Orson Scott Card - Ender 08 - Shadow of the Giant

by Orson Scott Card

  She had come here from Rwanda, as humans had come out of Africa for fifty thousand years. Not as part of a tribe that climbed down into caves to paint their stories and worship their gods. Not as part of a wave of invaders. But... wasn't she here to take a baby out of a woman's arms? To claim that what came from this stranger's womb would belong to her from now on? Just as so many people had stood on the hills overlooking the bay and said, This is mine now, and it always was mine, regardless of the people who happen to think it belongs to them and have held this place all their lives.

  Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings— that what they saw and loved, they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have.

  And now she understood for the first time the magnitude of what Graff and Mazer Rackham and, yes, even Peter were all trying to do.

  They were trying to get human beings to define themselves as all belonging to one tribe.

  It had happened briefly when they were threatened by creatures who truly were strangers; then the human race had felt itself to be one people, and united in order to repel an enemy.

  And the moment victory was achieved, it all fell apart, and long-pent-up resentments erupted into war. First the old rivalry between Russia and the West. And when that was quelled by the I.F., and the old Polemarch fell and was replaced by Chamrajnagar, the wars moved to different killing fields.

  They even looked at the Battle School grads and said, Ours. Not free people, but the property of this nation or that.

  And now those same children, once property, were at the heads of some of the most powerful nations. Alai, mortaring the bricks of his fragmented empire with the blood of his enemies. Han Tzu, restoring the prosperity of China as quickly as possible in order to emerge from defeat as a power in the world. And Virlomi, out in the open now, refusing to join any party, standing above politics, but Petra knew that she would not release her hold on power.

  Hadn't Petra sat with Han Tzu and Alai and controlled fleets and squadrons in distant wars? They thought they were only playing a game—all of them thought that, except Bean, the secret-keeper—but they were saving the world together. They loved being together. They loved being one, under the leadership of Ender Wiggin.

  Virlomi hadn't been with them then, but Petra remembered her as well, as the girl she turned to when she was a captive in Hyderabad. She had given her a message and Virlomi had taken the burden as if Petra were a real person; she had delivered it to Bean and had helped Bean to come and save her. Now Virlomi had created a new India out of the wreckage of the old; she had given them something more powerful than any mere elected government. She had given them a divine queen, a dream and a vision, and India was poised to become, for the first time, a great power commensurate with her great population and her ancient culture.

  All three of them are making their nations great, in a time when the greatness of nations is the nightmare of humanity.

  How will Peter ever gain mastery over them? How will he tell them, No, this city, that mountain, these fields, that lake, they do not belong to you or to any group or individual, they are part of Earth, and Earth belongs to all of us, a single tribe. One overgrown troop of baboons that have taken shelter in the shade of this planet's night, that draw their life from the heat of this planet's day.

  Graff and his ilk did their work too well. They found all of the children best suited to rule; but part of the mix they selected for was ambition. And not just the desire to achieve or even surpass others—it was aggression, the desire to rule and control.

  The need to have our own way.

  I certainly have it. If I had not fallen in love with Bean and focused on our children, wouldn't I be one of them? Only I would be hampered by the weakness of my country. Armenia has neither the resources nor the national will to rule over great empires. But Alai and Han Tzu inherit centuries of empire and a sense of entitlement to rule. While Virlomi is making her own myth and teaching her people that their day of destiny has come.

  Only two of these great children have stepped outside the pattern, the great game of slaughter and domination.

  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 Meld 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 realise 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 realised 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, corner wise 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 fertilised 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. "Não 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 fertilisation 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 Colonisation'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 than 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.

&n
bsp; "I'm glad you weren't there," said Petra. "I'm not sure you would have been tough enough to go through with it."

  CHAPTER 14 — VIRLOMI'S VISITORS

  From: lmperialSelf%HotSoup@ForbiddenCity.ch.gov

  To: Suriyawong@hegemon.gov

  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 organisation 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.