Orson Scott Card - Ender 6 - Shadow Of The Hegemon

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THE SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON

To: Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.gov

From: Locke%espinoza@polnet.gov

Re: What are you doing to protect the children?

Dear Admiral Chamrajnagar,

I was given your idname by a mutual friend who once worked for you but now is

a glorified dispatcher -- I'm sure you know whom I mean. I realize that your

primary responsibility now is not so much military as logistical, and your

thoughts are turned to space rather than the political situation on Earth.

After all, you decisively defeated the nationalist forces led by your

predecessor in the League War, and that issue seems settled. The IF remains

independent and for that we are all grateful.

What no one seems to understand is that peace on Earth is merely a temporary

illusion. Not only is Russia's long-pent expansionism still a driving force,

but also many other nations have aggressive designs on their neighbors. The

forces of the Strategos are being disbanded, the Hegemony is rapidly losing

all authority, and Earth is poised on the edge of cataclysm.

The most powerful resource of any nation in the wars to come will be the

children trained in Battle, Tactical, and Command School. While it is

perfectly appropriate for these children to serve their native countries in

future wars, it is inevitable that at least some nations that lack such IF-

certified geniuses or who believe that rivals have more-gifted commanders will

inevitably take preemptive action, either to secure that enemy resource for

their own use or, in any event, to deny the enemy the use of that resource. In

short, these children are in grave danger of being kidnapped or killed.

I recognize that you have a hands-off policy toward events on Earth, but it

was the IF that identified these children and trained them, thus making them

targets. Whatever happens to these children, the IF has ultimate

responsibility. It would go a long way toward protecting them if you were to

issue an order placing these children under Fleet protection, warning any

nation or group attempting to harm or interfere with them that they would face

swift and harsh military retribution. Far from regarding this as interference

in Earthside affairs, most nations would welcome this action, and, for

whatever it is worth, you would have my complete support in all public forums.

I hope you will act immediately. There is no time to waste.

Respectfully,

Locke

Nothing looked right in Armenia when Petra Arkanian returned home. The

mountains were dramatic, of course, but they had not really been part of her

childhood experience. It was not until she got to Maralik that she began to

see things that should mean something to her. Her father had met her in

Terevan while her mother remained at home with her eleven-year-old brother and

the new baby -- obviously conceived even before the population restrictions

were relaxed when the war ended. They had no doubt watched Petra on

television. Now, as the flivver took Petra and her father along the narrow

streets, he began apologizing. "It won't seem much to you, Pet, after seeing

the world."

"They didn't show us the world much, Papa. There were no windows in Battle

School."

"I mean, the spaceport, and the capital, all the important people and

wonderful buildings ..."

"I'm not disappointed, Papa." She had to lie in order to reassure him. It was

as if he had given her Maralik as a gift, and now was unsure whether she liked

it. She didn't know yet whether she would like it or not. She hadn't liked

Battle School, but she got used to it. There was no getting used to Eros, but

she had endured it. How could she dislike a place like this, with open sky and

people wandering wherever they wanted?

Yet she was disappointed. For all her memories of Maralik were the memories of

a five-year-old, looking up at tall buildings, across wide streets where large

vehicles loomed and fled at alarming speeds. Now she was much older, beginning

to come into her womanly height, and the cars were smaller, the streets

downright narrow, and the buildings -- designed to survive the next

earthquake, as the old buildings had not -- were squat. Not ugly -- there was

grace in them, given the eclectic styles that were somehow blended here,

Turkish and Russian, Spanish and Riviera, and, most incredibly, Japanese -- it

was a marvel to see how they were still unified by the choice of colors, the

closeness to the street, the almost uniform height as all strained against the

legal maximums.

She knew of all this because she had read about it on Eros as she and the

other children sat out the League War. She had seen pictures on the nets. But

nothing had prepared her for the fact that she had left here as a five-year-

old and now was returning at fourteen.

"What?" she said. For Father had spoken and she hadn't understood him.

"I asked if you wanted to stop for a candy before we went home, the way we

used to."

Candy. How could she have forgotten the word for candy?

