“We don’t have to stop you,” said Crazy Tom. “We just have to hold out till you’re dead.”

Utter silence.

“There it is,” said Graff. “There’s the whole point of this meeting. Bean only has a little while. So while he lives, the Hegemon is perceived as unbeatable. But the moment he’s gone, what then? Dumper or Fly would probably be appointed commander after him, since they’re already inside the FPE. But every one of you at this table would feel perfectly free to take on either of them, am I right?”

“Hell, Hyrum,” said Dink, “we’d take on Bean.”

“And so the world would be torn apart, and the FPE, even if it was victorious, would stand on the bodies of millions of soldiers who died because of your competitive ambition.” He looked fiercely around the table.

“Hey,” said Fly, “we haven’t killed anybody yet. Talk to Hot Soup and Alai about that.”

“Look at Alai,” said Graff. “It took him two purges to get real control over the Islamic forces, but now he has it, and what has he done? Has he left India? Has he withdrawn from Xinjiang or Tibet? Have the Indonesian Muslims left Taiwan? He remains face to face with Han Tzu. Why is that? It makes no sense. He can’t hold India. He couldn’t rule over China. But he has Genghis dreams.”

“It always comes back to Genghis,” said Vlad.

“You all want the world united,” said Graff. “But you want to do it yourselves, because you can’t stand the thought of anyone else standing on top of the hill.”

“Come on,” said Dink. “In our hearts we’re all Cincinnatus. We can hardly wait to get back to the farm.”

They laughed.

“At this table sits fifty years of bloody war,” said Graff.

“What about it?” said Dink. “We didn’t invent war. We’re just good at it.”

“War gets invented every time there’s somebody so hungry for domination that he can’t leave peaceful nations alone. It is precisely people like you that invent war. Even if you have a cause, like Lee did, would the South have struggled on for all those bloody years of Civil War if they hadn’t had the firm belief that no matter what happened, ‘Marse Robert’ would save them? Even if you don’t make the decision for war, nations will enter into wars only because they have you.”

“So what’s your solution, Hyrum?” said Dink. “You have little cyanide pills for us all to swallow so we can save the world from ourselves?”

“It wouldn’t help,” said Vlad. “Even if what you’re saying is true, there are other Battle School graduates. Look at Virlomi—she’s outmaneuvered everybody.”

“She hasn’t outmaneuvered Alai yet,” said Crazy Tom. “Or Hot Soup.”

Vlad insisted on his point. “Look at Suriyawong. That’s who Peter will turn to after Bean…retires. We weren’t the only kids at Battle School.”

“Ender’s Jeesh,” said Graff. “You’re the ones who saved the world. You’re the ones with the magic. And there are hundreds and hundreds of Battle School grads on Earth. Nobody is going to think that just because they happen to have one or two or five, they can conquer the world. Which one of them would it be?”