Why should she be important to the Muslims? They didn't want to use her military talents, and she had no political influence in the world. It had to be her baby that made her valuable--but how would her child, if she even had one, have any value to the Islamic world?
"My child," she said, "will not be raised to be a soldier."
Alai raised a hand. "You leap to conclusions, Petra," he said. "We are led, we hope, by Allah. We have no wi
sh to take your child, and while we hope that there will someday be a world in which all children will be raised to know Allah and serve him, we have no desire to take your child from you or keep him here with us."
"Or her," said Petra, unreassured. "If you don't want our baby, why am I an important person?"
"Think like a soldier," said Alai. "You have in your womb what our worst enemy wants most. And, even if you don't have a baby, your death is something that he has to have, for reasons deep in the evil of his heart. His need to reach for you makes you important to those of us who fear him and want to block his path."
Petra shook her head. "Alai," she said, "I and my child could die and it would be a mere blip on the rangefinder to you and your people."
"It's useful for us to keep you alive," said Alai.
"How pragmatic of you. But there's more to it than that."
"Yes," said Alai. "There is."
"Are you going to tell me?"
"It will sound very mystical to you," said Alai.
"But that's hardly a surprise, coming from the Caliph."
"Allah has brought something new into the world--I speak of Bean, the genetic difference between him and the rest of humanity. There are imams who declare him to be an abomination, conceived in evil. There are others who say he is an innocent victim, a child who was conceived as a normal embryo but was altered by evil and can't help what was done to him. But there are others--and the number is by far larger--who say that this could not have been done except by the will of Allah. That Bean's abilities were a key part of our victory over the Formics, so it must have been God's will that brought him into existence at the time we needed him. And since God has chosen to bring this new thing into the world, now we must watch and see whether God allows this genetic change to breed true."
"He's dying, Alai," said Petra.
"I know," said Alai. "But aren't we all?"
"He didn't want to have children at all."
"And yet he changed his mind," said Alai. "The will of God blossoms in all hearts."
"So maybe if the Beast kills us, that's the will of God as well. Why did you bother to prevent it?"
"Because my friends asked me to," said Alai. "Why are you making this so complicated? The things I want are simple. To do good wherever it's within my power, and where I can't do good, at least do no harm."
"How...Hippocratic of you."
"Petra, go to bed, sleep, you're becoming bitchy."
It was true. She was out of sorts, fretting about things she could do nothing to change, wanting Bean to be with her, wanting Alai not to have changed into this regal figure, this holy man.
"You're not happy with what I've become," said Alai.
"You can read minds?" asked Petra.
"Faces," said Alai. "Unlike Achilles and Peter Wiggin, I didn't seek this. I came home from space with no ambition other than to lead a normal life and perhaps serve my country or my God in one way or another. Nor did some party or faction choose me and set me in my place."
"How could you end up in this garden, on that chair, if neither you nor anyone else put you there?" asked Petra. It annoyed her when people lied--even to themselves--about things that simply didn't need to be lied about.
"I came home from my Russian captivity and was put to work planning joint military maneuvers of a pan-Arab force that was being trained to join in the defense of Pakistan."
Petra knew that this pan-Arab force probably began as an army designed to help defend against Pakistan, since right up to the moment of the Chinese invasion of India, the Pakistani government had been planning to launch a war against other Muslim nations to unite the Muslim world under their rule.
"Or whatever," said Alai, laughing at her consternation when, once again, he had seemed to read her mind. "It became a force for the defense of Pakistan. It put me in contact with military planners from a dozen nations, and more and more they began to come to me with questions well beyond those of military strategy. It was nobody's plan, least of all mine. I didn't think my answers were particularly wise, I simply said whatever seemed obvious to me, or when nothing was clear, I asked questions until clarity emerged."