"What I want," he said softly, "is to stand in this meadow and walk in the light of the sun."
"Why didn't you say so?" said Carlotta.
They got him to lie back down on the hammock cloth, and then they winched him up to sitting position, and then stood him up on his feet.
The gravity he felt was so slight, so very close to nothing, yet being upright, even with the hammock holding him a little, was taking all his breath.
"I'm going to walk now," he said.
His legs were rubbery under him.
The drones flew to him and clung to his clothing, fluttering to help hold him up. The children gathered around his legs and helped him take one step, then another.
He felt the sun on his face. He felt the ground under his feet. He felt the people who loved him holding on to him and bearing him along.
It was enough.
"I'm going to lie down now," said Bean.
And then he did.
And then he died.
The following content was added by Orson Scott Card specifically for this enhanced Ebook version
Addition to Chapter 3 (1)
Addition to Chpater 3 (2)
Addition to Chapter 9
Additional Content From Chapter 3
Return to chapter 3
Sergeant was so proud of his perfect memory, thought Bean. Yet Bean and Petra had never announced anything to him, advanced though he was for a one-year-old. For of the three children on the Herodotus, Sergeant was the one who had never met his mother.
Petra had given birth to Ender -- Andrew -- from her own body, had nursed him, had known him better than any of the children. All the others had been stolen as embryos and implanted in surrogate mothers. It had taken a long time to track them down.
Bella -- Carlotta -- had been located while Bean and Petra were still together; Petra knew her, had loved her.
But Cincinnatus -- Sergeant -- had been located while Petra and Bean were both caught up in military campaigns. She learned of his existence at the same time Bean handed her their
divorce papers and announced his decision to take the three children who had Bean's giantism off on a relativistic voyage in order to buy time for scientists to find the cure.
The closest Sergeant ever came to meeting Petra was that for a time Petra's mother took care of him in Armenia.
So whatever Sergeant thought he remembered, it was all manufactured memory, based on stories he had heard and opinions he had formed long after the fact. "I never liked you, I liked Petra," Sergeant said. What he really meant was, "I don't like you now, and invoking the name of my mother is the only thing I can think of that will really hurt you."
Sergeant's complaint was not unjustified. He had been torn from the family into which he had been born. They were given no choice; he was given no choice. And it was likely that Sergeant did have some memories, however fragmentary and vague, of the family that took care of him through the first year of his life. Maybe he even suffered from some separation anxiety for a while.
But Sergeant was too much like Bean for Bean to believe that it had really bothered him at the time. Sergeant was a fighter, and these words he said were weapons, not memories.
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Additional Content From Chapter 3
Return to chapter 3 The children had grown up with holograms of their mother, Petra, talking to them. "I love you. I miss you. I wish you could have known your brothers and sisters here on Earth. I know that you're still very young in years, and your siblings here are already adults who have moved on into their lives, married, having children. I hope that someday the same things become possible for you. The great regret of my life is that I was separated from the three of you, from your father. But I see now that it was the only decision that offered any kind of hope for a normal life for the children I kept here and for the children your father took with him."