None of them accepted his offer. All of them listened and remembered.

Meanwhile, the guerrilla fighting in India grew more savage. More and more Persian and Pakistani troops were withdrawn from China. Until the day came when there was no one penning in the starving Chinese army in Sichuan province. Han Tzu set it in motion.

The Turks withdrew to Xinjiang province. The Indonesians got back in their boats and withdrew to Taiwan. The Arabs joined in the occupation of India. Han China was free of foreign occupiers, without the Emperor firing a shot.

At once, the Americans and Europeans and Latin Americans were back, buying and selling, helping China recover from empty wars of conquest. While the Muslim nations continued to bleed weapons and wealth and men in the ever-more-brutal war to control India.

Meanwhile, a new pair of essayists emerged on the nets.

One styled himself “Lincoln” and spoke of the need to put an end to bloody wars and oppression, and to secure the rights and freedoms of all societies by giving an honest, law-abiding world government exclusive control of all weapons of war.

The other called himself “Martel,” harking back to Charles the Hammer, who stopped the Muslim advance into Europe at Poitiers. Martel kept pounding at the grave danger the world faced from the existence of a Caliph. The Muslims, who now made up more than a third of the population of some European countries, would be emboldened, seize power, and force all of Europe to live under brutal Muslim law.

There were some commentators who saw in these two new essayists a similarity to the days when Locke and Demosthenes dueled, with a similar division between statesmanlike peace-seeking and warnings of war. Those had turned out to be written by Peter and Valentine Wiggin. Only once did Peter answer a question about “Lincoln”: “There are several ways the world could be united. I’m glad that I’m not the only one who hopes it will be through a liberal democracy rather than a conquering despotism.”

And only once did Peter comment when questioned about “Martel”: “I don’t believe it helps the cause of peace in the world to stir up the kind of fear and hatred that leads to expulsions and genocide.”

Both answers only added to the credibility of the two essayists.

8

ENDER

From: Rockette%[email protected]
To: Noggin%[email protected]
Re: I’m having fun so don’t carp

Beloved husband,

What ELSE can I do while I’m sitting around with a belly the size of a barn except type? It’s actually hard work, considering the keyboard is at arm’s length. And it’s not as if anti-Muslim propaganda is harder than breathing. I’m Armenian, O Father of the Balloon I’m Carrying Around Inside My Abdomen. We learn about how Muslims—Turks in particular, of course—have been slaughtering Armenian Christians from time immemorial. How they can never be trusted. And guess what? When I look for evidence, ancient and contemporary, I don’t have to get out of my chair.

So I will continue to write the Martel essays and continue to laugh while they accuse Peter of writing them. Of course I AM doing it at his request, which is what I understand Valentine did for him when she wrote Demosthenes’s essays back when we were all in school. But you know that nobody will listen to his Lincoln stuff unless they’re also terrified. Either terrified of Muslims taking over the world (id est, more particularly, their neighborhood) or terrified of the hideous bloodshed that would ensue if nations with Muslim minorities actually started restricting them or expelling them.