Shadow of the Giant (22 page)

“And what will that defense consist of?”

“Me,” said Petra.

“A nursing mother?” asked the Prime Minister.

“The Armenian member of Ender’s Jeesh,” she answered. “I will command the Armenian forces.”

“Our mountain goddess versus the goddess of India,” said the Foreign Minister.

“This is a Christian nation,” said Father. “And my daughter is no goddess.”

“I was joking,” said Father’s boss.

“But the truth that underlies the joke,” said Bean, “is that Petra herself is a match for Alai. So am I. And Virlomi is no match for any of us.”

Petra hoped that this was true. Virlomi now had years of experience in the field—if not in the logistics of moving huge armies, then in exactly the kind of small operations that would be most effective in Armenia.

“We have to think about it,” said the President.

“Then we’re where we were before,” said the Foreign Minister. “Thinking.”

Bean rose to his feet—a formidable sight, these days—and bowed to them. “Thank you for meeting with us.”

“Wouldn’t it be better,” said the Prime Minister, “if you could get this new Hindu-Muslim…thing…to go to war against China?”

“Oh, that would eventually happen,” said Bean. “But when? The FPE wants to break the back of Caliph Alai’s Muslim League now. Before it grows any stronger.”

And Petra knew they were all thinking: Before Bean dies. Because Bean is the most important weapon.

The President rose from his seat, but then laid a restraining hand on the other two. “We have Petra Arkanian here. And Julian Delphiki. Couldn’t we ask them to consult with our military on our preparations for war?”

“I notice there are no military men here,” said Petra. “I don’t want them to feel that we’ve been thrust on them.”

“They won’t feel that way,” said the Foreign Minister blandly. But Petra knew that the military was not represented here because they were eager to join the FPE, precisely because they did not feel adequate, by themselves, to defend Armenia. There would be no problems with a tour of inspection.

After the top leadership of Armenia left the Arkanian flat, Father and Petra flung themselves down on the furniture and Bean stretched out on the floor, and at once began discussing what had just happened and what they thought
would
happen.

Mother came in as the conversation was winding down. “All asleep, the little darlings,” she said. “Stefan will drop David off after the movie, but we have a little while, just us grown-ups.”

“Well, good,” said Father.

“We were just discussing,” said Petra, “whether it was a waste of time for us to come here.”

Mother rolled her eyes. “How can it be a waste of time?” And then, to everyone’s surprise, she burst into tears.

“What is it?” At once she was enveloped in the concern of her husband and daughter.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just…you didn’t come here and bring these babies because you had negotiations. Nothing happened here that couldn’t have happened by teleconference.”

“Then why do you think we’re here?” asked Petra.

“You came to say good-bye.”

Petra looked at Bean and, for the first time, realized that this might be true. “If we are,” she said, “it wasn’t our plan.”

“But it’s what you’re doing,” said Mother. “You came in person because you might not see us again. Because of the war!”

“No,” said Bean. “Not because of the war.”

“Mother, you know Bean’s condition.”

“I’m not blind! I can see that he’s giraffed up so he can hardly get into houses!”

“And so are Ender and Bella. They have Bean’s same condition. So once we get all our other children, we’re going out into space. At lightspeed. So we can take advantage of relativistic effects. So that Bean will be alive when they finally find a cure.”

Father shook his head.

“Then we’ll be dead before you come home,” said Mother.

“Pretend I’m away at Battle School again,” said Petra.

“I get these grandchildren, but…then I don’t get them.” Mother cried again.

“I won’t leave,” said Bean, “until we’ve got Peter Wiggin safely in control of things.”

“Which is why you’re in such a hurry to get this war started,” said Father. “Why not just tell them?”

“We need them to have confidence in me,” said Bean. “Telling them that I might die in mid-campaign won’t reassure them about joining the FPE.”

“So these babies will grow up on a starship?” asked Mother, skeptically.

“Our joy,” said Petra, “will be to see them grow old—without any of them growing as big as their father.”

Bean raised one enormous foot. “These are tough shoes to fill.”

“It really is true,” said Petra, “that this war—in Armenia—is the one we want to fight. All these hills. It will go slowly.”

“Slowly?” asked Father. “Isn’t that the opposite of what you want?”

“What we want,” said Bean, “is for the war to end as soon as possible. But this is one case where going slow will speed us up.”

“You’re the brilliant strategists,” said Father, heading for the kitchen. “Anybody else want something to eat?”

That night, Petra couldn’t sleep. She went out onto the balcony and looked out over the city.

Is there anything in this world that I can’t leave?

I’ve lived apart from my family for so much of my life. Does that mean I’ll miss them more or less?

But then she realized that this had nothing to do with her melancholy. She couldn’t sleep because she knew that war was coming. Their plan was to keep the conflict in the mountains, to make the Turks pay for every meter. But there was no reason to think that Alai’s forces—or whatever Muslim forces they were—would shrink from bombing the big population centers. Precision bombing had been the rule for so long—ever since Mecca was nuked—that a sudden reversion to anti-population, saturation bombing would come as a demoralizing shock.

Everything depends on our being able to get and keep control of the air. And the FPE doesn’t have as many planes as the Muslim League.

Damn those short-sighted Israelis for training the Arab air forces to be among the most formidable in the world.

Why was Bean so confident?

Was it only because he knew that he’d soon leave Earth and wouldn’t have to be here to face the consequences?

That was unfair. Bean had said he’d stay until Peter was Hegemon in fact as well as name. Bean did not break his word.

What if they never find a cure? What if we sail on through space forever? What if Bean dies out there with me and the babies?

