Ender spoke up. “You want to know why the drones didn’t die.”

  “Maybe it was a disease that affected only females. But then, why did the workers not die until the Queen did, and then all at once?”

  “They might have already been dying,” said Ender. “That was outside the purview of what they were telling me.”

  “But the drones didn’t die,” said Bean.

  “I’ll try to negotiate a biopsy on some body part that contains their genome. Maybe they kept some relic of the dead ones.”

  “The ones they ate?”

  “Different species, different rules,” said Carlotta, almost reflexively.

  “And you, Carlotta,” said Bean.

  “You shouldn’t have spoken up,” said Cincinnatus.

  “I already had this planned,” said Bean. “While Ender’s getting his samples, Carlotta, I need you to figure out a way to get me into the ecotat.”

  The children were silent.

  “No,” said Carlotta.

  “They must have built the ark with a plan for getting large quantities of plants and animals out of there to ship it down to the planet’s surface. However they plan to get that stuff out, I can go in that way.”

  “It’ll kill you,” said Ender.

  “You’re going to dock the Hound with Herodotus at the cargo bay. With both doors open and gravity turned off, a six-year-old could push me into the Hound.”

  They were not amused by his “six-year-old” joke. “Father,” said Cincinnatus, “you’re too fragile. What can you do here that we can’t do for you?”

  “Bring my entire store of knowledge to bear in my conversation with the drones,” said Bean honestly.

  “Couldn’t we bring them to you?”

  “Don’t even hint at the possibility,” said Bean. “If you suggested taking them away from the ark, they might easily interpret it as an attempt by us to steal the ark from them. They may have asked you to do it, but they just saw you wield death to all the feral rabs. They also shared their Queen’s memory of the deaths of all the other Hive Queens in the Third Formic War. Why wouldn’t they assume we had death on our minds?”

  “If you die on the way…” Carlotta began.

  “I could have died a year ago. Or two. I’m glad for every minute I get, as long as I can watch you becoming what you’re growing up to be.”

  “The Giant’s getting sentimental,” said Cincinnatus.

  “Careful you don’t drown in his big puddly tears,” said Ender.

  Old jokes, family customs. “You know what I want you to do. If I die in the process of trying to get more data for you, so be it. You’ll do fine without it, or learn enough eventually to find it out yourself. But I might not die, and we should plan on that. You’ll be glad to know what I learn, I think, if I live to learn it.”

  Another silence. On the holodisplay, Bean could see them take off their helmets. They thought that meant he couldn’t hear them. The simple naïveté of children.

  Their conversation was brief, but it consisted mostly of thinking up ways to get the Giant to change his mind.

  When they put their helmets back on, Bean preempted them. “You have work to do,” he said. “Carlotta, come back with a plan to get me into the ecotat, or don’t come back. Ender, get a sample.”

  “What about me?” asked Cincinnatus.

  “Stay with Ender and protect him. I don’t think Carlotta will be in any danger.”

  “No sir,” said Cincinnatus. “We stay together. We all watch while Ender gets his sample from the drones, if he can. Then we all go with Carlotta.”

  “It’ll take more time. You’re already tired.”

  “As you said, the ship is safe now. We can sleep here and start again tomorrow, if need be.”

  Cincinnatus was right. How could Bean say, I’m eager for you to get these things done and get back here, because I might not be alive tomorrow or the next day. His whole argument had been that he was not going to die.

  “The Giant is thinking,” said Cincinnatus.

  “The vibrations pass through the vacuum of space and make me want to urinate,” said Ender.

  “Again,” said Carlotta.

  “I think it’s a rule that it’s socially acceptable to wet yourself when aliens enter your mind for the first time,” said Ender. “If it wasn’t already, it is now.”

  They were so immature. And so adult. The weight of a species on their shoulders. Children bantering on the playground, teasing their old crippled father.

  “Do what you’re going to do, and get back to me as soon as you’ve done it,” said Bean.

