Shadow of the giant

by love, teaching him as fast as he wants to learn. All those lost
years, recovered for our baby."
    Bean shook his head. "I hoped the baby would be
normal," he said. "I hoped they'd all be normal. So I wouldn't have
to consider this."
    "Consider what?"
    "Taking the baby with me."
    "With you where?" asked Petra.
    "The I.F. has a new starship. Very secret. A messenger
ship. It uses a gravity field to offset acceleration. Up to lightspeed in a
week. The plan is that once we find the babies, I take the ones like me and we
take off and keep traveling until they find the cure for this."
    "Once you're gone," said Petra, "why do you
think the fleet will bother even looking for a cure?"
    "Because they want to know how to turn Anton's Key
without the side effects," said Bean. "They'll keep working on
it."
    Petra nodded. She was taking this better than Bean expected.
    "All right," she said. "As soon as we find
the babies. Then we go."
    "We?" said Bean.
    "I'm sure, in your normal legumocentric view of the
universe, it didn't cross your mind that there's no reason I shouldn't go along
with you."
    "Petra, it means being cut off from the human race.
It's different for me because I'm not human."
    "That again."
    "What kind of life is that for the normal babies?
Growing up confined to a starship?"
    "It would only seem like weeks, Bean. How grown up will
they be?"
    "You'd be cut off from everything. Your family.
Everybody."
    "You stupid man," she said. "You are
everybody now. You and our babies."
    "You could raise the normal babies ... normally. With
grandparents. A normal life."
    "A fatherless life. And their siblings off on a
starship, so they'll never even meet. I don't think so, Bean. Do you think I'm
going to give birth to this little boy and then let somebody take him away from
me?"
    Bean stroked her cheek, her hair. "Petra, there's a
whole bunch of rational arguments against what you're saying, but you just gave
birth to my son, and I'm not going to argue with you now."
    "You're right," said Petra. "By all means,
let's avoid this discussion until I've nursed the baby for the first time and
it becomes even more impossible for me to consider letting you take him away
from me. But I'll tell you this right now. I will never change my mind. And if
you maneuver things so you sneak off and steal my son from me and leave me a
widow without even my child to raise, then you're worse than Volescu. When he
stole our children, we knew he was an amoral monster. But you—you're my
husband. If you do that to me, I'll pray that God puts you in the deepest part
of hell."
    "Petra, you know I don't believe in hell."
    "But knowing that I'm praying such a thing, that will
be hell for you."
    "Petra, I won't do anything you don't agree to."
    "Then I'm coming with you," she said,
"because I'll never agree to anything else. So it's decided. There's no
discussion to have later when I'm rational. I'm already as rational as I'll
ever be. In fact, there's no rational reason why I shouldn't come along if I
want to. It's an excellent idea. And being raised on a starship has to be
better than being orphaned on the streets of Rotterdam."
    "No wonder they named you after rock," said Bean.
    "I don't give up and I don't wear down. I'm not just
rock, I'm diamond."
    Her eyelids were heavy.
    "Go to sleep now, Petra."
    "Only if I can hold on to you," she said.
    He took her hand; she gripped it fiercely. "I got you to
give me a baby," she said. "Don't think for a minute I'm not going to
get my way in this, too."
    "I promised you already, Petra," said Bean.
"Whatever we do, it'll be because you agree that it's the right
thing."
    "Think you want to leave me. Voyage to... nowhere.
Think nowhere's better than living with me...."
    "That's right, baby," said Bean, stroking her arm
with his other hand. "Nowhere is better than living with you."
     
     
    They had the baby christened by a priest. He came into
neonate intensive care; not the first time he'd done it, of course, baptizing
distressed newborns before they died. He seemed relieved to learn that this
baby was strong and healthy and likely to survive, despite how tiny he was.
    "Andrew Arkanian Delphiki, I baptize you in the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
    It was quite a crowd gathered around the neonate incubator
to watch. Bean's family, Petra's family, and of course Anton and Ferreira and
Peter and the Wiggin parents and Suriyawong and those members of Bean's little
army who weren't actually on