Page 1338 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"I learned nothing, there was no time, they were still babies."
"You had them for almost a year. They developed. All the work done since Anton found his key was theoretical. *You* watched the babies grow."
A slow smile crept across his face. "This is like those Nazi medical crimes all over again. You deplore what I did, but you still want to know the results of my research."
"You monitored their growth. Their health. Their intellectual development."
"We were about to start the tracking of intellectual development. The project wasn't funded, of course, so it's not as if we could provide much more than a clean warm room and basic bodily needs."
"Their bodies, then. Their motor skills."
"Small," he said. "They are born small, they grow slowly. Undersized and underweight, all of them."
"But very bright?"
"Crawling very young. Making pre-speech sounds far earlier than normal. That's all we knew. I didn't see them often myself. I couldn't afford the risk of detection."
"So what was your prognosis?"
"Prognosis?"
"How did you see their future?"
"Dead. That's everyone's future. What are you talking about?"
"If they hadn't been slaughtered, Dr. Volescu, what would have happened?" "They would have kept on growing, of course."
"And later?"
"There *is* no later. They keep on growing."
She thought for a moment, trying to process the information.
"That's right, Sister. You're getting it. They grow slowly, but they never stop. That's what Anton's key does. Unlocks the mind because the brain never stops growing. But neither does anything else. The cranium keeps expanding -- it's never fully closed. The arms and legs, longer and longer."