"Alai," she murmured. So softly that she doubted he could hear.
And perhaps he did not hear, but chose that moment only by coincidence, to turn and see her. His brooding expression softened into a smile. But it was not the boyish grin that she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.
She realized then why Alai had disappeared from view.
He is Caliph. They have chosen a Caliph again, all the Muslim world under the authority of one man, and it is Alai.
She could not know this, not just from his place here in a garden. Yet she knew from the way he sat in it that this was a throne. She knew from the way she was brought here, with no trappings of power, no guards, no passwords, just a simple man of elegant courtesy leading her to the boy-man seated on the ancient throne. Alai's power was spiritual. In all of Damascus there was no safer place than here. No one would bother him. Millions would die before letting an uninvited stranger set foot here.
He beckoned to her, and it was the gentle invitation of a holy man. She did not have to obey him, and he would not mind if she did not come. But she came.
"Salaam," said Alai.
"Salaam," said Petra.
"Stone girl," he said.
"Hi," she said. The old joke between them, him punning on the meaning of her name in the original Greek, her punning on the jai of jai alai.
"I'm glad you're safe," he said.
"Your life has changed since you regained your freedom."
"And yours, too," said Alai. "Married now."
"A good Catholic wedding."
"You should have invited me," he said.
"You couldn't have come," she said.
"No," he agreed. "But I would have wished you well."
"Instead you have done well by us when we needed it most."
"I'm sorry that I did nothing to protect the other...children. But I didn't know about them in time. And I assumed that Bean and you would have had enough security...no, no, please, I'm sorry, I'm reminding you of pain instead of soothing you."
She sank down and sat on the ground before his throne, and he leaned over to gather her into his arms. She rested her head and arms on his lap, and he stroked her hair. "When we were children, playing the greatest computer game in the world, we had no idea."
"We were saving the world."
"And now we're creating the world we saved."
"Not me," said Petra. "I'm no longer a player."
"Are any of us players?" said Alai. "Or are we only the pieces moved in someone else's game?"
"Inshallah," said Petra.
She had rather expected Alai to chuckle, but he only nodded. "Yes, that is our belief, that all that happens comes from the will of God. But I think it is not your belief."
"No, we Christians have to guess the will of God and try to bring it to pass."
"It feels the same, when things are happening," said Alai. "Sometimes you think that you're in control, because you make things change by your own choices. And then something happens that sweeps all your plans away as if they were nothing, just pieces on a chessboard."
"Shadows that children make on the wall," said Petra, "and someone turns the light off."
"Or turns a brighter one on," said Alai, "and the shadows disappear."
"Alai," said Petra, "will you let us go again? I know your secret."
"Yes, I'll let you go," said Alai. "The secret can't be kept for long. Too many people know it already."
"We would never tell."
"I know," said Alai. "Because we were once in Ender's jeesh. But I'm in another jeesh now. I stand at the head of it, because they asked me to do it, because they said God had chosen me. I don't know about that. I don't hear the voice of God, I don't feel his power inside me. But they come to me with their plans, their questions, the conflicts between nations, and I offer suggestions. And they take them. And things work out. So far at least, they've always worked. So perhaps I am chosen by God."
"Or you're very clever."
"Or very lucky." Alai looked at his hands. "Still, it's better to believe that some high purpose guides our steps than to think that nothing matters except our own small miseries and happinesses."
"Unless our happiness is the high purpose."
"If our happiness is the purpose of God," said Alai, "why are so few of us happy?"
"Perhaps he wants us to have the happiness that we can only find for ourselves."
Alai nodded and chuckled. "We Battle School brats, we all have a bit of the imam in us, don't you think?"
"The Jesuit. The rabbi. The lama."
"Do you know how I find my answers? Sometimes, when it's very hard? I ask myself, 'What would Ender do?'"
Petra shook her head. "It's the old joke. 'I ask myself, What would a person smarter than me do in this circumstance, and then I do it.'"
"But Ender isn't imaginary. He was with us, and we knew him. We saw how he built us into an army, how he knew us all, found the best in us, pushed us as hard as we could bear, and sometimes harder, but himself hardest of all."
Petra felt once again the old sting, that she was the only one he had pushed harder than she could bear.
It made her sad and angry, and even though she knew that Alai had not even been thinking of her when he said it, she wanted to lash back at him.
But he had been kind to her and Bean. Had saved them, and brought them here, even though he did not need or want non-Muslims helping him, since his new role as the leader of the world's Muslims required a certain purity, if not in his soul, then certainly in his companionship.
Still, she had to offer.
"We'll help you if you let us," said Petra.
"Help me what?" asked Alai.
"Help you make war against China," she said.
"But we have no plans to make war against China," said Alai. "We have renounced military jihad. The only purification and redemption we attempt is of the soul."
"Do all wars have to be holy wars?"
"No, but unholy wars damn all those who take part in them."
"Who else but you can stand against China?"
"The Europeans. The North Americans."
"It's hard to stand when you have no spine."
