Shadow of the giant

anybody. She'd let Bob know where she was as
soon as she decided she was there, and she'd divorce him in a perfectly
ordinary way. But she wouldn't bump into anyone she knew or anyone who knew
her. She would become effectively invisible, not like someone trying to hide,
but like someone who had nothing to hide at all but who never became important
to anyone.
    Except to her beloved son.
     
     
     
    3
     
    COUP
     
     
    From: JulianDelphiki%[email protected]
    To: Volescu%[email protected]
    Re: Why keep hiding when you don't have to?
     
    Look, if we wanted you dead or punished, don't you think it
would have happened already? Your protector is gone and there's not a country
on Earth that will protect you if we lay out the facts of your
"achievements."
     
    What you did, you did. Now help us find our children,
wherever you've hidden them.
     
     
    Peter Wiggin had brought Petra Arkanian with him because she
knew Caliph Alai. They had both been in Ender's Jeesh together. And it was Alai
who had sheltered her and Bean in the weeks before the Muslim invasion of
China—or liberation of Asia, depending on which propaganda mill you shopped at.
    But now it seemed that having Petra with him meant nothing
at all. Nobody in Damascus acted as if it even mattered that the Hegemon had
come like a supplicant to see the Caliph. Not that Peter had arrived with any
publicity—this was a private visit, with him and Petra passing themselves off
as a tourist couple.
    Complete with bickering. Because Petra had no patience with
him. Everything he did and said and even thought was wrong. And last night,
when he finally demanded, "Tell me what you really hate about me, Petra,
instead of pretending it's all this trivial stuff."
    Her answer had been devastating: "Because the only
difference I ever saw between you and Achilles was that you let others do your
killing for you."
    It was so patently unfair. Peter had devoted himself to
trying to avoid war.
    At least now he knew why she was so furious at him. When
Bean went into the besieged Hegemony compound to face Achilles alone, Peter
understood that Bean was putting his own life on the line and that it was
extremely unlikely that Achilles would give him what he had promised—the
embryos of Bean's and Petra's children that had been stolen from a hospital
soon after in vitro fertilization.
    So when Bean put a .22 slug through Achilles's eye and let
it bounce around a few dozen times inside his skull, the only person who
absolutely got everything he needed was Peter himself. He got the Hegemony
compound back; he got all the hostages safely returned; he even regained his
tiny army trained by Bean and led by Suriyawong, who had turned out to be loyal
after all.
    While Bean and Petra did not get their babies, and Bean was
dying, Peter couldn't do a thing to help either of them except provide office
space and computers for them to conduct their search. He also used all his
connections to get them whatever cooperation he could from the nations where
they needed access to records.
    Right after Achilles's death, Petra had simply been
relieved. Her irritation with Peter had developed—or merely resurfaced—in the
weeks after, as she saw him trying to reestablish the prestige of the office of
Hegemon and try to put together a coalition. She began making snotty little
comments about Peter playing in his "geopolitical sandbox" and
"outstrutting the heads of state."
    He should have expected that actually having her travel
along with him would only make it worse. Especially because he wasn't following
her advice about anything.
    "You can't just show up," she told him.
    "I have no choice."
    "It's disrespectful. As if you think you can drop in on
the Caliph. It's treating him like a servant."
    "That's why I brought you" Peter patiently
explained. "So you can see him and explain that the only way this can
happen is if it's a secret meeting."
    "But he already told me and Bean that we couldn't have
access to him like we used to. We're infidels. He's Caliph."
    "The Pope sees non-Catholics all the time. He sees
me."
    "The Pope isn't Muslim," said Petra.
    "Just be patient," said Peter. "Alai knows
we're here. Eventually he'll decide to see me."
    "Eventually? I'm pregnant, Mr. Hegemon, and my husband
is dying in a big way, ha ha ha, and you're wasting some of the time we have
together and that pisses me off."
    "I invited you to come. I didn't compel you."
    "It's a good thing you didn't try."
    But now it was