Petra laughed. “You have the cheek to ask us to help you, when you’re cutting off funding for our search?”

  “You see? You immediately recognized that your search was not contributing.”

  “You’re searching, too,” said Bean. “To find the virus.”

  “If it exists,” said Peter. “In all likelihood, Volescu is teasing us, and the virus doesn’t actually work and hasn’t been dispersed.”

  “So you’re going to bet the future of the human race on that?”

  “No I’m not,” said Peter. “But without a budget for it, it’s beyond our reach. However, it is not beyond the reach of the International Fleet.”

  “You’re turning it over to them?”

  “I’m turning Volescu over to them. And they’re going to continue the research into the virus he developed and where he might have dispersed it, if he did.”

  “The I.F. can’t operate on Earth.”

  “They can if they’re acting against an alien threat. If Volescu’s virus works, and it’s released on Earth, it would create a new species designed to completely replace humanity in a single generation. The Hegemon has issued a secret finding that Volescu’s virus constitutes an alien invasion, which the I.F. has kindly agreed to track down and…repel for us.”

  Bean laughed. “Well, it seems we think alike.”

  “Really?” said Peter. “Oh, you’re just flattering me.”

  “I already turned over our search to the Ministry of Colonization. And we both know that Graff is really functioning as a branch of the I.F.”

  Peter regarded him calmly. “So you knew I’d have to cut the budget for your search.”

  “I knew that you didn’t have the resources no matter how much budget you have. Ferreira was doing his best, but ColMin has better software.”

  “Well, everything’s working out happily for everyone, then,” said Peter, standing up to go.

  “Even for Ender,” said Bean.

  “Your baby’s a lucky little boy,” said Peter, “to have such attentive parents.” And he was out the door.

  Volescu looked tired when Bean went to see him. Old. Confinement wasn’t good for him. He was not suffering physically, but he seemed to be growing wan as a plant kept in a closet without sun.

  “Promise me something,” said Volescu.

  “What?” asked Bean.

  “Something. Anything. Bargain with me.”

  “The one thing you want,” said Bean, “you will never have again.”

  “Only because you’re vindictive,” said Volescu. “Ungrateful—you exist because I made you, and you keep me in this box.”

  “It’s a good-sized room. It’s air-conditioned. Compared to the way you treated my brothers….”

  “They were not legally—”

  “And now you have my babies hidden away. And a virus with the potential to destroy the human race—”

  “Improve it—”

  “Erase it. How can you be given your freedom again? You combine grandiosity with amorality.”

  “Rather like Peter Wiggin, whom you serve so faithfully. His little toad.”

  “The word is ‘toady,’” said Bean.

  “Yet here you are, visiting me. Could it be that Julian Delphiki, my dear half-nephew, has a problem I could help him with?”

  “Same questions as before,” said Bean.

  “Same answer,” said Volescu. “I have no idea what happened to your missing embryos.”

  Bean sighed. “I thought you might want a chance to square things with me and Petra before you leave this Earth.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Volescu. “You’re threatening me with the death penalty?”

  “No,” said Bean. “You’re simply…leaving Earth. Peter is turning you over to the I.F. On the theory that your virus is an alien invasion.”

  “Only if you’re an alien invasion,” said Volescu.

  “But I am,” said Bean. “I’m the first of a race of short-lived giant geniuses. Think how much larger a population the Earth can sustain when the average age at death is eighteen.”

  “You know, Bean, there’s no reason for you to die young.”

  “Really? You have the antidote?”

  “Nobody needs an antidote to destiny. Death from giantism comes from the strain on your heart, trying to pump so much blood through so many kilometers of arteries and veins. If you get away from gravity, your heart won’t be overtaxed and you won’t die.”

  “You think I haven’t thought of that?” said Bean. “I’ll still continue to grow.”

  “So you get large. The I.F. can build you a really big ship. A colony ship. You can gradually fill it up with your protoplasm and bones. You’d live for years, tied to the walls of the ship like a balloon. An enormous Gulliver. Your wife could come visit you. And if you get too big, well, there’s always amputation. You could become a being of pure mind. Fed intravenously, what need would you have of belly and bowels? Eventually, all you really need is your brain and spine, and they need never die. A mind eternally growing.”

  Bean stood up. “Is that what you created me for, Volescu? To be a limbless crippled monster out in space?”

  “Silly boy,” said Volescu, “to ordinary humans you already are a monster. Their worst nightmare. The species that will replace them. But to me, you’re beautiful. Even tethered to an artificial habitat, even limbless, trunkless, voiceless, you’d be the most beautiful creature alive.”

  “And yet you came within one toilet-tank lid of killing me and burning my body.”

  “I didn’t want to go to jail.”

  “Yet here you are,” said Bean. “And your next prison is out in space.”

  “I can live like Prospero, refining my arts in solitude.”

  “Prospero had Ariel and Caliban,” said Bean.

  “Don’t you understand?” said Volescu. “You’re my Caliban. And all your little children—they’re my Ariels. I’ve spread them over the earth. You’ll never find them. Their mothers have been taught well. They’ll mate, they’ll reproduce before their giantism becomes obvious. Whether my virus works or not, your children are my virus.”

