"Yes, so now I ask you. Please. Let me have them. Let me know that you forgive me for it. That you give them to me freely, now, after the fact."
Petra couldn't forgive him. Not now. Not yet.
But there was no later.
She buried her face in his chest and held him and wept.
While she cried, Rackham spoke on, calmly. "Only a handful of us know what's really happening. And on Earth, outside of the I.F., only Peter will know. Is that clear? So this divorce document is absolutely secret. As far as anyone else will know, Bean is not in space, he died in the raid on Tehran. And he took no babies with him. There were never more than five. And two of the normal babies that we've recovered are also named Andrew and Bella. As far as anyone knows, you will still have all the children you ever did."
Petra pulled back from her embrace of Bean and glared savagely at Rackham. "You mean you're not even going to let me grieve for my babies? No one will know what I've lost except you and Peter Wiggin?"
"Your parents," said Rackham, "have seen Ender and Bella. It's your choice whether to tell them the truth, or to stay away from them until enough time has passed that they can't tell that there's been a change."
"Then I'll tell them."
"Think about it first," said Rackham. "It's a heavy burden."
"Don't presume to teach me how to love my parents," said Petra. "You know and I know that at every point in this you've decided solely on the basis of what's good for the Ministry of Colonization and the International Fleet."
"We'd like to think we've found the solution that's best for everyone."
"I'm supposed to have a funeral for my husband, when I know he's not dead, and that's best for me?"
"I will be dead," said Bean, "for all intents and purposes. Gone and never coming back. And you'll have children to raise."
"And yes, Petra," said Rackham, "there is a wider consideration. Your husband is already a legendary figure. If it's known that he's still alive, then everything Peter does will be ascribed to him. There'll be legends about how he's going to return. About how the most brilliant graduate of Battle School really planned out everything Peter did."
"This is about Peter?"
"This is about trying to get the world put together peacefully, permanently. This is about abolishing nations and the wars that just won't stop as long as people can pin their hopes on great heroes."
"Then you should send me away, too, or tell people I'm dead. I was in Ender's Jeesh."
"Petra, you chose your path. You married. You had children. Bean's children. You decided that's what you wanted more than anything else. We've respected that. You have Bean's children. And you've had Bean almost as long as you would have had him if we had never intervened. Because he's dying. Our best guess is that he wouldn't make it another six months without going out into space and living weightlessly. We've done everything according to your choice."
"It's true that they didn't actually requisition our babies," Bean said.
"So live with your choices, Petra," said Rackham. "Raise these babies. And help us do what we can to help Peter save the world from itself. The story of Bean's heroic death in the service of the FPE will help with that."
"There'll be legends anyway," said Petra. "Plenty of dead heroes have legends."
"Yes, but if they know we put him in a starship and trundled him off into space, it won't be just a legend, will it? Serious people would believe in it, not just the normal lunatics."
"So how will you even keep up the research project?" demanded Petra. "If everybody thinks the only people who need the cure are dead or never existed, why will it continue?"
"Because a few people in the I.F. and ColMin will know. And they'll be in contact with Bean by ansible. He'll be called home when the cure is found."
They flew on then, as Petra tried to deal with what they'd told her. Bean held her most of the time, even when her anger surged now and then and she was furious with him.
Terrible scenarios kept playing themselves out in her mind, and at the risk of giving Bean ideas, she said to him, "Don't give up, Julian Delphiki. Don't decide that there's never going to be a cure and end the voyage. Even if you think your life is worthless, you have my babies out there too. Even if the voyage goes on so long that you really are dying, remember that these children are like you. Survivors. As long as somebody doesn't actually kill them."
"Don't worry," said Bean. "If I had the slightest tendency toward suicide, we would never have met. And I would never do anything to endanger my own children. I'm only taking this voyage for them. Otherwise, I'd be content to die in your arms here on Earth."
She wept again for a while after that, and then she had to feed Ramon again, and then she insisted on feeding Ender and Bella herself, spooning the food into their mouths because when would she ever get a chance to do it again? She tried to memorize every moment of it, even though she knew she couldn't. Knew that memory would fade. That these babies would become only a distant dream to her. That her arms would remember best the babies she held the longest--the children she would keep with her.
The only one she had borne from her own body would be gone.
But she didn't cry while she was feeding them. That would have been a waste. Instead she played with them and talked to them and teased them to talk back to her. "I know your first word isn't going to be too long from now. How about a little 'mama' right now, you lazy baby?"