Shadow of the giant

acted for the good of all humankind—including
Thailand—and made possible the destruction of the man who, more than any other,
was responsible for the defeat and occupation of Thailand.
     
    This is the "public story," as you pointed out.
Now I point out that in this case the public story also happens to be the
complete truth.
     
    Like you, Suriyawong is a Battle School graduate. China's
new Emperor and the Muslim Caliph are both Battle School graduates. But they
are two of those chosen to take part in my brother Ender's famous Jeesh. Even
if you discount their actual brilliance as military commanders, the public
perception of their powers is at the level of magic. This will affect the
morale of your soldiers as surely as of theirs.
     
    How do you suppose you will keep Thailand free if you reject
Suriyawong? He is no threat to your leadership; he will be your most valuable
tool against your enemies.
     
    Sincerely,
    Peter, Hegemon
     
     
    Bean stooped to pass through the doorway. He wasn't actually
tall enough to bang his head. But it had happened often enough, in other
doorways that once would have given him plenty of room, that now he was
overcautious. He didn't know what to do with his hands, either. They seemed too
big for any job he might need them for. Pens were like toothpicks; his finger
filled the trigger guard of many a pistol. Soon he'd have to butter his finger
to get it out, as if the pistol were a too-tight ring.
    And his joints ached. And his head hurt sometimes like it
was going to split in two. Because, in fact, it was trying to do exactly that.
The soft spot on the top of his head could not seem to expand fast enough to
make room for his growing brain.
    The doctors loved that part. To find out what it did to the
mental function of an adult to have the brain grow. Did it disrupt memory? Or
merely add to capacity? Bean submitted to their questions and measurements and
scans and bloodlettings because he might not find all his children before he
died, and anything they learned from studying him might help them.
    But at times like this he felt nothing but despair. There
was no help for him, and none for them, either. He would not find them. And if
he did, he could not help them.
    What difference has my life made? I killed one man. He was a
monster, but I had it in my power to kill him at least once before, and failed
to do it. So don't I share in the responsibility for what he did in the
intervening years? The deaths, the misery.
    Including Petra's suffering when she was his captive.
Including our own suffering over the children he stole from us.
    And yet he went on searching, using every contact he could
think of, every search engine on the nets, every program he could devise for
manipulating the public records in order to be ready to identify which births
were of his children, implanted in surrogates.
    For of that much he was certain. Achilles and Volescu had
never intended to give the embryos back to him and Petra. That promise had only
been a lure. A man of less malice than Achilles might have killed the
embryos—as he pretended to do when he broke test tubes during their last
confrontation in Ribeirão Preto. But for Achilles, killing itself was never a
pleasure. He killed when he thought it was necessary. When he actually wanted
to make someone suffer, he made sure the suffering lingered as long as
possible.
    Bean's and Petra's children would be born to mothers unknown
to them, probably scattered throughout the world by Volescu.
    But Achilles had done his work well. Volescu's travels were
completely erased from the public record. And there was nothing about the man
to make him particularly memorable. They could show his picture to a million
airline workers and another million cab drivers throughout the world and half
of them might remember seeing a man who looked "like that" but none
of them would be sure of anything and Volescu's path could not be retraced.
    And when Bean had tried to appeal to Volescu's lingering
shreds of decency—which he hoped existed, against all evidence—the man had gone
underground and now all Bean could hope for was that somebody, some agency
somewhere, would find him, arrest him, and hold him long enough for Bean to...
    To what? Torture him? Threaten him? Bribe him? What could
possibly induce Volescu to tell him what he needed to know?
    Now the International Fleet had sent him some officer to
give him "important information." What could they possibly know?