“I won’t be here when Peter—”

  “Oh, Bean, for heaven’s sake, don’t take me seriously and make me feel bad for acting as if you weren’t going to die. I prefer not to think of you dying.”

  “I was only saying that I’m not a good person to manage Ender’s…portfolio.”

  “So…who?”

  “Wouldn’t that be whom?”

  She grimaced. “No it would not. Not even if you spoke English.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got no candidate.”

  “And so you wanted to confer with Peter.”

  Bean shrugged.

  “But that would make no sense at all. Peter doesn’t know anything about investing and…no, no, no. I see what you’re getting at.”

  “How, when I’m not sure myself?”

  “Oh, you’re sure. You think Peter is financing some of this from Andrew’s pension. You think he’s embezzling from his brother.”

  “I doubt Peter would call it embezzling.”

  “What would he call it, then?”

  “In Peter’s mind, Ender’s probably buying government bonds issued by the Hegemony. So when the Hegemon rules the world, Ender will get four percent per year, tax free.”

  “Even I know that would be a lousy investment.”

  “From a financial point of view. Mrs. Wiggin, Peter has the use of more money than the scant dues the few dues-paying nations still pay to the Hegemony.”

  “The dues go up and down,” said Theresa.

  “He tells you?”

  “John Paul is closer to these things. When the world is worried about war, money flows into the Hegemony. Not a lot, just a little extra.”

  “When I first got here there were Peter, you two, and the soldiers I brought with me. A couple of secretaries. And a lot of debt. Yet Peter always had enough money to send us out in the choppers we brought with us. Money for fuel, money for ammunition.”

  “Bean, what will be gained if you accuse Peter of embezzling Ender’s pension? You know Peter isn’t making himself rich with it.”

  “No, but he is making himself Hegemon. Ender might need that money someday.”

  “Ender will never come back to Earth, Bean. How valuable will money be on the new world he’s going to colonize? What harm is it causing?”

  “So you’re all right with Peter cheating his brother.”

  “If he’s doing that. Which I doubt.” Theresa’s smile was tight and her eyes flashed just a little. Mother bear, guarding cub.

  “Protect the son who’s here, even if he’s cheating the son who’s gone.”

  “Why don’t you go back to your place and take care of your own child instead of meddling with mine?”

  “And the pioneers circle the wagons to protect from the arrows of the Native Americans.”

  “I like you, Bean. I’m also worried about you. I’ll miss you when you die. I’ll do my best to help Petra get through the hard times ahead. But keep your hippo-sized hands off my son. He has the weight of the world on his shoulders, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “I think maybe I won’t have that interview with Peter this morning after all.”

  “Delighted to be of service,” said Theresa.

  “Do avoid telling him I stopped by, will you?”

  “With pleasure. In fact, I’ve already forgotten that you’re here.” She turned back to the computer and typed again. Bean rather hoped she was typing meaningless words and strings of letters because she was too angry to be writing anything intelligible. He even thought of peeking, just to see. But Theresa was a good friend who happened to be protective of her son. No reason to turn her into an enemy.

  He sauntered away, his long legs carrying him much farther, much faster than a man walking so slowly should have gone. And even though he wasn’t moving quickly, he still felt his heart pump faster. Just to walk down a corridor, it’s as if he were jogging a little.

  How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.

  Theresa watched him go and thought: I love that boy for being so loyal to Ender. And he’s absolutely right to suspect Peter. It’s just the sort of thing he’d do. For all I know, Peter got us back onto full salary at the University, too, only he didn’t tell us and he’s cashing our checks.

  Then again, maybe he’s secretly getting paid by China or America or some other country that values his services as Hegemon.

  Unless they value his services as Lincoln. Or…as Martel. If he was really writing the Martel essays. Such a thing smacked of Peter’s propaganda methods, but the writing sounded nothing like him, and it could hardly be Valentine this time. Had he found another surrogate writer?

  Maybe somebody was contributing in a big way to “Martel’s” cause and Peter was pocketing the money to advance his own.

  But no. Word of such contributions would get out. Peter would never be so foolish as to accept money that might compromise him if it were found out.

  I’ll check with Graff, see whether the I.F. is paying out the pension to Peter. And if it is, I’ll have to kill the boy. Or at least make my disappointed-in-you face and then curse about him to John Paul when we’re alone.

  Bean told Petra he was going to train with Suri and the boys. And he did—go where they were training, that is. But he spent his time in one of the choppers, making a scrambled and encrypted call to the old Battle School space station, where Graff was assembling his fleet of colony ships.

  “Going to come visit me?” said Graff. “Want to take a trip into space?”

  “Not yet,” said Bean. “Not till I’ve found my lost kids.”

  “So you have other business to discuss?”

  “Yes. But you’ll immediately realize that the business I want to talk about is none of my business.”

  “Can’t wait. No, got to wait. Call I can’t turn down. Wait just a minute please.”

  The hiss of atmosphere and magnetic fields and radiation between the surface of the Earth and the space station. Bean thought of breaking off the connection and waiting for another time. Or maybe dropping the whole stupid line of inquiry.

