Bean was never selected for aggression. He was selected for brilliance alone. His mind far outshone any other. But he was not one of us. He could solve the strategic and tactical problems more easily than anyone--more easily than Ender. But he didn't care whether he ruled; he didn't care whether he won. When he had an army of his own, he never won a battle--all his effort was spent on training his soldiers and trying out his ideas.
That's why he was able to be the perfect shadow to Ender Wiggin. He did not need to surpass Ender. All he wanted was to survive. And, without knowing it, to belong. To love and be loved. Ender gave him that. And Sister Carlotta. And me. But he never needed to rule.
Peter is the other one. And he does need to rule, to surpass all others. Especially because he wasn't selected for Battle School. So what tames him?
Ender Wiggin? Is that it? Peter must be greater than his brother Ender. He can't do it by conquest because he isn't a match for these Battle Schoolers. He can't take the field against Han Tzu or Alai--or Bean, or me, for that matter! Yet he must somehow be greater than Ender Wiggin, and Ender Wiggin saved the human race.
Petra stood at the edge of the hill, across the street from the house where her second child waited for her--a daughter she intended to take away from the woman who bore her. She looked out over the city and saw herself.
I am as ambitious as Hot Soup or Alai or any of them. Yet I fell in love with and determined to marry--against his will--the only Battle Schooler who had no ambition of his own. Why? Because I wanted to have the next generation. I wanted the most brilliant children. Even as I told him that I wanted none of them to have his affliction, in fact I wanted them to have it. To be like him. I wanted to be Eve to a new species. I wanted my genes to be part of the future of humanity. And they will be.
But Bean will also die. I knew that all along. I knew that I would be a young widow. In the back of my mind, I thought of that all along. What a terrible thing to realize about myself.
That's why I don't want him to take our babies away from me. I must have them all, the way conquerors have had to have this city. I must have them. That is my empire.
What kind of life will they have, with me for their mother?
"We can't put this off forever," said Mazer Rackham.
"I was just thinking."
"You're still young enough to believe that will get you somewhere," said Rackham.
"No," she said. "No, I'm older than you think. I know that I can't think my way out of being who I am."
"Why would you want to?" said Mazer Rackham. "Don't you know that you were always the best of them?"
She turned to him, suppressing the rush of pride, refusing to believe it. "That's nonsense. I'm the least. The worst. The one that broke."
"The one that Ender pressed hardest, relied on most. He knew. Besides, I didn't mean the best at war. I meant the best, period. The best at being human."
The irony of hearing him say that right after she realized just how selfish and ambitious and dangerous she was--she almost laughed. Instead she reached out and touched his shoulder. "You poor man," she said. "You think of us as your children."
"No," said Rackham, "that would be Hyrum Graff."
"Did you have children? Before your voyage?"
Rackham shook his head. But she couldn't tell if he was saying, No, I had no children, or No, I won't talk to you about this. "Let's go inside."
Petra turned around, crossed the narrow street, and followed him through the gate of the garden and up to the door of the house. It stood open in the early autumn sunlight. Bees hummed among the flowers of the garden but none came into the house; what business did they have in there, when all they needed was outside?
The man and woman waited in the dining room of their house. A woman in civilian clothes--who nevertheless seemed to Petra like a soldier--stood behind them. Perhaps watching to make sure they didn't try to run.
The wife sat in an armchair and held their newborn daughter. Her husband leaned on the table. His face was a mask of despair. The woman had been crying. So they already knew.
Rackham spoke at once. "I didn't want you to turn your baby over to strangers," he said to the man and woman. "I wanted you to see that the baby is going home to her mother."
"But she already has a baby," said the woman. "You didn't tell me that she already--"
"Yes he did," said the man.
Petra sat down in a chair across from the man, cornerwise from the woman. Ender wriggled a little but stayed asleep. "We meant to save the others, not to have them born all at once," said Petra. "I meant to bear them all myself. My husband is dying. I meant to keep having his children after he was gone."
"But don't you have more? Can't you spare this one?" The woman's voice was so piteous that Petra hated herself for saying no.
Rackham spoke before she could. "This child is already dying of the same condition that is killing her father. And her brother. That's why they were born prematurely."
This only made the woman cling more tightly to the baby.
"You'll have children of your own," said Rackham. "You still have the four fertilized embryos you already created."
The would-be father looked up at him blandly. "We'll adopt next time," he said.
"We're all very sorry," Rackham went on, "that these criminals stole the use of your womb to deliver another woman's child. But the child is truly hers, and if you adopt, you should have children that were willingly given up by their parents."
The man nodded. He understood.
But the woman had the baby in her arms.
Petra spoke up. "Would you like to hold her brother?" She reached down and lifted Ender out of the sling. "His name is Andrew. He's a month old."
The woman nodded.
Rackham reached down and took her daughter out of her arms. Petra handed Ender to her.
"My...the girl is...I call her Bella. My little Lourinha." She wept.
Lourinha? The baby's hair, such as it was, was brown. But apparently it didn't take much lightness of hair to earn the appellation "blonde."