  “Say ‘please,’” said Carlotta.

  “Say ‘yes sir,’” answered Bean.

  A moment’s pause.

  “Yes sir,” said Carlotta.

  “That pleases me very much,” said Bean.

  “That doesn’t count as ‘please,’” said Carlotta.

  “It’s all the ‘please’ you’re going to get.” Bean could play at playground banter, too.

  In the end, the drones solved both problems. When Ender asked them for samples, they all solemnly peeled off sections of skin. If it hurt them, they gave no sign. And then they led Carlotta to the cargo loading area.

  It was a deft design. A second wheel, almost as large in diameter but far smaller in depth, was attached to the forward end of the great cylinder of the ecotat. It could lock to the ecotat, or it could break free, slow down, and stop relative to the rest of the ship. It was the movement equivalent of an airlock.

  Around the edges, the trams entered the wheel from their five tracks that led to the Queen’s chamber. Once the tram was entirely inside the wheel, the wheel would start to spin until it matched the rotation of the ecotat. Then doors opened into the ecotat, and the domestic rabs there would fill them with slugs. When they closed the door, the wheel desynchronized with the ecotat and rejoined the ship.

  Cargo was a different matter. Above the tramways—closer to the hub than to ground level inside the ecotat—there were five huge doors, six meters square, which synched between the wheel and the ecotat. On the other side of the wheel, though, all five bays opened into a huge cargo chamber. Without spin, that space was weightless. So objects much longer than the depth of the wheel could be loaded into the bays surrounding the great doors.

  The cargo bay, in turn, was accessible through two even larger airlocks. Carlotta had the helmets take minute measurements, and they concluded that the Hound could fit in the larger of the two airlocks. “We can bring the entire ship inside the cargo area, and then transfer you, weightless, through the cargo doors into the ecotat,” Carlotta reported.

  “So it’s not so impossible,” said Bean. “I might even live through it.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Carlotta. “The centrifugal force inside the ecotat gives too strong a gravitational effect. Three times what you’re experiencing now. When you drift into the ecotat, you’re fine—weightless. But then you have to get down to the ground. If we just drop you, you won’t be going the same speed as the floor of the cylinder. There’s an impact. That will kill you. Or you can climb down the ladders that the Formics use. That way they gradually acquire the rotation of the cylinder and reach the ground perfectly synched up. Do you feel like ladder climbing?”

  “Can they slow down the rotation?” asked Bean.

  “We can ask, but … they chose this rate of rotation for a reason. It’s right for the plants.”

  “And you don’t think they’ll risk the plants.”

  “The biota is part of their mission. We not only aren’t bringing them the cocooned Hive Queen they believe that humans have, we also want to jeopardize the gravity the plants require?”

  Ender interrupted. “They’re probably already reading the images in our minds.”

  “I don’t have any images,” said Carlotta.

  “Yes you do,” said Ender.

  “Is that so?” said Bean. “All right, do this. Think of yourselves standing next to me. The size you are, the size I am. Me lying here in the cargo bay, you standing beside me. Picture that.”

  “Eh, we pictured it as you said it,” said Carlotta. “We had no choice.”

  “What did that accomplish?” asked Cincinnatus.

  “Think about it,” said Bean.

  They did. Cincinnatus got it first. “Toguro,” he said. “You’re about the same size relative to us that the Hive Queen was relative to them.”

  “Close enough,” said Bean.

  “And you’re our father,” said Ender, “the way the Hive Queen was their mother.”

  “But not our mate,” said Carlotta. “No way are you a Hive Queen.”

  “Don’t even pretend that I am,” said Bean. “Just let them see the sizes, say that I’m your only living parent, and the only way I can come to you in the ark is if they slow down the rotation of the ecotat. Tell them how much. Let them figure out what will happen to the soil and the roots.”

  “They’ll ask how long they need to slow the rotation,” said Ender. “Because it will affect plant growth patterns.”

