Shadow of the Hegemon

But then Sayagi began to nod. "They intercept all our emails," he said. "This is the only way it will get to Chapekar himself."

"To make military secrets public," someone said. He did not need to finish. They knew the penalty.

"Satyagraha," said Sayagi. He took the toilet paper with the address and sat down to go to that netsite. "I am the one doing this, and no one else," he said. "The rest of you warned me not to. There is no reason for more than one person to risk the consequences." Moments later, the data was flowing to Peter Wiggin's forum.

Only then did he send it as email to the general command-which would be routed through Achilles' computer.

"Sayagi," someone said. "Did you see what else is posted here? On this netsite?"

Petra also moved to the Locke forum and discovered that the lead essay on Locke's site was headed, "Chinese treachery and the fall of India." The subhead said, "Will China, too, fall victim to a psychopath's twisted plans?"

Even as they were reading Locke's essay detailing how China had made promises to both Thailand and India, and would attack now that both armies were fully exposed and, in India's case, overextended, they received emails that contained the same essay, pushed into the system on an urgent basis. That meant it had already been cleared at the top-Chapekar knew what Locke was alleging.

Therefore, their emailed plans for immediate withdrawal of Indian troops from Burma had reached Chapekar at exactly the time when he knew they would be necessary.

"Toguro," breathed Sayagi. "We look like geniuses."

"We are geniuses," someone grumbled, and everyone laughed.

"Does anyone think," asked the Tamil, "we'll hear another pep talk from our Belgian friend about how well the war is going?"

Almost as an answer, they heard gunfire outside.

Petra felt a thrill of hope run through her: Achilles tried to make a run for it, and he was shot.

But then a more practical idea replaced her hope: Achilles foresaw this possibility, and has his own forces already in place to cover his escape.

And finally, despair: When he comes for me, will it be to kill me, or take me with him?

More gunfire.

"Maybe," said Sayagi, "we ought to disperse."

He was walking toward the door when it opened and Achilles came in, followed by six Sikhs carrying automatic weapons. "Have a seat, Sayagi," said Achilles. "I'm afraid we have a hostage situation here. Someone made some libelous assertions about me on the nets, and when I declined to be detained during the inquiry, shooting began. Fortunately, I have some friends, and while we're waiting for them to provide me with transportation to a neutral location, you are my guarantors of safety."

Immediately, the two Battle School grads who were Sikhs stood up and said, to Achilles' soldiers, "Are we under threat of death from you?"

"As long as you serve the oppressor," one of them answered.

"He is the oppressor!" one of the Sikh Battle Schoolers said, pointing to Achilles.

"Do you think the Chinese will be any kinder to our people than New Delhi has?" said the other.

"Remember how the Chinese treated Tibet and Taiwan! That is our future, because of him!"

The Sikh soldiers were obviously wavering.

Achilles drew a pistol from his back and shot the soldiers dead, one after another. The last two had time to try to rush at him, but every shot he fired struck home.

The pistol shots still rang in the room when Sayagi said, "Why didn't they shoot you?"

"I had them unload their weapons before entering the room," Achilles said. "I told them we didn't want any accidents. But don't think you can overpower me because I'm alone with a half-empty clip. This room has long been wired with explosives, and they go off when my heart stops beating or when I activate the controller implanted under the skin of my chest."

A pocket phone beeped and, without lowering his gun, Achilles answered it. "No, I'm afraid one of my soldiers went out of control, and in order to keep the children safe, I had to shoot some of my own men. The situation is unchanged. I am monitoring the perimeter. Keep back, and these children will be safe."

Petra wanted to laugh. Most of the Battle Schoolers here were older than Achilles himself.

Achilles clicked off the phone and pocketed it. "I'm afraid I told them that I had you as my hostages before it was actually true."

"Caught you with your pants down, ne?'' said Sayagi. "You had no way of knowing you'd need hostages, or that we'd all be here. There are no explosives in this room."

Achilles turned to him and calmly shot him in the head. Sayagi crumpled and fell. Several of the others cried out. Achilles calmly changed clips.

No one charged him while he was reloading.

Not even, thought Petra, me.

There's nothing like casual murder to turn the onlookers into vegetables.

"Satyagraha," said Petra.

Achilles whirled on her. "What was that? What language?"

"Hindi," she said. "It means, 'One bears what one must.' "

"No more Hindi," said Achilles. "From anyone. Or any other language but Common. And if you talk, it had better be to me, and it had better not be something stupid and defiant like the words that got Sayagi killed. If all goes well, my relief should be here in only a few hours. And then Petra and I will go away and leave you to your new government. A Chinese government."

Many of them looked at Petra then. She smiled at Achilles. "So your tent door is still open?"

He smiled back. Warmly. Lovingly. Like a kiss.

But she knew that he was taking her away solely in order to relish the time in which she would have false hopes, before he pushed her from a helicopter or strangled her on the tarmac or, if he grew too impatient, simply shot her as she prepared to follow him out of this room. His time with her was over. His triumph was near-the architect of China's conquest of India, returning to China as a hero. Already plotting how he would take control of the Chinese government and then set out to conquer the other half of the world's population.

For now, though, she was alive, and so were the other Battle Schoolers, except Sayagi. The reason Sayagi died, of course, was not what he said to Achilles. He died because he was the one who posted the withdrawal plans on Locke's forum. Being plans for a retreat under unpredictable fire, they were still usable even with Chinese troops pouring down into Burma, even with Chinese planes bombing the retreating soldiers. The Indian commanders would be able to make a stand. The Chinese would have to fight hard before they won.

But they would win. The Indian defense could last no more than a few days, no matter how bravely they fought. That was when the trucks would stop rolling and food and munitions would run out. The war was already lost. There was only a little time for the Indian elite to attempt to flee before the Chinese swept in, unresisted, with their behead-the-society method of controlling an occupied country.

While these events unfolded, the Battle School graduates who would have kept India out of this dangerous situation in the first place, and whose planning was the only thing keeping the Chinese temporarily at bay, sat in a large room with seven corpses, one gun, and the young man who had betrayed them all.

More than three hours later, gunfire began again, in the distance. The booming sound of anti-aircraft guns.

Achilles was on the phone in an instant. "Don't fire at the incoming aircraft," he said, "or these geniuses start dying."

He clicked off before they could say anything in reply.

The shooting stopped.

They heard the rotors-choppers landing on the roof.

What a stupid place for them to land, thought Petra. Just because the roof is marked as a heliport doesn't mean they have to obey the signs. Up there, the Indian soldiers surrounding this place will have an easy target, and they'll see everything that happens. They'll know when Achilles is on the roof. They'll know which chopper to shoot down first, because he's in it. If this is the best plan the Chinese can come up with, Achilles is going to have a harder time using China as a base to take over the world than he thinks.

More choppers. Now that the roof was full, a few of them were landing on the grounds.

The door burst open, and a dozen Chinese soldiers fanned out through the room. A Chinese officer followed them in and saluted Achilles. "We came at once, sir."

"Good work," said Achilles. "Let's get them all up on the roof."

"You said you'd let us go!" said one of the Battle Schoolers.

"One way or another," said Achilles, "you're all going to end up in China anyway. Now get up and form into a line against that wall."

More choppers. And then the whoosh, whump of an explosion.

"Those stupid eemos," said the Tamil, "they're going to get us all killed."

"Such a shame," said Achilles, pointing his pistol at the Tamil's head.

The Chinese officer was already talking into his satrad. "Wait," he said. "It's not the Indians. They've got Thai markings."

Bean, thought Petra. You've come at last. Either that or death. Because if Bean wasn't running this Thai raid, the Thai could have no other objective than to kill everything that moved in Hyderabad.

Another whoosh-whump. Another. "They've taken out everything on the roof," the Chinese officer said. "The building's on fire, we've got to get out."

"Whose stupid idea was it to land up there anyway?" asked Achilles.

