"No! Aren't you listening? I'm watching the whole damn thing just like you are! I've already played my cards--making the Muslim leadership suspicious of my intentions. Provoking them. Plus a little quiet diplomacy."
"With whom?"
"With Russia," said Peter.
"You're trying to get them to join with you in attacking Alai? Or China?"
"No, no, no," said Peter. "If I tried anything like that, word would get out, and then what Muslim nation would ever, ever join the FPE?"
"So what are you doing with your diplomacy?"
"Begging the Russians to stay out of it."
"In other words, pointing out the opportunity and telling them that you're not going to interfere in any way."
"Yes," said Peter.
"Politics is so...indirect."
"That's why conquerors rarely make great rulers."
"And great rulers are rarely conquerors."
"You closed the door on my becoming a conqueror," said Peter. "So if I'm to be the ruler of the world--a good one--then I have to win that position in such a way as not to have to keep killing people in order to stay in power. It does the world no good if everything depends on me, if it all collapses when I die. I need to build this thing piece by piece, bit by bit, with powerful institutions that have their own momentum, so that it will make very little difference who's at the head. It's what I learned from growing up in America. It was a nation created out of nothing--nothing but a set of ideals that they never measured up to. Now and then they had great leaders, but usually nothing but political hacks, and I mean right from the start. Washington was great, but Adams was paranoid and lazy, and Jefferson was as vile a scheming politician as a nation has ever been cursed with. I learned a lot from him about destroying your enemies with demagoguery conducted under pseudonyms."
"So you were praising him."
"I'm saying that America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive. I'm trying to do the same thing with the Free People of Earth. Base it on some simple but workable ideals. Bring nations into it because they freely choose to join. Unite them with a language and a system of laws, and give them a stake in institutions that take on a life of their own. And I can't do any of that if I conquer a single country and force it to join. That's a rule I can never violate. My forces will defeat enemies who attack the FPE, and we'll carry war into their territory to do it. But when it comes to joining the FPE, they can only do it if a majority of the people want to. If they choose to be subject to our laws and take part in our institutions."
"But you're not above getting other nations to do your conquering for you."
"Islam," said Peter, "has never learned how to be a religion. It's a tyranny by its very nature. Until it learns to let the door swing both ways, and permit Muslims to decide not to be Muslim without penalty, then the world has no choice but to fight against it in order to remain free. As long as Muslim nations remained divided, working against each other, they weren't going to be a problem for me, because I could pick them up one by one, especially after the FPE becomes large enough for them to see how the people within my borders prosper."
"But united under Alai--"
"Alai is a decent guy," said Peter. "I think he has some idea of liberalizing Islam from the top. But it can't be done. He's simply wrong. He's a general, not a politician. As long as ordinary Muslims believe it's their duty to kill any Muslim who tries to quit being a Muslim, as long as they think they have a holy duty to resort to arms to compel unbelievers to obey Islamic law--you can't liberalize that, you can't make it a decent system for anybody. Not even for Muslims. Because the cruelest, narrowest, most evil people will always rise to power because they'll always be the ones most willing to wrap themselves in the crescent flag and murder people in God's name."
"So Alai is doomed to fail."
"Alai is doomed to die. The moment the fanatics realize that he's not as fanatically pure a Muslim as they are, they'll kill him."
"And install a new Caliph?"
"They can install whoever they want," said Peter. "It won't matter to me. Without Alai, there's no Islamic unity, because only Alai can lead them to victory. And in defeat, Muslims don't stay united. They move like a great wave--until they meet a wall of rock that doesn't move. Then they crash and recede."
"As they did after Charles Martel defeated them."
"It's Alai who made them powerful," said Peter. "The only trouble is, Alai doesn't like the things he has to do in order to rule a totalitarian system like Islam. He's already killed a lot more people than he wanted to. Alai's not a killer, but he's become one, and he likes it less and less."
"You think he's not going to follow Virlomi into war."
