl we named after you, when I tell the kids about her, I'm going to call her 'Poke' so they don't get her confused with you. You don't have to call her that, but it's because you're the only Petra I actually know, and Poke ought to have somebody named after her."

 

Petra broke down. She clung to Peter and he held her like a friend, like a father.

 

Peter didn't say anything. No "It's all right" or "I understand," maybe because it wasn't all right and he was smart enough to know he couldn't understand.

 

When he did speak, it was after she was much calmer and quieter and another of the children had walked past the archway and loudly proclaimed, "Lady crying."

 

Petra sat up and patted Peter's arm and said, "Thank you. I'm sorry."

 

"I wish his letter had been longer," said Peter. "It was obviously just a last-minute thought."

 

"It was perfect," said Petra.

 

"He didn't even sign it."

 

"Doesn't matter."

 

"But he was thinking of you and the children. Making sure you and he would think of all the children by the same names."

 

She nodded, afraid of starting again.

 

"I'm going to go now," said Peter. "I won't come back till you invite me."

 

"Come back when you usually do," she said. "I don't want my homecoming to cost the children somebody they love."

 

"Thanks," he said.

 

She nodded. She wanted to thank him for reading it to her and being so decent about her crying all over his shirt, but she didn't trust herself to speak so she just sort of waved.

 

It was a good thing she had cried herself out. When she went into the kitchen and washed her face and listened to little Petra—to Poke— say, "Lady crying" again, she was able to be very calm and say, "I was crying because I'm so happy to see you. I've missed you. You don't remember me, but I'm your mama."

 

"We show them your picture every morning and night," said Mrs. Delphiki, "and they kiss the picture."

 

"Thank you."

 

"The nurses started it before I came," she said.

 

"Now I get to kiss my boys and girls myself," she said. "Will that be all right? No more kissing the picture?"

 

It was too much for them to understand. And if they wanted to keep kissing the picture for a while, that would be fine with her, too. Just like Ramón's envelope. No reason to take away from them something that they valued.

 

By your father's age, Petra said silently, he was on his own, trying not to starve to death in Rotterdam.

 

But you're all going to catch up with him and pass him by. When you're in your twenties and out of college and getting married, he'll still be sixteen years old, crawling through time as his starship races through space. When you bury me, he'll not have turned seventeen yet. And your brothers and sister will still be babies. Not as old as you are. It will be as if they never change.

 

Which means it's exactly as if they had died. Loved ones who die never change, either. They're always the same age in memory.

 

So what I'm going through isn't something so different. How many women became widows in the war? How many mothers have buried babies that they hardly had time to hold? I'm just part of the same sentimental comedy as everyone else, the sad parts always followed by laughter, the laughter always by tears.

 

It wasn't until later, when she was alone in her bed, the children asleep for the night, Mrs. Delphiki gone next door—or, rather, to the other wing of the same house—that she was able to bring herself to read Bean's note again. It was in his handwriting. He had done it in a hurry and in spots it was barely legible. And the paper was stained— Peter hadn't been joking about Ramon peeing on the envelope a couple of times.

 

She turned the light out and meant to go to sleep.

 

And then something occurred to her and she switched on the light again and fumbled for the paper and her eyes were so bleary she could hardly read, so maybe she had actually fallen asleep, and this thought had woken her out of a sound slumber.

 

The letter began, "There's one thing we forgot to decide."

 

But when Peter read it, he had started with "I love you."

 

He must have scanned over the letter and realized that Bean never said it. That it was just a note that Bean had jotted at the last moment, and Peter worried that she might be hurt by the omission.

 

He couldn't have known that Bean just didn't put that kind of thing in writing. Except obliquely. Because the whole note said "I love you," didn't it?

 

She turned the light off again, but still held the letter. Bean's last message to her.

 

As she drifted off again, the thought passed briefly through her mind: When Peter said it, he wasn't reading at all.

 

 

 

 

 

26

 

 

SPEAK FOR ME

 

 

 

From: PeterWiggin%hegemon@FreePeopleOfEarth.fp.gov

 

To: ValentineWiggin%historian@BookWeb.com/AuthorsService

 

Re: Congratulations

 

 

Dear Valentine,

 

 

I read your seventh volume and you're not just a brilliant writer (which we always knew) but also a thorough researcher and a perceptive and honest analyst. I knew Hyrum Graff and Mazer Rackham very well before they died, and you treated them with absolute fairness. I doubt they would dispute a word of your book, even where they did not come off as perfect; they were always honest men, even when they lied their zhopas off.

