She walked closer to him, until her knees touched his.
"You have to deal with him eventually, Caliph Alai. Will you do it with India in your bed and by your side, or will you do it while most of your forces have to remain here to keep us from destroying you from behind? Because I'll do it. Either we're lovers or enemies, and the time to choose is now."
He made no idle threat to detain her or kill her—he knew that he could no more do that than let her walk out of the compound naked. The real question was whether he would be a grudging husband or an enthusiastic one.
He reached out and took her hand.
"You've chosen wisely, Caliph Alai," she said. She leaned down and kissed him. The same kiss she had given Peter Wiggin, and which he had treated as if it were nothing.
Alai returned it warmly. His hands moved on her body.
"Marriage first," she said.
"Let me guess," he said. "You want the wedding now."
"In this room."
"Will you dress so we can show video of the ceremony?"
She laughed and kissed his cheek. "For publicity, I'll dress."
She started to walk away, but he caught her hand, drew her back, kissed her again, passionately this time. "This is a good idea," he said to her. "It's a bold idea. It's a dangerous idea. But it's a good one."
"I'll stand beside you in everything," she said.
"Not ahead," he said. "Not behind, not above, not below."
She embraced him and kissed his headdress. Then she pulled it off his head and kissed his hair.
"Now I'll have to go to all the trouble of putting that back on," he said.
You'll take whatever trouble I want you to take, she thought. I have just had a victory here today, in this room, Caliph Alai. You and your Allah may not realize it, but the gods of India rule in this place, and they have given me victory without another soldier dying in useless war.
Such fools they were in Battle School, to let so few girls in. It left the boys helpless against a woman when they returned to Earth.
18
YEREVAN
From: PetraDelphiki@FreePeopleOfEarth.fp.gov
To: DinkMeeker@colmin.gov
Re: Can't believe you're at this address
When Bean told me what happened at that meeting, I thought: I know one guy who's never going to go along with any plan of Graff's.
Then I got your letter informing me of your change of address. And then I thought some more and realized: There's no place on Earth where Dink Meeker is going to fit in. You have too much ability to be content anywhere that they're likely to let you serve.
But I think you were wrong to refuse to be the head of the colony you're joining. Partly it's because: Who's going to do it better than you? Don't make me laugh.
But the main reason is: What kind of living hell will it be for the colony leader to have Mr. Insubordinate in his colony? Especially because everybody will know you were in Ender's Jeesh and they'll wonder why you AREN'T leader...
I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be, Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are, and go ahead and LEAD.
And just in case you don't know it, you stupidest of all possible geniuses: I still love you. I've always loved you. But no woman in her right mind would ever marry you and have your babies because NOBODY COULD STAND TO RAISE THEM. You will have the most hellish children. So have them in a colony where there'll be someplace for them to go when they run away from home about fifteen times before they're ten.
Dink, I'm going to be happy, in the long run. And yes, I did set myself up for hard times when I married a man who's going to die and whose children will probably have the same disease. But Dink—nobody ever marries anybody who ISN'T going to die.
God be with you, my friend. Heaven knows the devil already is.
Love, Petra
Bean held two babies and Petra one on the flight from Kiev to Yerevan—whichever one was hungriest got mama. Petra's parents lived there now; by the time Achilles died and they could return to Armenia, the tenants in their old home in Maralik had changed it too much for them to want to return.
Besides, Stefan, Petra's younger brother, was quite the world traveler now, and Maralik was too small for him. Yerevan, while not what anyone would call one of the great world cities, was still a national capital, and it had a university worth studying at, when he graduated from high school.
But to Petra, Yerevan was as unfamiliar a city as Volgograd would have been, or any of the cities named San Salvador. Even the Armenian that was still spoken by many on the street sounded strange to her. It made her sad. I have no native land, she thought.
Bean, however, was drinking it all in. Petra got into the cab first, and he handed her Bella and the newest—but largest—of the babies, Ramon, whom he had picked up in the Philippines. Once Bean was inside the taxi, he held Ender up to the window. And since their firstborn son was beginning to show signs that he understood speech, it wasn't just a matter of playfulness.
"This is your mama's homeland," said Bean. "All these people look just like her." Bean turned back to the two that Petra was holding. "You children all look different, because half your genetic material comes from me. And I'm a mongrel. So in your whole life, there'll be no place you can go where you'll look like the locals."
"That's right, depress and isolate the children from the start," said Petra.
"It's worked so well for me."
"You weren't depressed as a child," said Petra. "You were desperate and terrified."
"So we try to make things better for our children."
"Look, Bella, look, Ramon," said Petra. "This is Yerevan, a city with lots of people that we don't know at all. The whole world is full of strangers."
The taxi driver spoke up, in Armenian: "Nobody in Yerevan is a stranger to Petra Arkanian."
"Petra Delphiki," she corrected him mildly.
"Yes, yes, of course," he said in Common. "I just meaning that if you want a drink in a tavern, nobody let you pay!"
"Does that go for her husband?" asked Bean.
"Man big like you?" said the driver. "They don't tell you the price, they ask you what you wanting to give!" He roared with laughter at his own joke. Not realizing, of course, that Bean's size was killing him. "Big man like you, little tiny babies like these." He laughed again.
Think how amused he'd be if he knew that the largest baby, Ramon, was the youngest.
"I knew we should have walked from the airport," said Bean in Portuguese.
Petra grimaced. "That's rude, to speak in a language he doesn't know."
"Ah. I'm glad to know that the concept of rudeness does exist in Armenia."
The taxi driver picked up on the mention of Armenia, even though the rest of the sentence, being in Portuguese, was a mystery to him. "You wanting a tour of Armenia? Not a big country, I can take you, special price, meter not running."
"No time for that," said Petra in Armenian. "But thanks for offering."
The Arkanian family now lived in a nice apartment building—all balconies and glass, yet upscale enough that there was no hanging laundry visible from the street. Petra had told her family she was coming, but asked them not to meet her at the airport. They had gotten so used to the extraordinary security during the days when Petra and Bean were in hiding from Achilles Flandres that they accepted this unquestioningly.