"They're an old and tired civilization. We were, too, once. It took centuries of decline and a series of bitter defeats and humiliations before we made the changes that would allow us to serve Allah in unity and hope."
"And yet you maintain armies. You have a network of operatives who shoot their guns when they need to."
Alai nodded gravely. "We're prepared to use force to defend ourselves if we're attacked."
Petra shook her head. For a moment she had felt frustrated because the world needed rescuing, and it sounded as though Alai and his people were renouncing war. Now she was just as disappointed to realize that nothing had really changed. Alai was planning war--but intended to wait until some attack made his war "defensive." Not that she disagreed with the justness of defensive war. It was the falseness of pretending that he had renounced war when he was in fact planning for it.
Or maybe he meant exactly what he said.
It seemed so unlikely.
"You're tired," said Alai. "Even though the jet lag from the Netherlands is not so bad, you should rest. I understand you were ill on your flight."
She laughed. "You had someone on the plane, watching me?"
"Of course," he said. "You're a very important person."
Why should she be important to the Muslims? They didn't want to use her military talents, and she had no political influence in the world. It had to be her baby that made her valuable--but how would her child, if she even had one, have any value to the Islamic world?
"My child," she said, "will not be raised to be a soldier."
Alai raised a hand. "You leap to conclusions, Petra," he said. "We are led, we hope, by Allah. We have no wi
sh to take your child, and while we hope that there will someday be a world in which all children will be raised to know Allah and serve him, we have no desire to take your child from you or keep him here with us."
"Or her," said Petra, unreassured. "If you don't want our baby, why am I an important person?"
"Think like a soldier," said Alai. "You have in your womb what our worst enemy wants most. And, even if you don't have a baby, your death is something that he has to have, for reasons deep in the evil of his heart. His need to reach for you makes you important to those of us who fear him and want to block his path."
Petra shook her head. "Alai," she said, "I and my child could die and it would be a mere blip on the rangefinder to you and your people."
"It's useful for us to keep you alive," said Alai.
"How pragmatic of you. But there's more to it than that."
"Yes," said Alai. "There is."
"Are you going to tell me?"
"It will sound very mystical to you," said Alai.
"But that's hardly a surprise, coming from the Caliph."
"Allah has brought something new into the world--I speak of Bean, the genetic difference between him and the rest of humanity. There are imams who declare him to be an abomination, conceived in evil. There are others who say he is an innocent victim, a child who was conceived as a normal embryo but was altered by evil and can't help what was done to him. But there are others--and the number is by far larger--who say that this could not have been done except by the will of Allah. That Bean's abilities were a key part of our victory over the Formics, so it must have been God's will that brought him into existence at the time we needed him. And since God has chosen to bring this new thing into the world, now we must watch and see whether God allows this genetic change to breed true."
"He's dying, Alai," said Petra.
"I know," said Alai. "But aren't we all?"
"He didn't want to have children at all."
"And yet he changed his mind," said Alai. "The will of God blossoms in all hearts."
"So maybe if the Beast kills us, that's the will of God as well. Why did you bother to prevent it?"
"Because my friends asked me to," said Alai. "Why are you making this so complicated? The things I want are simple. To do good wherever it's within my power, and where I can't do good, at least do no harm."
"How...Hippocratic of you."
"Petra, go to bed, sleep, you're becoming bitchy."
It was true. She was out of sorts, fretting about things she could do nothing to change, wanting Bean to be with her, wanting Alai not to have changed into this regal figure, this holy man.
"You're not happy with what I've become," said Alai.
"You can read minds?" asked Petra.
"Faces," said Alai. "Unlike Achilles and Peter Wiggin, I didn't seek this. I came home from space with no ambition other than to lead a normal life and perhaps serve my country or my God in one way or another. Nor did some party or faction choose me and set me in my place."
"How could you end up in this garden, on that chair, if neither you nor anyone else put you there?" asked Petra. It annoyed her when people lied--even to themselves--about things that simply didn't need to be lied about.
"I came home from my Russian captivity and was put to work planning joint military maneuvers of a pan-Arab force that was being trained to join in the defense of Pakistan."
Petra knew that this pan-Arab force probably began as an army designed to help defend against Pakistan, since right up to the moment of the Chinese invasion of India, the Pakistani government had been planning to launch a war against other Muslim nations to unite the Muslim world under their rule.
"Or whatever," said Alai, laughing at her consternation when, once again, he had seemed to read her mind. "It became a force for the defense of Pakistan. It put me in contact with military planners from a dozen nations, and more and more they began to come to me with questions well beyond those of military strategy. It was nobody's plan, least of all mine. I didn't think my answers were particularly wise, I simply said whatever seemed obvious to me, or when nothing was clear, I asked questions until clarity emerged."
"And they became dependent on you."
"I don't think so," said Alai. "They simply...respected me. They began to want me in meetings with the politicians and diplomats, not just the soldiers. And the politicians and diplomats began asking me questions, seeking my support for their views or plans, and finally choosing me as the mediator between the parties in various disputes."