 

 

The work of the Hegemon's office is pretty slight these days. The last actual military ventures that were needed took place more than a decade ago—the last gasp of tribalism, which we managed to mostly put down with a show of force. Since then I've tried to retire half a dozen times—no, wait, I'm talking to a historian—twice, but they don't believe I mean it and they keep me in office. They even ask my advice sometimes, and to return the favor I try not to reminisce about how we did things in the early days of the FPE. Only the good old USA refuses to join the FPE and I have hopes they'll get off their "don't tread on me" kick and do the right thing. Polls keep saying that Americans are sick of being the only people in the world who don't get a chance to vote in the world elections. I may see the whole world formally united before I die. And even if I don't, we've got peace on earth.

 

 

Petra says hi. Wish you could have known her, but that's star travel. Tell Ender that Petra is more beautiful than ever, he should eat his heart out, and our grandchildren are so adorable that people applaud when we take them out for walks.

 

 

Speaking of Ender. I read The Hive Queen. I heard about it before, but never read it till you included it at the end of your last volume—but before the index, or I would never have seen it.

 

 

I know who wrote it. If he can speak for the buggers, surely he can speak for me.

 

 

Peter

 

 

 

Not for the first time, Peter wished they made a portable ansible. Of course it would make no economic sense. Yes, they miniaturized it as much as possible to put it on starships. But the ansible only made an important difference in communication across the void of space. It saved hours for within-system communication; decades, for communication with the colonies and the ships in flight.

 

It just wasn't a technology designed for chatting.

 

There were a few privileges that came with the vestiges of power. Peter might be over seventy—and, as he often pointed out to Petra, an old seventy, an ancient seventy—but he was still Hegemon, and the title had once meant enormous power, it once meant attack choppers in flight and armies and fleets in motion; it once meant punishment for aggression, collection of taxes, enforcement of human rights laws, cleaning up political corruption.

 

Peter remembered when the title was such an empty joke they gave it to a teenage boy who had written cleverly on the nets.

 

Peter had brought power to the office. And then, because he gradually stripped away its functions and assigned them to other officials in the FPE—or "EarthGov" as people now called it as often as not—he had returned the position to a figurehead position.

 

But not a joke. It was no longer a joke and never would be again.

 

Not a joke, but not necessarily a good thing, either. There were plenty of people left alive who remembered the Hegemon as the coercive power that shattered their dream of how Earth ought to be (though usually their dream was everyone else's nightmare). And historians and biographers had often had at him and would do it again, forever.

 

The thing about the historians was, they could arrange the data all neatly in rows, but they kept missing what it was for. They kept inventing the strangest motives for people. There was the biography of Virlomi, for instance, that made her an idealistic saint and blamed Suriyawong, of all people, for the slaughter that ended Virlomi's military career. Never mind that Virlomi herself repudiated that interpretation, writing by ansible from the colony on Andhra. Biographers were always irritated when their subject turned out to be alive.

 

But Peter hadn't bothered to answer any of them. Even the ones that attacked him quite savagely, blaming him for everything that went badly and giving others the credit for everything that went well... Petra would fume over some of them for days until he begged her not to read them anymore. But he couldn't resist reading them himself. He didn't take it personally. Most people never had biographies written about them.

 

Petra herself had only had a couple about her, and they were both of the "great women" or "role models for girls" variety, not serious scholarship. Which bothered Peter, because he knew what they seemed to neglect—that after all the other members of Ender's Jeesh left Earth and went out to the colonies, she stayed and ran the FPE defense ministry for almost thirty years, until the position became more of a police department than anything else and she insisted on retiring to play with the grandchildren.

 

She was there for everything, Peter said to her when he was griping about this. "You were Ender's and Bean's friend in Battle School— you taught Ender how to shoot, for heaven's sake. You were in his Jeesh—"

 

But at those points Petra would shush him. "I don't want those stories told," she said. "I wouldn't come off very well if the truth came out."

 

Peter didn't believe it. And you could skip all of that and start when she returned to Earth and ... wasn't it Petra who, when the Jeesh was almost all kidnapped, found a way to get a message out to Bean? Wasn't she the one who knew Achilles better than anybody that he didn't succeed in killing? She was one of the great military leaders of all time, and she also married Julian Delphiki, the Giant of legend, and then Peter the Hegemon, another legend, and on top of all that raised five of the children she had with Bean and five more that she had with Peter.

