Shadow of the giant

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