Orson Card - Shadow of the Giant

"So here's the key question," said Rackham. "It's the information I came here to get."

"I'm dying to hear."

"How long are you going to need Bean?"

Peter thought about that one for a while. "I've had to make my plans knowing that he was going to die. Or, once you made your offer, leave. So the answer is, as long as I have him, of course I'll use him, either to intimidate would-be enemies, or to command my forces when we go to war. But if he dies or leaves, I can make do. My plans don't depend on having Bean."

"So if he left in three months."

"Rackham, have you already found his other children? Is that what you're saying? Have you found them and you aren't telling him and Petra because you think I need Bean?"

"Not all of them."

"You're cold. You're such bastards," said Peter. "You're still using children as your tools."

"Yes," said Rackham. "We're bastards. But we mean well. Just like you."

"Give Bean and Petra their babies. And save his life, if you can. He's a good man who deserves better than to have you toy with him any longer."

PAPERS

From: The Impaled One

To: HonestAbe%Lincoln@RailSplitter.org/WriteToTheAuthor

Re: God help me

Sometimes you give advice assuming that no one will take it. I just hope the man upstairs will forgive me and still find a place for me. Meanwhile, tell the big guy he's got to do something about the cup I broke.

From: PeterWiggin%private@hegemon.com

To: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

Fwd: Re: God help me

Dear Hyrum,

As you'll see from below, our Slavic friend has apparently offered suggestions to his government that they actually took, and he regrets it. Assuming that you're the guy upstairs, I would guess this open encryption suggests he wants out. My sources last put him in Florida but if they're watching him closely, they would have moved him to Idaho.

As for the cup he broke, I think he means that instead of Russia looking for a chance to attack Alai, they've made a deal with the Muslim League and while China looks south to fight India, Russia is going to move on Han Tzu from the north while the Turks move from the west, the Indonesians from Taiwan, and Virlomi's insane invasion will go on over the mountains. Not so insane now.

However, on the chance that by "the big guy" Russian Boy meant somebody other than "the man upstairs," he could only mean a certain giant we both know. I'll confer with him and Mrs. Giant about what, if anything, we can do to deal with the situation.

Peter

Alai had given his orders, and now he was going to make sure he was out of Hyderabad when they were carried out. The Caliph could not be tainted with the arrest of his own wife.

But the Caliph could not be ruled by her, either. Alai knew that the wazirs of his council hated her; if he did not have her arrested by men loyal to him, then she would certainly be killed.

Later, after things had settled down, after she had regained her senses and stopped thinking she was unstoppable, he would take her out of prison. He could not release her in India—that was out of the question. Maybe Graff would take her. She wasn't one of Ender's Jeesh, but by the same reasoning Graff had used in his invitation, the world would certainly be a safer place with her gone from it, while a colony might be lucky to have someone of such ability and ambition at its head.

Meanwhile, without Virlomi there was no reason for him to govern from Hyderabad. He would continue to respect his treaty with India and withdraw his forces. Let them try to rebuild without Virlomi's madness trying to throw them prematurely into war. India would not be in shape to mount a meaningful military campaign against anything more substantial than a flock of starlings for many years to come.

Alai would spend the next few years putting Islam's house in order and trying to forge a real nation out of this mishmash that history had left for him to deal with. If Syrians and Iraqis and Egyptians couldn't get along with each other and despised each other the moment they heard the other's accent, how could anyone expect Moroccans and Persians and Uzbeks and Malays to see the world in the same way just because a muezzin called them to prayer?

Besides, he had to deal with the stateless peoples—the Kurds, the Berbers, half the nomad tribes of ancient Bactria. Alai knew perfectly well that these Muslims would not follow a Caliph who kept the status quo—not when Peter Wiggin was tempting revolutionaries everywhere with his promise of statehood and the examples of Runa and Nubia.

We brought Nubia on ourselves, thought Alai. The ancient Muslim contempt for blackest Africa still seethed under the surface; if Alai had not been a member of Ender's Jeesh, it would have been inconceivable for him, as a black African, to be named Caliph. It was in Sudan, where the races met face to face, that the ugliness had emerged with so much virulence. The rest of Islam should have disciplined Sudan long ago. And now they all paid the price, with the humiliation of Sudan at the hands of the FPE.

So we have to give the Kurds and Berbers their own governments. Real ones, not sham "autonomous regions." That would not be popular in Morocco and Iraq and Turkey, Alai knew. That's why it was stupid in the extreme to imagine embarking on wars of conquest when there was no peace or unity inside the world of Islam.

Alai would govern from Damascus. It was far more central. He would be surrounded by Muslim culture instead of Hindu. It would be a civilian-centered government, not an obvious military dictatorship. And the world would see that Islam was not interested in conquering the world. That Caliph Alai had already liberated more people from oppressive conquerors than Peter Wiggin ever could.

As Alai left his office, two of the guards fell in step beside him. Ever since Virlomi simply walked into his office the day they got married, Alamandar had insisted that it not be so easy to walk into highly sensitive areas of the compound. "We are in occupied enemy country, my Caliph," he had said, and he was right.

Still, there was something that made Alai uneasy about having to be accompanied by guards as he moved about the compound. It felt wrong. The Caliph should be able to move among his own people with perfect trust and openness.

As Alai stepped through the door into the parking garage, two more guards joined the two who had walked with him from upstairs. His limousine sat idling at the curb. The back door opened.

He saw someone jogging toward him from among the parked cars.

It was Ivan Lankowski. Alai had rewarded him for his loyal service by putting him in charge of the administration of the Turkish nations of central Asia. What was he doing here? Alai had not called him back from service, and Ivan had not written or called about coming.

Ivan reached into his jacket. Where a gun would be, if he was armed with a shoulder holster.

And he would be armed; he had carried a gun for too many years to be comfortable without one now.

Alamandar got out of the open back door of the limo. As he rose to his feet, he shouted at the guards. "Shoot him, you fools! He's going to kill the Caliph!"

Ivan's gun was out. He fired, and the guard to Alai's left dropped like a rock. The sound was strange—the barrel had a silencer, but Alai was close to being directly in front of it, so it wasn't so much silenced as shaped.

I should drop to the ground, thought Alai. To save my life, I should get out of the line of fire. But he couldn't take the danger seriously. He didn't feel as though he were in danger at all.

The other guards had their guns out now. Ivan shot another one, but then the bullets—not silenced—flew in the other direction, and Ivan fell to the ground. His gun did not slip from his hand; he maintained his grip on it to the end of his life.