 

And no biography. So why should he complain that there were dozens about him and every one of them got simple, obvious things wrong, things that you could actually check, let alone the more arcane things like motive and secret agreements and...

 

And then Valentine's book on the Bugger wars started to come out, volume by volume. One on the first invasion, two on the second—the one Mazer Rackham won. Then four volumes on the Third Invasion, the one that Ender and his Jeesh fought and won from what they thought was a training game on the asteroid Eros. One whole volume was about the development of Battle School—short biographies of dozens of children who were pivotal to the improvements in the school that eventually led to truly effective training and the legendary Battle Room games.

 

Peter saw what she wrote about Graff and Rackham and about the kids in Ender's Jeesh—including Petra—and even though he knew part of her insight came from having Ender right there with her in Shakespeare colony, the real source of the book's excellence was her own keen self-questioning. She did not find "themes" and impose them on the history. Things happened, and they were connected to each other, but when a motive was unknowable, she didn't pretend to know it. Yet she understood human beings.

 

Even the awful ones, she seemed to love.

 

So he thought: Too bad she isn't here to write a biography of Petra.

 

Though of course that was silly—she didn't have to be there, she had access to any documents she wanted through the ansible, since one of the key provisions of Graff's ColMin was the absolute assurance that every colony had complete access to every library and repository of records in all the human worlds.

 

It wasn't until the seventh volume came out and Peter read The Hive Queen that he found the biographer that made him think: I want him to write about me.

 

The Hive Queen wasn't long. And while it was well written, it wasn't particularly poetic. It was very simple. But it painted a picture of the Hive Queens that was as they might have written it themselves. The monsters that had frightened children for more than a century—and continued to do so even though all were now dead—suddenly became beautiful and tragic.

 

But it wasn't a propaganda job. The terrible things they did were recognized, not dismissed.

 

And then it dawned on him who wrote it. Not Valentine, who rooted things in fact. It was written by someone who could understand an enemy so well that he loved him. How often had he heard Petra quote what Ender said about that? She—or Bean, or somebody—had written it down. "I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."

 

That's what the writer of The Hive Queen, who called himself Speaker for the Dead, had done for the aliens who once haunted our nightmares.

 

And the more people read that book, the more they wished they had understood their enemy, that the language barrier had not been insuperable, that the Hive Queens had not all been destroyed.

 

The Speaker for the Dead had made humans love their ancient enemy.

 

Fine, it's easy to love your enemies after they're safely dead. But still. Humans give up their villains only reluctantly.

 

It had to be Ender. And so Peter had written to Valentine, congratulating her, but also asking her to invite Ender to write about him. There was some back and forth, with Peter insisting that he didn't want approval of anything. He wanted to talk to his brother. If a book emerged from it, fine. If the book painted him to be a monster, if that's what Speaker for the Dead saw in him, so be it. "Because I know that whatever he writes, it'll be a lot closer than most of the kuso that gets published here."

 

Valentine scoffed at his use of words like kuso. "What are you doing using Battle School slang?"

 

"It's just part of the language now," Peter told her in an answering email.

 

And then she wrote, "He won't email you. He doesn't know you anymore, he says. The last he saw of you, he was five years old and you were the worst older brother in the world. He has to talk to you."

 

"That's expensive," Peter wrote back, but in fact he knew the FPE could afford it and would not refuse him. What really held him back was fear. He had forgotten that Ender had only known him as a bully. Had never seen him struggle to build a world government, not by conquest, but by free choice of the people voting nation by nation. He doesn't know me.

 

But then Peter told himself, Yes he does. The Peter that he knew is part of the Peter who became Hegemon. The Peter that Petra agreed to marry and permitted to raise children with her, that Peter was the same one that had terrorized Ender and Valentine and was filled with venom and resentment at having been deemed unworthy by the judges who chose which children would grow up to save the world.

 

How much of my achievement was the acting out of that resentment?

 

"He should interview Mother," Peter wrote back. "She's still lucid and she likes me better than she used to."

 

"He writes to her," said Valentine. "When he has time to write to anyone. He takes his duties here very seriously. It's a small world, but he governs it as carefully as if it were Earth."

 

Finally Peter swallowed his fears and set a date and time and now he sat down at vocal interface of the ansible in the Blackstream Interstellar Communication Center. Of course, BICC didn't communicate directly with any ansible except ColMin's Stationary Ansible Array, which relayed everything to the appropriate colony or starship.

