"Old enough to know better," muttered Carn.

"What are you, Bean, sixteen?" asked Fly.

"I was never actually born," said Bean, "and the records of my decanting were destroyed when I was about a year old. But sixteen is probably close."

"And all the rest of us must be around twenty, give or take," said Fly. "What's your point, Colonel Graff?"

"Call me Hyrum," said Graff. "I'd like to think we're colleagues now."

"Colleagues in what," muttered Dink.

"Back when you last met," said Graff, "when Achilles arranged for your kidnapping in Russia—you were already held in high esteem throughout the world. You were regarded as having ... potential. Since then, however, one of your number has become Caliph, unified the un-unifiable Muslim world, and masterminded the conquest of China and the ... liberation of India."

"Alai's lost his mind, that's what he's done," said Carn.

"And Han Tzu is Emperor of China. Bean is commander of the undefeated armies of the FPE, plus being known as the man who finally brought Achilles down. All in all, what once was viewed as potential is now regarded as a certainty."

"So what have you assembled here?" said Crazy Tom. "The losers?"

"I've assembled the people that national governments will turn to stop Peter Wiggin from uniting the world."

They looked around at each other.

"Nobody's talked to me yet," said Fly Molo.

"But they turned to you to put down the Muslim rebellion in the Philippines, didn't they?" said Rackham.

"We're citizens of our countries," said Crazy Tom.

"Mine rents me out," said Dink. "Like a taxi."

"Because you always get along so well with authority," said Crazy Tom.

"Here's what will happen," said Graff. "Some combination of China, India, and the Muslim world destroy each other. Whichever one emerges on top, Bean destroys on the battlefield on behalf of the FPE. Does anyone doubt he can do it?"

Bean raised his hand.

No one else did.

And then Dink did.

"He's not hungry," he said.

No one argued with him.

"Now, what could Dink possibly mean by that?" said Graff. "Any ideas?"

No one seemed to have any.

"You don't want to say it, but I will," said Graff. "It's well known that Bean scored higher on the Battle School tests than anyone else in history. No one else was close. Well, Ender, but 'close' is such a relative term. Let's say Ender scored closest. But we don't know how close because Bean was off the charts."

"How?" said Dink. "He answered questions you didn't ask?"

"Exactly," said Graff. "That's what Sister Carlotta showed me. He had time to spare in taking the tests. He commented on them and mentioned how the test could have been improved. He was unstoppable. Irresistible. That's what the world knows about Julian Delphiki. And yet when we put him in charge of all of you on Eros, in Command School, while we were waiting for Ender to make up his mind about whether to continue his ... education—how did that go?"

Again silence.

"Oh, why must we pretend that things weren't as they were?" said Graff.

"We didn't like it," said Dink. "He was younger than all of us."

"So was Ender," said Graff.

"But we knew Ender," said Crazy Tom.

"We loved Ender," said Shen.

"Everybody loved Ender," said Fly.

"I can give you a list of people who hated him. But you loved him. And you didn't love Bean. Why is that?"

Bean barked out a laugh. The others looked at him. Except the ones who were embarrassed and looked away. "I never learned how to be cuddly," said Bean. "In an orphanage that would have got me adopted, but on the street, it would have got me killed."

"Nonsense," said Graff. "Cuddly wouldn't have cut it with this group anyway."

"And you actually were cuddly," said Carn. "No offense, but you were spunky."

"If that's your word for 'bratty little asshole,' " said Dink mildly.

"Now now," said Graff. "You didn't dislike Bean personally. Most of you. But you didn't like serving under him. And you can't say that it's because you were too independent to serve under anybody, because you gladly served under Ender. You gave Ender everything you had."

"More than we had," said Fly.

"But not Bean." Graft" said it like it was proof of something.

"Is this a therapy group?" asked Dink.

Vlad spoke up. "Of course it is. He wants us to reach the same conclusion he's already reached."

"Do you know what it is?" asked Graff.

Vlad took a breath. "Hyrum thinks that the reason we didn't follow Bean the way we followed Ender was because we knew something about Bean that the rest of the world doesn't know. And because of that, we're likely to be willing to challenge him in battle, while the rest of the world would just give up and surrender to him because of his reputation. Isn't that about it?"

Graff smiled benignly.

"But that's stupid," said Dumper. "Bean really is a good commander. I've seen him. Commanding his Rwandans in our campaign in Peru. It's true that the Peruvian Army wasn't well led or well trained, but those Rwandans—they worshipped Bean. They would have marched off a cliff if he asked them to. When he twitched, they sprang into action."

"And your point is?" asked Dink.

"My point is," said Dumper, "we didn't follow him well, but other people do. Bean's the real thing. He's still the best of us."

"I haven't seen his Rwandans," said Fly, "but I've seen him with the men he and Suriyawong trained. Back when the forces of the Hegemon were a hundred guys and two choppers. Dumper's right. Alexander the Great couldn't have had soldiers more devoted and more effective."

"Thanks for the testimonials, boys," said Bean, "but you're missing Hyrum's point."

" 'Hyrum,' " muttered Dink. "Aren't we cozy."

"Just tell them," said Bean. "They know it, but they don't know that they know it."

"You tell them," said Graff.

"Is this a Chinese reeducation camp? Do we have to indulge in self-criticism?" Bean laughed bitterly. "It's what Dink said right at the start. I'm not hungry. Which might seem stupid, considering I spent my whole infancy starving to death. But I'm not hungry for supremacy. And all of you are."

"That's the great secret of the tests," said Graff. "Sister Carlotta gave the standard battery of tests we used. But there was an additional test. One that I gave, or one of my most trusted aides. A test of ambition. Competitive ambition. You all scored very, very high. Bean didn't."

"Bean's not ambitious?"

"Bean wants victory," said Graff. "He likes to win. He needs to win. But he doesn't need to beat anybody."

"We all cooperated with Ender," said Carn. "We didn't have to beat him."

"But you knew he would lead you to victory. And in the meanwhile, you were all competing with each other. Except Bean."

"Only because he was better than any of us. Why compete if you've won?" said Fly.

"If any one of you came up against Bean in battle, who would win?"

They rolled their eyes or chuckled or otherwise showed their derision for the question.

"That would depend," said Carn Carby, "on the terrain, and the weather, and the sign of the zodiac. Nothing's sure in war, is it?"

"There wasn't any weather in the Battle Room," said Fly, grinning.

"You can conceive of beating Bean, can't you?" said Graff. "And it's possible. Because Bean is only better than the rest of you if all else is equal. Only it never is. And one of the most important variables in war is the hunger that makes you take ridiculous chances because you intuit that there's a path to victory and you have to take that path because anything other than winning is inconceivable. Unbearable."

"Very poetic," said Dink. "The romance of war."