"I can't believe you don't know what it is. I've been doing data comparisons since I was nine years old. Everybody learns how to do it at that age."
"Olhado, it's been a long time since I went to school. And it wasn't a normal escola baixa, either."
"But everybody uses these programs all the time!"
"Obviously not everybody. I haven't. If I knew how to do it myself, I wouldn't have had to hire you, would I? And since I'm going to be paying you in offworld funds, your service to me will
make a substantial contribution to the Lusitanian economy."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Neither do I, Olhado. But that reminds me. I'm not sure how to go about paying you."
"You just transfer money from your account."
"How do you do that?"
"You've got to be kidding."
The Speaker sighed, knelt before Olhado, took him by the hands, and said, "Olhado, I beg you, stop being amazed and help me! There are things I have to do, and I can't do them without the help of somebody who knows how to use computers."
"I'd be stealing your money. I'm just a kid. I'm twelve. Quim could help you a lot better than me. He's fifteen, he's actually gotten into the guts of this stuff. He also knows math."
"But Quim thinks I'm the infidel and prays every day for me to die."
"No, that was only before he met you, and you better not tell him that I told you."
"How do I transfer money?"
Olhado turned back to the terminal and called for the bank. "What's your real name?" he asked.
"Andrew Wiggin." The Speaker spelled it out. The name looked like it was in Stark--maybe the Speaker was one of the lucky ones who learned Stark at home instead of beating it into his head in school.
"OK, what's your password?"
"Password?"
Olhado let his head fall forward onto the terminal, temporarily blanking part of the display. "Please don't tell me you don't know your password."
"Look, Olhado, I've had a program, a very smart program, that helped me do all this stuff. All I had to say was Buy this, and the program took care of the finances."
"You can't do that. It's illegal to tie up the public systems with a slave program like that. Is that what that thing in your ear is for?"
"Yes, and it wasn't illegal for me."
"I got no eyes, Speaker, but at least that wasn't my own fault. You can't do anything." Only after he said it did Olhado realize that he was talking to the Speaker as brusquely as if he were another kid.
"I imagine courtesy is something they teach to thirteen-year-olds," the Speaker said. Olhado glanced at him. He was smiling. Father would have yelled at him, and then probably gone in and beaten up Mother because she didn't teach manners to her kids. But then, Olhado would never have said anything like that to Father.
"Sorry," Olhado said. "But I can't get into your finances for you without your password. You've got to have some idea what it is."
"Try using my name."
Olhado tried. It didn't work.
"Try typing 'Jane.' "
"Nothing."