"It's a race," said Peter. "Between followers of Alai who plan to kill Virlomi in order to free Alai from her influence, and fanatical Muslims who plan to kill Alai because he betrayed Islam by marrying Virlomi in the first place."
"Do you know who the conspirators are?"
"I don't have to," said Peter. "If there weren't any conspirators planning murder, it wouldn't be a Muslim empire. And there's another race. Can they kill Alai or Virlomi before China or Russia attacks? And even if they do kill one or both of them, will that stop China or Russia from attacking, or simply encourage them to think that victory will be more likely?"
"And is there any scenario where you'll go to war?"
"Yes," said Peter. "If they get rid of Virlomi, and Russia and China don't attack, then Alai--or his successor, if they kill him, too--will be pushed into attacking Armenia and Nubia. And that's a war I'm ready to fight. We'll destroy them. We'll be the rock against which Islam crashes and breaks into pieces."
"And if Russia or China does attack them before they can turn to you, then you still profit from the war as frightened nations unite with you against either Russia or China--whichever country is seen as the aggressive, dangerous one."
"It's like I said," Peter answered. "I have no idea how things will turn out. I just know that I'm ready to take advantage of every situation I can think of. And I'm watching very closely so that if something happens that I haven't foreseen, I can take advantage of it."
"So here's the key question," said Rackham. "It's the information I came here to get."
"I'm dying to hear."
"How long are you going to need Bean?"
Peter thought about that one for a while. "I've had to make my plans knowing that he was going to die. Or, once you made your offer, leave. So the answer is, as long as I have him, of course I'll use him, either to intimidate would-be enemies, or to command my forces when we go to war. But if he dies or leaves, I can make do. My plans don't depend on having Bean."
"So if he left in three months."
"Rackham, have you already found his other children? Is that what you're saying? Have you found them and you aren't telling him and Petra because you think I need Bean?"
"Not all of them."
"You're cold. You're such bastards," said Peter. "You're still using children as your tools."
"Yes," said Rackham. "We're bastards. But we mean well. Just like you."
"Give Bean and Petra their babies. And save his life, if you can. He's a good man who deserves better than to have you toy with him any longer."
21
PAPERS
From: The Impaled One
To: HonestAbe%[email protected]/WriteToTheAuthor
Re: God help me
Sometimes you give advice assuming that no one will take it. I just hope the man upstairs will forgive me and still find a place for me. Meanwhile, tell the big guy he's got to do something about the cup I broke.
From: PeterWiggin%[email protected]
To: Graff%[email protected]
Fwd: Re: God help me
Dear Hyrum,
As you'll see from below, our Slavic friend has apparently offered suggestions to his governm
ent that they actually took, and he regrets it. Assuming that you're the guy upstairs, I would guess this open encryption suggests he wants out. My sources last put him in Florida but if they're watching him closely, they would have moved him to Idaho.
As for the cup he broke, I think he means that instead of Russia looking for a chance to attack Alai, they've made a deal with the Muslim League and while China looks south to fight India, Russia is going to move on Han Tzu from the north while the Turks move from the west, the Indonesians from Taiwan, and Virlomi's insane invasion will go on over the mountains. Not so insane now.
However, on the chance that by "the big guy" Russian Boy meant somebody other than "the man upstairs," he could only mean a certain giant we both know. I'll confer with him and Mrs. Giant about what, if anything, we can do to deal with the situation.
Peter
Alai had given his orders, and now he was going to make sure he was out of Hyderabad when they were carried out. The Caliph could not be tainted with the arrest of his own wife.
But the Caliph could not be ruled by her, either. Alai knew that the wazirs of his council hated her; if he did not have her arrested by men loyal to him, then she would certainly be killed.
Later, after things had settled down, after she had regained her senses and stopped thinking she was unstoppable, he would take her out of prison. He could not release her in India--that was out of the question. Maybe Graff would take her. She wasn't one of Ender's Jeesh, but by the same reasoning Graff had used in his invitation, the world would certainly be a safer place with her gone from it, while a colony might be lucky to have someone of such ability and ambition at its head.
