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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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 realized 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.