But no. Word of such contributions would get out. Peter would never be so foolish as to accept money that might compromise him if it were found out.
I'll check with Graff, see whether the I.F. is paying out the pension to Peter. And if it is, I'll have to kill the boy. Or at least make my disappointed-in-you face and then curse about him to John Paul when we're alone.
Bean told Petra he was going to train with Suri and the boys. And he did--go where they were training, that is. But he spent his time in one of the choppers, making a scrambled and encrypted call to the old Battle School space station, where Graff was assembling his fleet of colony ships.
"Going to come visit me?" said Graff. "Want to take a trip into space?"
"Not yet," said Bean. "Not till I've
found my lost kids."
"So you 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."