Meanwhile, without Virlomi there was no reason for him to govern from Hyderabad. He would continue to respect his treaty with India and withdraw his forces. Let them try to rebuild without Virlomi's madness trying to throw them prematurely into war. India would not be in shape to mount a meaningful military campaign against anything more substantial than a flock of starlings for many years to come.
Alai would spend the next few years putting Islam's house in order and trying to forge a real nation out of this mishmash that history had left for him to deal with. If Syrians and Iraqis and Egyptians couldn't get along with each other and despised each other the moment they heard the other's accent, how could anyone expect Moroccans and Persians and Uzbeks and Malays to see the world in the same way just because a muezzin called them to prayer?
Besides, he had to deal with the stateless peoples--the Kurds, the Berbers, half the nomad tribes of ancient Bactria. Alai knew perfectly well that these Muslims would not follow a Caliph who kept the status quo--not when Peter Wiggin was tempting revolutionaries everywhere with his promise of statehood and the examples of Runa and Nubia.
We brought Nubia on ourselves, thought Alai. The ancient Muslim contempt for blackest Africa still seethed under the surface; if Alai had not been a member of Ender's Jeesh, it would have been inconceivable for him, as a black African, to be named Caliph. It was in Sudan, where the races met face to face, that the ugliness had emerged with so much virulence. The rest of Islam should have disciplined Sudan long ago. And now they all paid the price, with the humiliation of Sudan at the hands of the FPE.
So we have to give the Kurds and Berbers their own governments. Real ones, not sham "autonomous regions." That would not be popular in Morocco and Iraq and Turkey, Alai knew. That's why it was stupid in the extreme to imagine embarking on wars of conquest when there was no peace or unity inside the world of Islam.
Alai would govern from Damascus. It was far more central. He would be surrounded by Muslim culture instead of Hindu. It would be a civilian-centered government, not an obvious military dictatorship. And the world would see that Islam was not interested in conquering the world. That Caliph Alai had already liberated more people from oppressive conquerors than Peter Wiggin ever could.
As Alai left his office, two of the guards fell in step beside him. Ever since Virlomi simply walked into his office the day they got married, Alamandar had insisted that it not be so easy to walk into highly sensitive areas of the compound. "We are in occupied enemy country, my Caliph," he had said, and he was right.
Still, there was something that made Alai uneasy about having to be accompanied by guards as he moved about the compound. It felt wrong. The Caliph should be able to move among his own people with perfect trust and openness.
As Alai stepped through the door into the parking garage, two more guards joined the two who had walked with him from upstairs. His limousine sat idling at the curb. The back door opened.
He saw someone jogging toward him from among the parked cars.
It was Ivan Lankowski. Alai had rewarded him for his loyal service by putting him in charge of the administration of the Turkish nations of central Asia. What was he doing here? Alai had not called him back from service, and Ivan had not written or called about coming.
Ivan reached into his jacket. Where a gun would be, if he was armed with a shoulder holster.
And he would be armed; he had carried a gun for too many years to be comfortable without one now.
Alamandar got out of the open back door of the limo. As he rose to his feet, he shouted at the guards. "Shoot him, you fools! He's going to kill the Caliph!"
Ivan's gun was out. He fired, and the guard to Alai's left dropped like a rock. The sound was strange--the barrel had a silencer, but Alai was close to being directly in front of it, so it wasn't so much silenced as shaped.
I should drop to the ground, thought Alai. To save my life, I should get out of the line of fire. But he couldn't take the danger seriously. He didn't feel as though he were in danger at all.
The other guards had their guns out now. Ivan shot another one, but then the bullets--not silenced--flew in the other direction, and Ivan fell to the ground. His gun did not slip from his hand; he maintained his grip on it to the end of his life.
Or maybe he wasn't dead. Maybe he could spend his last moments explaining to Alai how he could betray him like this.