"It was the closest point to evacuate them from!" answered the officer angrily. "There aren't enough choppers left to take all these."

"They're coming," said Achilles, "even if we have to leave soldiers behind."

"We'll get them in a few days anyway. I don't leave my men behind!"

Not a bad commander, even if he's a little dim about tactics, thought Petra.

"They won't let us take off unless we've got their Indian geniuses with us."

"The Thai won't let us take off at all!"

"Of course they will," said Achilles. "They're here to kill me and rescue her" He pointed at Petra.

So Achilles knew it was Bean that was coming.

Petra showed nothing on her face.

If Achilles decided to leave without the hostages, there was a good chance he would kill them all. Deprive the enemy of a resource. And, more important, take away their hope.

"Achilles," she said, walking toward him. "Let's leave these others and get out. We'll be taking off from the ground. They won't know who's in what chopper. As long as we go now."

As she approached him, he swung his pistol to point at her chest.

She did not even pause, merely walked toward him, past him, to the door. She opened it. "Now, Achilles. You don't have to die in flames today, but that's where you're headed, the longer you wait."

"She's right," said the Chinese officer.

Achilles grinned and looked from Petra to the officer and back again. We've shamed you in front of the others, thought Petra. We've shown that we knew what to do, and you didn't. Now you have to kill us both. This officer doesn't know he's dead, but I do. Then again, I was dead anyway. So now let's get out of here without killing anybody else.

"Nothing in this room matters but you," said Petra. She grinned back at him. "Soak a noky, boy."

Achilles turned back to point the gun, first at one Battle Schooler, then another. They recoiled or flinched, but he did not fire. He dropped his gun hand to his side and walked from the room, grabbing Petra by the arm as he passed her. "Come on, Pet," he said. "The future is calling."

Bean is coming, thought Petra, and Achilles is not going to let me get even a meter away from him. He knows Bean is here for me, so I'm the one person he'll make sure Bean never rescues.

Maybe we'll all kill each other today.

She thought back to the airplane ride that brought her and Achilles to India. The two of them standing at the open door. Maybe there would be another chance today-to die, taking Achilles with her. She wondered if Bean would understand that it was more important for Achilles to die than for her to live. More important, would he know that she understood that? It was the right thing to do, and now that she really knew Achilles, the kind of man he was, she would gladly pay that price and call it cheap.

RESCUE

To:Wahabi%inshallah@Pakistan.gov From:Chapekar%hope@India.gov Re:For the Indian people

My Dear Friend Ghaffar,

I honor you because when I came to you with an offer of peace between our two families within the Indian people, you accepted and kept your word in every particular.

I honor you because you have lived a life that places the good of your people above your own ambition.

I honor you because in you rests the hope for my people's future.

I make this letter public even as I send it to you, not knowing what your response will be, for my people must know now, while I can still speak to them all, what I am asking of you and giving to you.

As the treacherous Chinese violate their promises and threaten to destroy our army, which has been weakened by the treachery of the one called Achilles, whom we treated as a guest and a friend, it is clear to me that without a miracle, the vast expanse of the nation of India will be defenseless against the invaders pouring into our country from the north. Soon the ruthless conqueror will work his will from Bengal to Punjab. Of all the Indian people, only those in Pakistan, led by you, will be free.

I ask you now to take upon yourself all the hopes of the Indian people. Our struggle over the next few days will give you time, I hope, to bring your armies back to our border, where you will be prepared to stand against the Chinese enemy.

I now give you permission to cross that border at any point where it is necessary, so you can establish stronger defensive positions. I order all Indian soldiers remaining at the Pakistani border to offer no resistance whatsoever to Pakistani forces entering our country, and to cooperate by providing full maps of all our defenses, and all codes and codebooks. All our materiel at the border is to be turned over to Pakistan as well.

I ask you that any citizens of India who come under the rule of the Pakistani government be treated as generously as you would wish us, were our situations reversed, to treat your people. Whatever past offenses have been committed between our families, let us forgive each other and commit no new offenses, but treat each other as brothers and sisters who have been faithful to different faces of the same God, and who must now stand shoulder to shoulder to defend India against the invader whose only god is power and whose worship is cruelty.

Many members of the Indian government, military, and educational system will flee to Pakistan. I beg you to open your borders to them, for if they remain in India, only death or captivity will be in their future. All other Indians have no reason to fear individual persecution from the Chinese, and I beg you not to flee to Pakistan, but rather to remain inside India, where, God willing, you will soon be liberated.

I myself will remain in India, to bear whatever burden is placed upon my people by the conqueror. I would rather be Mandela than de Gaulle. There is to be no government­in-exile. Pakistan is the government of the Indian people now. I say this with the full authority of Congress.

May God bless all honorable people, and keep them free.

Your brother and friend, Tikal Chapekar

Jetting over the dry southern reaches of India felt to Bean like a strange dream, where the landscape never changed. Or no, it was a vidgame, with a computer making up scenery on the fly, recycling the same algorithms to create the same type of scenery in general, but never quite the same in detail.

Like human beings. DNA that differed by only the tiniest amounts from person to person, and yet those differences giving rise to saints and monsters, fools and geniuses, builders and wreckers, lovers and takers. More people live in this one country, India, than lived in the whole world only three or four centuries ago. More people live here today than lived in the entire history of the world up to the time of Christ. All the history of the Bible and the Iliad and Herodotus and Gilgamesh and everything that had been pieced together by archaeologists and anthropologists, all of those human relationships, all those achievements, could all have been played out by the people we're flying over right now, with people left over to live through new stories that no one would ever hear.

In these few days, China would conquer enough people to make five thousand years of human history, and they would treat them like grass, to be mown till all were the same level, with anything that rose above that level discarded to be mere compost.

And what am I doing? Riding along on a machine that would have given that old prophet Ezekiel a heart attack before he could even write about seeing a shark in the sky. Sister Carlotta used to joke that Battle School was the wheel in the sky that Ezekiel saw in his vision. So here I am, like a figure out of some ancient vision, and what am I doing? That's right, out of the billions of people I might have saved, I'm choosing the one I happen to know and like the best, and risking the lives of a couple of hundred good soldiers in order to do it. And if we get out of this alive, what will I do then? Spend the few years of life remaining to me, helping Peter Wiggin defeat Achilles so he can do exactly what Achilles is already so close to doing-unite humanity under the rule of one sick, ambitious marubo?

Sister Carlotta liked to quote from another biblical git-vanity, vanity, all is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun. A time to scatter rocks and a time to gather rocks together.

Well, as long as God didn't tell anybody what the rocks were for, I might as well leave the rocks and go get my friend, if I can.

As they approached Hyderabad, they picked up a lot of radio chatter. Tactical stuff from satrads, not just the net traffic you'd expect because of the Chinese surprise attack in Burma that had been triggered by Peter's essay. As they got closer, the onboard computers were able to distinguish the radio signatures of Chinese troops as well as Indian.

"Looks like Achilles' retrieval crew got here ahead of us," said Suriyawong.

"But no shooting," said Bean. "Which means they've already got to the planning room and they're holding the Battle Schoolers as hostages."

"You got it," said Suriyawong. "Three choppers on the roof."

"There'll be more on the ground, but let's complicate their lives and take out those three."

Virlomi had misgivings. "What if they think it's the Indian Army attacking and they kill the hostages?"

"Achilles is not so stupid he won't make sure who's doing the shooting before he starts using up his ticket home."

It was like target practice, and three missiles took out three choppers, just like that.

"Now get us onto blades and show the Thai markings," said Suriyawong.

It was, as usual, a sickening climb and drop before the blades took over. But Bean was used to the sense of clawing nausea and was able to notice, out the windows, that the Indian troops were cheering and waving.

"Oh, suddenly now we're the good guys," said Bean.

"I think we're just the not-quite-so-evil guys," said Suriyawong.

