be doing this sneaking? When are any of us alone? Our desks are just dumb terminals and we never get to see anybody else log on so it's not like I can capture another identity. I just do what I'm told all day every day. You guys keep assuming that we kids are stupid, even though you chose us because we're really, really smart. And now you sit there and accuse me of having to steal information that any idiot could guess."
"Not any idiot."
"That was just an expression."
"Bean," said Graff, "I think you're feeding me a line of complete bullshit."
"Colonel Graff, even if that were true, which it isn't, so what? So I found out Ender was coming. I'm secretly monitoring your dreams. So what? He'll still come, he'll be in command, he'll be brilliant, and then we'll all graduate and I'll sit in a booster seat in a ship somewhere and give commands to grownups in my little-boy voice until they get sick of hearing me and throw me out into space."
"I don't care about the fact that you knew about Ender. I don't care that it was a guess."
"I know you don't care about those things."
"I need to know what else you've figured out."
"Colonel," said Bean, sounding very tired, "doesn't it occur to you that the very fact that you're asking me this question tells me there's something else for me to figure out, and therefore greatly increases the chance that I will figure it out?"
Graff's smile grew even broader. "That's just what I told the ... officer who assigned me to talk to you and ask these questions. I told him that we would end up telling you more, just by having the interview, than you would ever tell us, but he said, 'The kid is six, Colonel Graff.'"
"I think I'm seven."
"He was working from an old report and hadn't done the math."
"Just tell me what secret you want to make sure I don't know, and I'll tell you if I already knew it."
"Very helpful."
"Colonel Graff, am I doing a good job?"
"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