"Why should I tell you what I think?" said Peter. "What possible advantage will I get from you and Graff knowing what I'm expecting and what I'm preparing to do about it?"
"How will it hurt?"
"It'll hurt because if you decide your goals are different from mine, you'll meddle. Some of your meddling I've appreciated, but right now I don't want either the I.F. or ColMin doing one damn thing. I'm juggling too many balls to want some volunteer juggler to come in and try to help."
Rackham laughed. "Peter, Graff was so right about you."
"What?"
"When he rejected you for Battle School."
"Because I was too aggressive," said Peter wryly. "And look what he actually accepted."
"Peter," said Rackham. "Think about what you just said."
Peter thought about it. "You mean about juggling."
"I mean about why you were rejected for Battle School."
Peter immediately felt stupid. His parents had been told that he was rejected because he was too aggressive--dangerously so. And he had wormed that information out of them at a very young age. Ever since then, it had been a burden he carried around inside--the judgment that he was dangerous. Sometimes it had made him bold; more often, it had made him not trust his own judgment, his own moral framework. Am I doing this because it's right? Am I doing this because it will really be to my benefit? Or only because I'm aggressive and can't stand to sit back and wait? He had forced himself to be more patient, more subtle than his first impulse. Time after time he had held back. It was because of this that he had used Valentine and now Petra to write the more dangerous, demagogic essays--he didn't want any kind of textual analysis to point to him as the author. It was why he had held back from any kind of serious arm-twisting with nations that kept playing with him about joining the FPE--he couldn't afford to have anyone perceive him as coercive.
And all this time, that assessment of him was a lie.
"I'm not too aggressive."
"It's impossible to be too aggressive for Battle School," said Rackham. "Reckless--now, that would be dangerous. But nobody has ever called you reckless, have they? And your parents would have known that was a lie, because they could have seen what a calculating little bastard you were, even at the age of seven."
"Why thanks."
"No, Graff looked at your tests and watched what the monitor showed us, and then he talked to me and showed me, and we realized: You weren't what we wanted as commander of the army, because people don't love you. Sorry, but it's true. You're not warm. You don't inspire devotion. You would have been a good commander under someone like Ender. But you could never have held the whole thing together the way he did."
"I'm doing fine now, thanks."
"You're not commanding soldiers. Peter, do Bean or Suri love you? Would they die for you? Or do they serve you because they believe in your cause?"
"They think the world united under me as Hegemon would be better than the world united under anyone else, or not united at all."
"A simple calculation."
"A calculation based on trust that I've damn well earned."
"But not personal devotion," said Rackham. "Even Valentine--she was never devoted to you, and she knew you better than anyone."
"She pretty much hated me."
"Too strong, Peter. Too strong a word. She didn't trust you. She feared you. She saw your mind like clockwork. Very smart. She always figured you were six steps ahead of her."
Peter shrugged.
"But you weren't, were you?"
"Ruling the world isn't a chess game," said Peter. "Or if it is, it's a game with a thousand powerful pieces and eight billion pawns, and the pieces keep changing their capabilities, and the gameboard never stays the same. So just how far ahead can you possibly see? All I could do was put myself into a position with the most possible influence, and then exploit whatever opportunities came."
Rackham nodded. "But one thing was certain. Your off-the-charts aggressiveness, your passion to control events, we knew that you would place yourself in the center of everything."
It was Peter's turn to laugh. "So you left me home from Battle School so I would be what I am now."
"As I said, you weren't suited for military life. You don't take orders very well. People aren't devoted to you, and you aren't devoted to anyone else."