Shadow of the giant

for
intellectual ability without also triggering this perpetual growth
pattern."
    "If he had it, he'd use it. There's no advantage not
to."
    "So it is a biological weapon."
    "Weapon? Something that affects only your children?
Makes them die of giantism before they're twenty? Oh, that would make armies
run in panic."
    "What then?"
    "Volescu thinks he's God. Or at least he's playing
dress-up with God's clothing. He's trying to jump the whole human race to the
next stage of evolution. Spread this disease so that no normal children can be
born, ever again."
    "But that's insane. Everybody dying so young—"
    "No, no, Julian. No, not insane. Why do humans live so
long? Mathematicians and poets, they burn out in their mid-twenties anyway. We
live so long because of grandchildren. In a difficult world, grandparents can
help ensure the survival of their grandchildren. The societies that kept their
old people around and listened to them and respected them—that fed them—always
do better. But that's a community on the edge of starvation. Always at risk.
Are we at risk so much today?"
    "If these wars keep getting worse—"
    "Yes, war," said Anton. "Kill off a whole
generation of men, yet the grandfathers keep their sexual potency. They can
propagate the next generation even if the young ones are dead. But Volescu
thinks we're ready to move beyond planning for the deaths of young men."
    "So he doesn't mind having generations that are less
than twenty years."
    "Change society's patterns. When were you ready to
assume an adult role, Bean? When was your brain ready to go to work and change
the world?"
    "Age ten. Earlier, if I'd had good education."
    "So you get good education. All our schools change
because children are ready to learn at age three. Age two. By age ten, if
Volescu's gene change takes place, the new generation is completely ready to
take over for the old. Marry as early as possible. Breed like bunnies. Become
giants. Irresistible in war. Until they keel over from heart attacks. Don't you
see? Instead of spending the young men in violent death, we send the old
men—the eighteen-year-olds. While all the work in science, technology,
building, planting, everything—all done by the young men. The ten-year-olds.
All of them like you."
    "Not human anymore."
    "A different species, yes. The children of Homo
sapiens. Homo lumens, maybe. Still capable of interbreeding, but the old style
of human—they grow to be old, but they are never big. And they are never very
smart. How can they compete? They are gone, Bean. Your people rule the
world."
    "They wouldn't be my people."
    "It's good that you're loyal to old humans like me. But
you are something new, Bean. And if you have any children with my little key
turned, no, they won't be fast like what Volescu has designed, but they'll be
brilliant. Something new in the world. When they can talk to each other,
instead of being alone like you, will you be able to keep up with them? Well,
maybe yes, for you. But will I be able to keep up with them?"
    Bean laughed bitterly. "Will Petra? That's what you're
saying."
    "You had no parents to be humiliated when they found
out that you were learning faster than they can teach."
    "Petra will love them just as much."
    "Yes, she will. But all her love won't turn them
human."
    "And here you told me that I'm definitely human. Not
true after all."
    "Human in your loves, your hungers. In what makes you
good and not evil. But in the speed of your life, the intellectual heights, are
you not alone in this world?"
    "Unless that virus is released."
    "How do you know it won't still be released?"
asked Anton. "How do you know he hasn't already completed a batch and
disseminated it? How do you know he didn't infect himself and now he spreads it
wherever he goes? In these past weeks since he got here, how many people in the
Hegemony compound have had a cold? Sniffly nose, itchy penis, tender
nipples—yes, he used that virus as his base, he has a sense of humor, an ugly
kind."
    "I haven't checked on the subtler symptoms, but we've
had the normal number of colds."
    "Probably not," said Anton. "He probably
didn't make himself a carrier. What would be the point? He wants other people
to spread it."
    "You're saying that it's already out there."
    "Or he has a website that he has to check every week or
every month. And then one month he doesn't do it. So a signal is sent out to
some of Achilles's old network. The virus gets broken out and used. And all
Volescu