Bean was silent.

  “You hate what happened in the war,” said Peter. “So do I. 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 all absorbing 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 title.”

  “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 Ribeirão Preto in the state of São 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 Ribeirão 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 Ribeirão 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 Ribeirão 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, Ribeirão 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 babies—hang on to my address. Look me up.”

  Bean was silent for a long moment. “Ah,” 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 self-justifying, 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.