Shadow of the giant

small wheeled beds that held
his five normal children. The ones he would never see again, once he left them
today.
    Mazer Rackham put a hand on his shoulder. "It's time to
go, Julian."
    "Five of them," said Bean. "How will Petra
manage?"
    "She'll have help," said Rackham. "The real
question is, how will you manage on that messenger ship? They'll outnumber you
three to one."
    "As I can attest, children with my particular genetic
defect become self-sufficient at a very early age," said Bean.
    He touched the bed of the baby named Andrew. The same name
as the eldest of the siblings. But this Andrew was a normal infant. Not
undersized for his age.
    And this second Bella. She would lead a normal life. As
would Ramon and Julian and Petra.
    "If these five are normal," Bean said to Rackham,
"then the ninth child—it's most likely ... defective?"
    "If the odds are fifty-fifty of the traits getting
passed on, and we know that five of the nine didn't get them, then it stands to
reason that the missing one has a higher likelihood of having the traits.
Though as any expert on probability would tell you, the probability for each
child was fifty-fifty, and the distribution of the syndrome among the other
infants will have no effect on the outcome for the ninth."
    "Maybe it's better if Petra never finds ... the last
one."
    "My guess, Bean, is that there is no ninth baby. Not
every implantation works. There could easily have been an early miscarriage.
That would be a complete explanation of the lack of any record that was
traceable by the software."
    "I don't know whether to be comforted or appalled that
you would think I'd find that the death of one my children might be
comforting."
    Rackham grimaced. "You know what I meant."
    Bean took an envelope from his pocket and laid it under
Ramon. "Tell the nurses to leave that envelope there, even if he leaks and
wets all over the thing."
    "Of course," said Rackham. "For what it's
worth, Bean, your pension will also be invested, like Ender's, and run by the
same software."
    "Don't," said Bean. "Give it all to Petra.
She'll need it, with five babies to raise. Maybe six someday."
    "What about when you come home, when they find the
cure?"
    Bean looked at him as if he were crazy. "Do you really
think that will happen?"
    "If you don't, why are you going?"
    "Because it might," said Bean. "And if we
stay here, early death is certain for all four of us. If the cure is found, and
if we come home, then we can talk about a pension. I'll tell you what. After
Petra dies, after these five all grow old and die, then start paying my pension
into a fund controlled by that investor software."
    "You'll be back before then."
    "No," said Bean. "No, that's ... no. Once
we're ten years out—and there's no hope of a cure before that—then even if you
find the cure, don't call us back until ... well, until Petra would be dead
before we got here. Do you understand? Because if she remarries—and I want her
to—I don't want her to have to face me. To face me looking as I do right now,
the boy she married—the giant boy. This is cruel enough, what we're doing now.
I'm not going to cause her one last torment before she dies."
    "Why don't you let her decide?"
    "It's not her choice," said Bean. "Once we
leave, we're dead. Gone forever. She can never have back the life that will
have been lost. But I'm not worried, Mazer. There is no cure."
    "You know that?"
    "I know Volescu. He doesn't want to find a cure. He
doesn't think it's a disease. He thinks it's the hope of humanity. And except
for Anton, nobody else knows enough to proceed. It was an illegal field of
study for too long. It's still tainted. The methods Volescu used, the whole
process surrounding Anton's Key—nobody's going to turn that key again, and
therefore you're not going to have any scientists who know what they're doing
in that area. The project will have less and less importance for your
successors. Someday—not too long from now— somebody will look at the budget
item and say, We're paying for what? And the project will die."
    "It won't happen," said Mazer. "The Fleet
doesn't forget its own."
    Bean laughed. "You don't get it, do you? Peter is going
to succeed. The world is going to be united. International war will end. And
along with it, the sense of loyalty among the military will also die. There'll
just be ... colony ships and trading ships and scientific research institutes
that will be scandalized at the thought of wasting money doing a