Orson Scott Card - Ender 08 - Shadow of the Giant

by Orson Scott Card

  Audio and video were so wasteful of bandwidth that they were routinely compressed and then re-inflated at the other end, so despite the instantaneity of ansible communications, there was a noticeable time lag between sides of the conversation.

  No picture. Peter had to draw the line somewhere. And Ender hadn't insisted. It would be too painful for both of them—for Ender to see how much time had passed during his relativistic voyage out to Shakespeare, and for Peter to be forced to see how young Ender still was, how much life he still had ahead of him while Peter was looking coolly at his own old age and approaching death.

  "I'm here, Ender."

  "It's good to hear your voice, Peter."

  And then silence.

  "No small talk, is there?" said Peter. "It's been too long a time for me, too brief a time for you. Ender, I know I was a slumbitch to you as a kid. No excuses. I was full of rage and shame and I took it out on you and Valentine but mostly on you. I don't think I ever said a kind thing to you, not when you were awake anyway. I can talk about that if you want."

  "Later maybe," said Ender. "This isn't a family therapy session. I just want to know what you did and why."

  "Which things I did?"

  "The ones that matter to you," said Ender. "What you choose to tell me is as important as what you say about those events."

  "There's a lot. My mind is still clear. I remember a lot."

  "Good. I'm listening."

  He listened for hours that day. And more hours, more days. Peter poured out everything. The political struggles. The wars. The negotiations. The essays on the nets. Building up intelligence networks. Seizing opportunities. Finding worthwhile allies.

  It wasn't until near the end of their last session that Peter dredged up memories of when Ender was a baby. "I really loved you. Kept begging Mum to let me feed you. Change you. Play with you. I thought you were the best thing that ever existed. But then I noticed. I'd be playing with you and have you laughing and then Valentine would walk into the room and you'd just rivet on her. I didn't exist any more.

  "She was luminous, of course you reacted that way. Everybody did. I did. But at the same time, I was just a kid. I saw it as, Ender loves Valentine more than me. And when I realised you were born because they regarded me as a failure—the Battle School people, I mean—it was just one more resentment. That doesn't excuse anything. I didn't have to be a bastard about it. I'm just telling you, I realise now that's where it started."

  "OK," said Ender.

  "I'm sorry," said Peter. "That I wasn't better to you as a kid. Because, see, my whole life, all the things I've told you about in all these incredibly expensive conversations, I would find myself thinking, that was OK. I did OK that time. Ender would like that I did that."

  "Please don't tell me you did it all for me."

  "Are you kidding? I did it because I'm as competitive a marubo as ever was born on this planet. But my standard of judgement was: Ender would like that I did that."

  Ender didn't answer.

  "Aw, hell, kid. It's way simpler than that. What you did by the time you were twelve made my whole life's work possible."

  "Well, Peter, what you did while I was voyaging, that's what made my ... victory worth winning."

  "What a family Mr. and Mrs. Wiggin had."

  "I'm glad we talked, Peter."

  "Me too."

  "I think I can write about you."

  "I hope so."

  "Even if I can't, though, it doesn't mean I wasn't glad. To find out who you grew up to be."

  "Wish I could be there," said Peter, "to see who you grow up to be."

  "I'm never going to grow up, Peter," said Ender. "I'm frozen in history. Forever twelve. You had a good life, Peter. Give Petra my love. Tell her I miss her. And the others. But especially her. You got the best of us, Peter."

  At that moment, Peter almost told him about Bean and his three children, flying through space somewhere, waiting for a cure that didn't look very promising now.

  But then he realised that he couldn't. The story wasn't his to tell.

  If Ender wrote about it, then people would start looking for Bean. Somebody might try to contact him. Someone might call him home. And then his voyage would have been for nothing. His sacrifice. His Satyagraha.

  They never spoke again.

  Peter lived for some time after that, despite his weak heart. Hoping the whole time that Ender might write the book he wanted. But when he died, the book was still unwritten.

  So it was Petra who read the short biography called, simply, The Hegemon, and signed Speaker for the Dead.

  She wept all day after reading it.

  She read it aloud at Peter's grave, stopping whenever any passers-by came near. Until she realised that they were coming in order to hear her reading. So she invited them over and read it aloud again, from the beginning.

