Shadow of the giant

stupid in Armenia. Or
Nubia."
    "Well, at least you see through that."
    "I see through all of it," said Alai. "And
you don't see the most obvious thing of all. The longer we wait, the closer we
come to the day when Bean will die. It's a cruel and terrible fact, but when
he's gone, then Peter Wiggin loses his greatest tool."
    Virlomi looked at him with withering scorn. "Back to
the Battle School test scores."
    "All the kids in Battle School were tested," said
Alai. "Including you."
    "Yes, and what did that get any of them? They sat here
in Hyderabad like passive slaves while Achilles bullied them. I escaped. Me.
Somehow I was different. But did that show up on any of their tests in Battle
School? There are things they didn't test for."
    Alai did not tell her the obvious: She was different only
because Petra asked her for help, and not someone else. She would not have
escaped without Petra's request.
    "Ender's Jeesh didn't come from the tests," said
Alai. "We were chosen because of what we did."
    "Because of what you did that Graff thought was
important. There were qualities that he didn't know were important, so he
didn't watch for them."
    Alai laughed. "What, you're jealous because you weren't
in Ender's Jeesh?"
    "I'm disgusted that you still believe that Bean is
irresistible because he's so 'smart.' "
    "You haven't seen him in action," said Alai.
"He's scary."
    "No, you're just scared."
    "Virlomi," said Alai, "don't do this."
    "Don't do what?"
    "Don't force my hand."
    "I'm not forcing anything. We're equals, right? You'll
tell your armies what to do, and I'll tell mine."
    "If you send your troops on a suicide attack against
China, then China will be at war with me, too. That's what our marriage means.
So you're committing me to war whether I like it or not."
    "I can win without you."
    "Don't believe your own propaganda, my beloved,"
said Alai. "You aren't a god. You aren't infallible. And right now, you're
so irrational that it scares me."
    "Not irrational," said Virlomi. "Confident.
And determined."
    "You studied where I did. You already know all the
reasons why an attack against China is insane."
    "That's why we'll achieve surprise. That's why we'll
win. Besides," said Virlomi, "our battle plans will be drawn up by
the great Caliph Alai. And he was a member of Ender's Jeesh!"
    "What happened to the idea of our being equals?"
said Alai.
    "We are equals."
    "I never forced you to do anything."
    "And I'm not forcing you, either."
    "Saying that over and over won't make it true."
    "I'm doing what I choose, and you're doing what you
choose. The only thing I want from you is—I want your baby inside me before I
lead my troops to war."
    "What do you think this is, the middle ages? You don't
lead your troops to war."
    "I do," said Virlomi.
    "You do if you're a squad commander. There's no point
when you have an army of a million men. They can't see you so it doesn't help."
    "You reminded me a minute ago that you aren't Alexander
of Macedon. Well, Alai, I am Jeanne d'Arc."
    "When I said I'm not Alexander," said Alai,
"I wasn't referring to his military prowess. I was referring to his
marriage to a Persian princess."
    She looked irritated. "I studied his campaigns."
    "He returned to Babylon and married a daughter of the
old Persian Emperor. He made his officers marry Persians, too. He was trying to
unite the Greeks with the Persians and form them into one nation, by making the
Persians a little more Greek, and the Greeks a little more Persian."
    "Your point?"
    "The Greeks said, We conquered the world by being
Greek. The Persians lost their empire by being Persian."
    "So you aren't trying to make your Muslims more Hindu
or my Hindus more Muslim. Very good."
    "He tried to combine soldiers of Persia and soldiers of
Greece into one army. It didn't work. It fell apart."
    "We're not making those mistakes."
    "Exactly," said Alai. "I'm not going to make
mistakes that destroy my Caliphate."
    Virlomi laughed. "All right, then. If you think
invading China is such a mistake, what are you going to do? Divorce me? Void
our treaty? What then? You'll have to retreat from India and you'll look like
even more of a zhopa. Or you'll try to stay and then I'll go to war against
you. It all comes crashing down, Alai. So you're not going to get rid of me.
You're going to stay my husband and you're going to love me and we'll have
babies together and we'll conquer the world and govern it together and do you
know why?"
    "Why?" he said sadly.
    "Because