Shadow of the giant

show her power. I had no idea she'd try Alai, and I certainly had
no idea he'd actually fall for it. Didn't he know she was crazy? I mean, not
clinically, but drunk on power."
    "You tell me why he did it," said Rackham.
    "He was one of Ender's Jeesh," said Peter.
"You and Graff must have so much paper on Alai that you know when he
scratches his butt."
    Rackham only waited.
    "Look, I don't know why he did it, except maybe he
thought he could control her," said Peter. "When he came home from
Eros, he was a naive and righteous Muslim boy who's been sheltered ever since.
Maybe he just wasn't ready to deal with a real live woman. The question now is,
how will this play out?"
    "How do you think it will play out?"
    "Why should I tell you what I think?" said Peter.
"What possible advantage will I get from you and Graff knowing what I'm
expecting and what I'm preparing to do about it?"
    "How will it hurt?"
    "It'll hurt because if you decide your goals are
different from mine, you'll meddle. Some of your meddling I've appreciated, but
right now I don't want either the I.F. or ColMin doing one damn thing. I'm
juggling too many balls to want some volunteer juggler to come in and try to
help."
    Rackham laughed. "Peter, Graff was so right about
you."
    "What?"
    "When he rejected you for Battle School."
    "Because I was too aggressive," said Peter wryly.
"And look what he actually accepted."
    "Peter," said Rackham. "Think about what you
just said."
    Peter thought about it. "You mean about juggling."
    "I mean about why you were rejected for Battle
School."
    Peter immediately felt stupid. His parents had been told
that he was rejected because he was too aggressive—dangerously so. And he had
wormed that information out of them at a very young age. Ever since then, it
had been a burden he carried around inside—the judgment that he was dangerous.
Sometimes it had made him bold; more often, it had made him not trust his own
judgment, his own moral framework. Am I doing this because it's right? Am I
doing this because it will really be to my benefit? Or only because I'm
aggressive and can't stand to sit back and wait? He had forced himself to be
more patient, more subtle than his first impulse. Time after time he had held
back. It was because of this that he had used Valentine and now Petra to write
the more dangerous, demagogic essays—he didn't want any kind of textual
analysis to point to him as the author. It was why he had held back from any
kind of serious arm-twisting with nations that kept playing with him about
joining the FPE—he couldn't afford to have anyone perceive him as coercive.
    And all this time, that assessment of him was a lie.
    "I'm not too aggressive."
    "It's impossible to be too aggressive for Battle
School," said Rackham. "Reckless—now, that would be dangerous. But
nobody has ever called you reckless, have they? And your parents would have
known that was a lie, because they could have seen what a calculating little
bastard you were, even at the age of seven."
    "Why thanks."
    "No, Graff looked at your tests and watched what the
monitor showed us, and then he talked to me and showed me, and we realized: You
weren't what we wanted as commander of the army, because people don't love you.
Sorry, but it's true. You're not warm. You don't inspire devotion. You would
have been a good commander under someone like Ender. But you could never have
held the whole thing together the way he did."
    "I'm doing fine now, thanks."
    "You're not commanding soldiers. Peter, do Bean or Suri
love you? Would they die for you? Or do they serve you because they believe in
your cause?"
    "They think the world united under me as Hegemon would
be better than the world united under anyone else, or not united at all."
    "A simple calculation."
    "A calculation based on trust that I've damn well
earned."
    "But not personal devotion," said Rackham.
"Even Valentine—she was never devoted to you, and she knew you better than
anyone."
    "She pretty much hated me."
    "Too strong, Peter. Too strong a word. She didn't trust
you. She feared you. She saw your mind like clockwork. Very smart. She always
figured you were six steps ahead of her."
    Peter shrugged.
    "But you weren't, were you?"
    "Ruling the world isn't a chess game," said Peter.
"Or if it is, it's a game with a thousand powerful pieces and eight
billion pawns, and the pieces keep changing their capabilities, and the
gameboard never stays the same. So just how far ahead can you possibly see?