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 crueller 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."
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