Easily, that's how. The only other Armenian in Battle School had been three

years ahead of her and graduated to Tactical School so they overlapped only

for a few months. She had been seven when she got from Ground School to Battle

School, and he was ten, leaving without ever having commanded an army. Was it

any wonder that he didn't want to jabber in Armenian to a little kid from

home? So in effect she had gone without speaking Armenian for nine years. And

the Armenian she had spoken then was a five-year-old's language. It was so

hard to speak it now, and harder still to understand it.

How could she tell Father that it would help her greatly if he would speak to

her in Fleet Common -- English, in effect? He spoke it, of course -- he and

Mother had made a point of speaking English at home when she was little, so

she would not be handicapped linguistically if she was taken into Battle

School. In fact, as she thought about it, that was part of her problem. How

often had Father actually called candy by the Armenian word? Whenever he let

her walk with him through town and they stopped for candy, he would make her

ask for it in English, and call each piece by its English name. It was absurd,

really -- why would she need to know, in Battle School, the English names of

Armenian candies?

"What are you laughing for?"

"I seem to have lost my taste for candy while I was in space, Father. Though

for old time's sake, I hope you'll have time to walk through town with me

again. You won't be as tall as you were the last time."

"No, nor will your hand be as small in mine." He laughed, too. "We've been

robbed of years that would be precious now, to have in memory."

"Yes," said Petra. "But I was where I needed to be."

Or was I? I'm the one who broke first. I passed all the tests, until the test

that mattered, and there I broke first. Ender comforted me by telling me he

relied on me most and pushed me hardest, but he pushed us all and relied upon

us all and I'm the one who broke. No one ever spoke of it; perhaps here on

Earth not one living soul knew of it. But the others who had fought with her

knew it. Until that moment when she fell asleep in the midst of combat, she

had been one of the best. After that, though she never broke again, Ender also

never trusted her again. The others watched over her, so that if she suddenly

stopped commanding her ships, they could step in. She was sure that one of

them had been designated, but never asked who. Dink? Bean? Bean, yes --

whether Ender assigned him to do it or not, she knew Bean would be watching,

ready to take over. She was not reliable. They did not trust her. She did not

trust herself.

Yet she would keep that secret from her family, as she kept it in talking to

the prime minister and the press, to the Armenian military and the

schoolchildren who had been assembled to meet the great Armenian hero of the

Formic War. Armenia needed a hero. She was the only candidate out of this war.

They had shown her how the online textbooks already listed her among the ten

greatest Armenians of all time. Her picture, her biography, and quotations

from Colonel Graff, from Major Anderson, from Mazer Rackham.

And from Ender Wiggin. "It was Petra who first stood up for me at risk to

herself. It was Petra who trained me when no one else would. I owe everything

I accomplished to her. And in the final campaign, in battle after battle she

was the commander I relied upon."

Ender could not have known how those words would hurt. No doubt he meant to

reassure her that he did rely upon her. But because she knew the truth, his

words sounded like pity to her. They sounded like a kindly lie.

And now she was home. Nowhere on Earth was she so much a stranger as here,

because she ought to feel at home here, but she could not, for no one knew her

here. They knew a bright little girl who was sent off amid tearful good-byes

and brave words of love. They knew a hero who returned with the halo of

victory around her every word and gesture. But they did not know and would

never know the girl who broke under the strain and in the midst of battle

simply ... fell asleep. While her ships were lost, while real men died, she

slept because her body could stay awake no more. That girl would remain hidden

from all eyes.

And from all eyes would be hidden also the girl who watched every move of the

boys around her, evaluating their abilities, guessing at their intentions,

determined to take any advantage she could get, refusing to bow to any of

them. Here she was supposed to become a child again -- an older one, but a

child nonetheless. A dependent.

After nine years of fierce watchfulness, it would be restful to turn over her

life to others, wouldn't it?

"Your mother wanted to come. But she was afraid to come." He chuckled as if

this were amusing. "Do you understand?"

"No," said Petra.

"Not afraid of you," said Father. "Of her firstborn daughter she could never

be afraid. But the cameras. The politicians. The crowds. She is a woman of the

kitchen. Not a woman of the market. Do you understand?"

She understood the Armenian easily enough, if that's what he was asking,

because he had caught on, he was speaking in simple language and separating

his words a little so she would not get lost in the stream of conversation.

She was grateful for this, but also embarrassed that it was so obvious she

needed such help.

