Shadow of the giant

the service of the FPE
will help with that."
    "There'll be legends anyway," said Petra.
"Plenty of dead heroes have legends."
    "Yes, but if they know we put him in a starship and
trundled him off into space, it won't be just a legend, will it? Serious people
would believe in it, not just the normal lunatics."
    "So how will you even keep up the research
project?" demanded Petra. "If everybody thinks the only people who need
the cure are dead or never existed, why will it continue?"
    "Because a few people in the I.F. and ColMin will know.
And they'll be in contact with Bean by ansible. He'll be called home when the
cure is found."
    They flew on then, as Petra tried to deal with what they'd
told her. Bean held her most of the time, even when her anger surged now and
then and she was furious with him.
    Terrible scenarios kept playing themselves out in her mind,
and at the risk of giving Bean ideas, she said to him, "Don't give up,
Julian Delphiki. Don't decide that there's never going to be a cure and end the
voyage. Even if you think your life is worthless, you have my babies out there
too. Even if the voyage goes on so long that you really are dying, remember
that these children are like you. Survivors. As long as somebody doesn't
actually kill them."
    "Don't worry," said Bean. "If I had the
slightest tendency toward suicide, we would never have met. And I would never
do anything to endanger my own children. I'm only taking this voyage for them.
Otherwise, I'd be content to die in your arms here on Earth."
    She wept again for a while after that, and then she had to
feed Ramon again, and then she insisted on feeding Ender and Bella herself,
spooning the food into their mouths because when would she ever get a chance to
do it again? She tried to memorize every moment of it, even though she knew she
couldn't. Knew that memory would fade. That these babies would become only a
distant dream to her. That her arms would remember best the babies she held the
longest—the children she would keep with her.
    The only one she had borne from her own body would be gone.
    But she didn't cry while she was feeding them. That would
have been a waste. Instead she played with them and talked to them and teased
them to talk back to her. "I know your first word isn't going to be too
long from now. How about a little 'mama' right now, you lazy baby?"
    It was only after the plane had landed in Rotterdam, and
Bean was supervising the nurses as they carried the babies down onto the
tarmac, that Petra stayed back in the plane with Rackham, long enough to put
her worst nightmare into words.
    "Don't think that I'm not aware of how easy it would
be, Mazer Rackham, for this fake death of Bean's not to be a fake at all. For
all we know there is no ship, there is no project to find a cure, and Volescu
is going to be executed. The threat of this new species replacing your precious
human race would be gone then. And even the widow would be silent about what
you've done to her husband and children, because she'll think he's off in space
somewhere, traveling at lightspeed, instead of dead on a battlefield in
Iran."
    Rackham looked as if she had slapped him. "Petra,"
he said. "What do you think we are?"
    "What you are," said Petra, "is not denying
it."
    "I deny it," said Rackham. "There is a ship.
We are seeking a cure. We will call him home."
    Then she saw the tears streaming down his cheeks.
    "Petra," said Rackham, "don't you understand
that we love you children? All of you? We already had to send Ender away. We're
sending them all away, except for you. Because we love you. Because we don't
want any harm to you."
    "So why are you leaving me here?"
    "Because of your babies, Petra. Because even though
they don't have the syndrome, they're also Bean's babies. He's the only one who
had no hope of a normal life. But thanks to you, he had one. However briefly,
he got to be a husband and a father and have a family. Don't you know how much
we love you for giving him that? As God is my witness, Petra, we would never
harm Bean, not for any cause and certainly not for our convenience. Whatever
you think we are, you're wrong. Because you children are the only children we
have."
    She wasn't going to feel sorry for him. It was her turn
right now. So she pushed past him and went down the stairs and took the hand of
her husband and followed the nurses that were carrying her children toward a
closed van.
    There were five new children that she hadn't met yet,
waiting for