  “So that’s what Achilles plotted?”

  “Achilles?” Volescu laughed. “That bloody-handed little moron? I told him your babies were dead. That’s all he wanted. Fool.”

  “So they’re not dead.”

  “All alive. All implanted. By now, perhaps, some of them born, since those with your abilities will be born two months premature.”

  “You knew that and didn’t tell us?”

  “Why should I? The delivery was safe, wasn’t it? The baby was mature enough to breathe and function on its own?”

  “What else do you know?”

  “I know that everything will work out. Julian, look at yourself, man! You escaped at the age of one. Which means that seventeen months after conception, you were able to survive without parents. I don’t have even the tiniest worry about the health of your babies, and neither should you. They don’t need you, because you didn’t need anybody. Let them go. Let them replace the old species, bit by bit, over the generations to come.”

  “No,” said Bean, “I love the old species. And I hate what you did to me.”

  “Without ‘what I did to you,’ all you’d be is Nikolai.”

  “My brother is a wonderful person. Kind. And very smart.”

  “Very smart, but not as smart as you. Would you really trade with him? Would you really like to be as dull-witted as he is, compared to you?”

  Whereupon Bean left, having no answer to Volescu’s last question.

  12

  ALLAHU AKBAR

  From: Graff%pilgrimage@colmin.gov

  To: Borommakot%pinto@IComeAnon.com

  Forwarded and Posted by IcomeAnon

  Encrypted using code ********

  Decrypted using code ***********

  Re: Investment Counselor

  Your idea of converting the Fantasy Game software into an investment counselor is going surprisingly well. We haven’t had time to do more than short-term testing, but so far it has outpicked all the experts. We are paying Ender’s pension funds to it. As you suggested, we are making sure that all investments are under false identities; we are also making sure the software is hooked widely over the nets in endlessly self-varying forms. It will be effectively untraceable and unkillable unless someone is making a systematic international effort to wipe it out, which is unlikely to happen as long as no one suspects it’s there.

  Ender will have no need of this money on his colony, and he’ll do a better job if he’s not aware that it’s there. The first time he enters the nets after his subjective twenty-first birthday, the software will reveal itself to him along with the extent of his investments. Given the amount of time in travel alone, Ender will come of age with a noticeable fortune. Considerably more, I might add, than even the most optimistic projections of the value of Hegemony bonds,

  But Ender’s finances are not an emergency, and your children are.

  A different team is tweaking the database your Ferreira sent us so it yields us more useful information. It involves a lot of additional research, not by raw data-seeks, but by individual operators trawling various medical, voting, tax, real estate, moving company, transportation and other databases, some of them not legally available. Instead of getting thousands of positives, of which none is likely to be useful, we are now getting hundreds of positives of which some might actually go somewhere.

  Sorry it takes time, but once we get a decent positive, we have to check it out, often with landside personnel. And for obvious reasons, we don’t have many of those to work with.

  Meanwhile, I suggest you keep in mind that our deal depends on your making Peter Hegemon in fact as well as name before you go. You asked me what my standard of success would be. You can go when: Peter has firm control over more than 50% of the world’s population, or Peter has sufficient military force that he is assured of victory whether or not any potential opponent is led by Battle School graduates.

  Therefore: Yes, Bean, we expect you to go to Rwanda. We are your best hope for your and your children’s survival, and you are our best hope for assuring Peter will prevail and achieve unity and general peace. Your task begins with getting Peter that irresistible military force, and our task begins with finding your babies.

  Like you, I hope both our tasks turn out to be achievable.

  Alai had thought that once he took control of the complex in Damascus, he’d be free to rule as Caliph.

  It didn’t take long to learn otherwise.

  All the men in his palace complex, including his bodyguards, obeyed him implicitly. But as soon as he tried to leave, even to ride around in Damascus, those he trusted most would begin to plead with him. “It’s not safe,” Ivan Lankowski would say. “When you got rid of the people controlling you here, it panicked their friends. And their friends include those who are commanding our armies everywhere.”

  “They followed my plan in the war,” said Alai. “I thought they were loyal to the Caliph.”

  “They were loyal to victory,” said Ivan. “Your plan was brilliant. And you…were in Ender’s Jeesh. His closest friend. Of course they followed your plan.”

  “So they believed in me from Battle School, but not as Caliph.”

  “They believe in you as Caliph,” said Ivan. “But more as the figurehead kind of Caliph who makes vague religious pronouncements and encouraging speeches, while you have wazirs and warlords to do all the nasty tedious work like making decisions and giving commands.”

  “How far does their control reach?” asked Alai.

  “It’s impossible to know,” said Ivan. “Here in Damascus, your loyal servants have caught and eliminated several dozen agents. But I would not let you board an aircraft in Damascus—military or commercial.”

  “So if I can’t trust Muslims, drive me over the Golan Heights into Israel, and let me fly on an Israeli jet.”

  “The same group that refuses to obey you in India is also saying that our accommodation with the Zionists was an offense against God.”