She heard footsteps behind her. She assumed it would be Bean, but it was her mother.

“Awake without the babies waking you?”

Petra smiled. “I have plenty to keep me from sleeping.”

“But you
need
your sleep.”

“Eventually, my body takes it whether I like it or not.”

Mother looked out over the city. “Did you miss us?”

She knew her mother wanted her to say, Every day. But the truth would have to do. “When I have time to think about anything at all, yes. But it’s not that I miss you. It’s that…I’m glad you’re in my life. Glad you’re in this world.” She turned to face her mother. “I’m not a little girl anymore. I know I’m still very young and I’m sure I don’t know anything yet, but I’m part of the cycle of life now. I’m no longer the youngest generation. So I don’t cling to my parents as I once would have liked to. I missed a lot up there in Battle School. Children need families.”

“And,” said Mother sadly, “they make families out of whatever they have at hand.”

“That will never happen to my children,” said Petra. “The world isn’t being invaded by aliens. I can stay with them.”

Then she remembered that some people would claim that some of her children
were
the alien invasion.

She couldn’t think that way.

“You carry so much weight in your heart,” said Mother, stroking her hair.

“Not as much as Bean. Far less than Peter.”

“Is this Peter Wiggin a good man?”

Petra shrugged. “Are great men ever really good? I know they
can
be, but we judge them by a different standard. Greatness changes them, whatever they were to start with. It’s like war—does any war ever settle anything? But we can’t judge that way. The test of a war isn’t whether it
solved
things. You have to ask, Was fighting the war better than not fighting it? And I guess the same kind of test ought to be used on great men.”

“
If
Peter Wiggin is great.”

“Mother, he was Locke, remember? He stopped a war. Already he was great before I came home from Battle School. And he was still in his teens. Younger than I am now.”

“Then I asked the wrong question,” said Mother. “Is a world that he rules over going to be a good place to live?”

Petra shrugged again. “I believe he means it to be. I haven’t seen him being vindictive. Or corrupt. He’s making sure that any nation that joins the FPE does it through the vote of the people, so nothing is being forced on them. That’s promising, isn’t it?”

“Armenia spent so many centuries yearning to have our own nation. Now we have it, but it seems the price of keeping it is to give it up.”

“Armenia will still be Armenia, Mother.”

“No, it won’t,” she said. “If Peter Wiggin wins everything he’s trying to win, then Armenia will be…Kansas.”

“Hardly!”

“We’ll all speak Common and if you go from Yerevan to Rostov or Ankara or Sofia, you won’t even know you’ve gone anywhere.”

“We all speak Common
now
. And there’ll never be a time you can’t tell Ankara from Yerevan.”

“You’re so sure.”

“I’m sure of a lot of things. And about half the time, I’m right.” She grinned at her mother, but her mother’s return smile wasn’t real.

“How did you do it?” asked Petra. “How did you give up your child?”

“You weren’t ‘given up,’” said Mother. “You were taken. Most of the time I managed to believe it was all for a good cause. The other times I cried. It wasn’t death because you were still alive. I was proud of you. I missed you. You were good company almost from your first word. But so ambitious!”

Petra smiled a little at that.

“You’re married now,” said Mother. “Ambition for yourself is over. It’s now ambition for your children.”

“I just want them to be happy.”

“
That
is something you can’t do for them. So don’t set that as your goal.”

“I don’t have a goal, Mother.”

“That’s nice. Then your heart will never break.”

Mother looked at her with a deadpan expression.

Petra laughed a little. “You know, when I’ve been away for a while, I forget that you know everything.”

Mother smiled. “Petra, I can’t save you from anything. But I want to. I would if I could. Does that help? To know that somebody wants you to be happy?”

“More than you know, Mother.”

She nodded. Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Going off into space. It feels like closing yourself in your own coffin. I know! But that’s how it feels to
me
. I just know that I’m going to lose you, as sure as death. You know it too. That’s why you’re out here saying good-bye to Yerevan?”

“To Earth, Mother. Yerevan’s the least of it.”

“Well, Yerevan won’t miss you. Cities never do. They go on and we don’t make any difference to them at all. That’s what I hate about cities.”

And that’s true of the human race, too, thought Petra. “I think it’s a good thing, that life goes on. Like water in a pail. Take some out, the rest fills in.”

“When it’s my child that’s gone, nothing fills in,” said Mother.

Petra knew that Mother was referring to the years that she spent without Petra, but what flashed into Petra’s mind was the six babies they still hadn’t found. The two ideas put together made the loss of those babies—if they even existed—too painful to contain. Petra began to cry. She hated crying.

Her mother put her arms around her. “I’m sorry, Pet,” she said. “I wasn’t even thinking. I was missing one child, and you have so many and you don’t even know whether they’re alive or dead.”

“But they aren’t even real to me,” said Petra. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’ve never even met them.”

“We’re hungry for our children,” said Mother. “We
need
to take care of them, once we bring them into existence.”

“
I
didn’t even get to do
that,
” said Petra. “Other women got to bear all but the one. And I’m going to lose
him
.” And suddenly her life felt so terrible it could not be borne. She sobbed as her mother held her.

“Oh, my poor girl,” her mother kept murmuring. “Your life breaks my heart.”

“How can I complain like this?” said Petra, her voice high with crying. “I’ve been part of some of the greatest events in history.”

“When your babies need you, history doesn’t bring much comfort.”

And as if on cue, there was a faint sound of a baby crying inside the flat. Mother made as if to go, but Petra stopped her. “Bean will get her.” She used the hem of her shirt to dab at her eyes.

“You can tell from the crying which baby it is?”