 

Audio and video were so wasteful of bandwidth that they were routinely compressed and then reinflated at the other end, so despite the instantaneity of ansible communications, there was a noticeable timelag between sides of the conversation.

 

No picture. Peter had to draw the line somewhere. And Ender hadn't insisted. It would be too painful for both of them—for Ender to see how much time had passed during his relativistic voyage out to Shakespeare, and for Peter to be forced to see how young Ender still was, how much life he still had ahead of him while Peter was looking coolly at his own old age and approaching death.

 

"I'm here, Ender."

 

"It's good to hear your voice, Peter."

 

And then silence.

 

"No small talk, is there?" said Peter. "It's been too long a time for me, too brief a time for you. Ender, I know I was a slumbitch to you as a kid. No excuses. I was full of rage and shame and I took it out on you and Valentine but mostly on you. I don't think I ever said a kind thing to you, not when you were awake anyway. I can talk about that if you want."

 

"Later maybe," said Ender. "This isn't a family therapy session. I just want to know what you did and why."

 

"Which things I did?"

 

"The ones that matter to you," said Ender. "What you choose to tell me is as important as what you say about those events."

 

"There's a lot. My mind is still clear. I remember a lot."

 

"Good. I'm listening."

 

He listened for hours that day. And more hours, more days. Peter poured out everything. The political struggles. The wars. The negotiations. The essays on the nets. Building up intelligence networks. Seizing opportunities. Finding worthwhile allies.

 

It wasn't until near the end of their last session that Peter dredged up memories of when Ender was a baby. "I really loved you. Kept begging Mom to let me feed you. Change you. Play with you. I thought you were the best thing that ever existed. But then I noticed. I'd be playing with you and have you laughing and then Valentine would walk into the room and you'd just rivet on her. I didn't exist anymore.

 

"She was luminous, of course you reacted that way. Everybody did. I did. But at the same time, I was just a kid. I saw it as, Ender loves Valentine more than me. And when I realized you were born because they regarded me as a failure—the Battle School people, I mean—it was just one more resentment. That doesn't excuse anything. I didn't have to be a bastard about it. I'm just telling you, I realize now that's where it started."

 

"OK," said Ender.

 

"I'm sorry," said Peter. "That I wasn't better to you as a kid. Because, see, my whole life, all the things I've told you about in all these incredibly expensive conversations, I would find myself thinking, that was OK. I did OK that time. Ender would like that I did that."

 

"Please don't tell me you did it all for me."

 

"Are you kidding? I did it because I'm as competitive a marubo as ever was born on this planet. But my standard of judgment was: Ender would like that I did that."

 

Ender didn't answer.

 

"Aw, hell, kid. It's way simpler than that. What you did by the time you were twelve made my whole life's work possible."

 

"Well, Peter, what you did while I was voyaging, that's what made my ... victory worth winning."

 

"What a family Mr. and Mrs. Wiggin had."

 

"I'm glad we talked, Peter."

 

"Me too."

 

"I think I can write about you."

 

"I hope so."

 

"Even if I can't, though, it doesn't mean I wasn't glad. To find out who you grew up to be."

 

"Wish I could be there," said Peter, "to see who you grow up to be."

 

"I'm never going to grow up, Peter," said Ender. "I'm frozen in history. Forever twelve. You had a good life, Peter. Give Petra my love. Tell her I miss her. And the others. But especially her. You got the best of us, Peter."

 

At that moment, Peter almost told him about Bean and his three children, flying through space somewhere, waiting for a cure that didn't look very promising now.

 

But then he realized that he couldn't. The story wasn't his to tell.

 

 

 

If Ender wrote about it, then people would start looking for Bean. Somebody might try to contact him. Someone might call him home. And then his voyage would have been for nothing. His sacrifice. His Satyagraha.

 

They never spoke again.

 

Peter lived for some time after that, despite his weak heart. Hoping the whole time that Ender might write the book he wanted. But when he died, the book was still unwritten.

 

 

 

So it was Petra who read the short biography called, simply, The Hegemon, and signed Speaker for the Dead.

 

She wept all day after reading it.

 

She read it aloud at Peter's grave, stopping whenever any passersby came near. Until she realized that they were coming in order to hear her reading. So she invited them over and read it aloud again, from the beginning.

