Shadow of the giant

The
I.F. was forbidden to operate on the surface of Earth. Even if they had agents
who had discovered Volescu's whereabouts, why would they risk exposing their
own illegal activities just to help Bean find his babies? They had made a big
deal about how loyal they were to the Battle School graduates, especially to
Ender's Jeesh, but he doubted it went that far. Money, that's what they
offered. All the Battle School grads had a nice pension. They could go home
like Cincinnatus and farm for the rest of their lives, without even having to
worry about the weather or the seasons or the harvest. They could grow weeds
and still prosper.
    Instead, I stupidly allowed children of my deformed and
self-destructive genes to be created in vitro and now Volescu has planted them
in foreign wombs and I must find them before he and people like him can exploit
them and use them up and then watch them die of giantism, like me, before they
turn twenty.
    Volescu knows. He would never leave it to chance. Because he
still imagined himself to be a scientist. He would want to gather data about
the children. To him, it was all one big experiment, with the added
inconvenience of being illegal and based on stolen embryos. To Volescu, those
embryos belonged to him by right. To him, Bean was nothing but the experiment
that got away. Anything he produced was part of Volescu's long-term study.
    An old man sat at the table in the conference room. It took
Bean a moment to decide whether his skin was naturally dark or merely weathered
into a barnwood color and texture. Both, probably.
    I know him, thought Bean. Mazer Rackham. The man who saved
humanity in the Second Bugger Invasion. Who should have been dead many decades
ago, but who surfaced long enough to train Ender himself for the last campaign.
    "They send you to Earth?"
    "I'm retired," said Rackham.
    "So am I," said Bean. "So is Ender. When does
he come to Earth?"
    Rackham shook his head. "Too late to be bitter about
that," he said. "If Ender had been here, do you think there's any
chance he would be both alive and free?"
    Rackham had a point. Back when Achilles was arranging for
all of Ender's Jeesh to be kidnapped, the greatest prize of all would have been
Ender himself. And even if Ender had evaded capture—as Bean had done—how long
before someone else tried to control him or exploit him in order to achieve
some imperial ambition? With Ender, being an American as he was, maybe the
United States would have stirred from its torpor and now, instead of China and
the Muslim world being the main players in the great game, America would be
flexing its muscles again and then the world really would be in turmoil.
    Ender would have hated that. Hated himself for being part of
it. It really was better that Graff had arranged to send him off on the first
colony ship to a former Bugger world. Right now, each second of Ender's life
aboard the starship was a week to Bean. While Ender read a paragraph of a book,
a million babies would be born on Earth, a million old people and soldiers and
sick people and pedestrians and drivers would die and humanity would move
forward another small step in its evolution into a starfaring species.
    Starfaring species. That was Graff's program.
    "You're not here for the fleet, then," said Bean.
"You're here for Colonel Graff."
    "For the Minister of Colonization?" Rackham nodded
gravely. "Informally and unofficially, yes. To inform you of an
offer."
    "Graff has nothing that I want. Before any starship
could arrive on a colony world, I'd be dead."
    "You'd undoubtedly be an ... interesting choice to head
a colony," said Rackham. "But as you said, your term in office would
be too brief to-be effective. No, it's a different kind of offer."
    "The only things I want, you don't have."
    "Once upon a time, I believe, you wanted nothing more
than survival."
    "It's not within your power to offer me."
    "Yes it is," said Rackham.
    "Oh, from the vast medical research facilities of the
International Fleet there comes a cure for a condition that is suffered by only
one person on Earth?"
    "Not at all," said Rackham. "The cure will
have to come from others. What we offer you is the ability to wait until it's
ready. We offer you a starship, and lightspeed, and an ansible so you can be
told when to come home."
    Precisely the "gift" they gave Rackham himself,
when they thought they might need him to command all the fleets when they
arrived at the various Bugger worlds. The chance of survival rang