Shadow of the giant

Washington.
Find a battlefield where the Unions would have to try to force his
position."
    "He was low on supplies," said Dink. "And he
didn't have the information from his cavalry."
    "Excuses," said Vlad. "No excuses in war.
Graff is right. Lee didn't act like Lee, once he left Virginia. But that's Lee.
What does that have to do with Bean?"
    "He thinks," said Bean, "that when I don't
believe in a cause, I can be beaten. That I would beat myself. The trouble is
that I do believe in the cause. I think Peter Wiggin is a decent man. Ruthless,
but I've seen how he uses power, and he doesn't use it to hurt anybody. He
really is trying to create a world order that leads to peace. I want him to
win. I want him to win quickly. And if any of you think you can stop me."
    "We don't have to stop you," said Crazy Tom.
"We just have to hold out till you're dead."
    Utter silence.
    "There it is," said Graff. "There's the whole
point of this meeting. Bean only has a little while. So while he lives, the
Hegemon is perceived as unbeatable. But the moment he's gone, what then? Dumper
or Fly would probably be appointed commander after him, since they're already
inside the FPE. But every one of you at this table would feel perfectly free to
take on either of them, am I right?"
    "Hell, Hyrum" said Dink, "we'd take on
Bean."
    "And so the world would be torn apart, and the FPE,
even if it was victorious, would stand on the bodies of millions of soldiers
who died because of your competitive ambition." He looked fiercely around
the table.
    "Hey," said Fly, "we haven't killed anybody
yet. Talk to Hot Soup and Alai about that."
    "Look at Alai," said Graff. "It took him two
purges to get real control over the Islamic forces, but now he has it, and what
has he done? Has he left India? Has he withdrawn from Xinjiang or Tibet? Have
the Indonesian Muslims left Taiwan? He remains face to face with Han Tzu. Why
is that? It makes no sense. He can't hold India. He couldn't rule over China.
But he has Genghis dreams."
    "It always comes back to Genghis," said Vlad.
    "You all want the world united," said Graff.
"But you want to do it yourselves, because you can't stand the thought of
anyone else standing on top of the hill."
    "Come on," said Dink. "In our hearts we're
all Cincinnatus. We can hardly wait to get back to the farm."
    They laughed.
    "At this table sits fifty years of bloody war,"
said Graff.
    "What about it?" said Dink. "We didn't invent
war. We're just good at it."
    "War gets invented every time there's somebody so
hungry for domination that he can't leave peaceful nations alone. It is
precisely people like you that invent war. Even if you have a cause, like Lee
did, would the South have struggled on for all those bloody years of Civil War
if they hadn't had the firm belief that no matter what happened, 'Marse Robert'
would save them? Even if you don't make the decision for war, nations will
enter into wars only because they have you!'
    "So what's your solution, Hyrum?" said Dink.
"You have little-cyanide pills for us all to swallow so we can save the
world from ourselves?"
    "It wouldn't help," said Vlad. "Even if what
you're saying is true, there are other Battle School graduates. Look at
Virlomi—she's outmaneuvered everybody."
    "She hasn't outmaneuvered Alai yet," said Crazy
Tom. "Or Hot Soup."
    Vlad insisted on his point. "Look at Suriyawong. That's
who Peter will turn to after Bean ... retires. We weren't the only kids at
Battle School."
    "Ender's Jeesh," said Graff. "You're the ones
who saved the world. You're the ones with the magic. And there are hundreds and
hundreds of Battle School grads on Earth. Nobody is going to think that just
because they happen to have one or two or five, they can conquer the world.
Which one of them would it be?"
    "So you want to be rid of us all," said Dink.
"And that's why you brought us here. We're not leaving here alive, are
we?"
    "Lighten up, Dink," said Graff. "You can all
go home as soon as this meeting is over. ColMin doesn't assassinate
people."
    "Now, that's an interesting point," said Crazy
Tom. "What does ColMin do? It packs people into starships like sardines,
and then it sends them off to colony worlds. And they'll never come back, not
to the world they left. Fifty years out, fifty years back. The world would have
forgotten all of us by then, even if we went to a colony and came right home.
Which of course he wouldn't let us do."
    "So this isn't an assassination," said Dink,
"it's another damn