Only two of these great children have stepped outside the pattern, the great game of slaughter and domination.

Bean was never selected for aggression. He was selected for brilliance alone. His mind far outshone any other. But he was not one of us. He could solve the strategic and tactical problems more easily than anyone—more easily than Ender. But he didn’t care whether he ruled; he didn’t care whether he won. When he had an army of his own, he never won a battle—all his effort was spent on training his soldiers and trying out his ideas.

That’s why he was able to be the perfect shadow to Ender Wiggin. He did not need to surpass Ender. All he wanted was to survive. And, without knowing it, to belong. To love and be loved. Ender gave him that. And Sister Carlotta. And me. But he never needed to rule.

Peter is the other one. And he does need to rule, to surpass all others. Especially because he wasn’t selected for Battle School. So what tames him?

Ender Wiggin? Is that it? Peter must be greater than his brother Ender. He can’t do it by conquest because he isn’t a match for these Battle Schoolers. He can’t take the field against Han Tzu or Alai—or Bean, or me, for that matter! Yet he must somehow be greater than Ender Wiggin, and Ender Wiggin saved the human race.

Petra stood at the edge of the hill, across the street from the house where her second child waited for her—a daughter she intended to take away from the woman who bore her. She looked out over the city and saw herself.

I am as ambitious as Hot Soup or Alai or any of them. Yet I fell in love with and determined to marry—against his will—the only Battle Schooler who had no ambition of his own. Why? Because I wanted to have the next generation. I wanted the most brilliant children. Even as I told him that I wanted none of them to have his affliction, in fact I wanted them to have it. To be like him. I wanted to be Eve to a new species. I wanted my genes to be part of the future of humanity. And they will be.

But Bean will also die. I knew that all along. I knew that I would be a young widow. In the back of my mind, I thought of that all along. What a terrible thing to realize about myself.

That’s why I don’t want him to take our babies away from me. I must have them all, the way conquerors have had to have this city. I must have them. That is my empire.

What kind of life will they have, with me for their mother?

“We can’t put this off forever,” said Mazer Rackham.

“I was just thinking.”

“You’re still young enough to believe that will get you somewhere,” said Rackham.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m older than you think. I know that I can’t think my way out of being who I am.”