Shadow of the giant

offer, and fled into space? What
would have happened to China then?
    And then a more sobering question: What will happen to China
now?
     
     
     
    2
     
    MOTHER
     
    From: HMebane%[email protected]
    To: JulianDelphiki%[email protected] Re:
Prognosis
     
    Dear Julian,
     
    I wish I had better news. But yesterday's tests are
conclusive. Estrogen therapy has had no effect on the epiphyses. They remain
open, even though you definitely do not have any defect in the estrogen
receptors on the growth plates of your bones.
     
    As to your second request, of course we will continue to
study your DNA, my friend, whether any of your missing embryos are found or
not. What was done once can be done again, and Volescu's mistakes may be
repeated with some other genetic alteration in the future. But the history of
genetic research is fairly consistent. It takes time to map and isolate an
unusual sequence and then perform animal experiments in order to determine what
each portion of it does and how to counteract its effects.
     
    There is no way to expedite such research. If we had ten
thousand working on the problem, they would perform the same experiments in the
same order and it would take the same amount of time. Someday we will
understand why your astonishing intellect is so incurably linked with uncontrolled
growth. Right now, to be candid, it seems to be almost malicious on the part of
nature, as if there were some law that the price for the unleashing of human
intellect is either autism or giantism.
     
    If only, instead of military training, you had been taught
biochemistry so that at your present age you could be up to speed in this
field. I have no doubt that you would be more likely to have the kind of
insights we need than we of fettered intellect. That is the bitter irony of
your condition and your personal history. Even Volescu could not have
anticipated the consequence of his alteration of your genes.
     
    I feel like a coward, delivering this information in an
email instead of face to face, but you insisted on no delay and a written
report. The technical data will, of course, be forwarded to you as the final
reports become available.
     
    If only cryogenics had not proven to be such a barren field.
     
    Sincerely,
    Howard
     
     
    As soon as Bob left for his shift as night manager of the
grocery store, Randi sat down in front of the screen and started the special on
Achilles Flandres over again from the beginning.
    It galled her to hear how they slandered him, but by now she
was adept at tuning it out. Megalomaniac. Madman. Murderer.
    Why couldn't they see him as he really was? A genius like
Alexander the Great, who came this close to uniting the world and ending war
forever.
    Now the dogs would fight over the scraps of Achilles's achievements,
while his body rested in an obscure grave in some miserable tropical village in
Brazil.
    And the assassin who had ended Achilles's life, who had
thwarted his greatness, he was being honored as if there were something heroic
about putting a bullet into the eye of an unarmed man. Julian Delphiki. Bean.
The tool of the evil Hegemon Peter Wiggin.

    Delphiki and Wiggin. Unworthy to be on the same planet with
Achilles. And yet they claimed to be his heirs, the rightful rulers of the
world.
    Well, poor fools, you're the heirs of nothing. Because I
know where Achilles's true heir is.
    She patted her stomach, though that was a dangerous thing to
do, what with her puking at a moment's notice ever since the pregnancy really
took hold. She didn't show yet, and when she did, it was a fifty-fifty chance
whether Bob would throw her out or keep her and accept the child as his own.
Bob knew he couldn't father children—they'd had enough tests—and there was no
point in pretending since he'd ask for a DNA test and then he'd know anyway.
    And she had sworn never to tell that she had received an
implant after all. She would have to pretend that she had had an affair with
somebody and wanted to keep the baby. Bob would not like that at all. But she
knew that her baby's life depended on keeping the secret.
    The man who interviewed her at the fertility clinic had been
adamant about that. "It doesn't matter whom you tell, Randi. The enemies
of the great man know that this embryo exists. They'll be searching for it.
They'll be watching all the women in the world who give birth within a certain
timeframe. And any rumor that a baby was implanted rather than