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I am as ambitious as Hot Soup or Alai or any of them. Yet I fell in love with and determined to marry—against his will—the only Battle Schooler who had no ambition of his own. Why? Because I wanted to have the next generation. I wanted the most brilliant children. Even as I told him that I wanted none of them to have his affliction, in fact I wanted them to have it. To be like him. I wanted to be Eve to a new species. I wanted my genes to be part of the future of humanity. And they will be.

But Bean will also die. I knew that all along. I knew that I would be a young widow. In the back of my mind, I thought of that all along. What a terrible thing to realize about myself.

That's why I don't want him to take our babies away from me. I must have them all, the way conquerors have had to have this city. I must have them. That is my empire.

What kind of life will they have, with me for their mother?

"We can't put this off forever," said Mazer Rackham.

"I was just thinking."

"You're still young enough to believe that will get you somewhere," said Rackham.

"No," she said. "No, I'm older than you think. I know that I can't think my way out of being who I am."

"Why would you want to?" said Mazer Rackham. "Don't you know that you were always the best of them?"

She turned to him, suppressing the rush of pride, refusing to believe it. "That's nonsense. I'm the least. The worst. The one that broke."

"The one that Ender pressed hardest, relied on most. He knew. Besides, I didn't mean the best at war. I meant the best, period. The best at being human."

The irony of hearing him say that right after she realized just how selfish and ambitious and dangerous she was—she almost laughed. Instead she reached out and touched his shoulder. "You poor man," she said. "You think of us as your children."

"No," said Rackham, "that would be Hyrum Graff."

"Did you have children? Before your voyage?"

Rackham shook his head. But she couldn't tell if he was saying, No, I had no children, or No, I won't talk to you about this. "Let's go inside."

Petra turned around, crossed the narrow street, and followed him through the gate of the garden and up to the door of the house. It stood open in the early autumn sunlight. Bees hummed among the flowers of the garden but none came into the house; what business did they have in there, when all they needed was outside?

The man and woman waited in the dining room of their house. A woman in civilian clothes—who nevertheless seemed to Petra like a soldier—stood behind them. Perhaps watching to make sure they didn't try to run.

The wife sat in an armchair and held their newborn daughter. Her husband leaned on the table. His face was a mask of despair. The woman had been crying. So they already knew.

Rackham spoke at once. "I didn't want you to turn your baby over to strangers," he said to the man and woman. "I wanted you to see that the baby is going home to her mother."

"But she already has a baby," said the woman. "You didn't tell me that she already—"

"Yes he did," said the man.

Petra sat down in a chair across from the man, cornerwise from the woman. Ender wriggled a little but stayed asleep. "We meant to save the others, not to have them born all at once," said Petra. "I meant to bear them all myself. My husband is dying. I meant to keep having his children after he was gone."

"But don't you have more? Can't you spare this one?" The woman's voice was so piteous that Petra hated herself for saying no.

Rackham spoke before she could. "This child is already dying of the same condition that is killing her father. And her brother. That's why they were born prematurely."

This only made the woman cling more tightly to the baby.

"You'll have children of your own," said Rackham. "You still have the four fertilized embryos you already created."

The would-be father looked up at him blandly. "We'll adopt next time," he said.

"We're all very sorry," Rackham went on, "that these criminals stole the use of your womb to deliver another woman's child. But the child is truly hers, and if you adopt, you should have children that were willingly given up by their parents."

The man nodded. He understood.

But the woman had the baby in her arms.

Petra spoke up. "Would you like to hold her brother?" She reached down and lifted Ender out of the sling. "His name is Andrew. He's a month old."

The woman nodded.

Rackham reached down and took her daughter out of her arms. Petra handed Ender to her.

"My ... the girl is ... I call her Bella. My little Lourinha." She wept.

Lourinha? The baby's hair, such as it was, was brown. But apparently it didn't take much lightness of hair to earn the appellation "blonde."

Petra took the girl from Rackham's hands. She was even smaller than Ender, but her eyes were just as intelligent and searching. Ender's hair was as black as Bean's. Bella's hair was more like Petra's. It startled her, how happy it made her that the baby took after her.

"Thank you for bearing my daughter," said Petra. "I grieve for your grief, but I hope you can also rejoice at my joy."

Weeping, the woman nodded and clung now to Ender. She turned her face to the baby and spoke in a small babytalk voice. "Es tu feliz em ter irminha? Es tu felizinho?" Then she burst into tears and handed Ender to Rackham.

Standing, Petra laid Bella into the sling where Ender had been. Then she took Ender from Rackham and held him against her shoulder.

"I'm so sorry," said Petra. "Please forgive me for not letting you keep my baby."

The man shook his head. "Não ha de que desculpar," he said.

"Nothing to forgive," murmured the stern-looking woman who was apparently not just a guard, but also an interpreter.

The woman wailed in grief and leapt to her feet, upsetting the chair. She sobbed and babbled and clutched at Bella and covered her with kisses. But she didn't try to take the baby.

Rackham pulled Petra away as the guard and the husband pulled the mother back and held her, still wailing and sobbing, while Petra and Rackham left the house.

Back in the car, Rackham sat in back with Petra and took Ender out of her arms for the ride back to the hotel. "They really are small," he said.

"Bean calls Ender a toy person," said Petra.

"I can see why," said Rackham.

"I feel like a really polite kidnapper," said Petra.

"Don't," said Rackham. "Even though they were embryos when they were stolen from you, it was a kidnapping, and now you're getting your daughter back."

"But these people did nothing wrong."

"Think again," said Rackham. "Remember how we found them."

They moved, she remembered. When Volescu's deadman switch triggered a message, they moved. "Why would they knowingly—"

"The wife doesn't know. Our deal with the husband was that we wouldn't tell. He's completely sterile, you see. Their attempt at in vitro fertilization didn't take. That's why he took Volescu's offer and pretended to his wife that the baby was really theirs. He's the one that got the message and made up a reason for them to move to this house."

"He didn't ask where the baby came from?"

"He's a rich man," said Rackham. "Rich people tend to take it for granted that things they want simply come to them."

"The wife meant no harm, though."

"Neither did Bean, and yet he's dying," said Rackham. "Neither did I, and yet I was sent on a voyage that jumped me decades into the future, costing me everyone and everything. And you'll lose Bean, even though you've done nothing wrong. Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people."