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Shadow of the Hegemon Corrections
The final changes made by Orson Scott Card to the galleys of Shadow of the
Hegemon were not incorporated into the printed book. This is most unfortunate
and these very problems have been caught again by several readers. Following are
revisions that SHOULD have been in the book. There are other smaller
corrections, but these are the most essential to the story.
We encourage individuals to copy these corrections and share them with friends, and we encourage bookstores to print out the corrections and include them with copies of the book, if they so desire.
Page 133 says:
Greensboro. "The place where Ender grew up."
"And where he killed for the first time." said Sister Carlotta.
These two lines should be replaced with:
Greensboro. "Ender's home town."
"He only visited there once. His family moved there after he left for Battle
School."
"Oh, é. He grew up in the big city, like me."
Sister Carlotta gave one bark of a laugh. "Not at all like you."
"Because he didn't have to fight off other children just to eat?"
"Plenty to eat," said Sister Carlotta. "Yet he did his first killing there all the
same."
Pages 142 through 145 were rewritten as follows:
Bean looked back at Peter, who seemed genuinely bemused. "He wants to
be Hegemon," said Bean, "but he's nothing." Bean walked away. He had
memorized the route, of course, and knew how to get to the bus station without
Sister Carlotta's help. Figuring out the bus route would distract him from the
bitter disappointment of finding out that Peter was a game-playing fool.
No one called after him, and he did not look back.
Bean took, not the bus to the hotel, but the one that passed nearest the
neighborhood school that Peter and Valentine probably attended. What if Ender
had actually grown up here, had attended schools in this town instead of the city?
His whole life might have been shaped differently. Maybe Ender's first killing
would never have happened - maybe there would have been no bully like the boy
Stilson, who ambushed Ender with his gang and paid for it with his life. And if
Ender had not proved his brutal efficiency in combat, his determination to win
without scruple or hesitation, would he have been taken into the Battle School
program?
Bean had been there for Ender's second killing, which was pretty much the
same situation as the first. Ender - alone, outnumbered, surrounded - talking his
way into single combat and then destroying his enemy so no will to fight would
remain. There were military strategists who taught that principle of warfare. But
Ender had known it instinctively, at the age of five.
I knew things at that age, thought Bean. And younger, too. Not how to kill
- that was beyond me, I was too small. But how to live. That was hard.
For me it was hard, but not for Ender. Bean walked through the
neighborhoods of modest old houses and even more modest new ones - but to him
they were all miracles. Not that he hadn't had plenty of chances, living with his
family in Greece after the war, to see how most children grew up. How much of a
child's character came from the place he grew up, the people, the family, the
friends? How much was born in him? Could a harsh place like Rotterdam make a
military genius out of a child? Could a gentler place like Greensboro keep a
child's genius from surfacing?
I had more native talent for war than Ender had. But he was still the better
commander. Was it because Ender grew up where he never worried about finding
another meal, where people praised him and protected him? I grew up where if I
found a scrap of food I had to worry that another street kid might kill me for it.
Shouldn't that have made me the one who fought most desperately, and Ender the
one who held back?
It wasn't the place. Two people in identical situations would never make
exactly the same choices. Ender is who he is, and I am who I am. It was in him to
destroy the Formics. It was in me to stay alive.
So what's in me now? I'm a commander without an army. I have a mission
to perform, but no knowledge of how to perform it. Petra, if she's still alive, is in
desperate peril, and she counts on me to free her. The others are all free. She
alone remains hidden. What has Achilles done to her? I will not have Petra end
like Poke.
There it was. The difference between Ender and Bean. Ender came out of
his bitterest battle of childhood undefeated. He had done what was required. But
Bean had not even realized the danger his friend Poke was in until too late. If he
had seen in time how immediate her peril was, he could have warned her, helped
her. Saved her. Instead, her body was tossed into the Rhine, to be found bobbing
like so much garbage among the wharves.
And it was happening again.
Bean stood in front of the Wiggin house. Ender had never seen it, and no
pictures of it had been shown at the court of inquiry. But it was exactly what Bean
had expected. A tree in the front yard, with wooden slats nailed into the trunk to
form a ladder to the platform in a high crotch of the tree. A tidy, well-tended
garden. A place of peace and refuge. Something Ender never had. Peter and
Valentine lived here, though.
Where is Petra's garden? For that matter, where is mine?
Bean knew he was being unreasonable. If Ender had come back to Earth, he
too would no doubt be in hiding - if Achilles or someone else hadn't simply killed
him straight off. And even as things stood, he couldn't help but wonder if Ender
might not prefer to be living as Bean was, on Earth, in hiding, than where he was
now, in space, bound for another world and a life of permanent exile from the
world of his birth.
A woman came out of the front door of the house. Mrs. Wiggin?
"Are you lost?" she asked.
Bean realized that in his disappointment - no, call it despair - he had
forgotten his vigilance. This house might be watched. Even if it was not, Mrs.
Wiggin herself might remember him, this young boy who appeared in front of her
house during school hours.
"Is this where Ender Wiggin's family lives?"
A cloud passed across her face, just momentarily, but Bean saw how her
expression saddened before her smile could be put back. "Yes, it is," she said.
"But he didn't grow up here and we don't give tours."
For reasons Bean could not understand, on impulse he said, "I was with
him. In the last battle. I fought under him."
Her smile changed again, away from mere courtesy and kindness, toward
something like warmth and pain. "Ah," she said. "A veteran." And then the
warmth faded and was replaced by worry. "I know all the faces of Ender's
companions in that last battle. You're the one who's dead, Julian Delphiki."
Just like that, his cover was blown - and he had done it to himself, by
telling her that he was in Ender's jeesh. What was he thinking? There were only
eleven of them. "Obviously , there's someone who wants to kill me," he said. "If
you tell anyone I came here, it will help him do it."
"I won't tell. But it was careless of you to come here."
"I had to see," said Bean, wondering if that was anything like a true
explanation.
She didn't wonder. "That's absurd," she said. "You wouldn't risk your life
to come here without a reason." And then it came together in her mind. "Peter's
not home right now."
"I know," Bean said. "I was just with him at the university." And then he
realized - there was no reason for her to think he was coming to see Peter, unless
she had some idea of what Peter was doing. "You know," he said.
She closed her eyes, realizing now what she had confessed. "Either we are
both very great fools," she said, "or we must have trusted each other at once, to let
our guard down so readily."
"We're only fools if the other can't be trusted," said Bean.
"We'll find out, won't we?" Then she smiled. "No use leaving you
standing out here on the street, for people to wonder why a child your size is not in
school."
He followed her up the walkway to the front door. Bean was walking up to
a door that Ender must have longed to see. But he never came home. Like Bonzo,
the other casualty of the war. Bonzo, killed; Ender, missing in action; and now
Bean coming up the walk to Ender's home. Only this was no sentimental visit
with a grieving family. It was a different war now, but war it was and she had
another son at risk these days.
Page 205 says:
"Not at all," said Peter, "because so far, India and Pakistan have shown less
sense and less self-control than either of those monsters."
This speech should begin:
"Not at all," said Achilles, "because . . .
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