  Just as Bean was going to terminate the call, Graff came back on. “Sorry, I’m in the middle of tricky negotiations with China to let breeding couples emigrate. They want to send us some of their surplus males. I told him we were forming a colony, not fighting a war. But…negotiating with the Chinese. You think you hear yes, but the next day you find out they said no very delicately and then tittered behind their hands.”

  “All those years controlling the size of their population, and now they won’t let go of a measly few thousand,” said Bean.

  “So you called me. What is it that’s none of your business?”

  “I get my pension. Petra gets hers. Who get’s Ender’s?”

  “My, but you’re to the point.”

  “Is it going to Peter?”

  “What an excellent question.”

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Please. As I recall, you have a history of making interesting suggestions.”

  “Stop sending the pension to anybody.”

  “I’m the Minister of Colonization now,” said Graff. “I take my orders from the Hegemon.”

  “You’re in bed so deep with the I.F. that Chamrajnagar thinks you’re a hemorrhoid and wakes up scratching at you.”

  “You have a vast untapped potential as a poet,” said Graff.

  “My suggestion,” said Bean, “is to get the I.F. to turn Ender’s money over to a neutral party.”

  “When it comes to money, there are no neutral parties. The I.F. and the colony program both spend money as fast as it comes in. We have no idea where to begin an investment program. And if you think I’m trusting some earthside mutual fund with the entire savings of a war hero who won’t even be able to inquire about the money for another thirty years, you’re insane.”

  “I was thinking that you could turn it over to a computer program.”

  “You think we didn’t think of that? The best investment programs are only two percent better at predicting markets and bringing a positive return on investment than closing your eyes and stabbing the stock listings with a pin.”

  “You mean with all the computer expertise and all the computer facilities of the Fleet, you can’t devise a neutral program to handle Ender’s money?”

  “Why are you so set on software doing it?”

  “Because software doesn’t get greedy and try to steal. Even for a noble purpose.”

  “So what if Peter is using Ender’s money—that’s what you’re worried about, right?—if we suddenly cut it off, won’t he notice? Won’t that set back his efforts?”

  “Ender saved the world. He’s entitled to have his full pension, when and if he ever wants it. There are laws to protect child actors. Why not war heroes traveling at lightspeed?”

  “Ah,” said Graff. “So you are thinking about what will happen when you take off in the scoutship we offered you.”

  “I don’t need you to manage my money. Petra will do it just fine. I want her to have the use of the money.”

  “Meaning you think you’ll never come back.”

  “You’re changing the subject. Software. Managing Ender’s investments.”

  “A semi-autonomous program that—”

  “Not semi. Autonomous.”

  “There are no autonomous programs. Besides which, the stock market is impossible to model. Nothing that depends on crowd behavior can be accurate over time. What computer could possibly deal with it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bean. “Didn’t that mind game you had us play predict human behavior?”

  “It’s very specialized educational software.”

  “Come on,” said Bean. “It was your shrink. You analyzed the behavior of the kids and—”

  “That’s right. Listen to yourself. We analyzed.”

  “But the game also analyzed. It anticipated our moves. When Ender was playing, it took him places the rest of us never saw. But the game was always ahead of him. That was one cool piece of software. Can’t you teach it to play Investment Manager?”

  Graff looked impatient. “I don’t know. What does an ancient piece of software have to do with…Bean, do you realize how much effort you’re asking me to go to in order to protect Ender’s pension? I don’t even know that it needs protecting.”

  “But you should know that it doesn’t.”

  “Guilt. You, the conscienceless wonder, are actually using guilt on me.”

  “I spent a lot of time with Sister Carlotta. And Petra’s no slouch, either.”

  “I’ll look at the program. I’ll look at Ender’s money.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what is the program being used for now that you don’t have any kids up there?”

  Graff snorted. “We have nothing but kids here. The adults are playing it now. The Mind Game. Only I promised them never to let the program do analyses on their gameplay.”

  “So the program does analyze.”

  “It does pre-analysis. Looking for anomalies. Surprises.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Bean.

  “You don’t want me to have it run Ender’s finances?”

  “I haven’t changed my mind about that. I’m just wondering—maybe it could look at a really massive database we’ve got here and analyze…well, find some patterns that we’re not seeing.”

  “The game was created for a very specific purpose. Pattern finding in databases wasn’t—”

  “Oh, come on,” said Bean. “That’s all it did. Patterns in our behavior. Just because it assembled the database of our actions on the fly doesn’t change the nature of what it was doing. Checking our behavior against the behavior of earlier children. Against our own normal behavior. Seeing just how crazy your educational program was making us.”

  Graff sighed. “Have your computer people contact my computer people.”

  “With your blessing. Not some foot-dragging fob-them-off-with-smoke-and-mirrors ‘effort’ that deliberately leads nowhere.”

  “You really care about what we do with Ender’s money?”

  “I care about Ender. Someday he may need that money. I once made a promise that I’d keep Peter from hurting Ender. Instead, I did nothing while Peter sent Ender away.”

