Shadow of the giant

Why
would he conceal his thinking from her? What secrets would he keep?
    But when it became clear that Bean would not come with her,
Petra packed baby clothes, diapers, and a change of clothes for herself into a
single bag, then scooped up little Ender and headed for Kayibanda Airport.
    She was met there by Mazer Rackham. "You came to Kigali
instead of meeting me there?" she said.
    "Hello to you too," said Rackham. "We're not
trusting commercial flights on this matter. We believe Achilles's network has
been broken, but we can't risk having your baby kidnapped or you harmed en
route."
    So Achilles still bends us and costs us time and money, even
after death. Or else he's just your excuse for making sure you supervise
everything directly. Why are Bean's and my children so important to you? How do
I know that you, too, don't have some plan to harness our children to the yoke
of some noble world-saving project?
    What she said aloud was, "Thank you."
    They took off on a private jet that pretended to belong to
one of the big solar desalinization companies that were developing the Sahara.
    Nice to know which companies the I.F. is using as a cover
for planetside operations.
    They overflew the Sahara, and Petra couldn't help but be
pleased at the sight of a restored Lake Chad and the vast irrigation project
surrounding it. She had read that the desalination on the Libyan coast was now
proceeding faster than evaporation, and that Lake Chad was already affecting
weather in the surrounding area. But she had not been prepared to see so many
kilometers of grassland, or the herds of animals grazing on it. The grass and
vines were turning sand and sahel into fertile soil again. And the dazzling
surface of Lake Chad was dotted with the sails of fishing boats.
    They landed in Lisbon and Rackham took her first to a hotel,
where she nursed Ender, cleaned herself up, then put the baby into a sling in
front of her. Carrying him she went back down to the lobby, where Rackham met
her and led her to the limo waiting outside.
    To her surprise, she felt a sudden stab of fear. It had
nothing to do with this car, or their destination today. She remembered the day
in Rotterdam when Ender was implanted in her womb. Bean emerged from the
hospital with her and the drivers of the first couple of taxis were smoking. So
Bean made her get in the third one. He got into the first one himself.
    The first two cabs had been part of a kidnapping and murder
plot, and Bean only narrowly escaped death. The cab she entered was part of an
entirely different plot—one to save her life.
    "You know this driver?" asked Petra.
    Mazer nodded gravely. "We leave nothing to
chance," he said. "The driver is a soldier. One of ours."
    So the I.F. had trained military personnel on Earth, wearing
civilian clothes and driving limousines. Such a scandal.
    They drove up into the hills, to a large and lovely home
with an astonishing view of the city and the bay and, on a clear day, the
Atlantic beyond. The Romans saw this place, ruled in this city. The Vandals
took it, and then the Visigoths. The Moors got it next, and then the Christians
took it back. From this city, sailing ships went out and rounded Africa and
colonized in India and China and Africa and, eventually, Brazil.
    And yet it was nothing more than a human city in a lovely
setting. Earthquakes and fires had come and gone, but people still built in the
hills and on the flat. Storms and calms and pirates and war had taken ship
after ship, and yet people still put out to sea with nets or trade goods or
guns. People made love and grew babies, in the mansions just as in the tiny
houses of the poor.
    She had come here from Rwanda, as humans had come out of
Africa for fifty thousand years. Not as part of a tribe that climbed down into
caves to paint their stories and worship their gods. Not as part of a wave of
invaders. But... wasn't she here to take a baby out of a woman's arms? To claim
that what came from this stranger's womb would belong to her from now on? Just
as so many people had stood on the hills overlooking the bay and said, This is
mine now, and it always was mine, regardless of the people who happen to think
it belongs to them and have held this place all their lives.
    Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human
beings— that what they saw and loved, they had to have. They could share it
with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow
their own. What we own is ours. What