Your love is misplaced, thought Randi. Only one man was pure in his embrace of power, and that was my Achilles.
And to one woman who glared at her with special ferocity, Randi pointed to baby Achilles's diaper and made a face. The woman at once relaxed her grimace. Of course, the baby had messed himself, a woman had to take care of her baby even before she heard the words of the Caliph.
If the Caliph cannot stand against Peter Wiggin, then there is nowhere on Earth for me to raise my son.
She walked the rest of the way to the Metro as the rain came down harder and harder. Her umbrella did its job, though, and the baby stayed dry. Then she was in the Metro station and the rain had stopped.
That's how it will be in space. All the sheltering of this baby will be needless then. I can put away the umbrella and he will have nothing to fear. And on the new world, he can walk in the open, in the light of a new sun, like the free spirit he was born to be.
When he returns to Earth, he will be a great man, towering over these moral dwarfs.
By then, Peter Wiggin will be dead, like Julian Delphiki. That's the only disappointment--that my son will never be able to face his father's murderers directly.
24
SACRIFICE
From: Mosca%[email protected]
To: Graff%[email protected]
Re: My ticket
Just when things were getting interesting here on Earth, I keep getting this nagging feeling that you were right. I hate it when that happens.
They came to me today, excited as babies. Petra took Moscow with a ragtag army traveling by passenger train! Han Tzu wiped out the entire Russian Army without taking more than a few dozen casualties! Bean was able to decoy the Turkish forces toward Armenia and keep them from getting involved in China! And of course Bean also gets the credit for Suriyawong's victory in China--everybody wants to assign all glory to the boys and girl of Ender's Jeesh.
You know what they wanted from me?
I'm supposed to conquer Taiwan. No joke. I'm supposed to draw up the plans. Because, you see, my poor little ragtag island nation has me, Jeeshboy, and that makes them a great power! How dare those Muslim troops remain on Taiwan!
I pointed out that now that Han Tzu had won against the Russians and the Muslims probably wouldn't dare attack, he'd probably be looking to put Taiwan back in his fold. And even if he didn't, did they really think Peter Wiggin would sit idly by while the Philippines committed an act of unprovoked aggression against Taiwan?
They wouldn't listen. It was: Do as you're told, genius boy.
So what's left for me, Hyrum? (I feel so wicked calling you by your first name.) Do as Vlad did, and draw up their plans, and let them fall into their own pit? Do as Alai did and repudiate them openly and call for revolution? (That is what he did, isn't it?) Or do as Han did and stage an internal coup and become Emperor of the Philippines and Master of the Tagalog-Speaking World?
I don't want to leave my home. But there's no peace for me on Earth. I'm not sure I want the burden of running a colony. But at least I won't be drawing up blueprints for death and oppression. Just don't put me in the same colony with Alai. He thinks he's so the man because he's the successor of the Prophet.
Even the tanks had been washed downstream, some of them for kilometers. Where the Russians had been spreading out for their offensive against Han Tzu's forces on the high ground, there was nothing, not a sign that they had been there.
Not a sign that the villages and fields had been there either.
It was a muddy version of the moon. Except for a couple of deep-rooted trees, there was nothing. It would take a long time and a lot of work to restore this land.
But now there was work to do. First, they had to glean the survivors, if there were any, from the countryside downstream. Second, they had to clean up the corpses and gather up the tanks and other vehicles--and, most important, the live armaments.
And Han Tzu had to swing a large part of his army north, to retake Beijing and sweep away whatever remnants of the Russian invasion might be left behind. Meanwhile, the Turks might decide to come back.
The work of war wasn't over yet.
But the grinding, bloody campaign he had feared, the one that would tear China apart and bleed a generation to death, that had been averted. Both here in the north and in the south as well.
And then what? Emperor of China indeed. What would the people expect? Now that he had won this great victory, was he supposed to go back and subjugate the Tibetans again? Force the Turkic-speakers of Xinjiang back under the Chinese heel? Spill Chinese blood on the beaches of Taiwan to satisfy old claims that the Chinese had some inherent right to rule over the racially-Malay majority on that island? And then invade any nation that mistreated its Chinese minorities? Where would it stop? In the jungles of Papua? Back in India? Or at the old western border of Genghis's empire, the lands of the Golden Horde on the steppes of Ukraine?
What frightened him most about these scenarios was that he knew he could do it. He knew that with China he had a people with the intelligence, the vigor, the resources, and unified will--everything a ruler needed to go out into the world and make everything he saw his own. And because it was possible, there was a part of him that wanted to play it out, see where this path led.
I know where it leads, thought Han Tzu. It leads to Virlomi leading her pathetic army of half-armed volunteers to certain death. It leads to Julius Caesar bleeding to death on the floor of the Senate, muttering about how he was betrayed. It leads to Adolf and Eva dead in an underground bunker while their empire crumbles in explosions above their corpses. Or it leads to Augustus, casting about him for a successor, only to realize that it all has to be handed over to his revolting pervert of a...stepson? What was Tiberius, really? A sad statement about how empires are inevitably led. Because what rises to the top in an empire are the bureaucratic infighters, the assassins, or the warlords.