Petra took the girl from Rackham's hands. She was even smaller than Ender, but her eyes were just as intelligent and searching. Ender's hair was as black as Bean's. Bella's hair was more like Petra's. It startled her, how happy it made her that the baby took after her.
"Thank you for bearing my daughter," said Petra. "I grieve for your grief, but I hope you can also rejoice at my joy."
Weeping, the woman nodded and clung now to Ender. She turned her face to the baby and spoke in a small babytalk voice. "Es tu feliz em ter irminha? Es tu felizinho?" Then she burst into tears and handed Ender to Rackham.
Standing, Petra laid Bella into the sling where Ender had been. Then she took Ender from Rackham and held him against her shoulder.
"I'm so sorry," said Petra. "Please forgive me for not letting you keep my baby."
The man shook his head. "Nao ha de que desculpar," he said.
"Nothing to forgive," murmured the stern-looking woman who was apparently not just a guard, but also an interpreter.
The woman wailed in grief and leapt to her feet, upsetting the chair. She sobbed and babbled and clutched at Bella and covered her with kisses. But she didn't try to take the baby.
Rackham pulled Petra away as the guard and the husband pulled the mother back and held her, still wailing and sobbing, while Petra and Rackham left the house.
Back in the car, Rackham sat in back with Petra and took Ender out of her arms for the ride back to the hotel. "They really are small," he said.
"Bean calls Ender a toy person," said Petra.
"I can see why," said Rackham.
"I feel like a really polite kidnapper," said Petra.
"Don't," said Rackham. "Even though they were embryos when they were stolen from you, it was a kidnapping, and now you're getting your daughter back."
"But these people did nothing wrong."
"Think again," said Rackham. "Remember how we found them."
>
They moved, she remembered. When Volescu's deadman switch triggered a message, they moved. "Why would they knowingly--"
"The wife doesn't know. Our deal with the husband was that we wouldn't tell. He's completely sterile, you see. Their attempt at in vitro fertilization didn't take. That's why he took Volescu's offer and pretended to his wife that the baby was really theirs. He's the one that got the message and made up a reason for them to move to this house."
"He didn't ask where the baby came from?"
"He's a rich man," said Rackham. "Rich people tend to take it for granted that things they want simply come to them."
"The wife meant no harm, though."
"Neither did Bean, and yet he's dying," said Rackham. "Neither did I, and yet I was sent on a voyage that jumped me decades into the future, costing me everyone and everything. And you'll lose Bean, even though you've done nothing wrong. Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people."
"I see," said Petra. "You're the Ministry of Colonization's resident philosopher."
Rackham grinned. "The consolations of philosophy are many, but never enough."
"I think you and Graff planned the whole history of the world. I think you chose Bean and Peter for the roles they're playing now."
"You're wrong," said Rackham. "Flat wrong. All that Graff and I ever did was choose the children we thought might win the war and try to train them for victory. We failed again and again until we found Ender. And Bean to back him up. And the rest of the Jeesh to help him. And when the last battle ended and we had won, Graff and I had to face the fact that the solution to the one problem was now the cause of another."
"The military geniuses you had identified would now tear the world apart with their ambition."
"Or be used as pawns to satisfy the ambitions of others, yes."
"So you decided to use them as pawns in your own game once again."
"No," said Rackham softly. "We decided to find a way to set most of them free to live human lives. We're still working on that."
"Most of us?"
"There was nothing we could do for Bean," said Rackham.
"I guess not," said Petra.
"But then something happened that we hadn't planned on," said Rackham. "Hadn't hoped for. He found love. He became a father. The one we could do nothing for, you made him happy. So, I have to admit, we feel a lot of gratitude to you, Petra. You could have been out there playing the game with the others." He chuckled. "We would never have guessed it. You're off the charts when it comes to ambition. Not quite like Peter, but close. Yet somehow you set it all aside."
She smiled as beatifically as she could.
If only you knew the truth, she thought.
Or maybe he does know, but telling her that he admires her is a way of manipulating her...
Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.
It was dark when she got back to her own house in the military headquarters compound just outside Kigali. Mazer Rackham did not come inside with her. So she carried both babies, Ender in the sling again, and Bella at her shoulder.
Bean was there, waiting for her. He ran to her and took the new baby from her and pressed his cheek to the baby's cheek.
"Don't smother her, oaf," said Petra.
He laughed and kissed her. They sat together on the edge of the bed, holding the two children, and then trading, back and forth.
"Seven to go," said Petra.
"Was it hard?" asked Bean.
"I'm glad you weren't there," said Petra. "I'm not sure you would have been tough enough to go through with it."
14
VIRLOMI'S VISITORS
From: ImperialSelf%[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Re: We have found Paribatra
Suriyawong, I am relieved to tell you that Paribatra, the former prime minister of Thailand, has been located. His health is not good but with proper attention it is believed that he will recover as well as can be expected for a man his age.