"I think you're taking irresponsible risks with the lives of my friends," said Virlomi.

Bean sobered at once. "Virlomi, I know Achilles, and the only way to keep him from killing your friends, just for spite, is to keep him worried and off balance. To give him no time to display his malice."

"I meant that if one of those missiles had gone astray," she said, "it could have hit the room they're in and killed them all."

"Oh, is that all you're worried about?" Bean said. "Virlomi, I trained these men. There are situations in which they might miss, but this was not one of them."

Virlomi nodded. "I understand. The confidence of the field commander. It's been a long time since I had a toon of my own."

A few choppers stayed aloft, watching the perimeter; most set down in front of the building where the planning room was located. Suriyawong had already briefed the company commanders he was taking into the building by satrad as they flew. Now he jumped from the chopper as soon as the door opened and, with Virlomi running behind him, he got his group moving, executing the plan.

At once, Bean's chopper lifted back up and, with another chopper, hopped the building to come down on the other side. This was where they found the two remaining Chinese helicopters, blades spinning. Bean had his pilot set down so the chopper's weapons were pointed at the sides of the two Chinese machines. Then he and the thirty men with him went out both doors as Chinese troops across the open space between them did the same.

Bean's other chopper remained airborne, waiting to see whether its missiles or the troops inside would be needed first.

The Chinese had Bean's troops outnumbered, but that wasn't really the issue. Nobody was shooting, because the Chinese wanted to get away alive, and there was no hope of that if shooting broke out, because the airborne chopper would simply destroy both the remaining Chinese machines and then it wouldn't matter what happened on the ground, they'd never get home and their mission would be a failure.

So the two little armies formed up just like regiments in the Napoleonic wars, neat little lines. Bean wanted to shout something like "fix bayonets" or "load"­but nobody was using muskets and besides, what interested him would be coming out the door of the building....

And there he was, rushing straight for the nearest chopper, gripping Petra by the arm and half-dragging her along. Achilles held a pistol down at his side. Bean wanted to have one of his sharpshooters him out, but he knew that then the Chinese would open fire and take Petra would certainly be killed. So he called out to Achilles.

Achilles ignored him. Bean knew what he was thinking-get inside the chopper while everybody's holding their fire, and then Bean would be helpless, unable to do anything to Achilles without also harming Petra.

So Bean spoke into his satrad and the hovering chopper did what the gunner was trained to do-fired a missile that blew up just beyond the nearer Chinese chopper. The machine itself blocked the blast so Petra and Achilles weren't hurt­but the chopper was rocked over onto its side and then, as the blades chewed to bits against the ground, it flipped over and over and smashed up against a barracks. A few soldiers slithered out, trying to drag out others with broken limbs or other injuries before the machine went up in flames.

Achilles and Petra now stood in the middle of the open space. The only remaining Chinese chopper was too far for him to run to. He did the only thing he could do, under the circumstances. He held Petra in front of him with a gun pointed to her head. It wasn't a move they taught you in Battle School. It was straight from the vids.

In the meantime, the Chinese officer in charge-a colonel, if Bean remembered correctly how to translate the rank insignia, which was a very high rank for a small-scale operation like this one-strode out with his men. Bean did not have to instruct him to stay far away from Achilles and Petra. The colonel would know that any move to get between Achilles and Bean's men would lead to shooting, since there was only a stalemate as long as Bean had the ability to kill Achilles the moment he harmed Petra.

Without looking at the soldiers near him, Bean said, "Who has a trank pistol?"

One was slapped into his open hand. Someone murmured, "Keep your hand on a real gun, too."

And someone else said, "I hope the Indian Army doesn't realize that Achilles doesn't have any Indian kids with him. They couldn't care less about an Armenian." Bean appreciated it when his men thought through the whole situation. No time for praise now, though.

He stepped away from his men and walked toward Achilles and Petra. As he did, he saw Suriyawong and Virlomi come out the door through which the Chinese colonel had just come. Suriyawong called out, "All secure. Loading. Achilles murdered only one of ours."

"One of 'ours'?" said Achilles. "When did Sayagi become one of yours? You mean that I can kill anybody else and you don't care, but touch a Battle School brat and I'm a murderer?"

"You're never taking off in that chopper with Petra," said Bean.

"I know I'm never taking off without her," said Achilles. "If I don't have her with me, you'll blow that chopper into bits so small they'd have to use a comb to gather them up."

"Then I guess I'll just have one of my sharpshooters kill you."

Petra smiled.

She was telling him yes, do it.

"Colonel Yuan-xi will then regard his mission as a failure, and he will kill as many of you as he can. Petra first."

Bean saw that the colonel had gotten his men on board the chopper-those who had come with him from the building and those who had deployed from the choppers when Bean first landed. Only he, Achilles, and Petra remained outside.

"Colonel," said Bean, "the only way this doesn't end in blood is if we can trust each other's word. I promise you that as long as Petra is alive, uninjured, and with me, you can take off safely with no interference from me or my strike force. Whether you have Achilles with you is of no importance to me."

Petra's smile vanished, replaced with a face that was an obvious mask of anger. She did not want Achilles to get away.

But she still hoped to live-that was why she was saying nothing, so Achilles wouldn't know that she was demanding his death, even at the cost of her own.

What she was ignoring was the fact that the Chinese commander had to meet the minimum conditions for mission success-he had to have Achilles with him when he left. If he didn't, a lot of people here would die, and for what? Achilles' worst deeds were already done. From here on, no one would ever trust his word on anything. Whatever power he got now would be by force and fear, not by deception. Which meant that he would be making enemies every day, driving people into the arms of his opponents.

He might still win more battles and more wars and he might even seem to triumph completely, but, like Caligula, he would make assassins out of the people closest to him. And when he died, men just as evil but perhaps not as crazy would take his place. Killing him now would not make that much difference to the world.

Keeping Petra alive, however, would make all the difference in the world to Bean. He had made the mistakes that killed Poke and Sister Carlotta. But he was going to make no mistakes today. Petra would live because Bean couldn't bear any other outcome. She didn't even get a vote on the matter.

The colonel was weighing the situation.

Achilles was not. "I'm moving to the chopper now. My fingers are pretty tight on this trigger. Don't make me flinch, Bean."

Bean knew what Achilles was thinking: Can I kill Bean at the last moment and still get away, or should I leave that pleasure for another time?

And that was an advantage for Bean, because his thinking was not clouded by thoughts of personal vengeance.

Except, he realized, that it was. Because he, too, was trying to think of some way to save Petra and still kill Achilles.

The colonel walked up closer behind Achilles before calling out his answer to Bean. "Achilles is the architect of a great Chinese victory, and he must come to Beijing to be received in honor. My orders say nothing about the Armenian."

"They'll never let us take off without her, you fool," said Achilles.

"Sir, I give you my word, my parole. Even though Achilles has already murdered a woman and a girl who did nothing but good for him, and deserves to die for his crimes, I will let him go and let you go."

"Then our missions do not conflict," said the colonel. "I agree to your terms, provided you also agree to care for any of my men who remain behind according to the rules of war."

"I agree," said Bean.

"I'm in charge of our mission," said Achilles, "and I don't agree."

"You are not in charge of our mission, sir," said the colonel.

Bean knew exactly what Achilles would do. He would take the gun away from Petra's head long enough to shoot the colonel. Achilles would expect this move to surprise people, but Bean was not surprised at all. His hand with the trank gun was already rising before Achilles even started to turn to the colonel.

But Bean was not the only one who knew what to expect from Achilles. The colonel had deliberately moved close enough to Achilles that as he swung the gun around, the colonel slapped the weapon out of Achilles' hand. At the same moment, with his other hand the colonel slapped Achilles' arm close to the elbow, and even though there seemed to be almost no force behind the blow, Achilles' arm bent sickeningly backward. Achilles cried out in pain and dropped to his knees, letting go of Petra. She immediately launched herself to the side, out of the way, and at that moment Bean fired the trank gun. He was able to adjust the aim at the last split second, and the tiny pellet struck Achilles' shirt with such force that even though the casing collapsed against the cloth, the tranquilizer blew right through the fabric and penetrated Achilles' skin. He collapsed immediately.

