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and we think our species is worth saving.”
    “Even if you have to have the help of non-humans like me.”
    “Bean, when I spoke of human beings at their best, whom do you think I was talking about?”
    “Ender Wiggin,” said Bean.
    “And Julian Delphiki,” said Rackham. “The other little boy we trusted to save the world.”
    Bean shook his head and stood up. “Not so little now,” said Bean. “And dying. But I’ll take your offer because it gives me a hope for my little family. And apart from that, I have no hope at all. Tell me where Volescu is, and I’ll go see him.”
    “You’ll have to secure him yourself,” said Rackham. “We can’t have I.F. agents involved.”
    “Give me the address and I’ll do the rest.”
    Bean ducked again to leave the room. And he was trembling as he walked through the park, back toward his office in the Hegemony compound. Huge armies prepared to clash, in a struggle for supremacy. And off to one side, not even on the surface of Earth, there were a handful of men who intended to turn those armies to their own purposes.
    They were Archimedes, preparing to move the Earth because they finally had a lever big enough.
    I’m the lever.
    And I’m not as big as they think I am. Not as big as I seem. It can’t be done.
    Yet it might just be worth doing.
    So I’ll let them use me to try to pry the world of men loose from its age-old path of competition and war.
    And I’ll use them to try to save my life and the lives of my children who share my disease.
    And the chance of both projects succeeding is so slim that the odds are much better of the Earth being hit by a disastrously huge meteor first.
    Then again, they probably already have a plan to deal with a meteor strike. They probably have a plan for everything. Even a plan they can turn to if…when…I fail.

5
SHIVA
    From: Figurehead%[email protected]
To: PeterWiggin%[email protected]
Password: ********
Re: Speaking as a mother
    After all these years of posing as the Madonna in your little Pietà, it occurs to me that I might whisper something in your oh-so busy ear:
    Ever since Achilles’s little kidnapping venture, the not-so-secret weapon in everyone’s arsenal is whatever array of Battle School graduates they’re able to acquire, keep, and deploy. Now it’s even worse. Alai is Caliph in fact as well as name. Han Tzu is emperor of China. Virlomi is…what, a goddess? That’s what I hear, coming out of India.
    Now they will go to war against each other.
    What are YOU doing? Betting on the winner and choosing up sides?
    Quite apart from the fact that many of these children were Ender’s friends and fellow soldiers, the whole human race owes them our very survival. We took away their childhood. When do they get a life they can call their own?
    Peter, I’ve read history. Men like Genghis and Alexander were deprived of a normal childhood and absolutely focused on war and you know what? It deformed them. They were unhappy all the days of their lives. Alexander didn’t know who he was when he stopped conquering people. If he stopped moving forward, slaughtering all the way, he died.
    So how about setting these children free? Have you given any thought to that? Talk to Graff. He’ll listen to you. Give these children an out. A chance. A life.
    If for no other reason than because they’re Andrew’s friends. They’re like Andrew. They didn’t choose themselves for Battle School.
    You, on the other hand, didn’t go to Battle School. You volunteered to save the world. So you have to stay and see it through.
    Your loving and ever-supportive mother
     
    A woman’s face appeared on the screen. She was dressed in the simple work-stained clothing of a Hindu peasant woman. But she bore herself like a lady of the highest caste—a concept that still had meaning, despite the long-ago banning of all outward markers of caste.
    Peter did not know her. But Petra did. “It’s Virlomi.”
    “All this time,” said Bean, “she