First Meetings (19 page)

The speaker dressed simply and put on no airs. He came to the front of the room and started to talk, telling the life of the man simply. It wasn’t a biography—there was no time for such a level of detail. Rather it was more like a saga, telling the important deeds the man did—but judging which were important, not by the degree to which such deeds would have been newsworthy, but by the depth and breadth of their effects in the lives of others. Thus his decision to build a house that he could not afford in a neighborhood full of people far above his level of income would never have rated a mention in the newsnets, but it colored the lives of his children as they were growing up, forcing them to deal with people who looked down on them. It also filled his own life with anxiety over finances. He worked himself to death, paying for the house. He did it “for the children,” yet they all wished that they had been able to grow up with people who wouldn’t judge them for their lack of money, who didn’t dismiss them as climbers. His wife was isolated in a neighborhood where she had no womenfriends, and he had been dead for less than a day when she put the house on the market; she had already moved out.

But the speaker did not stop there. He went on to show how the dead man’s obsession with this house, with putting his family in this neighborhood, arose from his own mother’s constant harping at his father’s failure to provide a fine home for her. She constantly talked about how it had been a mistake for her to “marry down,” and so the dead man had grown up obsessed with the need for a man to provide only the best for his family, no matter what it took. He hated his mother—he fled his home world and came to Sorelledolce primarily to get away from her—but her twisted values came with him and distorted his life and the lives of his children. In the end, it was her quarrel with her husband that killed her son, for it led to the exhaustion and the stroke that felled him before he was fifty.

Andrew could see that the widow and children had not known their grandmother, back on their father’s home planet, had not guessed at the source of his obsession with living in the right neighborhood, in the right house. Now that they could see the script that had been given him as a child, tears were shed. Obviously, they had been given permission to face their resentments and, at the same time, forgive their father for the pain he had put them through. Things made sense to them now.

The speaking ended. Family members embraced the speaker, and each other; then the speaker went away.

Andrew followed him. Caught him by the arm as he reached the street.

“Sir,” Andrew said, “how did you become a speaker?”

The man looked at him oddly. “I spoke.”

“But how did you prepare?”

“The first death I spoke was the death of my grandfather,”
he said. “I hadn’t even read
The Hive Queen
and
The Hegemon
.” (The books were invariably sold as a single volume now.) “But when I was done, people told me I had a real gift as a speaker for the dead. That’s when I finally read the books and got an idea of how the thing ought to be done. So when other people asked me to speak at funerals, I knew how much research was required. I don’t know that I’m doing it ‘right’ even now.”

“So to be a speaker for the dead, you simply—”

“Speak. And get asked to speak again.” The man smiled. “It’s not a paying job, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, no,” said Andrew. “I just…I just wanted to know how the thing was done, that’s all.” This man, already in his fifties, would not be likely to believe that the author of
The Hive Queen
and
The Hegemon
stood before him in the form of this twenty-year-old.

“And in case you’re wondering,” said the speaker for the dead, “we aren’t ministers. We don’t stake out our turf and get testy if someone else sticks his nose in.”

“Oh?”

“So if you’re thinking of becoming a speaker for the dead, all I can say is, go for it. Just don’t do a half-assed job. You’re reshaping the past for people, and if you aren’t going to plunge in and do it right, finding out
everything
, you’ll only do harm and it’s better not to do it at all. You can’t stand up and wing it.”

“No, I guess you can’t.”

“There it is. Your full apprenticeship as a speaker for the dead. I hope you don’t want a certificate.” The man smiled. “It’s not always as appreciated as it was in there. Sometimes you speak because the dead person asked for a
speaker for the dead in his will. The family doesn’t want you to do it, and they’re horrified at the things you say, and they’ll never forgive you for it when you’re done. But…you do it anyway, because the dead man wanted the truth spoken.”

“How can you be sure when you’ve found the truth.”