"It's only a tranquilizer," said Bean. "He'll be awake in six hours or so, with a headache."

The colonel stood there, not bending yet to even notice Achilles, his eyes still fixed on Bean. "Now there is no hostage. Your enemy is on the ground. How good is your word, sir, when the circumstance in which it was given goes away?"

"Men of honor," said Bean, "are brothers no matter what uniform they wear. You may put him aboard, and take off. I recommend that you fly in formation with us until we are south of the defenses around Hyderabad. Then you may fly your own course, and we'll fly ours."

"That is a wise plan," said the colonel.

He knelt and started to pick up Achilles' limp body. It was tricky work, and so Bean, small as he was, stepped forward to help by taking Achilles' legs.

Petra was on her feet by then, and when Bean glanced at her he could see that she was eyeing Achilles' pistol, which lay on the ground near her. Bean could almost read her mind. To kill Achilles with his own gun had to be tempting­and Petra had not given her word.

But before she could even move toward the pistol, Bean had his trank gun pointed at her. "You could also wake up in six hours with a headache," he said.

"No need," she said. "I know that I'm also bound by your word." And, without stooping for the gun, she came and helped Bean carry his end of Achilles' body.

They rolled Achilles through the wide door of the chopper. Soldiers inside the machine took him and carried him back, presumably to a place where he could be secured during flight maneuvers. The chopper was grossly overcrowded, but only with men-there were no supplies or heavy munitions, so it would fly as well as normal. It would simply be uncomfortable for the passengers.

"You don't want to ride home on that chopper," said Bean. "I invite you to ride with us."

"But you're not going where I'm going," said the colonel.

"I know this boy you have just taken aboard," said Bean. "Even if he doesn't remember what you did when he wakes up, someone will tell him someday, and once he knows, you'll be marked. He never forgets. He will certainly kill you."

"Then I will have died obeying my orders and fulfilling my mission," said the colonel.

"Full asylum," said Bean, "and a life spent helping liberate China and all other nations from the kind of evil he represents."

"I know that you mean to be kind," said the colonel, "but it hurts my soul to be offered such rewards for betraying my country."

"Your country is led by men without honor," said Bean. "And yet they are sustained in power by the honor of men like you. Who, then, betrays his country? No, we have no time for arguments. I only plant the idea so it will fester in your soul." Bean smiled.

The colonel smiled back. "Then you are a devil, sir, as we Chinese always knew you Europeans to be."

Bean saluted him. He returned the salute and got on board.

The chopper door closed.

Bean and Petra ran out of the downdraft as the Chinese machine rose up into the air. There it hovered as Bean ordered everyone into the one chopper that remained on the ground. Less than two minutes later, his chopper, too, rose up, and the Thai and Chinese machines flew together over the building, where they were joined by the other helijets of Bean's strike force as they rose up from the ground or converged from their watching points at the perimeter.

They flew together toward the south, slowly, on blades. No Indian weapon was fired at them. For the Indian officers no doubt knew that their best young military minds were being taken to far more safety than they could possibly have in Hyderabad, or anywhere in India, once the Chinese came in force.

Then Bean gave the order, and all his choppers rose up, cut the blades, and dropped as the jets came on and the blades folded back for the quick ride back to Sri Lanka.

Inside the chopper, Petra sat glumly in her straps. Virlomi was beside her, but they did not speak to each other.

"Petra," said Bean.

She did not look up.

"Virlomi found us, we did not find her. Because of her, we were able to come for you."

Petra still did not look up, but she reached out a hand and laid it on Virlomi's hands, which were clasped in her lap. "You were brave and good," said Petra. "Thank you for having compassion for me."

Then she looked up to meet Bean's gaze. "But I don't thank you, Bean. I was ready to kill him. I would have done it. I would have found a way."

"He's going to kill himself in the end," said Bean. "He's going to overreach himself, like Robespierre, like Stalin. Others will see his pattern and when they realize he's finally about to put them to the guillotine, they'll decide they've had enough and he will, most certainly, die."

"But how many will he kill along the way? And now your hands are stained with all their blood, because you loaded him onto that chopper alive. Mine, too."

"You're wrong," said Bean. "He is the only one responsible for his killings. And you're wrong about what would have happened if we had let him take you along. You would not have lived through that ride."

"You don't know that."

"I know Achilles. When that chopper rose to about twenty stories up, you would have been pushed out the door. And do you know why?"

"So you could watch," she said.

"No, he would have waited till I was gone," said Bean. "He's not stupid. He regards his own survival as far more important than your death."

"Then why would he kill me now? Why are you so sure?"

"Because he had his arm around you like a lover," said Bean. "Standing there with the gun to your head, he held you with affection. I think he meant to kiss you before he took you on board. He'd want me to see that."

"She would never let him kiss her," said Virlomi with disgust.

But Petra met Bean's gaze, and the tears in her eyes were a truer answer than Virlomi's brave words. She had already let Achilles kiss her. Just like Poke.

"He marked you," said Bean. "He loved you. You had power over him. After he didn't need you anymore as the hostage to keep me from killing him, you could not go on living."

Suriyawong shuddered. "What made him that way?"

"Nothing made him that way," said Bean. "No matter what terrible things happened in his life, no matter what dreadful hungers rose up from his soul, he chose to act on those desires, he chose to do the things he did. He's responsible for his own actions, and no one else. Not even those who saved his life."

"Like you and me today," said Petra.

"Sister Carlotta saved his life today," said Bean. "The last thing she asked me was to leave vengeance up to God."

"Do you believe in God?" asked Suriyawong, surprised.

"More and more," said Bean. "And less and less."

Virlomi took Petra's hands between hers and said, "Enough of blame and enough of Achilles. You're free of him. You can have whole minutes and hours and days in which you don't have to think of what he'll do to you if he hears what you say, and how you have to act when he might be watching. The only way he can hurt you now is if you keep watching him in your own heart."

"Listen to her, Petra," said Suriyawong. "She's a goddess, you know."

Virlomi laughed. "I save bridges and summon choppers."

"And you blessed me," said Suriyawong.

"I never did," said Virlomi.

"When you walked on my back," said Suriyawong. "My whole body is now the path of a goddess."

"Only the back part," said Virlomi. "You'll have to find someone else to bless the front."

While they bantered, half-drunk with success and liberty and the overwhelming tragedy they were leaving behind them, Bean watched Petra, saw the tears drop from her eyes onto her lap, longed to be able to reach out and touch them away from her eyes. But what good would that do? Those tears had risen up from deep wells of pain, and his mere touch would do nothing to dry them at their source. It would take time to do that, and time was the one thing that he did not have. If Petra knew happiness in her life­happiness, that precious thing that Mrs. Wiggin talked about-it would come when she shared her life with someone else. Bean had saved her, had freed her, not so he could have her or be part of her life, but so that he did not have to bear the guilt of her death as he bore the deaths of Poke and Carlotta. It was a selfish thing he did, in a way. But in another way, there would be nothing for himself at all from this day's work.

Except that when his death came, sooner rather than later, he might well look back on this day's work with more pride than anything else in his life. Because today he won. In the midst of all this terrible defeat, he had found a victory. He had cheated Achilles out of one of his favorite murders. He had saved the life of his dearest friend, even though she wasn't quite grateful yet. His army had done what he needed it to do, and not one life had been lost out of the two hundred men he had first been given. Always before he had been part of someone else's victory. But today, today he won.

