“I don’t know whether to be comforted or appalled that you would think I’d find that the death of one my children might be comforting.”

Rackham grimaced. “You know what I meant.”

Bean took an envelope from his pocket and laid it under Ramón. “Tell the nurses to leave that envelope there, even if he leaks and wets all over the thing.”

“Of course,” said Rackham. “For what it’s worth, Bean, your pension will also be invested, like Ender’s, and run by the same software.”

“Don’t,” said Bean. “Give it all to Petra. She’ll need it, with five babies to raise. Maybe six someday.”

“What about when you come home, when they find the cure?”

Bean looked at him as if he were crazy. “Do you really think that will happen?”

“If you don’t, why are you going?”

“Because it might,” said Bean. “And if we stay here, early death is certain for all four of us. If the cure is found, and if we come home, then we can talk about a pension. I’ll tell you what. After Petra dies, after these five all grow old and die, then start paying my pension into a fund controlled by that investor software.”

“You’ll be back before then.”

“No,” said Bean. “No, that’s…no. Once we’re ten years out—and there’s no hope of a cure before that—then even if you find the cure, don’t call us back until…well, until Petra would be dead before we got here. Do you understand? Because if she remarries—and I want her to—I don’t want her to have to face me. To face me looking as I do right now, the boy she married—the giant boy. This is cruel enough, what we’re doing now. I’m not going to cause her one last torment before she dies.”

“Why don’t you let her decide?”

“It’s not her choice,” said Bean. “Once we leave, we’re dead. Gone forever. She can never have back the life that will have been lost. But I’m not worried, Mazer. There is no cure.”

“You know that?”

“I know Volescu. He doesn’t want to find a cure. He doesn’t think it’s a disease. He thinks it’s the hope of humanity. And except for Anton, nobody else knows enough to proceed. It was an illegal field of study for too long. It’s still tainted. The methods Volescu used, the whole process surrounding Anton’s Key—nobody’s going to turn that key again, and therefore you’re not going to have any scientists who know what they’re doing in that area. The project will have less and less importance for your successors. Someday—not too long from now—somebody will look at the budget item and say, We’re paying for what? And the project will die.”

“It won’t happen,” said Mazer. “The Fleet doesn’t forget its own.”

Bean laughed. “You don’t get it, do you? Peter is going to succeed. The world is going to be united. International war will end. And along with it, the sense of loyalty among the military will also die. There’ll just be…colony ships and trading ships and scientific research institutes that will be scandalized at the thought of wasting money doing a personal favor for a soldier who lived a hundred years ago. Or two hundred. Or three hundred.”