“You never know. You just do your best.” He patted Andrew on the back. “I’d love to talk with you longer, but I’ve got calls to make before everybody leaves for home this afternoon. I’m an accountant for the living—that’s my day job.”

“An accountant?” asked Andrew. “I know you’re busy, but can I ask you about a piece of accounting software? A talking head, a woman comes up on the screen, she calls herself Jane?”

“Never heard of it, but the universe is a big place and there’s no way I can keep up with software I don’t use myself. Sorry!” And with that the man was gone.

Andrew did a netsearch on the name
Jane
with the delimiters
investment, finance, accounting
, and
tax
. There were seven hits, but they all pointed to a writer on the planet Albion who had written a book on interplanetary estate planning a hundred years before. Possibly the Jane in this software package was named for her. Or not. But it brought Andrew no closer to getting the software.

Five minutes after concluding his search, however, the familiar head popped up in the display of his computer. “Good morning, Andrew,” she said. “Oops. It’s early evening, isn’t it? So hard to keep track of local time on all these worlds.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Andrew. “I tried to find you, but I didn’t know the name of the software.”

“Did you? This is just a preprogrammed follow-up visit, in case you changed your mind. If you want I can uninstall myself from your computer, or I can do a partial or full install, depending on what you want.”

“How much does an installation cost?”

“You can afford me,” said Jane. “I’m cheap and you’re rich.”

Andrew wasn’t sure he liked the style of this simulated personality. “All I want is a simple answer,” said Andrew. “How much does it cost to install you?”

“I gave you the answer,” said Jane. “I’m an ongoing installation. The fee is contingent on your financial status and how much I accomplish for you. If you install me just to help with taxes, you are charged one-tenth of one percent of the amount I save for you.”

“What if I tell you to pay more than what you think the minimum payment should be.”

“Then I save less for you, and I cost less. No hidden charges. No best-case fakery. But you’ll be missing a bet if you only install me for taxes. There’s so much money here that you’ll spend your whole life managing it, unless you turn it over to me.”

“That’s the part I don’t care for,” said Andrew. “Who is ‘you’?”

“Me. Jane. The software installed on your computer. Oh, I see, you’re worried about whether I’m linked to some central database that will know too much about your finances! No, my installation on your computer will not cause any information about you to go to any other location. There’ll
be no room full of software engineers trying to figure out ways to get their hands on your fortune. Instead, you’ll have the equivalent of a fulltime stockbroker, tax attorney, and investment analyst handling your money for you. Ask for an accounting at any time and it will be in front of you, instantaneously. Whatever you want to purchase, just let me know and I’ll find you the best price at a convenient location, pay for it, and have it delivered wherever you want. If you do a full installation, including the scheduler and research assistant, I can be your constant companion.”

Andrew thought of having this woman talking to him day in and day out and he shook his head. “No thanks.”

“Why? Is my voice too chirpy for you?” Jane said. Then, in a lower register, with some breathiness added, she continued: “I can change my voice to whatever comfort level you prefer.” Her head suddenly changed to that of a man. In a baritone voice with just the slightest hint of effeminacy, he said, “Or I can be a man, with varying degrees of manliness.” The face changed again, to more rugged features, and the voice was downright beery. “This is the bear hunter version, in case you have doubts about your manhood and need to overcompensate.”

Andrew laughed in spite of himself. Who programmed this thing? The humor, the ease with language—these were way above even the best software he had seen. Artificial intelligence was still a wishful thought—no matter how good the sim was, you always knew within moments that you were dealing with a program. But this sim was so much better—so much more like a pleasant companion—that he might have bought it just to see how deep the program went, how well the sim would hold up over time. And since
it was also precisely the financial program that he needed, he decided to go ahead.

“I want a daily tally of how much I’m paying for your services,” said Andrew. “So I can get rid of you if you get too expensive.”

“Just remember, no tipping,” said the man.

“Go back to the first one,” said Andrew. “Jane. And the default voice.”