To: Chamrajnagar%jawaharlal@ifcom.gov

From: PeterWiggin%freeworld@hegemon.gov

Re: Confirmation

Dear Polemarch Chamrajnagar,

Thank you for allowing me to reconfirm your appointment as Polemarch as my first official act. We both know that I was giving you only what you already had, while you, by accepting that reconfirmation as if it actually meant something, restored to the office of Hegemon some of the luster that has been torn from it by the events of recent months. There are many who feel that it is an empty gesture to appoint a Hegemon who leads only about a third of the human race and has no particular influence over the third that officially supports him. Many nations are racing to find some accommodation with the Chinese and their allies, and I live under the constant threat of having my office abolished as one of the first gestures they can make to win the favor of the new superpower. I am, in short, a Hegemon without hegemony.

And it is all the more remarkable that you would make this generous gesture toward the very individual that you once regarded as the worst of all possible Hegemons. The weaknesses in my character that you saw then have not magically vanished. It is only by comparison with Achilles, and only in a world where your homeland groans under the Chinese lash, that I begin to look like an attractive alternative or a source of hope instead of despair. But regardless of my weaknesses, I also have strengths, and I make you a promise:

Even though you are bound by your oath of office never to use the International Fleet to influence the course of events on Earth, except to intercept nuclear weapons or punish those who use them, I know that you are still a man of Earth, a man of India, and you care deeply what happens to all people, and particularly to your people. Therefore I promise you that I will devote the rest of my life to reshaping this world into one that you would be glad of, for your people, and for all people. And I hope that I succeed well enough, before one or the other of us dies, that you will be glad of the support you gave to me today.

Sincerely,

Peter Wiggin, Hegemon

Over a million Indians made it out of India before the Chinese sealed the borders. Out of a population of a billion and a half, that was far too few. At least ten times that million were transported over the next year, from India to the cold lands of Manchuria and the high deserts of Sinkiang. Among the transported ones was Tikal Chapekar. The Chinese gave no report to outsiders about the fate of him or any of the other "former oppressors of the Indian people." The same, on a far smaller scale, happened to the governing elites of Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

As if this vast redrawing of the world's map were not enough, Russia announced that it had joined China as its ally, and that it considered the nations of eastern Europe that were not loyal members of the New Warsaw Pact to be provinces in rebellion. Without firing a shot, Russia was able, simply by promising not to be as dreadful an overlord as China, to rewrite the Warsaw Pact until it was more or less the constitution of an empire that included all of Europe east of Germany, Austria, and Italy in the south, and east of Sweden and Norway in the north.

The weary nations of western Europe were quick to "welcome" the "discipline" that Russia would bring to Europe, and Russia was immediately given full membership in the European Community. Because Russia now controlled the votes of more than half the members of that community, it would require a constant tug of war to keep some semblance of independence, and rather than play that game, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and Portugal left the European Community. But even they took great pains to assure the Russian bear that this was purely over economic issues and they really welcomed this renewed Russian interest in the West.

America, which had long since become the tail to China's dog in matters of trade, made a few grumpy noises about human rights and then went back to business as usual, using satellite cartography to redraw the map of the world to fit the new reality and then sell the atlases that resulted. In sub-Saharan Africa, where India had once been their greatest single trading partner and cultural influence, the loss of India was much more devastating, and they loyally denounced the Chinese conquest even as they scrambled to find new markets for their goods. Latin America was even louder in their condemnation of all the aggressors, but lacking serious military forces, their bluster could do no harm. In the Pacific, Japan, with its dominant fleet, could afford to stand firm; the other island nations that faced China across various not-so-wide bodies of water had no such luxury.

Indeed, the only force that stood firm against China and Russia while facing them across heavily defended borders were the Muslim nations. Iran generously forgot how threateningly Pakistani troops had loomed along their borders in the month before India's fall, and Arabs joined with Turks in Muslim solidarity against any Russian encroachment across the Caucasus or into the vast steppes of central Asia. No one seriously thought that Muslim military might could stand for long against a serious attack from China, and Russia was only scarcely less dangerous, but the Muslims laid aside their grievances, trusted in Allah, and kept their borders bristling with the warning that this nettle would be hard to grasp.

This was the world as it was the day that Peter "Locke" Wiggin was named as the new Hegemon. China let it be known that choosing any Hegemon at all was an affront, but Russia was a bit more tolerant, especially because many governments that cast their vote for Wiggin did so with the public declaration that the office was more ceremonial than practical, a gesture toward world unity and peace, and not at all an attempt to roll back the conquests that had brought "peace" to an unstable world.

But privately, many leaders of the very same governments assured Peter that they expected him to do all he could to bring about diplomatic "transformations" in the occupied countries. Peter listened to them politely and said reassuring things, but he felt nothing but scorn for them-for without military might, he had no way of negotiating with anyone about anything.

His first official act was to reconfirm the appointment of Polemarch Chamrajnagar-an action which China officially protested as illegal because the office of Hegemon no longer existed, and while they would do nothing to interfere with Chamrajnagar's continued leadership of the Fleet, they would no longer contribute financially either to the Hegemony or the Fleet. Peter then confirmed Graff as Hegemony Minister of Colonization-and, again, because his work was offworld, China could do nothing more than cut off its contribution of funds.

But the lack of money forced Peter's next decision. He moved the Hegemony capital out of the former Netherlands and returned the Low Countries to self­government, which immediately put a stop to unrestricted immigration into those nations. He closed down most Hegemony services worldwide except for medical and agricultural research and assistance programs. He moved the main Hegemony offices to Brazil, which had several important assets:

First, it was a large enough and powerful enough country that the enemies of the Hegemony would not be quick to provoke it by assassinating the Hegemon within its borders.

Second, it was in the southern hemisphere, with strong economic ties to Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific, so that being there kept Peter within the mainstream of international commerce and politics.

And third, Brazil invited Peter Wiggin to come there. No one else did.

Peter had no delusions about what the office of Hegemon had become. He did not expect anyone to come to him. He went to them.

Which is why he left Haiti and crossed the Pacific to Manila, where Bean and his Thai army and the Indians they rescued had found temporary refuge. Peter knew that Bean was still angry at him, so he was relieved that Bean not only agreed to see him, but treated him with open respect when he arrived. His two hundred soldiers were crisply turned out to greet him, and when Bean introduced him to Petra, Suriyawong, and Virlomi and the other Indian Battle Schoolers, he phrased everything as if he were presenting his friends to a man of higher rank.

In front of all of them, Bean then made a little speech. "To His Excellency the Hegemon, I offer the service of this band of soldiersveterans of war, former opponents, and now, because of treachery, exiles from their homeland and brothers- and sisters-at-arms. This was not my decision, nor the decision of the majority. Each individual here was given the choice, and chose to make this offer of our service. We are few, but nations have found our service valuable before. We hope that we now can serve a cause that is higher than any nation, and whose end will be the establishment of a new and honorable order in the world."

Peter was surprised only by the formality of the offer, and the fact that it was made without any sort of negotiation beforehand. He also noticed that Bean had arranged to have cameras present. This would be news. So Peter made a brief, soundbite-oriented reply accepting their offer, praising their achievements, and expressing regret at the suffering of their people. It would play well-twenty seconds on the vids, and in full on the nets.

When the ceremonies were done, there was an inspection of their inventory-all the equipment they had been able to rescue from Thailand. Even their fighter­bomber pilots and patrol boat crews had managed to make their way from southern Thailand to the Philippines, so the Hegemon had an air force and a fleet. Peter nodded and commented gravely as he saw each item in the inventory-the cameras were still running.

Later, though, when they were alone, Peter finally allowed himself a rueful, self­mocking laugh. "If it weren't for you I'd have nothing at all," he said. "But to compare this to the vast fleets and air forces and armies that the Hegemon once commanded..."

Bean looked at him coldly. "The office had to be greatly diminished," he said, "before they'd have given it to you."

The honeymoon, apparently, was over. "Yes," Peter said, "that's true, of course."

"And the world had to be in a desperate condition, with the existence of the office of Hegemon in doubt."