  “For Ender’s own good.”

  “Ender should have had a vote.”

  “He did,” said Graff. “If he had insisted on going home to Earth, I would have let him. But once Valentine came up to join him, he was content.”

  “Fine,” said Bean. “Has he given consent to have his pension pillaged?”

  “I’ll see about turning the mind game into a financial manager. The program is a complex one. It does a lot of self-programming and self-alteration. So maybe if we ask it to, it can rewrite its own code in order to become whatever you want it to be. It is magic, after all. This computer stuff.”

  “That’s what I always thought,” said Bean. “Like Santa Claus. You adults pretend he doesn’t exist, but we know that he really does.”

  When he ended the conversation with Graff, Bean immediately called Ferreira. It was full daylight now, so Ferreira was actually awake. Bean told him about the plan to have the Mind Game program analyze the impossibly large database of vague and mostly useless information about the movements of pregnant women with low-birth-weight babies and Ferreira said he’d get right on it. He said it without enthusiasm, but Bean knew that Ferreira wasn’t the kind of man to say he’d do something and not do it, just because he didn’t believe in it. He’d keep his word.

  How do I know that? Bean wondered. How do I know that I can trust Ferreira to go off on wild goose chases, once he gives his word to do it? While I know without even knowing that I know it, that Peter is partly financing his operations by stealing from Ender. That was bothering me for days before I understood it.

  Damn, but I’m smart. Smarter than any computer program, even the Mind Game.

  If only I could control it.

  I may not have the capacity to consciously deal with a vast database and find patterns in it. But I could deal with the database of stuff I observe in the Hegemony and what I know about Peter and without my even asking the question, out pops an answer.

  Could I always do that? Or is my growing brain giving me ever-stronger mental powers?

  I really should look at some of the mathematical conundrums and see if I can find proofs of…whatever it is they can’t prove but want to.

  Maybe Volescu isn’t so wrong after all. Maybe a whole world full of minds like mine…

  Miserable, lonely, untrusting minds like mine. Minds that see death looming over them all the time. Minds that know they’ll never see their children grow up. Minds that let themselves get sidetracked on issues like taking care of a friend’s pension that he’ll probably never need.

  Peter is going to be so furious when he finds out that those pension checks aren’t going to him anymore. Should I tell him it was my meddling? Or let him think the I.F. did it on their own?

  And what does it say about my character that I am absolutely going to tell him I did it?

  Theresa didn’t actually see Peter until noon, when she and John Paul and their illustrious son sat down to a lunch of papaya and cheese and sliced sausage.

  “Why do you always drink that stuff?” asked John Paul.

  Peter looked surprised. “Guaraná? It’s my duty as an American to never drink Coke or Pepsi in a country that has an indigenous soft drink. Besides which, I like it.”

  “It’s a stimulant,” said Theresa. “It fuzzes your brain.”

  “It also makes you fart,” said John Paul. “Constantly.”

  “Frequently would be the more accurate term,” said Peter. “And it’s sweet of you to care.”

  “We’re just looking out for your image,” said Theresa.

  “I only fart when I’m alone.”

  “Since he does it in front of us,” said John Paul to Theresa, “what exactly does that make us?”

  “I meant ‘in private,’” said Peter. “And flatulence from carbonated beverages is odorless.”

  “He thinks it doesn’t stink,” said John Paul.

  Peter picked up the glass and drained it. “And you wonder why I don’t look forward to these little family get-togethers.”

  “Yes,” said Theresa. “Family is so inconvenient for you. Except when you can spend their pension checks.”

  Peter looked back and forth between her and John Paul. “You aren’t even on a pension. Either of you. You’re not even fifty yet.”

  Theresa just looked at him like he was stupid. She knew that look drove him crazy.

  But Peter refused to bite. He simply went back to eating his lunch.

  His very incuriosity was proof enough to Theresa that he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “You mind telling me what this is about?” asked John Paul.

  “Why, Andrew’s pension,” said Theresa. “Bean thinks that Peter’s been stealing it.”

  “So naturally,” said Peter with his mouth full, “Mother believes him.”

  “Oh, haven’t you, then?” asked Theresa.

  “There’s a difference between investing and stealing.”

  “Not when you invest it in Hegemony bonds. Especially when a circle of huts in Amazonas has a higher bond rating than you.”

  “Investing in the future of world peace is a sound investment.”

  “Investing in your future,” said Theresa. “Which is more than you did for Andrew. But now that Bean knows, you can be sure that source of funding will dry up very quickly.”

  “How sad for Bean,” said Peter. “Since that was what was paying for his and Petra’s search.”

  “It wasn’t until you decided it was,” said John Paul. “Are you really that petty?”

  “If Bean decides unilaterally to cut off a funding source, then I have to reduce spending somewhere. Since spending on his personal quest has nothing to do with Hegemony goals, it seems only fair that the meddler’s pet project be the first to go. It’s all moot anyway. Bean has no claim on Ender’s pension. He can’t touch it.”

  “He’s not going to touch it himself,” said Theresa. “He doesn’t want the money.”