"My point is," said Dumper, "we didn't follow him well, but other people do. Bean's the real thing. He's still the best of us."
"I haven't seen his Rwandans," said Fly, "but I've seen him with the men he and Suriyawong trained. Back when the forces of the Hegemon were a hundred guys and two choppers. Dumper's right. Alexander the Great couldn't have had soldiers more devoted and more effective."
"Thanks for the testimonials, boys," said Bean, "but you're missing Hyrum's point."
" 'Hyrum,' " muttered Dink. "Aren't we cozy."
"Just tell them," said Bean. "They know it, but they don't know that they know it."
"You tell them," said Graff.
"Is this a Chinese reeducation camp? Do we have to indulge in self-criticism?" Bean laughed bitterly. "It's what Dink said right at the start. I'm not hungry. Which might seem stupid, considering I spent my whole infancy starving to death. But I'm not hungry for supremacy. And all of you are."
"That's the great secret of the tests," said Graff. "Sister Carlotta gave the standard battery of tests we used. But there was an additional test. One that I gave, or one of my most trusted aides. A test of ambition. Competitive ambition. You all scored very, very high. Bean didn't."
"Bean's not ambitious?"
"Bean wants victory," said Graff. "He likes to win. He needs to win. But he doesn't need to beat anybody."
"We all cooperated with Ender," said Carn. "We didn't have to beat him."
"But you knew he would lead you to victory. And in the meanwhile, you were all competing with each other. Except Bean."
"Only because he was better than any of us. Why compete if you've won?" said Fly.
"If any one of you came up against Bean in battle, who would win?"
They rolled their eyes or chuckled or otherwise showed their derision for the question.
"That would depend," said Carn Carby, "on the terrain, and the weather, and the sign of the zodiac. Nothing's sure in war, is it?"
"There wasn't any weather in the Battle Room," said Fly, grinning.
"You can conceive of beating Bean, can't you?" said Graff. "And it's possible. Because Bean is only better than the rest of you if all else is equal. Only it never is. And one of the most important variables in war is the hunger that makes you take ridiculous chances because you intuit that there's a path to victory and you have to take that path because anything other than winning is inconceivable. Unbearable."
"Very poetic," said Dink. "The romance of war."
"Look at Lee," said Graff.
"Which one?" said Shen. "The Chinese or the American?"
"Lee L-E-E the Virginian," said Graff. "When the enemy was on Virginia soil, he won. He took the chances he needed to take. He sent Stonewall Jackson out on a forest path at Chancellorsville, dividing his forces and exposing himself dangerously against Hooker, exactly the sort of reckless commander who could have exploited the opportunity if he'd realized it."
"Hooker was an idiot."
"We say that because he lost," said Graff. "But would he have lost if Lee had not taken the dangerous move he took? My point isn't to re-fight Chancellorsville. My point is—"
"Antietam and Gettysburg," said Bean.
"Exactly. As soon as Lee left Virginia and entered Northern territory, he wasn't hungry anymore. He believed in the cause of defending Virginia, but he did not believe in the cause of slavery, and he knew that's what the war was about. He didn't want to see his state defeated, but he didn't want to see the southern cause win. All unconsciously. He didn't know this about himself. But it was true."
"It had nothing to do with the North's overwhelming force?"
"Lee lost at Antietam against the second stupidest and most timid commander the North had, McClellan. And Meade at Gettysburg wasn't terribly imaginative. Meade saw the high ground and he took it. And what did Lee do? Based on how Lee acted in all his Virginia campaigns, what would you have expected Lee to do?"
"Refuse to fight on that ground," said Fly. "Maneuver. Slide right. Steal a march. Get between Meade and Washington. Find a battlefield where the Unions would have to try to force his position."
"He was low on supplies," said Dink. "And he didn't have the information from his cavalry."
"Excuses," said Vlad. "No excuses in war. Graff is right. Lee didn't act like Lee, once he left Virginia. But that's Lee. What does that have to do with Bean?"
"He thinks," said Bean, "that when I don't believe in a cause, I can be beaten. That I would beat myself. The trouble is that I do believe in the cause. I think Peter Wiggin is a decent man. Ruthless, but I've seen how he uses power, and he doesn't use it to hurt anybody. He really is trying to create a world order that leads to peace. I want him to win. I want him to win quickly. And if any of you think you can stop me."
"We don't have to stop you," said Crazy Tom. "We just have to hold out till you're dead."
Utter silence.
"There it is," said Graff. "There's the whole point of this meeting. Bean only has a little while. So while he lives, the Hegemon is perceived as unbeatable. But the moment he's gone, what then? Dumper or Fly would probably be appointed commander after him, since they're already inside the FPE. But every one of you at this table would feel perfectly free to take on either of them, am I right?"
"Hell, Hyrum" said Dink, "we'd take on Bean."
"And so the world would be torn apart, and the FPE, even if it was victorious, would stand on the bodies of millions of soldiers who died because of your competitive ambition." He looked fiercely around the table.
"Hey," said Fly, "we haven't killed anybody yet. Talk to Hot Soup and Alai about that."
"Look at Alai," said Graff. "It took him two purges to get real control over the Islamic forces, but now he has it, and what has he done? Has he left India? Has he withdrawn from Xinjiang or Tibet? Have the Indonesian Muslims left Taiwan? He remains face to face with Han Tzu. Why is that? It makes no sense. He can't hold India. He couldn't rule over China. But he has Genghis dreams."
"It always comes back to Genghis," said Vlad.
"You all want the world united," said Graff. "But you want to do it yourselves, because you can't stand the thought of anyone else standing on top of the hill."
"Come on," said Dink. "In our hearts we're all Cincinnatus. We can hardly wait to get back to the farm."
They laughed.
"At this table sits fifty years of bloody war," said Graff.
"What about it?" said Dink. "We didn't invent war. We're just good at it."
"War gets invented every time there's somebody so hungry for domination that he can't leave peaceful nations alone. It is precisely people like you that invent war. Even if you have a cause, like Lee did, would the South have struggled on for all those bloody years of Civil War if they hadn't had the firm belief that no matter what happened, 'Marse Robert' would save them? Even if you don't make the decision for war, nations will enter into wars only because they have you!'
"So what's your solution, Hyrum?" said Dink. "You have little-cyanide pills for us all to swallow so we can save the world from ourselves?"
"It wouldn't help," said Vlad. "Even if what you're saying is true, there are other Battle School graduates. Look at Virlomi—she's outmaneuvered everybody."