"That, too, is true," said Peter. "And for some reason you seem to be angry about this."

"That's because, apart from the not-trivial matter of Achilles' penchant for killing people now and then, I fail to see much difference between you and him. You're both content to let any number of people suffer needlessly in order to advance your personal ambitions."

Peter sighed. "If that's all the difference that you see, I don't understand how you could offer your service to me."

"I see other differences, of course," said Bean. "But they're matters of degree, not of kind. Achilles makes treaties he never intends to keep. You merely write essays that might have saved nations, but you delay publishing them so that those nations will fall, putting the world in a position desperate enough that they would make you Hegemon."

"Your statement is true," said Peter, "only if you believe that earlier publication would have saved India and Thailand."

"Early in the war," said Bean, "India still had the supplies and equipment to resist Chinese attack. Thailand's forces were still fully dispersed and hard to find."

"But if I had published early in the war," said Peter, "India and Thailand would not have seen their peril, and they wouldn't have believed me. After all, the Thai government didn't believe you, and you warned them of everything."

"You're Locke," said Bean.

"Ah yes. Because I had so much credibility and prestige, nations would tremble and believe my words. Aren't you forgetting something? At your insistence, I had declared myself to be a teenage college student. I was still recovering from that, trying to prove in Haiti that I could actually govern. I might have had the prestige left to be taken seriously in India and Thailand­but I might not. And if I published too soon, before China was ready to act, China would simply have denied everything to both sides, the war would have proceeded, and then there would have been no shock value at all to my publication. I wouldn't have been able to trigger the invasion at exactly the moment you needed me to."

"Don't pretend that this was your plan all along."

"It was my plan," said Peter, "to withhold publication until it could be an act of power instead of an act of futility. Yes, I was thinking of my prestige, because right now the only power I have is that prestige and the influence it gives me with the governments of the world. It's a coin that is minted very slowly, and if spent ineffectively, disappears. So yes, I protect that power very carefully, and use it sparingly, so that later, when I need to have it, it will still exist."

Bean was silent.

"You hate what happened in the war," said Peter. "So do 1. It's possible-not likely, but possible-that if I had published earlier, India might have been able to mount a real resistance. They might still have been fighting now. Millions of soldiers might have been dying even as we speak. Instead, there was a clean, almost bloodless victory for China. And now the Chinese have to govern a population almost twice the size of their own, with a culture every bit as old and allabsorbing as their own. The snake has swallowed a crocodile, and the question is going to arise again and again-who is digesting whom? Thailand and Vietnam will be just as hard to govern, and even the Burmese have never managed to govern Burma. What I did saved lives. It left the world with a clear moral picture of who did the stabbing in the back, and who was stabbed. And it leaves China victorious and Russia triumphant-but with captive, angry populations to govern who will not stand with them when the final struggle comes. Why do you think China made a quick peace with Pakistan? Because they knew they could not fight a war against the Muslim world with Indian revolt and sabotage a constant threat. And that alliance between China and Russia-what a joke! Within a year they'll be quarreling, and they'll be back to weakening each other across that long Siberian border. To people who think superficially, China and Russia look triumphant. But I never thought you were a superficial thinker."

"I see all that," said Bean.

"But you don't care. You're still angry at me."

Bean said nothing.

"It's hard," said Peter, "to see how all of this seems to work to my advantage, and not blame me for profiteering from the suffering of others. But the real issue is, What am I going to be able to do, and what will I actually do, now that I'm nominally the leader of the world, and actually the administrator of a small tax base, a few international service agencies, and this military force you gave to me today? I did the few things that were in my power to shape events so that when I got this office, it would still be worth having."

"But above all, to get that office."

"Yes, Bean. I'm arrogant. I think I'm the only person who understands what to do and has what it takes to do it. I think the world needs me. In fact, I'm even more arrogant than you. Is that what this comes down to? I should have been humbler? Only you are allowed to assess your own abilities candidly and decide that you're the best man for a particular job?"

"I don't want the job."

"I don't want this job, either," said Peter. "What I want is the job where the Hegemon speaks, and wars stop, where the Hegemon can redraw borders and strike down bad laws and break up international cartels and bring all of humanity a chance for a decent life in peace and whatever freedom their culture will allow. And I'm going to get that job, by creating it step by step. Not only that, I'm going to do it with your help, because you want somebody to do that job, and you know, just as surely as I do, that I'm the only one who can do it."

Bean nodded, saying nothing.

"You know all that, and you're still angry with me."

"I'm angry with Achilles," said Bean. "I'm angry with the stupidity of those who refused to listen to me. But you're here, and they're not."

"It's more than that," said Peter. "If that's all it was, you would have talked yourself out of your wrath long before we had this conversation."

"I know," said Bean. "But you don't want to hear it."

"Because it will hurt my feelings? Let me make a stab at it, then. You're angry because every word from my mouth, every gesture, every expression on my face reminds you of Ender Wiggin. Only I'm not Ender, I'll never be Ender, you think Ender should be doing what I'm doing, and you hate me for being the one who made sure Ender got sent away."

"It's irrational," said Bean. "I know that. I know that by sending him away you saved his life. The people who helped Achilles try to kill me would have worked day and night to kill Ender without any prompting from Achilles at all. They would have feared him far more than they feared you or me. I know that. But you look and talk so much like him. And I keep thinking, if Ender had been here, he wouldn't have botched things the way I did."

"The way I read it, it's the other way around. If you hadn't been there with Ender, he would have botched it at the end. No, don't argue, it doesn't matter. What does matter is, the world's the way it is right now, and we're in a position where, if we move carefully, if we think through and plan everything just right, we can fix this. We can make it better. No regrets. No wishing we could undo the past. We just look to the future and work our zhupas off."

"I'll look to the future," said Bean, "and I'll help you all I can. But I'll regret whatever I want to regret."

"Fair enough," said Peter. "Now that we've agreed on that, I think you should know. I've decided to revive the office of Strategos."

Bean gave one hoot of derision. "You're putting that title on the commander of a force of two hundred soldiers, a couple of planes, a couple of boats, and an overheated company of strategic planners?"

"Hey, if I can be called Hegemon, you can take on a title like that."

"I notice you didn't want any vids of me getting that tide."

"No, I didn't," said Peter. "I don't want people to hear the news while looking at vids of a kid. I want them to learn of your appointment as Strategos while seeing stock footage of the victory over the Formics and hearing voice-overs about your rescue of the Indian Battle Schoolers."

"Well, fine," said Bean. "I accept. Do I get a fancy uniform?"

"No," said Peter. "At the rate you're growing lately, we'd have to pay for new ones too often, and you'd bankrupt us."

A thoughtful expression passed across Bean's face.

"What," said Peter, "did I offend again?"

"No," said Bean. "I was just wondering what your parents said, when you declared yourself to be Locke."

Peter laughed. "Oh, they pretended that they'd known it all along. Parents."

At Bean's suggestion, Peter located the headquarters of the Hegemony in a compound just outside the city of Ribeirao Preto in the state of Sao Paulo. There they would have excellent air connections anywhere in the world, while being surrounded by small towns and agricultural land. They'd be far from any government body. It was a pleasant place to live as they planned and trained to achieve the modest goal of freeing the captive nations while holding the line against any new aggressions.

The Delphiki family came out of hiding and joined Bean in the safety of the Hegemony compound. Greece was part of the Warsaw Pact now, and there was no going home for them. Peter's parents also came, because they understood that they would become targets for anyone wanting to get to Peter. He gave them both jobs in the Hegemony, and if they minded the disruption of their lives, they never gave a sign of it.

The Arkanians left their homeland, too, and came gladly to live in a place where their children would not be stolen from them. Suriyawong's parents had made it out of Thailand, and they moved the family fortune and the family business to Ribeirao Preto. Other Thai and Indian families with ties to Bean's army or the Battle School graduates came as well, and soon there were thriving neighborhoods where

Portuguese was rarely heard.