"A judge," said Petra.
"A Battle School graduate," said Alai, "at a time when my people wanted more than a judge. They wanted to be great again, and to do that they needed a leader that they believed had the favor of Allah. I try to live and act in such a way as to give them the leader they need. Petra, I am still the same boy I was in Battle School. And, like Ender, I may be a leader, but I am also the tool my people created to accomplish their collective purpose."
"Maybe," said Petra, "I'm just jealous. Because Armenia has no great purpose, except to stay alive and free. And no power to accomplish that without the help of great nations."
"Armenia is in no danger from us," said Alai.
"Unless, of course, we provoke the Azerbaijanis," said Petra. "Which we do by breathing, I must point out."
"We will not conquer our way to greatness, Petra," said Alai.
"What, then, you'll wait for the whole world to convert to Islam and beg to be admitted to your new world order?"
"Yes," said Alai. "That's just what we'll do."
"As plans go," said Petra, "that's about the most self-delusional one I've ever heard of."
He laughed. "Definitely you need a nap, my beloved sister. You don't want that to be the mouth Bean has to listen to when he arrives."
"When will he arrive?"
"Well after dark," said Alai. "Now you see Mr. Lankowski waiting for you at that gate. He'll lead you to your room."
"I sleep in the palace of the Caliph tonight?" asked Petra.
"It's not much, as palaces go," said Alai. "Most of the rooms are public spaces, offices, things like that. I have a very simple bedroom and...this garden. Your room will also be very simple--but perhaps it will make it seem luxurious if you think of it as being identical with the one where the Caliph sleeps."
"I feel as if I've been swept away into one of Scheherazade's stories."
"We keep a sturdy roof. You have nothing to fear from rocs."
"You think of everything," said Petra.
"We have an excellent doctor on call, should you wish for medical attention of any kind."
"It's still too soon for a pregnancy test to mean anything," said Petra. "If that's what you meant."
"I meant," said Alai, "that we have an excellent doctor on call, should you wish for medical attention of any kind."
"In that case," said Petra, "my answer is, 'You think of everything.'"
She thought she couldn't sleep, but she had nothing better to do than lie on the bed in a room that was downright spartan--with no television and no book but an Armenian translation of the Q'uran. She knew what the presence of this book in her room implied. For many centuries, translations of the Q'uran were regarded as false by definition, since only the original Arabic actually conveyed the words of the Prophet. But in the great opening of Islam that followed their abject defeat in a series of desperate wars with the West, this was one of the first things that was changed.
Every translated copy of the Q'uran contained, on the title page, a quotation from the great imam Zuqaq--the very one who brought about the reconciliation of Israel and the Muslim world. "Allah is above language. Even in Arabic, the Q'uran is translated from the mind of God into the words of men. Everyone should be able to hear the words of God in the language he speaks in his own heart."
So the presence of the Q'uran in Armenian told her, first, that in the palace of the Caliph, there was no recidivism, no return to the days of fanatical Islam, wh
en foreigners were forced to live by Islamic law, women were veiled and barred from the schools and the roads, and young Muslim soldiers strapped bombs to their bodies to blow up the children of their enemies.
And it also told her that her coming was anticipated and someone had taken great pains to prepare this room for her, simple as it seemed. To have the Q'uran in Common Speech, the more-or-less phonetically spelled English that had been adopted as the language of the International Fleet, would have been sufficient. They wanted to make the point, though, that here in the heart--no, the head--of the Muslim world, they had regard for all nations, all languages. They knew who she was, and they had the holy words for her in the language she spoke in her heart.
She appreciated the gesture and was annoyed by it, both at once. She did not open the book. She rummaged through her bag, then unpacked everything. She showered to clear the must of travel from her hair and skin, and then lay down on the bed because in this room there was nowhere else to sit.
No wonder he spends his time in the garden, she thought. He has to go out there just to turn around.
She woke because someone was at the door. Not knocking. Just standing there, pressing a palm against the reader. What could she possibly have heard that woke her? Footsteps in the corridor?
"I'm not dressed," she called out as the door opened.
"That's what I was hoping," said Bean.
He came in carrying his own bag and set it down beside the one dresser.
"Did you meet Alai?" asked Petra.
"Yes, but we'll talk of that later," said Bean.
"You know he's Caliph," she insisted.
"Later," he said. He pulled his shoes off.
"I think they're planning a war, but pretending that they're not," said Petra.
"They can plan what they like," said Bean. "You're safe here, that's what I care about."
Still in his traveling clothes, Bean lay down on the bed beside her, snaking one arm under her, drawing her close to him. He stroked her back, kissed her forehead.
"They told me about the other embryos," she said. "How Achilles stole them."
He kissed her again and said, "Shhhh."
"I don't know if I'm pregnant yet," said Petra.
"You will be," said Bean.
"I knew that he hadn't checked for Anton's Key," said Petra. "I knew he was lying about that."
"All right," said Bean.
"I knew but I didn't tell you," said Petra.
"Now you've told me."