First meetings in the Enderverse

doesn’t it?” said Benedetto. Andrew looked around the office. “It says on that sign that you’ll help me fill out my tax form.”
    “Yes.”
    “Help.”
    “Show me the form.”
    Andrew looked at him oddly. “How can I show it to you?”
    “Bring it up on the computer here.” Benedetto turned his computer around on his desk, offering the keyboard side of it to Andrew.
    Andrew looked at the blanks in the form displayed above the computer, and typed in his name and his tax I.D. number, then his private I.D. code.
    Benedetto pointedly looked away while he typed in the code, even though his software was recording each keystroke the young man entered. Once he was gone, Benedetto would have full access to all his records and all his funds. The better to assist him with his taxes, of course. The display began scrolling.
    “What did you do?” asked Benedetto. The words appeared at the bottom of the display, as the top of the page slid back and out of the way, rolling into an ever-tighter scroll. Because it wasn’t paging, Benedetto knew that this long list of information was appearing as it was being called up by a single question on the form. He turned the computer around to where he could see it. The list consisted of the names and exchange codes of corporations and mutual funds, along with numbers of shares.
    “You see my problem,” said the young man.
    The list went on and on. Benedetto reached down and pressed a few keys in combination. The list stopped. “You have,” he said softly, “a large number of holdings.”
    “But I didn’t know it,” said Andrew. “I mean, I knew that the trustees had diversified me some time ago, but I had no idea the extent. I just drew an allowance whenever I was on planet, and because it was a tax-free government pension I never had to think any more about it.”
    So maybe the kid’s wide-eyed innocence wasn’t an act. Benedetto disliked him a little less. In fact, Benedetto felt the first stirrings of true friendship.
    This lad was going to make Benedetto a rich man without even knowing it. Benedetto might even retire from the tax service. Just his stock in the last company on the interrupted list, Enzichel Vinicenze, conglomerate with extensive holdings on Sorelledolce, was worth enough for Benedetto to buy a country estate and keep servants for the rest of his life. And the list was only up to the E s.
    “Interesting,” said Benedetto.
    “How about this?” said the young man. “I only turned twenty in the last year of my voyage. Up to then, my earnings were still tax-exempt and I’m entitled to them without paying taxes. Free up that much of my funds, and then give me a few weeks to get some expert to help me analyze the rest of this and I’ll submit my tax forms then.”
    “Excellent idea,” said Benedetto. “Where are those liquid earnings held?”
    “Catalonian Exchange Bank,” said Andrew.
    “Account number?”
    “All you need is to free up any funds held in my name,” said Andrew. “You don’t need the account number.”
    Benedetto didn’t press the point. He wouldn’t need to dip into the boy’s petty cash. Not with the mother lode waiting for him to pillage at will before he ever got into a tax attorney’s office. He typed in the necessary information and published the form. He also gave Andrew Wiggin a thirtyday pass, allowing him the freedom of Sorelledolce as long as he logged in daily with the tax service and turned in a full tax form and paid the estimated tax within that thirty-day period, and promised not to leave the planet until his tax form had been evaluated and confirmed.
    Standard operating procedure. The young man thanked him-that’s the part Benedetto always liked, when these rich idiots thanked him for lying to them and skimming invisible bribes from their accountsand then left the office. As soon as he was gone, Benedetto cleared the display and called up his snitch program to report the young man’s I.D. code. He waited. The snitch program did not come up. He brought up his log of running programs, checked the hidden log, and found that the snitch program wasn’t on the list. Absurd. It was always running. Only now it wasn’t. And in fact it had disappeared from memory. Using his version of the banned Predator program, he searched for the electronic signature of the snitch program, and found a couple of its temp files. But none contained any useful information, and the snitch program itself was completely