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 field 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 realize 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 realized 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, cornerwise 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.