  The book wasn't long, but there was power in it. To Petra, it was everything Peter had wanted it to be. It put a period on his life. The harm and the good. The wars and the peace. The lies and the truth. The manipulation and the liberty.

  The Hegemon was a companion piece, really, to The Hive Queen. The one book was the story of an entire species; and so was the other.

  But to Petra, it was the story of the man who had shaped her life more than any other.

  Except one. The one who lived now only as a shadow in other people's stories. The Giant.

  There was no grave, and there was no book to read there. And his story wasn't a human one because in a way he hadn't lived a human life.

  It was a hero's life. It ended with him being taken away into heaven, dying but not dead.

  I love you, Peter, she said to him at his grave. But you must have known that I never stopped loving Bean, and longing for him, and missing him whenever I looked in our children's faces.

  Then she went home, leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Joan Han, M.D., who works in pediatric endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, for advice on what kinds of legitimate therapy might be tried to stop Bean's unstoppable growth. Along the same lines, M. Jack Long, M.D., brought up the ideas that became Volescu's suggestions for how Bean might live a long life. My thanks to Dr. Long—along with my relief that he realised they were truly appalling ideas. (His letter ended "Yikes—I hope not!")

  Thanks to Danny Sale for suggesting that Bean might have a hand in the decision to convert the Fantasy Game from Battle School into the program that eventually became Jane. Farah Khimji of Lewisville, Texas, reminded me of the need for a world currency—and the fact that the dollar already is one. Andaiye Spencer let me know that I could not let the old Battle School relationship between Petra Arkanian and Dink Meeker die without at least some mention.

  Mark Trevors of New Brunswick reminded me that Peter and Ender conversed once before Peter died, and expressed the wish that he could see that scene more fully, and from Peter's point of view. Since this idea was much better than the one I had for ending the book, I seized upon it immediately, with gratitude. I also had reminders and help from Rechavia Berman, my Hebrew translator, and from David Tayman.

  I'm not good with calendaring my books or aging my characters. I don't pay attention to those things in real life, and so I have a hard time keeping track of the passage of time in my fiction. In response to a plea at our Hatrack River Web site (www.hatrack.com), Megan Schindele, Nathan Taylor, Maureen Fanta, Jennifer Rader, Samuel Sevlie, Carrie Pennow, Shannon Blood, Elizabeth Cohen, and Cecily Kiester all pitched in and sorted through all the age and time references in Ender's Game and the other Shadow books to help sort it out for me. In addition, Jason Bradshaw and C. Porter Bassett caught a continuity error between the original Ender's Game and this novel. I'm grateful for readers who know my books better than I do.

  I'm grateful for the willingness of my good friends Erin Absh
er, Aaron Johnston, and Kathy Kidd, who set aside many other more important concerns in order to join my wife, Kristine, in giving me quick feedback on each chapter as it was written. It never ceases to amaze me how many errors—not just typos, but also continuity lapses and outright contradictions—can slip past me and three or four very careful readers, only to be caught by the next. If there are such mistakes still in this book, it's not their fault!

  Beth Meacham, my editor at Tor, went the extra mile on this book. Still in pain from major surgery and drugged to the gills, she read this manuscript while the bits and bytes were still sizzling, and gave me excellent advice. Some of the best scenes in this book are here because she suggested them and I was smart enough to recognise a great idea when I heard it.

  The whole production team at Tor went to extraordinary lengths to help us bring out this book in time for a good publishing window, and I appreciate their patience with an author whose estimate of the time needed to complete this book was so laughably wrong.

  And Tom Doherty may just be the most creative publisher in the business. There's no idea too wacky for him to at least consider it; and when he decides to do something unusual—like a series of "parallel novels"—he puts everything behind it and makes it happen.

  Barbara Bova's creativity and dedication as my agent have blessed my family for most of my career. And I haven't forgotten that the Ender saga first reached the public because, even before she became an agent, her husband, Ben Bova, found a novella called "Ender's Game" on his slushpile and, with a few small changes, agreed to publish it in the August 1977 Analog magazine. That one decision (and it wasn't a no-brainer—other editors turned it down cold) has been putting bread on my table and opening the door for readers to find my other work ever since.

  But when the writing day is done and I come down out of my garret room, it's finding my wife, Kristine, and my daughter Zina there that makes it all worth doing. Thanks for the love and joy in my life each day. And to my other kids as well, for leading lives that I'm proud to be connected with.