Shadow of the giant

needed to rule.
    Peter is the other one. And he does need to rule, to surpass
all others. Especially because he wasn't selected for Battle School. So what
tames him?
    Ender Wiggin? Is that it? Peter must be greater than his
brother Ender. He can't do it by conquest because he isn't a match for these
Battle Schoolers. He can't take the Meld against Han Tzu or Alai—or Bean, or
me, for that matter! Yet he must somehow be greater than Ender Wiggin, and
Ender Wiggin saved the human race.
    Petra stood at the edge of the hill, across the street from
the house where her second child waited for her—a daughter she intended to take
away from the woman who bore her. She looked out over the city and saw herself.
    I am as ambitious as Hot Soup or Alai or any of them. Yet I
fell in love with and determined to marry—against his will—the only Battle
Schooler who had no ambition of his own. Why? Because I wanted to have the next
generation. I wanted the most brilliant children. Even as I told him that I
wanted none of them to have his affliction, in fact I wanted them to have it.
To be like him. I wanted to be Eve to a new species. I wanted my genes to be
part of the future of humanity. And they will be.
    But Bean will also die. I knew that all along. I knew that I
would be a young widow. In the back of my mind, I thought of that all along.
What a terrible thing to realize about myself.
    That's why I don't want him to take our babies away from me.
I must have them all, the way conquerors have had to have this city. I must
have them. That is my empire.
    What kind of life will they have, with me for their mother?
    "We can't put this off forever," said Mazer
Rackham.
    "I was just thinking."
    "You're still young enough to believe that will get you
somewhere," said Rackham.
    "No," she said. "No, I'm older than you
think. I know that I can't think my way out of being who I am."
    "Why would you want to?" said Mazer Rackham.
"Don't you know that you were always the best of them?"
    She turned to him, suppressing the rush of pride, refusing
to believe it. "That's nonsense. I'm the least. The worst. The one that
broke."
    "The one that Ender pressed hardest, relied on most. He
knew. Besides, I didn't mean the best at war. I meant the best, period. The
best at being human."
    The irony of hearing him say that right after she realized
just how selfish and ambitious and dangerous she was—she almost laughed.
Instead she reached out and touched his shoulder. "You poor man," she
said. "You think of us as your children."
    "No," said Rackham, "that would be Hyrum
Graff."
    "Did you have children? Before your voyage?"
    Rackham shook his head. But she couldn't tell if he was
saying, No, I had no children, or No, I won't talk to you about this.
"Let's go inside."
    Petra turned around, crossed the narrow street, and followed
him through the gate of the garden and up to the door of the house. It stood
open in the early autumn sunlight. Bees hummed among the flowers of the garden
but none came into the house; what business did they have in there, when all
they needed was outside?
    The man and woman waited in the dining room of their house.
A woman in civilian clothes—who nevertheless seemed to Petra like a
soldier—stood behind them. Perhaps watching to make sure they didn't try to
run.
    The wife sat in an armchair and held their newborn daughter.
Her husband leaned on the table. His face was a mask of despair. The woman had
been crying. So they already knew.
    Rackham spoke at once. "I didn't want you to turn your
baby over to strangers," he said to the man and woman. "I wanted you
to see that the baby is going home to her mother."
    "But she already has a baby," said the woman.
"You didn't tell me that she already—"
    "Yes he did," said the man.
    Petra sat down in a chair across from the man, cornerwise
from the woman. Ender wriggled a little but stayed asleep. "We meant to
save the others, not to have them born all at once," said Petra. "I
meant to bear them all myself. My husband is dying. I meant to keep having his
children after he was gone."
    "But don't you have more? Can't you spare this
one?" The woman's voice was so piteous that Petra hated herself for saying
no.
    Rackham spoke before she could. "This child is already
dying of the same condition that is killing her father. And her brother. That's
why they were born prematurely."
    This only made the woman cling more tightly to the baby.
    "You'll have children of your own," said Rackham.
"You