Shadow of the Giant Page 0,79

her to sit with him at the table or on the soft chairs bolted to the deck.

She took two steps and she was with him, pressing her body against his, entwining the arms of India under his and around his back. She stood on her toes and kissed his lips. Not with vigor, but softly and warmly. It was not a girl's chaste kiss; it was a promise of love, as best she knew how to show it. She had not had that much experience before Achilles came and made Hyderabad a chaste and terrifying place to work. A few kisses with boys she knew. But she had learned something of what made them excited; and Peter was, after all, scarcely more than a boy, wasn't he?

And it seemed to work. He certainly returned the kiss.

It was going as she expected. The gods were with her.

"Let's sit down," said Peter.

But to her surprise, what he indicated was the table, not the soft chairs. Not the wide one, where they could have sat together.

The table, where they would have a slab of wood - something cold and smooth, anyway - between them.

When they were seated, Peter looked at her quizzically. "Is that really what you came all this way for?"

"What did you think?" she said.

"I hoped it had something to do with India ratifying the FPE Constitution."

"I haven't read it," she said. "But you must know India doesn't surrender its sovereignty easily."

"It'll be easy enough, if you ask the Indian people to vote for it."

"But, you see, I need to know what India gets in return."

"What every nation in the FPE receives. Peace. Protection. Free trade. Human rights and elections."

"That's what you give to Nigeria," said Virlomi.

"That's what we give to Vanuatu and Kiribati, too. And the United States and Russia and China and, yes, India, when they choose to join us."

"India is the most populous nation on Earth. And she's spent the past three years fighting for her survival. She needs more than mere protection. She needs a special place near the center of power."

"But I'm not the center of power," said Peter. "I'm not a king."

"I know who you are," said Virlomi.

"Who am I?" He seemed amused.

"You're Genghis. Washington. Bismarck. A builder of empires. A uniter of peoples. A maker of nations."

"I'm the breaker of nations, Virlomi," said Peter. "We'll keep the word nation, but it will come to mean what state means in America. An administrative unit, but little more. India will have a great history, but from now on, we'll have human history."

"How very noble," said Virlomi. This was not going as she intended. "I think you don't understand what I'm offering you."

"You're offering me something I want very much - India in the FPE. But the price you want me to pay is too high."

"Price!" Was he really that stupid. "To have me is not a price you pay. It's a sacrifice I make."

"And who says romance is dead," said Peter. "Virlomi, you're a Battle Schooler. Surely you can see why it's impossible for me to marry my way into having India in the FPE."

Only then, in the moment of his challenge, did the whole thing become clear. Not the world as she saw it, centered on India, but the world as he saw it, with himself at the center of everything.

"So it's all about you," said Virlomi. "You can't share power with another."

"I can share power with everybody," said Peter, "and I already am. Only a fool thinks he can rule alone. You can only rule by the willing obedience and cooperation of those you supposedly rule over. They have to want you to lead them. And if I married you - attractive as the offer is on every count - I would no longer be seen as an honest broker. Instead of trusting me to lead the FPE's foreign and military policy to the benefit of the whole world, I would be seen as tilting everything toward India."

"Not everything," she said.

"More than everything," said Peter. "I would be seen as the tool of India. You can be sure that Caliph Alai would immediately declare war, not just on India, which has his troops all over it, but on the FPE. I'd be faced with bloody war in Sudan and Nubia, which I don't want."

"Why would you tear it?"

"Why wouldn't I?" he said.

"You have Bean" she said. "How can Alai stand against you?"

"Well," said Peter, "if Bean is so all powerful and irresistible, why do