First Meetings (16 page)

He was asleep when Graff and Mazer Rackham found him. They came in quietly and roused him. He awoke slowly, and when he recognized them he turned away to go back to sleep.

“Ender,” Graff said. “We need to talk to you.”

Ender rolled back to face them. He said nothing.

Graff smiled. “It was a shock to you yesterday, I know. But it must make you feel good to know you won the war.”

Ender nodded slowly.

“Mazer Rackham here, he never played against you. He only analyzed your battles to find out your weak spots, to help you improve. It worked, didn’t it?”

Ender closed his eyes tightly. They waited. He said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mazer smiled. “A hundred years ago, Ender, we found out some things. That when a commander’s life is in danger he becomes afraid, and fear slows down his thinking. When a commander knows that he’s killing people, he becomes cautious or insane, and neither of those help him do well. And when he’s mature, when he has responsibilities and an understanding of the world, he becomes cautious and sluggish and can’t do his job. So we trained children, who didn’t know anything but the game, and never knew when it would become real. That was the theory, and you proved that the theory worked.”

Graff reached out and touched Ender’s shoulder. “We launched the ships so that they would all arrive at their destination during these few months. We knew that we’d probably have only one good commander, if we were lucky. In history it’s been very rare to have more than one genius in a war. So we planned on having a genius. We were gambling. And you came along and we won.”

Ender opened his eyes again and they realized that he was angry. “Yes, you won.”

Graff and Mazer Rackham looked at each other. “He doesn’t understand,” Graff whispered.

“I understand,” Ender said. “You needed a weapon, and you got it, and it was me.”

“That’s right,” Mazer answered.

“So tell me,” Ender went on, “how many people lived on that planet that I destroyed.”

They didn’t answer him. They waited awhile in silence, and then Graff spoke. “Weapons don’t need to understand what they’re pointed at, Ender. We did the pointing, and so we’re responsible. You just did your job.”

Mazer smiled. “Of course, Ender, you’ll be taken care of. The government will never forget you. You served us all very well.”

Ender rolled over and faced the wall, and even though they tried to talk to him, he didn’t answer them. Finally they left.

Ender lay in his bed for a long time before anyone disturbed him again. The door opened softly. Ender didn’t turn to see who it was. Then a hand touched him softly.

“Ender, it’s me, Bean.”

Ender turned over and looked at the little boy who was standing by his bed.

“Sit down,” Ender said.

Bean sat. “That last battle, Ender. I didn’t know how you’d get us out of it.”

Ender smiled. “I didn’t. I cheated. I thought they’d kick me out.”

“Can you believe it! We won the war. The whole war’s
over, and we thought we’d have to wait till we grew up to fight in it, and it was us fighting it all the time. I mean, Ender, we’re little kids. I’m a little kid, anyway.” Bean laughed and Ender smiled. Then they were silent for a little while, Bean sitting on the edge of the bed, Ender watching him out of half-closed eyes.

Finally Bean thought of something else to say.

“What will we do now that the war’s over?” he said.

Ender closed his eyes and said, “I need some sleep, Bean.”

Bean got up and left and Ender slept.

Graff and Anderson walked through the gates into the park. There was a breeze, but the sun was hot on their shoulders.

“Abba Technics? In the capital?” Graff asked.

“No, in Biggock County. Training division,” Anderson replied. “They think my work with children is good preparation. And you?”

Graff smiled and shook his head. “No plans. I’ll be here for a few more months. Reports, winding down. I’ve had offers. Personnel development for DCIA, executive vice-president for U and P, but I said no. Publisher wants me to do memoirs of the war. I don’t know.”

They sat on a bench and watched leaves shivering in the breeze. Children on the monkey bars were laughing and yelling, but the wind and the distance swallowed their words. “Look,” Graff said, pointing. A little boy jumped from the bars and ran near the bench where the two men sat. Another boy followed him, and holding his hands like a gun he made an explosive sound. The child he was shooting at didn’t stop. He fired again.

“I got you! Come back here!”

The other little boy ran on out of sight.

“Don’t you know when you’re dead?” The boy shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked a rock back to the monkey bars. Anderson smiled and shook his head. “Kids,” he said. Then he and Graff stood up and walked on out of the park.

Andrew Wiggin turned twenty the day he reached the
planet Sorelledolce. Or rather, after complicated calculations of how many seconds he had been in flight, and at what percentage of lightspeed, and therefore what amount of subjective time had elapsed for him, he reached the conclusion that he had passed his twentieth birthday just before the end of the voyage.

This was much more relevant to him than the other pertinent fact—that four hundred and some-odd years had passed since the day he was born, back on Earth, back when the human race had not spread beyond the solar system of its birth.

When Valentine emerged from the debarkation chamber—alphabetically she was always after him—Andrew greeted her with the news. “I just figured it out,” he said. “I’m twenty.”

“Good,” she said. “Now you can start paying taxes like the rest of us.”

Ever since the end of the War of Xenocide, Andrew had lived on a trust fund set up by a grateful world to reward the commander of the fleets that saved humanity. Well, strictly speaking, that action was taken at the end of the Third Bugger War, when people still thought of the Buggers as monsters and the children who commanded the fleet as heroes. By the time the name was changed to the War of Xenocide, humanity was no longer grateful, and the last thing any government would have dared to do was authorize a pension trust fund for Ender Wiggin, the perpetrator of the most awful crime in human history.

