Shadow of the giant

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