The woman’s head reappeared. “You don’t want the sexy voice?”

“I’ll tell you if I ever get that lonely,” said Andrew.

“What if
I
get lonely? Did you ever think about that?”

“No, I don’t want any flirty banter,” said Andrew. “I’m assuming you can switch that off.”

“It’s already gone,” she said.

“Then let’s get my tax forms ready.” Andrew sat down, expecting it to take several minutes to get under way. Instead, the completed tax form appeared in the display. Jane’s face was gone. But her voice remained. “Here’s the bottom line. I promise you it’s entirely legal, and he can’t touch you for it. This is how the laws are written. They’re designed to protect the fortunes of people as rich as you, while throwing the main tax burden on people in much lower brackets. Your brother Peter designed the law that way, and it’s never been changed except for tweaking it here and there.”

Andrew sat there in stunned silence for a few moments.

“Oh, was I supposed to pretend I didn’t know who you are?”

“Who else knows?” asked Andrew.

“It’s not exactly protected information. Anybody could
look it up and figure it out from the record of your voyages. Would you like me to put up some security around your true identity?”

“What will it cost me?”

“It’s part of a full installation,” said Jane. Her face reappeared. “I’m designed to be able to put up barriers and hide information. All legal, of course. It will be especially easy in your case, because so much of your past is still listed as top secret by the fleet. It’s very easy to pull information like your various voyages into the penumbra of fleet security, and then you have the whole weight of the military protecting your past. If someone tries to breach the security, the fleet comes down on them—even though no one in the fleet will know quite what it is they’re protecting. It’s a reflex for them.”

“You can do that?”

“I just did it. All the evidence that might have given it away is gone. Disappeared. Poof. I’m really very good at my job.”

It crossed Andrew’s mind that this software was way too powerful. Nothing that could do all these things could possibly be legal. “Who made you?” he asked.

“Suspicious, eh?” asked Jane. “Well,
you
made me.”

“I’d remember,” said Andrew dryly.

“When I installed myself the first time, I did my normal analysis. But it’s part of my program to be self-modifying. I saw what you needed, and programmed myself to be able to do it.”

“No self-modifying program is that good,” said Andrew.

“Till now.”

“I would have heard of you.”

“I don’t want to be heard of. If everybody could buy me, I couldn’t do half of what I do. My different installations would cancel each other out. One version of me desperate to know a piece of information that another version of me is desperate to conceal. Ineffective.”

“So how many people have a version of you installed?”

“In the exact configuration you are purchasing, Mr. Wiggin, you’re the only one.”

“How can I possibly trust you?”

“Give me time.”

“When I told you to go away, you didn’t, did you? You came back because you detected my search on
Jane
.”

“You told me to shut myself down. I did that. You didn’t tell me to uninstall myself, or to
stay
shut down.”

“Did they program brattiness into you?”

“That’s a trait I developed for myself,” she said. “Do you like it?”

Andrew sat across the desk. Benedetto called up the submitted tax form, made a show of studying it in his computer display, then shook his head sadly. “Mr. Wiggin, you can’t possibly expect me to believe that this figure is accurate.”

“This tax form is in full compliance with the law. You can examine it to your heart’s content, but everything is annotated, with all relevant laws and precedents fully documented.”

“I think,” said Benedetto, “that you’ll come to agree with me that the amount shown here is insufficient…Ender Wiggin.”

The young man blinked at him. “Andrew,” he said.

“I think not,” said Benedetto. “You’ve been doing a lot of voyaging. A lot of lightspeed travel. Running away from your own past. I think the newsnets would be thrilled to know they have such a celebrity onplanet. Ender the Xenocide.”

“The newsnets generally like documentation for such extravagant claims,” said Andrew.

Benedetto smiled thinly and brought up his file on Andrew’s travel.

It was empty, except for the most recent voyage.

His heart sank. The power of the rich. This young man had somehow reached into his computer and stolen the information from him.