Alai walked to Ivan's body and felt for a pulse. Ivan's eyes were open. He was already dead.
"Come away, my Caliph!" shouted Alamandar. "There may be other conspirators!"
Conspirators. There was no possibility of other conspirators. Ivan didn't trust anybody enough to conspire with them. The only person Ivan absolutely trusted was...
Was me.
Ivan was a perfect shot. Even at a run, he could not have aimed at me and then clumsily hit two guards.
"My guards," said Alai, looking up at Alamandar. "The ones he shot--will they be all right?"
One of the other guards jogged back to look. "Both dead," he said.
But Alai already knew that. Ivan had not been aiming at Alai. He had come here with one purpose in mind, the purpose that had guided him for years. Ivan was here to protect his Caliph.
It flashed into Alai's mind with immediate clarity. Ivan had learned of a conspiracy against the Caliph, and it involved people so close to Alai that there was no way for Ivan to warn him from a distance without running the risk of alerting one of the conspirators.
Alai reached with one hand to close Ivan's eyes, while with the other he pulled Ivan's pistol from his slackened fingers. Still not taking his eyes off of Ivan's face, Alai fired the pistol upward into the guard who was standing over him. Then he calmly aimed at the guard who had gone back to the bodies and fired. Alai had never been as good a shot as Ivan. He could not have done this while running. But kneeling, he was all right.
The guard he had shot without looking was lying on the pavement, twitching. Alai shot him again, then turned to Alamandar, who was getting back into the limo.
Alai shot him. He fell into the car and it screeched away from the curb. But the door was not closed yet, and Alamandar was in no shape to close it. So as it passed Alai, there would be a brief moment when the driver would be unprotected by the heavy armoring and bulletproof glass. Alai laid down three quick shots
in order to have a better chance of catching that moment.
It worked. The car did not turn. It ran into a wall.
Alai jogged over to the still-open back door of the car, where Alamandar was panting and holding his chest. His eyes were on fire with rage and fear as Alai leveled Ivan's pistol to fire.
"You are no Caliph!" gasped Alamandar. "The Hindu woman is more of a Caliph than you are, you black dog."
Alai shot him in the head and he fell silent.
The driver was unconscious, but Alai shot him, too.
Then he went back to the bodies of the guards, who were dressed in western business suits. Ivan had shot one of them in the head. He was larger than Alai but his clothing would do. Alai had his white robe off in a moment. Underneath he wore jeans as he always did. After wrestling with the corpse for a few moments, he got the shirt and jacket off the man, and without popping any of the buttons off.
Alai took the pistols from the two guards who had never gotten off a shot and dropped them into the pockets of the jacket he now wore. Ivan's silenced pistol had to be nearly out of bullets, so Alai slid it across the pavement back toward Ivan's body.
Where do I imagine an African man can hide in Hyderabad? No one's face was more recognizable than the Caliph's, and those who didn't know his face knew his race. They would also know that he spoke no Hindi. He would not make it a hundred meters outside in Hyderabad.
Then again, there was no chance he could get out of the compound alive.
Wait. Think.
Don't wait. Get away from this murder scene.
Ivan jogged through the parked cars. The garage would have been cleared of any observers by Alamandar's men; that meant Ivan must have been hidden inside a car. Where was that car?
Keys in the ignition. Thank you, Ivan. You planned for everything. No time would be wasted fumbling with keys, as you dragged me to your car to get me out of here.
Where were you going to take me, Ivan? Whom do you trust?
Alamandar's last words rang in his ears. The Hindu woman is more of a Caliph than you are.
He thought they all hated her. But now he realized that she was the one advocating war. Expansion. The restoration of a great empire.
That's what they wanted. And all his talk of peace, of consolidation, of reforming Islam from the inside before reaching out to the rest of the world, of competing with Peter Wiggin using the same methods, inviting other nations to join the Caliphate without requiring them to become Muslim or live under Shari'a--they had listened, they had agreed, but they hated it.
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