From: Caliph%[email protected]
To: ImperialSelf%[email protected]
Re: Look again
Take no precipitate action, my friend. Things will not go as they appear to be going.
Mazer Rackham sat across from Peter Wiggin in his office in Rotterdam.
"We're very concerned," said Rackham.
"So am I."
"What have you set in motion here, Peter?"
"Mazer," said Peter, "all I've done is keep pressing, using what small tools I have. They decide how to respond to that pressure. I was prepared for an invasion of Armenia or Nubia. I was prepared to take advantage of a mass expulsion of Muslims from some or all European nations."
"And war between India and China? Are you prepared for that?"
"These are your geniuses, Mazer. Yours and Graff's. You trained them. You explain to me why Alai and Virlomi are doing something so stupid and suicidal as to throw badly armed Indian troops against Han Tzu's battle-hardened, fully equipped, revenge-hungry army."
"So that's not something you did."
"I'm not like you and Graff," said Peter, irritated. "I don't think I'm some master puppeteer. I've got this amount of power and influence in the world, and it doesn't amount to much. I have a billion or so citizens who have not yet become a genuine nation, so I have to keep dancing just to keep the FPE viable. I have a military force which is well trained and well equipped, has excellent morale, and is so small it wouldn't even be noticed on a battlefield in China or India. I have my personal reputation as Locke and my not-so-empty-anymore office as Hegemon. And I have Bean, both his actual abilities and his extravagant reputation. That's my arsenal. Do you see anything in that list that would allow me to even think of starting a war between two major world powers over whom I have no influence?"
"It just played into your hands so nicely, we couldn't help but think you had something to do with it."
"No, you did," said Peter. "You made these kids crazy in Battle School. Now they're all mad kings, using the lives of their subjects as playing pieces in a tawdry game of one-upmanship."
Rackham sat back, looking a little sick. "We didn't want this either. And I don't think they're crazy. Somebody must see some advantage in starting this war, and yet I can't think who. You're the only one who stands to gain, so we thought..."
"Believe it or not," said Peter, "I would not start a war like this, even if I thought I could profit from picking up the pieces. The only people who start wars that are bound to depend on human waves getting cut down by machine guns are fanatics or idiots. I think we can safely rule out idiocy. So...that leaves Virlomi."
"That's what we're afraid of. That she's actually come to believe her image. God-blessed and irresistible." Rackham raised an eyebrow. "But you knew that. You met with her."
"She proposed marriage to me," said Peter. "I turned her down."
"Before she went to Alai."
"I have a feeling that she married Alai on the rebound."
Rackham laughed. "She offered you India."
"She offered me an entanglement. I turned it into an opportunity."
"You knew when you turned her down that she'd be angry and do something stupid."
Peter shrugged. "I knew she'd do something spiteful. Something to show her power. I had no idea she'd try Alai, and I certainly had no idea he'd actually fall for it. Didn't he know she was crazy? I mean, not clinically, but drunk on power."
"You tell me why he did it," said Rackham.
"He was one of Ender's Jeesh," said Peter. "You and Graff must have so much paper on Alai that you know when he scratches his butt."
Rackham only waited.
"Look, I don't know why he did it, except maybe he thought he could control her," said Peter. "When he came home from Eros, he was a naive and righteous Muslim boy who's been sheltered ever since. Maybe he just wasn't ready to deal with a real live woman. The question now is, how will this play out?"
"How do you think it will play out?"