“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.”
The Speaker grimaced. “Try 'Ender.'”
“Ender? The Xenocide?”
“Just try it.”
It worked. Olhado didn't get it. “Why would you have a password like that? It's like having a dirty word for your password, only the system won't accept any dirty words.”
“I have an ugly sense of humor,” the Speaker answered. “And my slave program, as you call it, has an even worse one.”
Olhado laughed. “Right. A program with a sense of humor.” The current balance in liquid funds appeared on the screen. Olhado had never seen so large a number in his life. “OK, so maybe the computer can tell a joke.”
“That's how much money I have?”
“It's got to be an error.”
“Well, I've done a lot of lightspeed travel. Some of my investments must have turned out well while I was en route.”
The numbers were real. The Speaker for the Dead was older than Olhado had ever thought anybody could possibly be. “I'll tell you what,” said Olhado, “instead of paying me a wage, why don't you just give me a percentage of the interest this gets during the time I work for you? Say, one thousandth of one percent. Then in a couple of weeks I can afford to buy Lusitania and ship the topsoil to another planet.”
“It's not that much money.”
“Speaker, the only way you could get that much money from investments is if you were a thousand years old.”
“Hmm,” said the Speaker.
And from the look on his face, Olhado realized that he had just said something funny. “Are you a thousand years old?” he asked.
“Time,” said the Speaker, “time is such a fleeting, insubstantial thing. As Shakespeare said, 'I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.'”
“What does 'doth' mean?”
“It means 'does.'”
“Why do you quote a guy who doesn't even know how to speak Stark?”
“Transfer to your own account what you think a fair week's wage might be. And then start doing those comparisons of Pipo's and Libo's working files from the last few weeks before their deaths.”
“They're probably shielded.”
“Use my password. It ought to get us in.”
Olhado did the search. The Speaker of the Dead watched him the whole time. Now and then he asked Olhado a question about what he was doing. From his questions Olhado could tell that the Speaker knew more about computers than Olhado himself did. What he didn't know was the particular commands; it was plain that just by watching, the Speaker was figuring out a lot. By the end of the day, when the searches hadn't found anything in particular, it took Olhado only a minute to figure out why the Speaker looked so contented with the day's work. You didn't want results at all, Olhado thought. You wanted to watch how I did the search. I know what you'll be doing tonight, Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead. You'll be running your own searches on some other files. I may have no eyes, but I can see more than you think.
What's dumb is that you're keeping it such a secret, Speaker. Don't you know I'm on your side? I won't tell anybody how your password gets you into private files. Even if you make a run at the Mayor's files, or the Bishop's. No need to keep a secret from me. You've only been here three days, but I know you well enough to like you, and I like you well enough that I'd do anything for you, as long as it didn't hurt my family. And you'd never do anything to hurt my family.
Novinha discovered the Speaker's attempts to intrude in her files almost immediately the next morning. He had been arrogantly open about the attempt, and what bothered her was how far he got. Some files he had actually been able to access, though the most important one, the record of the simulations Pipo saw, remained closed to him. What annoyed her most was that he made no attempt at all to conceal himself. His name was stamped in every access directory, even the ones that any schoolchild could have changed or erased.
Well, she wouldn't let it interfere with her work, she decided. He barges into my house, manipulates my children, spies on my files, all as if he had a right– And so on and so on, until she realized she was getting no work done at all for thinking of vitriolic things to say to him when she saw him again.
Don't think about him at all. Think about something else.
Miro and Ela laughing, night before last. Think of that. Of course Miro was back to his sullen self by morning, and Ela, whose cheerfulness lingered a bit longer, was soon as worried-looking, busy, snappish, and indispensible as ever. And Grego may have cried and embraced the man, as Ela told her, but the next morning he got the scissors and cut up his own bedsheets into thin, precise ribbons, and at school he slammed his head into Brother Adomai's crotch, causing an abrupt end to classwork and leading to a serious consultation with Dona Crist . So much for the Speaker's healing hands. He may think he can walk into my home and fix everything he thinks I've done wrong, but he'll find some wounds aren't so easily healed.
Except that Dona Crist also told her that Quara actually spoke to Sister Bebei in class, in front of all the other children no less, and why? To tell them that she had met the scandalous, terrible Falante pelos Mortos, and his name was Andrew, and he was every bit as awful as Bishop Peregrino had said, and maybe even worse, because he tortured Grego until he cried– and finally Sister Bebei had actually been forced to ask Quara to stop talking. That was something, to pull Quara out of her profound self-absorption.
And Olhado, so self-conscious, so detached, was now excited, couldn't stop talking about the Speaker at supper last night. Do you know that he didn't even know how to transfer money? And you wouldn't believe the awful password that he has– I thought the computers were supposed to reject words like that– no, I can't tell you, it's a secret– I was practically teaching him how to do searches– but I think he understands computers, he's not an idiot or anything– he said he used to have a slave program, that's why he's got that jewel in his ear– he told me I could pay myself anything I want, not that there's much to buy, but I can save it for when I get out on my own– I think he's really old. I think he remembers things from a long time ago. I think he speaks Stark as his native language, there aren't many people in the Hundred Worlds who actually grow up speaking it, do you think maybe he was born on Earth?
Until Quim finally screamed at him to shut up about that servant of the devil or he'd ask the Bishop to conduct an exorcism because Olhado was obviously possessed; and when Olhado only grinned and winked, Quim stormed out of the kitchen, out of the house, and didn't come back until late at night. The Speaker might as well live at our house, thought Novinha, because he keeps influencing the family even when he isn't there and now he's prying in my files and I won't have it.
Except that, as usual, it's my own fault, I'm the one who called him here, I'm the one who took him from whatever place he called home– he says he had a sister there– Trondheim, it was– it's my fault he's here in this miserable little town in a backwater of the Hundred Worlds, surrounded by a fence that still doesn't keep the piggies from killing everyone I love– And once again she thought of Miro, who looked so much like his real father that she couldn't understand why no one accused her of adultery, thought of him lying on the hillside as Pipo had lain, thought of the piggies cutting him open with their cruel wooden knives. They will. No matter what I do, they will. And even if they don't, the day will come soon when he will be old enough to marry Ouanda, and then I'll have to tell him who he really is, and why they can never marry, and he'll know then that I did deserve all the pain that C o inflicted on me, that he struck me with the hand of God to punish me for my sins.