Shadow of the giant

simply,
The Hegemon, and signed Speaker for the Dead.
    She wept all day after reading it.
    She read it aloud at Peter's grave, stopping whenever any
passersby came near. Until she realized that they were coming in order to hear
her reading. So she invited them over and read it aloud again, from the beginning.
    The book wasn't long, but there was power in it. To Petra,
it was everything Peter had wanted it to be. It put a period on his life. The
harm and the good. The wars and the peace. The lies and the truth. The
manipulation and the liberty.
    The Hegemon was a companion piece, really, to The Hive
Queen. The one book was the story of an entire species; and so was the other.
    But to Petra, it was the story of the man who had shaped her
life more than any other.
    Except one. The one who lived now only as a shadow in other
people's stories. The Giant.
    There was no grave, and there was no book to read there. And
his story wasn't a human one because in a way he hadn't lived a human life.
    It was a hero's life. It ended with him being taken away
into heaven, dying but not dead.
    I love you, Peter, she said to him at his grave. But you
must have known that I never stopped loving Bean, and longing for him, and
missing him whenever I looked in our children's faces.
    Then she went home, leaving both her husbands behind, the
one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was
in her heart.
     
     
     
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
     
     
    Thanks to Joan Han, M.D., who works in pediatric
endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, for advice on
what kinds of legitimate therapy might be tried to stop Bean's unstoppable
growth. Along the same lines, M. Jack Long, M.D., brought up the ideas that
became Volescu's suggestions for how Bean might live a long life. My thanks to
Dr. Long—along with my relief that he realized they were truly appalling ideas.
(His letter ended "Yikes—I hope not!")
    Thanks to Danny Sale for suggesting that Bean might have a
hand in the decision to convert the Fantasy Game from Battle School into the
program that eventually became Jane. Farah Khimji of Lewisville, Texas,
reminded me of the need for a world currency—and the fact that the dollar
already is one. Andaiye Spencer let me know that I could not let the old Battle
School relationship between Petra Arkanian and Dink Meeker die without at least
some mention.
    Mark Trevors of New Brunswick reminded me that Peter and
Ender conversed once before Peter died, and expressed the wish that he could
see that scene more fully, and from Peter's point of view. Since this idea was
much better than the one I had for ending the book, I seized upon it
immediately, with gratitude. I also had reminders and help from Rechavia
Berman, my Hebrew translator, and from David Tayman.
    I'm not good with calendaring my books or aging my
characters. I don't pay attention to those things in real life, and so I have a
hard time keeping track of the passage of time in my fiction. In response to a
plea at our Hatrack River Web site (www.hatrack.com), Megan Schindele, Nathan
Taylor, Maureen Fanta, Jennifer Rader, Samuel Sevlie, Carrie Pennow, Shannon
Blood, Elizabeth Cohen, and Cecily Kiester all pitched in and sorted through
all the age and time references in Ender's Game and the other Shadow books to
help sort it out for me. In addition, Jason Bradshaw and C. Porter Bassett
caught a continuity error between the original Ender's Game and this novel. I'm
grateful for readers who know my books better than I do.
    I'm grateful for the willingness of my good friends Erin
Absher, Aaron Johnston, and Kathy Kidd, who set aside many other more important
concerns in order to join my wife, Kristine, in giving me quick feedback on
each chapter as it was written. It never ceases to amaze me how many errors—not
just typos, but also continuity lapses and outright contradictions—can slip past
me and three or four very careful readers, only to be caught by the next. If
there are such mistakes still in this book, it's not their fault!
    Beth Meacham, my editor at Tor, went the extra mile on this
book. Still in pain from major surgery and drugged to the gills, she read this
manuscript while the bits and bytes were still sizzling, and gave me excellent
advice. Some of the best scenes in this book are here because she suggested
them and I was smart enough to recognize a great idea when I heard it.
    The whole production team at Tor went to extraordinary
lengths