As for Achilles, month after month they heard nothing about him.

Presumably he got back to Beijing. Presumably, he was worming his way into power one way or another. But they allowed themselves, as the silence about him continued, to hope that perhaps the Chinese, having made use of him, now knew him well enough to keep him away from the reins of power.

On a cloudy winter afternoon in June, Petra walked through the cemetery in the town of Araraquara, only twenty minutes by train from Ribeirao Preto. She took care to make sure she approached Bean from a direction where he could see her coming. Soon she stood beside him, looking at a marker.

"Who is buried here?" she asked.

"No one," said Bean, who showed no surprise at seeing her. "It's a cenotaph."

Petra read the names that were on it.

Poke.

Carlotta.

There was nothing else.

"There's a marker for Sister Carlotta somewhere in Vatican City," said Bean. "But there was no body recovered that could actually be buried anywhere. And Poke was cremated by people who didn't even know who she was. I got the idea for this from Virlomi."

Virlomi had set up a cenotaph for Sayagi in the small Hindu cemetery that already existed in Ribeirao Preto. It was a bit more elaborate-it included the dates of his birth and death, and called him "a man of satyagraha."

"Bean," said Petra, "it's quite insane of you to come here. No bodyguard. This marker standing here so that assassins can set their sights before you show up."

"I know," said Bean.

"At least you could have invited me along."

He turned to her, tears in his eyes. "This is my place of shame," he said. "I worked very hard to make sure your name would not be here."

"Is that what you tell yourself? There's no shame here, Bean. There's only love. And that's why I belong here-with the other lonely girls who gave their hearts to you."

Bean turned to her, put his arms around her, and wept into her shoulder. He had grown, to stand tall enough for that. "They saved my life," he said. "They gave me life."

"That's what good people do," said Petra. "And then they die, every one of them. It's a damned shame."

He gave one short laugh-whether at her small levity or at himself, for weeping, she did not know. "Nothing lasts long, does it," said Bean.

"They're still alive in you."

"Who am I alive in?" said Bean. "And don't say you."

"I will if I want. You saved my life."

"They never had children, either one of them," said Bean. "No one ever held either Poke or Carlotta the way a man does with a woman, or had a baby with them. They never got to see their children grow up and have children of their own."

"By Sister Carlotta's choice," said Petra.

"Not Poke's."

"They both had you."

"That's the futility of it," said Bean. "The only child they had was me."

"So ... you owe it to them to carry on, to marry, to have more children who'll remember them both for your sake."

Bean stared off into space. "I have a better idea. Let me tell you about them. And you tell your children. Will you do that? If you could promise me that, then I think that I could bear all this, because they wouldn't just disappear from memory when I die."

"Of course I'll do that, Bean, but you're talking as if your life were already over, and it's just beginning. Look at you, you're getting along, you'll have a man's height before long, you'll-"

He touched her lips, gently, to silence her. "I'll have no wife, Petra. No babies."

"Why not? If you tell me you've decided to become a priest I'll kidnap you myself and get you out of this Catholic country."

"I'm not human, Petra," Bean replied. "And my species dies with me."

She laughed at his joke.

But as she looked into his eyes, she saw that it wasn't a joke at all. Whatever he meant by that, he really thought that it was true. Not human. But how could he think that? Of all the people Petra knew, who was more human than Bean?

"Let's go back home," Bean finally said, "before somebody comes along and shoots us just for loitering."

"Home," said Petra.

Bean only halfway understood. "Sorry it's not Armenia."

"No, I don't think Armenia is home either," she said. "And Battle School sure wasn't, nor Eros. This is home, though. I mean, Ribeirao Preto. But here, too. Because ... my family's here, of course, but..."

And then she realized what she was trying to say.

"It's because you're here. Because you're the one who went through it all with me. You're the one who knows what I'm talking about. What I'm remembering. Ender. That terrible day with Bonzo. And the day I fell asleep in the middle of a battle on Eros. You think you have shame." She laughed. "But it's OK to remember even that with you. Because you knew about that, and you still came to get me out."

"Took me long enough," said Bean.

They walked out of the cemetery toward the train station, holding hands because neither of them wanted to feel separate right now.

"I have an idea," said Petra.

"What?"

"If you ever change your mind-you know, about marrying and having babies­hang on to my address. Look me up."

Bean was silent for a long moment. "Ali," he finally said, "I get it. I rescued the princess, so now I can marry her if I want."

"That's the deal."

"Yeah, well, I notice you didn't mention it until after you heard my vow of celibacy."

"I suppose that was perverse of me."

"Besides, it's a cheat. Aren't I supposed to get half the kingdom, too?"

"I've got a better idea," she answered. "You can have it all."

AFTERWORD

Just as Speaker for the Dead was a different kind of novel from Ender's Game, so also is Shadow of the Hegemon a different kind of book from Ender's Shadow. No longer are we in the close confines of Battle School or the asteroid Eros, fighting a war against insectoid aliens. Now, with Hegemon, we are on Earth, playing what amounts to a huge game of Risk-only you have to play politics and diplomacy as well in order to get power, hold onto it, and give yourself a place to land if you lose it.

Indeed, the game that this novel most resembles is the computer classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is itself based on a Chinese historical novel, thus affirming the ties between history, fiction, and gaming. While history responds to irresistible forces and conditions (pace the extraordinarily illuminating book Guns, Germs, and Steel, which should be required reading by everyone who writes history or historical fiction, just so they understand the ground rules), in the specifics, history happens as it happens for highly personal reasons. The reasons European civilization prevailed over indigenous civilizations of the Americas consist of the implacable laws of history; but the reason why it was Cortez and Pizarro who prevailed over the Aztec and Inca empires by winning particular battles on particular days, instead of being cut down and destroyed as they might have been, had everything to do with their own character and the character and recent history of the emperors opposing them. And it happens that it is the novelist, not the historian, who has the freer hand at imagining what causes individual human beings to do the things they do.

Which is hardly a surprise. Human motivation cannot be documented, at least not with any kind of finality. After all, we rarely understand our own motivations, and so, even when we write down what we honestly believe to be our reasons for making the choices we make, our explanation is likely to be wrong or partly wrong or at least incomplete. So even when a historian or biographer has a wealth of information at hand, in the end he still has to make that uncomfortable leap into the abyss of ignorance before he can declare why a person did the things he did. The French Revolution inexorably led to anarchy and then tyranny for comprehensible reasons, following predictable paths. But nothing could have predicted Napoleon himself, or even that a single dictator of such gifts would emerge.

Novelists who write about Great Leaders, however, too often fall into the opposite trap. Able to imagine personal motivations, the people who write novels rarely have the grounding in historical fact or the grasp of historical forces to set their plausible characters into an equally plausible society. Most such attempts are laughably wrong, even when written by people who have actually been involved in the society of movers and shakers, for even those caught up in the maelstrom of politics are rarely able to see through the trees well enough to comprehend the forest. (Besides, most political or military novels by political or military leaders tend to be self-serving and self­justifying, which makes them almost as unreliable as books written by the ignorant.) How likely is it that someone who took part in the Clinton administration's immoral decision to launch unprovoked attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan in the late summer of 1998 would be able to write a novel in which the political exigencies that led to these criminal acts are accurately recounted? Anyone in a position to know or guess the real interplay of human desires among the major players will also be so culpable that it will be impossible for him to tell the truth, even if he is honest enough to attempt it, simply because the people involved were so busy lying to themselves and to each other throughout the process that everyone involved is bound to be snow-blind.

In Shadow of the Hegemon, I have the advantage of writing a history that hasn't happened, because it is in the future. Not thirty million years in the future, as with my Homecoming books, or even three thousand years in the future, as with the trilogy of Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, but rather only a couple of centuries in the future, after nearly a century of international stasis caused by the Formic War. In the future history posited by Hegemon, nations and peoples of today are still recognizable, though the relative balance among them has changed. And I have both the perilous freedom and the solemn obligation to attempt to tell my characters' highly personal stories as they move (or are moved) amid the highest circles of power in the governing and military classes of the world.