What she did not understand was a fear of crowds that could keep a mother from

coming to meet her daughter after nine years.

Petra knew that it was not the crowds or the cameras that Mother was afraid

of. It was Petra herself. The lost five-year-old who would never be five

again, who had had her first period with the help of a Fleet nurse, whose

mother had never bent over her homework with her, or taught her how to cook.

No, wait. She had baked pies with her mother. She had helped roll out the

dough. Thinking back, she could see that her mother had not actually let her

do anything that mattered. But to Petra it had seemed that she was the one

baking. That her mother trusted her.

That turned her thoughts to the way Ender had coddled her at the end,

pretending to trust her as before but actually keeping control.

And because that was an unbearable thought, Petra looked out the window of the

flivver. "Are we in the part of town where I used to play?"

"Not yet," said Father. "But nearly. Maralik is still not such a large town."

"It all seems new to me," said Petra.

"But it isn't. It never changes. Only the architecture. There are Armenians

all over the world, but only because they were forced to leave to save their

lives. By nature, Armenians stay at home. The hills are the womb, and we have

no desire to be born." He chuckled at his joke.

Had he always chuckled like that? It sounded to Petra less like amusement than

like nervousness. Mother was not the only one afraid of her.

At last the flivver reached home. And here at last she recognized where she

was. It was small and shabby compared to what she had remembered, but in truth

she had not even thought of the place in many years. It stopped haunting her

dreams by the time she was ten. But now, coming home again, it all returned to

her, the tears she had shed in those first weeks and months in Ground School,

and again when she left Earth and went up to Battle School. This was what she

had yearned for, and at last she was here again, she had it back ... and knew

that she no longer needed it, no longer really wanted it. The nervous man in

the car beside her was not the tall god who had led her through the streets of

Maralik so proudly. And the woman waiting inside the house would not be the

goddess from whom came warm food and a cool hand on her forehead when she was

sick.

But she had nowhere else to go.

Her mother was standing at the window as Petra emerged from the flivver.

Father palmed the scanner to accept the charges. Petra raised a hand and gave

a small wave to her mother, a shy smile that quickly grew into a grin. Her

mother smiled back and gave her own small wave in reply. Petra took her

father's hand and walked with him to the house.

The door opened as they approached. It was Stefan, her brother. She would not

have known him from her memories of a two-year-old, still creased with baby

fat. And he, of course, did not know her at all. He beamed the way the

children from the school group had beamed at her, thrilled to meet a celebrity

but not really aware of her as a person. He was her brother, though, and so

she hugged him and he hugged her back. "You're really Petra!" he said.

"You're really Stefan!" she answered. Then she turned to her mother. She was

still standing at the window, looking out.

"Mother?"

The woman turned, tears streaking her cheeks. "I'm so glad to see you, Petra,"

she said.

But she made no move to come to Petra, or even to reach out to her.

"But you're still looking for the little girl who left nine years ago," said

Petra.

Mother burst into tears, and now she reached out her arms and Petra strode to

her, to be enfolded in her embrace. "You're a woman now," said Mother. "I

don't know you, but I love you."

"I love you too, Mother," said Petra. And was pleased to realize that it was

true.

They had about an hour, the four of them -- five, once the baby woke up. Petra

shunted aside their questions -- "Oh, everything about me has already been

published or broadcast. It's you that I want to hear about" -- and learned

that her father was still editing textbooks and supervising translations, and

her mother was still the shepherd of the neighborhood, watching out for

everyone, bringing food when someone was sick, taking care of children while

parents ran errands, and providing lunch for any child who showed up. "I

remember once that Mother and I had lunch alone, just the two of us," Stefan

joked. "We didn't know what to say, and there was so much food left over."

"It was already that way when I was little," Petra said. "I remember being so

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(v1.00)THESHADOWOFTHEHEGEMONTo:Chamrajnagar%sacredriver@ifcom.govFrom:Locke%espinoza@polnet.govRe:Whatareyoudoingtoprotectthechildren?DearAdmiralChamrajnagar,Iwasgivenyouridnamebyamutualfriendwhoonceworkedforyoubutnowisaglorifieddispatcher--I'msureyouknowwhomImean.Irealizethatyourprimaryresponsibili...

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Orson Scott Card - Ender 6 - Shadow Of The Hegemon

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