Shadow of the giant

inside him
like the tolling of a great bell. He couldn't help it. If there was anything
that had ever driven him, it was that hunger to survive. But how could he trust
them?
    "And in return, what do you want from me?"
    "Can't this be part of your retirement package from the
fleet?"
    Rackham was good at keeping a straight face, but Bean knew
he couldn't be serious. "When I come back, there's going to be some poor
young soldier I can train?"
    "You're not a teacher," said Rackham.
    "Neither were you."
    Rackham shrugged. "So we become whatever we need to be.
We're offering you life. We'll continue to fund research on your
condition."
    "What, using my children as your guinea pigs?"
    "We'll try to find them, of course. We'll try to cure
them."
    "But they won't get their own starships?"
    "Bean," said Rackham. "How many trillions of
dollars do you think your genes are worth?"
    "To me," said Bean, "They're worth more than
all the money in the world."
    "I don't think you could pay even the interest on that
loan."
    "So I don't have as high a credit rating as I
hoped."
    "Bean, take this offer seriously. While there's still
time. Acceleration is hard on the heart. You have to go while you're still
healthy enough to survive the voyage. As it is, we'll be cutting it rather
fine, don't you think? A couple of years to accelerate, and at the end, a
couple more to decelerate. Who gives you four years?"
    "Nobody," said Bean. "And you're forgetting.
I have to come home. That's four more years. It's already far too late."
    Rackham smiled. "Don't you think we've taken that into
account?"
    "What, you've figured out a way to turn while traveling
at light-speed?"
    "Even light bends."
    "Light is a wave."
    "So are you, when you're traveling that fast."
    "Neither of us is a physicist."
    "But the people who planned our new generation of
messenger ship are," said Rackham.
    "How can the I.F. afford to build new ships?"
asked Bean. "Your funding comes from Earth and the emergency is over. The
only reason the nations of Earth even pay your salaries and continue to supply
you is because they're buying your neutrality."
    Rackham smiled.
    "Somebody's paying you to keep developing new
ships," said Bean.
    "Speculation is pointless."
    "There's only one nation that could afford to do that,
and it's the one nation that could never keep it secret."
    "So it's not possible," said Rackham.
    "Yet you're promising me a kind of ship that couldn't
exist."
    "You go through acceleration in a compensatory gravity
field, so there's no additional strain on your heart. That lets us accelerate
in a week instead of two years."
    "And if the gravity fails?"
    "Then you're torn to dust in an instant. But it doesn't
fail. We've tested it."
    "So messengers can go from world to world without
losing more than a couple of weeks of their lives."
    "Of their own lives," said Rackham. "But when
we send someone out on such a voyage, thirty or fifty lightyears, everyone they
ever knew is dead long before they come back. Volunteers are few."
    Everyone they ever knew. If he got on this starship, he'd
leave Petra behind and never see her again.
    Was he heartless enough for that?
    Not heartless at all. He could still feel the pain of losing
Sister Carlotta, the woman who saved him from the streets of Rotterdam and
watched over for him for years, until Achilles finally murdered her.
    "Can I take Petra with me?"
    "Would she go?"
    "Not without our children," said Bean.
    "Then I suggest you keep searching," said Rackham.
"Because even though the new technology buys you a bit more time, it's not
forever. Your body imposes a deadline that we can't put off."
    "And you'll let me bring Petra, if we find our
children."
    "If she'll go," said Rackham.
    "She will," said Bean. "We have no roots in
this world, except our children."
    "Already they're children in your imagination,"
said Rackham.
    Bean only smiled. He knew how Catholic it made him sound,
but that's how it felt to him and Petra both.
    "We ask only one thing," said Rackham.
    Bean laughed. "I knew it."
    "As long as you're waiting around anyway, searching for
your children," said Rackham. "We'd like you to help Peter unite the
world under the office of the Hegemon."
    Bean was so astonished he stopped laughing. "So the
fleet intends to meddle in earthside affairs."
    "We aren't meddling at all," said Rackham.
"You are."
    "Peter doesn't listen to me. If he did, he would have
let me kill Achilles back in China when we first had the chance. Peter