If there is anything that can be called my "life study," it is precisely this subject area: great leaders and great forces shaping the interplay of nations and peoples throughout history. As a child, I would put myself to sleep at night imagining a map of the world as it existed in the late fifties, just as the great colonial empires were beginning to grant independence, one by one, to the colonies that had once made up those great swathes of British pink and French blue across Africa and southern Asia. I imagined all those colonies as free countries, and, choosing one of them or some other relatively small nation, I would imagine alliance, unifications, invasions, conquests, until all the world was united under one magnanimous, democratic government. Cincinnatus and George Washington, not Caesar or Napoleon, were my models. I read Machiavelli's The Prince and Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but I also read Mon-non scripture (most notably the Book of Mormon stories of the generals Gideon, Moroni, Helaman, and Gidgiddoni, and Doctrine and Covenants section 121) and the Old and New Testaments, all the while trying to imagine how one might govern well when law gives way to exigency, and the circumstances under which war becomes righteous.

I don't pretend that the imaginings and studies of my life have brought me to great answers, and you will find no such answers in Shadow of the Hegemon. But I do believe I understand something of the workings of the world of government, politics, and war, both at their best and at their worst. I have sought the borderline between strength and ruthlessness, between ruthlessness and cruelty, and at the other extreme, between goodness and weakness, between weakness and betrayal. I have pondered how it is that some societies are able to get young men to kill and die with fervor trumping fear, and yet others seem to lose their will to survive or at least their will to do the things that make survival possible. And Shadow of the Hegemon and the two remaining books in this long tale of Bean, Petra, and Peter are my best attempt to use what I have learned in a tale in which great forces, large populations, and individuals of heroic if not always virtuous character combine to give shape to an imaginary, but I hope believable, history.

I am crippled in this effort by the factor that real life is rarely plausible-we believe that people would or could do these things only because we have documentation. Fiction, lacking that documentation, dares not be half so implausible. On the other hand, we can do what history never can-we can assign motive to human behavior, which cannot be refuted by any witness or evidence. So, despite doing my utmost to be truthful about how history happens, in the end I must depend on the novelist's tools. Do you care about this person, or that one? Do you believe such a person would do the things I say they do, for the reasons I assign?

History, when told as epic, often has the thrilling grandeur of Dvorak or Smetana, Borodin or Mussorgsky, but historical fiction must also find the intimacies and dissonances of the delicate little piano pieces of Satie and Debussy. For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events. Tchaikowsky can carry me away, but I tire quickly of the large effect, which feels so hollow and false on the second hearing. Of Satie I never tire, for his music is endlessly surprising and yet perfectly satisfying. If I can bring off this novel in Tchaikowsky's terms, that is well and good; but if I can also give you moments of Satie, I am far happier, for that is the harder and, ultimately, more rewarding task.

Besides my lifelong study of history in general, two books particularly influenced me during the writing of Shadow of the Hegemon. When I saw Anna and the King, I became impatient with my own ignorance of real Thai history, and so found David K. Wyatt's Thailand: A Short History (Yale, 1982, 1984). Wyatt writes clearly and convincingly, making the history of the Thai people both intelligible and fascinating. It is hard to imagine a nation that has been more lucky in the quality of its leaders as Thailand and its predecessor kingdoms, which managed to survive invasions from every direction and European and Japanese ambitions in Southeast Asia, all the while maintaining its own national character and remaining, more than many kingdoms and oligarchies, responsive to the needs of the Thai people. (I followed Wyatt's lead in calling the pre-Siamese language and the people who spoke it, in lands from Laos to upper Burma and southern China, "Tai," reserving "Thai" for the modem language and kingdom that bear that name.)

My own country once had leaders comparable to Siam's Mongkut and Chulalongkorn, and public servants as gifted and selfless as many of Chulalongkorn's brothers and nephews, but unlike Thailand, America is now a nation in decline, and my people have little will to be well led. America's past and its resources make it a major player for the nonce, but nations of small resources but strong will can change the course of world history, as the Huns, the Mongols, and the Arabs have shown, sometimes to devastating effect, and as the people of the Ganges have shown far more pacifically.

Which brings me to the second book, Lawrence James's Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (Little, Brown, 1997). Modem Indian history reads like one long tragedy of good, or at least bold, intentions leading to disaster, and in Shadow of the Hegemon I consciously echoed some of the themes I found in James's book.

As always, I relied on others to help me with this book by reading the first draft of each chapter to give me some idea whether I had wrought what I intended. My wife, Kristine; my son Geoffrey; and Kathy H. Kidd and Erin and Phillip Absher were my most immediate readers, and I thank them for helping prevent many a moment of inclarity or ineffectiveness.

The person most influential in giving this book the shape it has, however, is the aforementioned Phillip Absher, for when he read the first version of a chapter in which Petra was rescued from Russian captivity and united with Bean, he commented that I had built up her kidnapping so much that it was rather disappointing how easily the problem turned out to be resolved. I had not realized how high I had raised expectations, but I could see that he was right-that her easy release was not only a breaking of an implied promise with the reader, but also implausible under the circumstances. So instead of her kidnapping being an early event in a very involved story, I realized that it could and should provide the overarching structure of the entire novel, thus splitting what was to be one novel into two. As the story of Han Qing-jao took over Xenocide and caused it to become two books, so also the story of Petra took over this, Bean's second book, and caused there to be a third, Shadow of Death (which I may extend to the longer phrase from the Twenty-third Psalm, The Valley of the Shadow of Death; it would never do to become tied to a title too early). The book originally planned to be third will now be the fourth, Shadow of the Giant. All because Phillip felt a bit disappointed and, just as importantly, said so, causing me to think again about the structure I had unconsciously created in subversion of my conscious plans.

I rarely write two novels at once, but I did this time, going back and forth between Shadow of the Hegemon and Sarah, my historical novel about the wife of Abraham (Shadow Mountain, 2000). The novels sustained each other in odd ways, each of them dealing with history during times of chaos and transformation-like the one the world is embarking upon at the time of this writing. In both stories, personal loyalties, ambitions, and passions sometimes shape the course of the history and sometimes surf upon history's wave, trying merely to stay just ahead of the breaking crest. May all who read these books find their own ways to do the same. It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.

As always, I have relied upon Kathleen Bellamy and Scott Allen to help keep communications open between me and my readers, and many who visited and took part in my online commun (http.//www.hatrack.com, http.//www.frescopix.com, and http.//www.nauvoo.com) helped me, often in ways they did not realize.

Many writers produce their art from a maelstrom of domestic chaos and tragedy. I am fortunate enough to write from within an island of peace and love, created by my wife, Kristine, my children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, and Zina, and good and dear friends and family who surround us and enrich our lives with their good will, kind help, and happy company. Perhaps I would write better were my life more miserable, but I have no interest in performing the experiment.

In particular, though, I write this book for my second son, Charlie Ben, who wordlessly has given great gifts to all who know him. Within the small community of his family, of school friends at Gateway Education Center, and of church friends in the Greensboro Summit Ward, Charlie Ben has given and received much friendship and love without uttering a word, as he patiently endures his pain and limitations, gladly receives the kindness of others, and generously shares his love and joy with all who care to receive it. Twisted by cerebral palsy, his body movements may look strange and disturbing to strangers, but to those willing to look more closely, a young man of beauty, humor, kindness, and joy can be found. May we all learn to see past such outward signs, and show our true selves through all barriers, however opaque they seem. And Charlie, who will never hold this book in his own hands or read it with his own eyes, will nevertheless hear it read to him by loving friends and family members. So to you, Charlie, I say: I am proud of all you do with your life, and glad to be your father; though you deserved a better one, you have been generous enough to love the one you have.