"Then why do you think we're here?" asked Petra.
"You came to say good-bye."
Petra looked at Bean and, for the first time, realized that this might be true. "If we are," she said, "it wasn't our plan."
"But it's what you're doing," said Mother. "You came in person because you might not see us again. Because of the war!"
"No," said Bean. "Not because of the war."
"Mother, you know Bean's condition."
"I'm not blind! I can see that he's giraffed up so he can hardly get into houses!"
"And so are Ender and Bella. They have Bean's same condition. So once we get all our other children, we're going out into space. At lightspeed. So we can take advantage of relativistic effects. So that Bean will be alive when they finally find a cure."
Father shook his head.
"Then we'll be dead before you come home," said Mother.
"Pretend I'm away at Battle School again," said Petra.
"I get these grandchildren, but...then I don't get them." Mother cried again.
"I won't leave," said Bean, "until we've got Peter Wiggin safely in control of things."
"Which is why you're in such a hurry to get this war started," said Father. "Why not just tell them?"
"We need them to have confidence in me," sai
d Bean. "Telling them that I might die in mid-campaign won't reassure them about joining the FPE."
"So these babies will grow up on a starship?" asked Mother, skeptically.
"Our joy," said Petra, "will be to see them grow old--without any of them growing as big as their father."
Bean raised one enormous foot. "These are tough shoes to fill."
"It really is true," said Petra, "that this war--in Armenia--is the one we want to fight. All these hills. It will go slowly."
"Slowly?" asked Father. "Isn't that the opposite of what you want?"
"What we want," said Bean, "is for the war to end as soon as possible. But this is one case where going slow will speed us up."
"You're the brilliant strategists," said Father, heading for the kitchen. "Anybody else want something to eat?"
That night, Petra couldn't sleep. She went out onto the balcony and looked out over the city.
Is there anything in this world that I can't leave?
I've lived apart from my family for so much of my life. Does that mean I'll miss them more or less?
But then she realized that this had nothing to do with her melancholy. She couldn't sleep because she knew that war was coming. Their plan was to keep the conflict in the mountains, to make the Turks pay for every meter. But there was no reason to think that Alai's forces--or whatever Muslim forces they were--would shrink from bombing the big population centers. Precision bombing had been the rule for so long--ever since Mecca was nuked--that a sudden reversion to anti-population, saturation bombing would come as a demoralizing shock.
Everything depends on our being able to get and keep control of the air. And the FPE doesn't have as many planes as the Muslim League.
Damn those short-sighted Israelis for training the Arab air forces to be among the most formidable in the world.
Why was Bean so confident?