 

The book wasn't long, but there was power in it. To Petra, it was everything Peter had wanted it to be. It put a period on his life. The harm and the good. The wars and the peace. The lies and the truth. The manipulation and the liberty.

 

The Hegemon was a companion piece, really, to The Hive Queen. The one book was the story of an entire species; and so was the other.

 

But to Petra, it was the story of the man who had shaped her life more than any other.

 

Except one. The one who lived now only as a shadow in other people's stories. The Giant.

 

There was no grave, and there was no book to read there. And his story wasn't a human one because in a way he hadn't lived a human life.

 

It was a hero's life. It ended with him being taken away into heaven, dying but not dead.

 

I love you, Peter, she said to him at his grave. But you must have known that I never stopped loving Bean, and longing for him, and missing him whenever I looked in our children's faces.

 

Then she went home, leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart.

 

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

 

 

Thanks to Joan Han, M.D., who works in pediatric endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, for advice on what kinds of legitimate therapy might be tried to stop Bean's unstoppable growth. Along the same lines, M. Jack Long, M.D., brought up the ideas that became Volescu's suggestions for how Bean might live a long life. My thanks to Dr. Long—along with my relief that he realized they were truly appalling ideas. (His letter ended "Yikes—I hope not!")

 

Thanks to Danny Sale for suggesting that Bean might have a hand in the decision to convert the Fantasy Game from Battle School into the program that eventually became Jane. Farah Khimji of Lewisville, Texas, reminded me of the need for a world currency—and the fact that the dollar already is one. Andaiye Spencer let me know that I could not let the old Battle School relationship between Petra Arkanian and Dink Meeker die without at least some mention.

 

Mark Trevors of New Brunswick reminded me that Peter and Ender conversed once before Peter died, and expressed the wish that he could see that scene more fully, and from Peter's point of view. Since this idea was much better than the one I had for ending the book, I seized upon it immediately, with gratitude. I also had reminders and help from Rechavia Berman, my Hebrew translator, and from David Tayman.

 

I'm not good with calendaring my books or aging my characters. I don't pay attention to those things in real life, and so I have a hard time keeping track of the passage of time in my fiction. In response to a plea at our Hatrack River Web site (www.hatrack.com), Megan Schindele, Nathan Taylor, Maureen Fanta, Jennifer Rader, Samuel Sevlie, Carrie Pennow, Shannon Blood, Elizabeth Cohen, and Cecily Kiester all pitched in and sorted through all the age and time references in Ender's Game and the other Shadow books to help sort it out for me. In addition, Jason Bradshaw and C. Porter Bassett caught a continuity error between the original Ender's Game and this novel. I'm grateful for readers who know my books better than I do.

 

I'm grateful for the willingness of my good friends Erin Absher, Aaron Johnston, and Kathy Kidd, who set aside many other more important concerns in order to join my wife, Kristine, in giving me quick feedback on each chapter as it was written. It never ceases to amaze me how many errors—not just typos, but also continuity lapses and outright contradictions—can slip past me and three or four very careful readers, only to be caught by the next. If there are such mistakes still in this book, it's not their fault!

 

Beth Meacham, my editor at Tor, went the extra mile on this book. Still in pain from major surgery and drugged to the gills, she read this manuscript while the bits and bytes were still sizzling, and gave me excellent advice. Some of the best scenes in this book are here because she suggested them and I was smart enough to recognize a great idea when I heard it.

 

The whole production team at Tor went to extraordinary lengths to help us bring out this book in time for a good publishing window, and I appreciate their patience with an author whose estimate of the time needed to complete this book was so laughably wrong.

 

And Tom Doherty may just be the most creative publisher in the business. There's no idea too wacky for him to at least consider it; and when he decides to do something unusual—like a series of "parallel novels"—he puts everything behind it and makes it happen.

 

Barbara Bova's creativity and dedication as my agent have blessed my family for most of my career. And I haven't forgotten that the Ender saga first reached the public because, even before she became an agent, her husband, Ben Bova, found a novella called "Ender's Game" on his slushpile and, with a few small changes, agreed to publish it in the August 1977 Analog magazine. That one decision (and it wasn't a no-brainer—other editors turned it down cold) has been putting bread on my table and opening the door for readers to find my other work ever since.

 

But when the writing day is done and I come down out of my garret room, it's finding my wife, Kristine, and my daughter Zina there that makes it all worth doing. Thanks for the love and joy in my life each day. And to my other kids as well, for leading lives that I'm proud to be connected with.