  “They want to start that nightmare all over again?”

  “They long for the good old days.”

  “Yes, when Muslim armies were humiliated left and right, and the world feared Muslims because so many innocents were murdered in the name of God.”

  “You don’t have to argue with me,” said Ivan pleasantly.

  “Well, Ivan,” said Alai, “if I stay here, then someday my enemies will finish in India—either they’ll win or they’ll lose. Either way, they’ll come here, made mad by victory or by defeat, it doesn’t matter which. Either way, I’ll be dead, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, definitely, sir. We do have to find a way to get you out of here.”

  “No plan?”

  “All kinds of plans,” said Ivan. “But they all involve saving your life. Not saving the Caliphate.”

  “If I run away, then the Caliphate is lost.”

  “And if you stay, then the Caliphate is yours until the day you die.”

  Alai laughed. “Well, Ivan, you’ve analyzed it well. So I have no choice. I have to go to my enemies and destroy them.”

  “I suggest you use a magic carpet,” said Ivan, “as the most reliable form of transportation.”

  “You think only a genie could get me to India to face General Rajam?”

  “Alive, yes.”

  “Then I must contact my genie,” said Alai.

  “Is this a good time?” asked Ivan. “With the madwoman’s latest vid all over the nets and the media, Rajam is going to be a crazy man.”

  “That’s the best time,” said Alai. “By the way, Ivan, can you tell me why Rajam’s nickname is ‘Andariyy’?”

  “Would it help if I told you that he chose the nickname ‘thick rope’ himself?”

  “Ah. So it doesn’t refer to his tenacity or strength.”

  “He would say it does. Or at least the tenacity of a particular part of his body.”

  “And yet…rope is limp.”

  “Thick rope isn’t.”

  “Thick rope is as limp as any other,” said Alai, “unless it’s very short.”

  Ivan laughed. “I’ll make sure to repeat this joke at Rajam’s funeral.”

  “Just don’t repeat it at mine.”

  “I will not be at your funeral,” said Ivan, “unless it’s a mass grave.”

  Alai went to his computer and began to compose a few emails. Within a half hour of sending them, he received a telephone call from Felix Starman of Rwanda.

  “I’m sorry to tell you,” said Felix, “that I cannot allow Muslim teachers into Rwanda.”

  “Fortunately,” said Alai, “that isn’t why I called.”

  “Excellent,” said Felix.

  “I am calling in the interest of world peace. And I understand you have already made your decision about who is the best hope of humankind for achieving that goal—no, say no names.”

  “Since I have no idea what you’re talking about—”

  “Excellent,” said Alai. “A good Muslim always assumes that unbelievers have no idea.” They both laughed. “All I ask is that you let it be known that there is a man crossing the Rub’al Khali on foot because his camel won’t let him mount and ride.”

  “And you wish someone to help this poor wanderer?”

  “God watches over all his creatures, but the Caliph cannot always reach out a hand to do God’s will.”

  “I hope this poor unfortunate will be helped as soon as possible,” said Felix.

  “Let it be soon. I am ready at any time to hear good news of him.”

  They said their good-byes, and Alai got up and went in search of Ivan.

  “Pack,” he said.

  Ivan raised his eyebrows. “What will you need?”

  “Clean underwear. My most flamboyantly Caliph-like costume. Three men who will kill at my command and will not turn their weapons on me. And a loyal man with a video camera with a fully charged battery and plenty of film.”

  “Should the vidman be one of the loyal soldiers? Or a separate person?”

  “Let all the loyal soldiers be part of the video crew.”

  “And shall I be one of these three?”

  “That is for you to decide,” said Alai. “If I fail, the men who are with me will surely die.”

  “Better to die quickly before the face of God’s servant than slowly at the hands of God’s enemies,” said Ivan.

  “My favorite Russian,” said Alai.

  “I’m a Kazakh Turk,” Ivan reminded him.

  “God was good to send you to me.”

  “And good when he gave you to all of the faithful.”

  “Will you say so when I have done all that I mean to do?”

  “Always,” said Ivan. “Always I am your faithful servant.”

  “You are a servant only to God,” said Alai. “To me, you are a friend.”

  An hour later, Alai received an email that he knew was from Petra, despite the innocent signature. It was a request that he pray for a child that was undergoing an operation at the largest hospital in Beirut at seven o’clock the next morning. “We will begin our own prayers at five in the morning,” said the letter, “so that dawn will find us praying.”

  Alai merely answered, “I will pray for your nephew, and for all those who love him, that he may live. Let it be as God wills, and we will rejoice in his wisdom.”

  So he would have to go to Beirut. Well, the drive was easy enough. The problem was doing it without alarming anyone that his enemies had set to spy on him.

  When he left the palace complex, it was in a garbage truck. Ivan had protested, but Alai told him, “A Caliph who is afraid to be filthied on God’s errand is unworthy to rule.” He was sure this would be written down and, if he lived, would be included in a book of the wisdom of Caliph Alai. A book he hoped would be long and worth reading, instead of brief and embarrassing.