The former government had nearly perfected the art of making people disappear without actually killing them, but we are still tracking down other Thai exiles. I have great hopes of finding and releasing your family members.
You know that I opposed all these illegal actions against Thailand, its citizens, and its government. I have now moved at the first opportunity to undo as much of the damage as I can.
For internal political reasons I cannot release Paribatra directly to Ambul's Free Thai organization at this time, even though I fully expect that his group will be the core of the new government of Thailand and look forward to an early reconciliation.
As we free Paribatra into the care of the Hegemon, it seems appropriate that you who tried so hard to save Thailand should be the one to receive him.
Virlomi came to Hyderabad, and in front of the gate of the military complex where she once worked in virtual captivity, drawing up plans for wars and invasions she did not believe in, she now built a hut with her own hands.
Each day she went to a well and drew water, even though there were few villages in India that did not already have clean running water. Each dawn she buried her night soil even though most villages had working sewer systems.
Indians came to her by the hundreds, to ask her questions. When she was tired, she came out and wept for them and begged them to go home. They went, but the next morning others came.
No soldiers came near her, so there was no overt provocation to the Muslims inside the military compound. Of course, she was controlling the Indian military, which grew in strength every day, through her encrypted cellphones, which were swapped out daily for freshly charged ones by aides posing as ordinary supplicants.
Now and then someone from another land would come to see her. Her aides would whisper to them that she would not speak to anyone who was not barefoot, and if they wore western business suits she would offer them appropriate clothing, which they would not like, so it was better to be clad already in Indian clothing of their own choosing.
Three visitors came to her in one week of her vigil.
The first was Tikal Chapekar. Emperor Han had freed him, along with many other Indian captives. If he had expected some kind of ceremony when he returned to India, he was disappointed.
He assumed at first that the silence from the media was because the Muslim conquerors would not allow any mention of the return of the imprisoned Prime Minister to India.
So he went to Hyderabad to complain to the Caliph himself, who now ruled over his vast Muslim empire from within the walls of the military compound there. He was allowed to enter the compound, though while he waited in line at the checkpoint, he was curious about the hut a few dozen meters away, where a great many more Indians waited in line than waited to see the rulers of the nation.
"What is that hut?" he asked. "Do ordinary citizens have to go there first before coming to this gate?"
The gate guards laughed at his question. "You're an Indian, and you don't know that's where Virlomi lives?"
"Who is Virlomi?"
Now the guards grew suspicious. "No Hindu would say that. Who are you?"
He explained that he had been in captivity until just a few days ago, and was not aware of the news.
"News?" said one guard. "Virlomi isn't on the news. She makes her own news."
"Wish they'd just let us shoot her," muttered another.
"And then who would protect you as they tore us all limb from limb?" said another, quite cheerfully.
"So...who is she?" asked Chapekar.
"The soul of India is a woman," said the one who had wanted to shoot her. He said "woman" with all the contempt he could put into a single word. Then he spat.
"What office does she hold?" asked Chapekar.
"Hindus don't hold offices anymore," said another guard. "Not even you, former Prime Minister."
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Chapekar felt a wave of relief. Someone had recognized his name.
"Because you forbid the Indian people to elect their own government?"
"We allow it," said the guard. "The Caliph declared an election but nobody came."
"No one voted?"
"No one ran for office."
Chapekar laughed. "India has been a democracy for hundreds of years. People run for office. People vote."
"Not when Virlomi asks them not to serve in any office until the Muslim overlords leave India."
Now Chapekar understood everything. She was a charismatic, like Gandhi, centuries ago. Rather a sad one, since she was imitating a primitive Indian lifestyle that hadn't been the rule through most of India in many lifetimes. Still, there was magic in the old icons, and with so many disasters befalling India, the people would look for someone to capture their imagination.
Gandhi never became ruler of India, however. That job was for more practical people. If he could just get the word out that he was back. Surely the Caliph would want a legitimate Indian government restored to help keep order.
After a suitable wait, he was ushered into a building. After another wait, he was brought to the anteroom of the Caliph's office. And finally he was brought into the Presence.
Except that the person he met with was not the Caliph at all, but his old adversary, Ghaffar Wahabi, who had been prime minister of Pakistan.
"I thought to see the Caliph," said Chapekar, "but I'm glad to see you first, my old friend."
Wahabi smiled and nodded, but he did not rise and when Chapekar made as if to approach him, hands restrained him. Still, they did not stop him from sitting in an armless chair, which was good, because Chapekar tired easily these days.
"I am glad to see that the Chinese have come to their senses and set their prisoners free. This new emperor they have is weak, a mere boy, but a weak China is better for all of us, don't you think?"
Chapekar shook his head. "The Chinese people love him."
"Islam has ground the face of China into the dust," said Wahabi.
"Has Islam ground the face of India into the dust as well?" asked Chapekar.
"There were excesses, under the previous military leadership. But Caliph Alai, may God preserve him, put a stop to that some time ago. Now the leader of the Indian rebels sits outside our gate, and we are untroubled, and she and her followers are unmolested."
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