"Absurd question. Of course you are."
"If I do know anything that you don't want us kids to know, have I talked about it? Have I told any of the other kids? Has it affected my performance in any way?"
"No."
"To me that sounds like a tree falling in the forest where no one can hear. If I do know something, because I figured it out, but I'm not telling anybody else, and it's not affecting my work, then why would you waste time finding out whether I know it? Because after this conversation, you may be sure that I'll be looking very hard for any secret that might be lying around where a seven-year-old might find it. Even if I do find such a secret, though, I still won't tell the other kids, so it still won't make a difference. So why don't we just drop it?"
Graff reached under the table and pressed something.
"All right," said Graff. "They've got the recording of our conversation and if that doesn't reassure them, nothing will."
"Reassure them of what? And who is 'them'?"
"Bean, this part is not being recorded."
"Yes it is," said Bean.
"I turned it off."
"Puh-leeze."
In fact, Graff was not altogether sure that the recording was off. Even if the machine he controlled was off, that didn't mean there wasn't another.
"Let's walk," said Graff.
"I hope not outside."
Graff got up from the table--laboriously, because he'd put on a lot of weight and they kept Eros at full gravity--and led the way out into the tunnels.
As they walked, Graff talked softly. "Let's at least make them work for it," he said.
"Fine," said Bean.
"I thought you'd want to know that the I.F. is going crazy because of an apparent security leak. It seems that someone with access to the most secret archives wrote letters to a couple of net pundits who then started agitating for the children of Battle School to be sent home to their native countries."
"What's a pundit?" asked Bean.
"My turn to say puh-leeze, I think. Look, I'm not accusing you. I just happen to have seen a text of the letters sent to Locke and Demosthenes--they're both being closely watched, as I'm sure you would expect--and when I read those letters--interesting the differences between them, by the way, very cleverly done--I realized that there was not really any top secret information in there, beyond what any child in Battle School knows. No, the thing that's really making them crazy is that the political analysis is dead on, even though it's based on insufficient information. From what is publicly known, in other words, the writer of those letters couldn't have figured out what he figured out. The Russians are claiming that somebody's been spying on them--and lying about what they found, of course. But I accessed the library on the destroyer Condor and found out what you were reading. And then I checked your library use on the ISL while you were in Tactical School. You've been a busy boy."
"I try to keep my mind occupied."
"You'll be happy to know that the first group of children has already been sent home."
"But the war's not over."
"You think that when you start a political snowball rolling, it will always go where you wanted it to go? You're smart but you're naive, Bean. Give the universe a push, and you don't know which dominoes will fall. There are always a few you never thought were connected. Someone will always push back a little harder than you expected. But still, I'm happy that you remembered the other children and set the wheels in motion to free them."
"But not us."
"The I.F. has no obligation to remind the agitators on Earth that Tactical School and Command School are still full of children."
"I'm not going to remind them."
"I know you won't. No, Bean, I got a chance to talk to you because you panicked some of the higher-ups with your educated guess about who would command your team. But I was hoping for a chance to talk to you because there are a couple of things I wanted to tell you. Besides the fact that your letter had pretty much the desired effect."
"I'm listening, though I admit to no letter."
"First, you'll be fascinated to know the identity of Locke and Demosthenes."