In fact, if it had become known that such a trust fund existed, it would have become a public scandal. But the interstellar fleet was slow to convert to the idea that destroying the Buggers had been a bad idea. And so they carefully shielded the trust fund from public view, dispersing it among many mutual funds and as stock in many different companies, with no single authority controlling any significant portion of the money. Effectively, they had made the money disappear, and only Andrew himself and his sister Valentine knew where the money was, or how much of it there was.

One thing, though, was certain: By law, when Andrew reached the subjective age of twenty, the tax-exempt status of his holdings would be revoked. The income would start being reported to the appropriate authorities. Andrew
would have to file a tax report either every year or every time he concluded an interstellar voyage of greater than one year in objective time, the taxes to be annualized and interest on the unpaid portion duly handed over.

Andrew was not looking forward to it.

“How does it work with your book royalties?” he asked Valentine.

“The same as anyone,” she answered, “except that not many copies sell, so there isn’t much in the way of taxes to pay.”

Only a few minutes later she had to eat her words, for when they sat down at the rental computers in the starport of Sorelledolce, Valentine discovered that her most recent book, a history of the failed Jung and Calvin colonies on the planet Helvetica, had achieved something of a cult status.

“I think I’m rich,” she murmured to Andrew.

“I have no idea whether I’m rich or not,” said Andrew. “I can’t get the computer to stop listing my holdings.”

The names of companies kept scrolling up and back, the list going on and on.

“I thought they’d just give you a check for whatever was in the bank when you turned twenty,” said Valentine.

“I should be so lucky,” said Andrew. “I can’t sit here and wait for this.”

“You have to,” said Valentine. “You can’t get through customs without proving that you’ve paid your taxes
and
that you have enough left over to support yourself without becoming a drain on public resources.”

“What if I didn’t have enough money? They send me back?”

“No, they assign you to a work crew and compel you to earn your way free at an extremely unfair rate of pay.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t. I’ve just read a lot of history and I know how governments work. If it isn’t that, it’ll be the equivalent. Or they’ll send you back.”

“I can’t be the only person who ever landed and discovered that it would take him a week to find out what his financial situation was,” said Andrew. “I’m going to find somebody.”

“I’ll be here, paying my taxes like a grown-up,” said Valentine. “Like an honest woman.”

“You make me ashamed of myself,” called Andrew blithely as he strode away.

Benedetto took one look at the cocky young man who sat down across the desk from him and sighed. He knew at once that this one would be trouble. A young man of privilege, arriving at a new planet, thinking he could get special favors for himself from the tax man. “What can I do for you?” asked Benedetto—in Italian, even though he was fluent in Starcommon and the law said that all travelers had to be addressed in that language unless another was mutually agreed upon.

Unfazed by the Italian, the young man produced his identification.

“Andrew Wiggin?” asked Benedetto, incredulous.

“Is there a problem?”

“Do you expect me to believe that this identification is real?” He was speaking Starcommon now; the point had been made.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Andrew
Wiggin?
Do you think this is such a backwater
that we are not educated enough to recognize the name of Ender the Xenocide?”

“Is having the same name a criminal offense?” asked Andrew.

“Having false identification is.”

“If I were using false identification, would it be smart or stupid to use a name like Andrew Wiggin?” he asked.

“Stupid,” Benedetto grudgingly admitted.

“So let’s start from the assumption that I’m smart, but also tormented by having grown up with the name of Ender the Xenocide. Are you going to find me psychologically unfit because of the imbalance these traumas caused me?”

“I’m not customs,” said Benedetto. “I’m taxes.”

“I know. But you seemed preternaturally absorbed with the question of identity, so I thought you were either a spy from customs or a philosopher, and who am I to deny the curiosity of either?”

Benedetto hated the smart-mouthed ones. “What do you want?”

“I find my tax situation is complicated. This is the first time I’ve had to pay taxes—I just came into a trust fund—and I don’t even know what my holdings are. I’d like to have a delay in paying my taxes until I can sort it all out.”

“Denied,” said Benedetto.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” said Benedetto.

Andrew sat there for a moment.

“Can I help you with something else?” asked Benedetto.

“Is there any appeal?”

“Yes,” said Benedetto. “But you have to pay your taxes before you can appeal.”

“I intend to pay my taxes,” said Andrew. “It’s just going to take me time to do it, and I thought I’d do a better job of it on my own computer in my own apartment rather than on the public computers here in the starport.”

“Afraid someone will look over your shoulder?” asked Benedetto. “See how much of an allowance Grandmother left you?”

“It would be nice to have more privacy, yes,” said Andrew.

“Permission to leave without payment is denied.”

“All right, then, release my liquid funds to me so I can pay to stay here and work on my taxes.”

“You had your whole flight to do that.”

“My money had always been in a trust fund. I never knew how complicated the holdings were.”

“You realize, of course, that if you keep telling me these things, you’ll break my heart and I’ll run from the room crying,” said Benedetto calmly.

The young man sighed. “I’m not sure what you want me to do.”

“Pay your taxes like every other citizen.”

“I have no way to get to my money until I pay my taxes,” said Andrew. “And I have no way to support myself while I figure out my taxes unless you release some funds to me.”

“Makes you wish you had thought of this earlier, 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 anymore 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 very 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, a 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
Es
.

“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 it 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 thirty-day 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 accounts—and 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 gone.