  “Then tell them it needs to stay slow until I die or I return to this ship. Tell them that I’m not likely to live very long, but I want to meet them in their ark before I die. If I’m still alive after I’ve talked to them enough, then I’ll come back here, and they can spin up to normal.”

  “How long is ‘enough’?” asked Ender.

  “I hate this whole idea,” murmured Carlotta.

  “Until I understand as much as I can about what happened to their Hive Queen. Tell them I need to know why she died, so that I can be sure you won’t get poisoned when you transfer to the Ark.”

  Consternation from the three of them.

  “I told you already,” said Bean. “The planet down there is your future. You need to move the entire lab into the ecotat and set about creating gut bacteria that will digest the alien proteins and make them useful for yourselves and your children to come. When you can live entirely within the Formic ecotat and what it produces, then you’re ready to colonize that planet.”

  “What if we don’t want to?” That was Cincinnatus.

  “You want to,” said Bean. “Because you want our species to survive, and there’s no better chance, anywhere. We’ve had this conversation. Only now we’re having it where the drones can see the images that pass through your minds.”

  “Why do you think the drones will go along with this?” asked Ender. “Their own species is dying out—they’re the last, with no hope of reproduction.”

  “Tell them that I am your father. A male. And when I die, they must adopt you and become your fathers. Teach you everything they know. Tell them that we’re not really human—we’re different from the rest of that species. So that when you populate that planet, you do it as a new sentient species, and you will always regard these drones as your fathers.”

  “I don’t think they have a concept of adoption,” said Ender.

  “Of course they do. Remember? You said that when the Hive Queen died without eating them first, they felt honored, because it meant they were being passed to the new Hive Queen. Except they couldn’t find one.”

  “That’s not adoption, it’s remarriage,” said Cincinnatus.

  “Close enough,” said Bean. “Tell them. Try to make them see analogies between their species, their lives, and ours. Let them understand how small you are and how short a life you’ll have. You need all the help you can get to survive.”

  “Why not?” said Carlotta. “We’re not even lying.”

  “You never knew the Hive Queen, but through them, you can become like children of the Hive Queen,” said Bean.

  “We’ve got it, Father,” said Ender. “You don’t have to give us a script.”

  So the children negotiated. This time drones touched all three of them, and afterward they said it was astonishing, because they could sense each other through the drones. It allowed them to join their images together, unify them. The plan was worked out, agreed to by drones and children.

  Then the children came back. Bean piloted the Hound for them again, and this time docked it directly over the cargo bay. The Herodotus was designed for this, and soon the doors opened and a much higher ceiling loomed above Bean.

  He had not realized how claustrophobic he had felt all these years, how the ceiling had oppressed him as he grew larger and larger. But when it was removed, he felt a great lightening of his spirit. He was almost cheerful.

  The children weren’t. They were afraid that they would accidently kill him somehow in the transfer. “That’s not fair,” said Carlotta. “To put that guilt on us.”

  “No guilt,” said Bean. “I’d rather die doing something than lying here like a melon.”

  They had never seen a melon growing on the ground.

  There was work to do before the transfer. Bean insisted that they transfer all the lab equipment first. He also showed all three of them the secret cargo compartments and demonstrated the use of the artificial wombs—without, of course, inserting anything into them. “In vitro fertilization is a common practice, as is egg extraction,” said Bean. “You can learn about it over the ansible. The wombs aren’t so common because they’re illegal on a lot of worlds.”

  “Why?” asked Carlotta.

  “Because they’re unnatural,” said Bean. “Or they deprive surrogate mothers of a livelihood. Lots of reasons, but it comes down to the real reason: Artificial wombs suggest that women aren’t necessary, and that really bothers a lot of women.”

  “But women still produce the ova,” said Carlotta.

