Shadows in Flight, enhanced edition (13 page)

"You've already done it?" said Bean. His heart raced.

"Calm, calm, Father," said Carlotta.

"Of course we did it," said Cincinnatus.

"And in a few years, we'll see if it worked," said Ender. "If not, we'll still have time to try again. Or try something else."

He slept well that night, better than he had in five long years in space, because his children were safe, and perhaps cured, and certainly able to take care of themselves. He had accomplished it all -- if not directly, then by raising them to be the kind of people who would dare to take the steps necessary to save themselves.

In the morning, they were all busy, but Bean was content to lie there and listen to the sounds of life in the meadow. He didn't know the names of any of the animals, but there were some who hopped and some that chirped and croaked, and some that landed lightly on him and crawled or wriggled to somewhere else and dropped or leapt off of him. He was part of the life here. Soon his body would be even more deeply involved with it. Meanwhile, he was happy.

And maybe when he died, he'd find out that one religion or another was right after all. Maybe Petra would be there waiting for him -- impatient, scolding. "What took you?"

"I had to finish my work."

"Well, you didn't -- the children had to do it."

And others. Sister Carlotta, who saved his life. Poke, who also saved his life, and also died for it. His parents, though he didn't meet them until after the war. His brother Nikolai.

Bean woke again. He hadn't known he was going to fall asleep. But now the children were gathered around him, looking serious.

"You had a little heart incident," said Cincinnatus.

"It's called happiness," said Bean.

He propped himself carefully on his elbows and knees. A position he had not adopted in at least a year, ever since he stopped trying to roll over. He hadn't been sure he could even do it. But there he was, on elbows and knees, like a baby. Panting, exhausted. I can't do this.

"What I want," he said softly, "is to stand in this meadow and walk in the light of the sun."

"Why didn't you say so?" said Carlotta.

They got him to lie back down on the hammock cloth, and then they winched him up to sitting position, and then stood him up on his feet.

The gravity he felt was so slight, so very close to nothing, yet being upright, even with the hammock holding him a little, was taking all his breath.

"I'm going to walk now," he said.

His legs were rubbery under him.

The drones flew to him and clung to his clothing, fluttering to help hold him up. The children gathered around his legs and helped him take one step, then another.

He felt the sun on his face. He felt the ground under his feet. He felt the people who loved him holding on to him and bearing him along.

It was enough.

"I'm going to lie down now," said Bean.

And then he did.

And then he died.

Sergeant was so proud of his perfect memory, thought Bean. Yet Bean and Petra had never announced anything to him, advanced though he was for a one-year-old. For of the three children on the
Herodotus
, Sergeant was the one who had never met his mother.

Petra had given birth to Ender -- Andrew -- from her own body, had nursed him, had known him better than any of the children. All the others had been stolen as embryos and implanted in surrogate mothers. It had taken a long time to track them down.

Bella -- Carlotta -- had been located while Bean and Petra were still together; Petra knew her, had loved her.

But Cincinnatus -- Sergeant -- had been located while Petra and Bean were both caught up in military campaigns. She learned of his existence at the same time Bean handed her their divorce papers and announced his decision to take the three children who had Bean's giantism off on a relativistic voyage in order to buy time for scientists to find the cure.

The closest Sergeant ever came to meeting Petra was that for a time Petra's mother took care of him in Armenia.

So whatever Sergeant thought he remembered, it was all manufactured memory, based on stories he had heard and opinions he had formed long after the fact. "I never liked you, I liked Petra," Sergeant said. What he really meant was, "I don't like you now, and invoking the name of my mother is the only thing I can think of that will really hurt you."

Sergeant's complaint was not unjustified. He
had
been torn from the family into which he had been born. They were given no choice; he was given no choice. And it was likely that Sergeant did have some memories, however fragmentary and vague, of the family that took care of him through the first year of his life. Maybe he even suffered from some separation anxiety for a while.

But Sergeant was too much like Bean for Bean to believe that it had really bothered him at the time. Sergeant was a fighter, and these words he said were weapons, not memories.
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The children had grown up with holograms of their mother, Petra, talking to them. "I love you. I miss you. I wish you could have known your brothers and sisters here on Earth. I know that you're still very young in years, and your siblings here are already adults who have moved on into their lives, married, having children. I hope that someday the same things become possible for you. The great regret of my life is that I was separated from the three of you, from your father. But I see now that it was the only decision that offered any kind of hope for a normal life for the children I kept here
and
for the children your father took with him."

The children had all memorized every word. They could say them along with her. And at various times they had wept while hearing them, repeated them mockingly, screamed them at the hologram, refused to listen, and finally just watched her thoughtfully.

Until they stopped summoning the holograms at all.

Bean thought that the holograms had done their job. They had given the children a relationship with their absent mother. She was grateful that Petra had made the recordings.

Even thought she had never actually sent them.
Return to chapter 3

It made Carlotta feel a little bitter that the communication between the Hive Queen and her daughters had been so perfect that they didn't need writing, they didn't need intercoms or radios, they didn't even need language. Memories were transferred perfectly. The mother was present within her children's minds always.

While
my
mother ...

Alone of the children, Carlotta knew that Mother had never sent them the hologram messages they had played over and over again.

The question had arisen quite early. "Why are the holograms so jumpy? Between every sentence she shifts."

The Giant's explanations had made perfect sense. "Your mother didn't like making speeches or sending messages. She always felt like she made constant mistakes. I'm sure she edited this a hundred times before she sent it."

Ender had been his normal complacent self, accepting the explanation completely. Sergeant had naturally made snotty remarks about how it was so nice of her to go to so much trouble to send them exactly one highly-edited, unnatural message in all the years that she had known they were on this voyage.

Carlotta alone seemed to understand that the Giant's explanation sounded like a just-so story, designed to fend off a child's question without actually answering it.