Shadow of the Giant Page 0,87

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?

Was it only because he knew that he'd soon leave Earth and wouldn't have to be here to face the consequences?

That was unfair. Bean had said he'd stay until Peter was Hegemon in fact as well as name. Bean did not break his word.

What if they never find a cure? What if we sail on through space forever? What if Bean dies out there with me and the babies?

She heard footsteps behind her. She assumed it would be Bean, but it was her mother.

"Awake without the babies waking you?"

Petra smiled. "I have plenty to keep me from sleeping."

"But you need your sleep."

"Eventually, my body takes it whether I like it or not."

Mother looked out over the city. "Did you miss us?"

She knew her mother wanted her to say, every day. But the truth would have to do. "When I have time to think about anything at all, yes. But it's not that I miss you. It's that... I'm glad you're in my life. Glad you're in this world." She turned to face her mother. "I'm not a little girl anymore. I know I'm still very young and I'm sure I don't know anything yet, but I'm part of the cycle of life now. I'm no longer the youngest generation. So I don't cling to my parents as I once would have liked to. I missed a lot up there in Battle School. Children need families."

"And," said Mother sadly, "they make families out of whatever they have at hand."

"That will never happen to my children," said Petra. "The world isn't being invaded by aliens. I can stay with them."

Then she remembered that some people would claim that some of her children were the alien invasion.

She couldn't think that way.

"You carry so much weight in your heart," said Mother, stroking her hair.

"Not as much as Bean. Far less than Peter."

"Is this Peter Wiggin a good man?"

Petra shrugged. "Are great men ever really good? I know they can be, but we judge them by a different standard. Greatness changes them, whatever they were to start with. It's like war - does any war ever settle anything? But we can't judge that way. The test of a war isn't whether it solved things. You have to ask, Was fighting the war better than not fighting it? And I guess the same kind of test ought to be used on great men."

"If Peter Wiggin is great."

"Mother, he was Locke, remember? He stopped a war. Already he was great before I came home from Battle School. And he was still in his teens. Younger