  “There are ways around that,” said Bean. “And ways around men, too. Neither sex actually needs the other in order to reproduce. But several societies have tried doing without it, and evolution ends up winning—the discontent grows and the society either goes back to mating or people keep leaving until only a tiny fanatical remnant remain. It’s the human race, Carlotta. Why should it make sense?”

  So Bean watched and tried not to fret as the children learned from the drones how to build sealed laboratories in the ecotat. It was a technology well known on the ark, because when they reached the planet’s surface it would take time to find or dig tunnels and caves. They had to use the plan for a temporary Hive Queen’s chamber, because no other space was tall enough for the adult-size equipment to fit.

  As soon as the lab was up and working, Ender simply withdrew from any further preparation for Bean’s move. “I think there might be something in the Formic genome that will help us. And not just to digest food.”

  So it was Cincinnatus and Carlotta who made all the preparations. There was some serious discussion of trying to fashion a pressure suit for Bean. “In case some seal is broken and we lose atmosphere,” she said.

  Bean laughed. “Carlotta, my darling girl, you’re so compassionate. But if a seal is broken, I’ll die. If you go into space, you put your faith in machinery, and hope it works.”

  “But what if—”

  “Carlotta, the pressure suit would kill me even if you could make it work. It creates pressure, but it’s not the same as a normal atmosphere. It can’t be. So I’d die anyway, and then you’d have the problem of getting me out of the suit so my body materials could be added to the ecotat.”

  Carlotta burst into tears.

  “Father,” said Cincinnatus, “you’re so sensitive to your daughter’s tender feelings.”

  “Did she imagine I’d be buried? Cremated? Ejected into space? You told her yourself, back when you were planning to dispose of me—my body hoards too many resources.”

  “That was before we met up with the ark,” said Cincinnatus. “And I’m not proud of the boy I was then.”

  “You’re still the same boy,” said Bean. “Always thinking six steps ahead. And impatient. I don’t hold it against you, but I don’t forget it, especially the bits where you were right.”

  “Weren’t many of those.”

  “By and large, all three of you kids run above the human average on being right, and you learn from your mistakes.”

  “The Giant says that I’m an idiot, but I’m an above average idiot.”

  “That’s about right,” said Bean.

  Bean had imagined that he might make the transfer in just a few days, but Carlotta was methodical and slow, testing everything. She also insisted on moving a lot of computers out of Herodotus and getting them powered up and networked in the ecotat. And then the big one.

  “I want to move the ansible,” she said.

  Bean hadn’t anticipated that one. “Eventually,” he said. “But your network is reaching between the ships just fine. You can access human communications systems just fine from there.”

  “I’m going to build another,” she said. “For redundancy. I need it there so I don’t have to keep going back and forth to work on it.”

  “The ansible technology is still a closely guarded secret,” said Bean.

  “Ender and I hacked the tech years ago,” said Carlotta. “We thought you’d be angry so we didn’t tell you.”

  “You hacked the parts of the technology that they made hackable,” said Bean. “I watched you do it.”

  “We found the rest of it later, and hacked that, too. While you slept. Give me some credit.”

  So it took longer than Bean thought, and he hated it when the ansible was in transit, fearing damage to that machine more than he feared damage to himself. The ansible was their lifeline to the human race. It was Bean’s lifeline to his last living friend—Ender Wiggin. Not that they ever talked or even sent messages. For all Bean knew, Ender Wiggin never thought of Bean at all, or if he did, he assumed Bean had died years ago. Wiggin was hiding from everybody, from Ender the Xenocide. He was a speaker for the dead now. Nobody knew he was the Speaker for the Dead. They just took him to be another of the growing number of itinerant speakers. It was a good calling for him. But it made Ender Wiggin focus on living people and the recently dead whom they summoned him to speak for. He had no time for his past. Indeed, he was running from his past, in all likelihood. Bean imagined it would not be a friendly act to make himself known to Ender Wiggin now. Ender would wonder what he wanted. Ender would wish he hadn’t contacted him.