Shadow of the giant

merely opened her eyes in the middle of the night, and despite the
complete darkness, she could see Sayagi sitting on the mat near the door.
    "You're dead," she said to him.
    "I'm still awaiting rebirth," he said.
    "You should have lived," Virlomi told him. "I
admired you greatly. You would have been such a husband for me and such a
father for India."
    "India is already alive. She does not need you to give
birth to her," said Sayagi.
    "India does not know she's alive, Sayagi. To wake
someone from a coma is to bring them to life as surely as a mother brings forth
life when she bears a baby."
    "Always have an answer, don't you? And the way you talk
now— like a god. How did it happen, Virlomi? Was it when Petra chose you to
confide in?"
    "It was when I decided to take action."
    "Your action succeeded," said Sayagi. "Mine
failed."
    "You should not have spoken to Achilles. You should
simply have killed him."
    "He said he had the building wired with
explosives."
    "And you believed him?"
    "There were other lives besides mine. You escaped in
order to save the lives of the Battle Schoolers. Should I then have thrown
their lives away?"
    "You misunderstand me, Sayagi. All I say now is, either
you act or you don't act. Either you do the thing that makes a difference, or you
do nothing at all. You chose a middle way, and when it comes to war, the middle
way is death."
    "Now you tell me."
    "Sayagi, why have you come to me?"
    "I haven't. I'm only a dream. You're awake enough to
realize that. You're making up both sides of this conversation."
    "Then why am I making you up? What do I need to learn
from you?"
    "My fate," said Sayagi. "So far all your
gambits have worked, but that's because you have always played against fools.
Now Alai is in control of one enemy, Han Tzu another, and Peter Wiggin is the
most dangerous and subtle of all. Against these adversaries, you will not win
so easily. Death lies down this road, Virlomi."
    "I'm not afraid to die. I've faced death many times,
and when the gods decide it's time for me to—"
    "See, Virlomi? You've already forgotten that you don't
believe in the gods."
    "But I do, Sayagi. How else can I explain my string of
impossible victories?"
    "Superb training in Battle School. Your innate
brilliance. Brave and wise Indians who awaited only a decisive leader to show
them how to act like people worthy of their own civilization. And very, very
stupid enemies."
    "And couldn't it be the gods who arranged for me to
have these things?"
    "It was an unbroken network of causality leading back
to the first human who wasn't a chimp. And farther back, to the coalescing of
the planets around the sun. If you wish to call that God, go ahead."
    "The cause of everything," said Virlomi. "The
purpose of everything. And if there are no gods, then my own purposes will have
to do."
    "Making you the only god that actually exists."
    "If I can call you back from the dead by the power of
my mind alone, I'd say I'm pretty powerful."
    Sayagi laughed. "Oh, Virlomi, if only we had lived!
Such lovers we could have been! Such children we could have had!"
    "You may have died, but I didn't."
    "Didn't you? The real Virlomi died the day you escaped
from Hyderabad, and this impostor has been playing the part ever since."
    "No," said Virlomi. "The real Virlomi died
the day she heard you had been killed."

"Now you say it. When I was alive, not one little kiss,
nothing. I think you didn't even fall in love with me until I was safely
dead."
    "Go away," she said. "It's time for me to
sleep."
    "No," he said. "Wake up, light your lamp, and
write down this vision. Even if it is only a manifestation of your unconscious,
it's a fascinating one, and it's worth pondering over. Especially the part
about love and marriage. You have some cockeyed plan to marry dynastically. But
I tell you the only way you'll be happy is to marry a man who loves you, not
one who covets India."
    "I knew that," said Virlomi. "I just didn't
think it mattered whether I was happy."
    That's when Sayagi left her tent. She wrote and wrote and
wrote. But when she woke in the morning, she found that she had written
nothing. The writing was also part of the dream.
    It didn't matter. She remembered. Even if he denied that he
was really the spirit of her dead friend and mocked her for believing in the
gods, she did believe, and knew that he was a spirit in transit, and that the
gods had sent him to her to teach her.
     
     
    The third visitor did not have to have help from