The Authorized Ender Companion (40 page)

When Battle School was converted into the Ministry of Colonization after the Formic War was over, Uphanad stayed at the space station serving as the head of security.

He assisted the Wiggin family when they traveled to the Ministry for a
brief period while hiding from Achilles Flandres. During their time on the station, someone used Uphanad’s computer to send a message to Achilles on Earth saying the Wiggins were on the station. Uphanad claimed someone had logged on as him, like Bean had years before, and sent the message. Hyrum Graff and the Wiggins believed it was Uphanad himself, though, who had exposed the Wiggins location.

Achilles had blackmailed Uphanad into being the mole at the Ministry. Hyrum Graff, with the help of the International Fleet’s Digital Security Force, exposed Uphanad’s treacherous actions. Peter Wiggin forgave Uphanad, understanding the challenge he faced with his family, but Graff was forced to fire him from the Ministry.

Utlannings (
See
Hierarchy of Alienness)

Van Hoot, Congressor Jan (SD)

A high-level political figure in the Starways Congress, Congressor Jan Van Hoot had written essays defining the power and authority of the Congress over the human colonized planets of the system known as the Hundred Worlds.

Varelse (
See
Hierarchy of Alienness)

Varsam (XN)

Varsam was the youngest child born to Valentine Wiggin and her husband Jakt on the planet Trondheim. At age sixteen, he accompanied his parents on their journey into space, hoping to protect the world Lusitania from annihilation.

He was a member of Ender’s search party that went into the pequeninos’ land on Lusitania, hoping to save Ender’s stepson, Quim, from being killed by the so-called piggies.

Vatican Contact (SH)

The Vatican contact was a go-between for Peter Wiggin’s political pundit alias Locke, and the nun-in-hiding Sister Carlotta and Bean. The contact joked that he would not read the e-mail messages that went back and forth, because working in the Vatican had taught him to keep his eyes closed on confidential matters.

Victorious Fleet (EG)

“Victorious Fleet” was the nickname given to the fleet of spaceships Ender Wiggin commanded through simulators that defeated the Formics.

Vid (PL, TP, EGS, EG, ES)

Vids was the name for all video media. A vid could be any movie, news broadcast, war film, or any other moving visual media.

Vidman (SG)

The vidman was the name given to the equivalent of a television cameraman. He was responsible for filming vids for airing on the nets. He filmed Alai’s speech to the Muslim world.

Vila Alta (
See
Hundred Worlds)

Vila Atrás (
See
Hundred Worlds)

Vila das Aguas (
See
Hundred Worlds)

Vila dos Professores (
See
Hundred Worlds)

Vila Última (
See
Hundred Worlds)

Vila Velha (
See
Hundred Worlds)

Vinicenze, Enzichel (IC)

Enzichel Vinicenze was a conglomerate with many holdings on the planet Sorelledolce.

Virlomi (EE, SH, SP, SG)

Virlomi was a Battle School graduate who completed her time at the School before Ender arrived. She was a talented military strategist from India and was given a good job within the Indian military.

During her time at Battle School, she met Petra Arkanian, who was several years younger. After Ender’s victory over the Formics, and when Achilles Flandres positioned himself in power in India, Virlomi saw that he’d brought Petra with him. Virlomi could see, though, that Petra was an unwilling participant in Achilles’s plans for world domination.

After Petra made an offhanded comment to Virlomi that implied she was Achilles’s prisoner, Virlomi searched the computer networks to see for whom Petra really intended the message. Virlomi was successful in discovering the forum where Petra intended the message to be posted and left it there for its intended target to find.

Achilles also saw the message and planned to execute Virlomi for posting it, but Virlomi disappeared before Achilles had the chance to kill her. She escaped to what she knew would be a potential target of the Thai military, led by Bean and Suriyawong on their offensive into India.

She waited there for them, and spoke with Suriyawong, offering her services of intelligence on Achilles’s headquarters and Petra’s location. Suriyawong, in an effort to win the trust of the soldiers loyal to Virlomi, bowed before her. He took her to a helicopter where the act of obeisance stopped. Virlomi there guided Bean to Achilles. She helped plan a rescue mission for Petra and an assassination of Achilles.

Though not a big part of the mission itself, Virlomi witnessed Petra’s safe return and Achilles’s escape. Reunited with Petra, she felt mixed emotions: joy for Petra’s return, but also sadness as India had been taken over by the Chinese. She vowed to work with her people to free India from the Chinese oppressors.

Virlomi was brought to Brazil to live in the secure compound of the Hegemony, but had to go back into hiding when it was revealed that Achilles Flandres was to arrive in Brazil, too. It made Suriyawong sad as he’d fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her. Virlomi found Suriyawong annoying and had no interest in him.

Unlike the rest of the people who went into hiding when Achilles reached Brazil, Virlomi did not go into the custody of the Minister of Colonization, Hyrum Graff. Instead she made her way back to India where she planned to subvert the Chinese occupation of her homeland.

The Chinese were only able to control the rich, ruling class of Indian citizens and virtually ignored the common folk. Virlomi sought opportunities to live in villages that had not been occupied. In one of these villages, she saw a small boy slowly placing pebbles in a road. He was building a small imaginary wall to protect “his” property from invasion.

Virlomi took this idea to heart, and rebuilt the boy’s wall the next day, despite anger from those who kept the roads clear of pebbles. Virlomi made it seem that such walls were being created all over India as a symbolic gesture to keep the Chinese out of the villages. The walls represented the heart of India itself.

Many people began building stone walls in the roads in every village Virlomi visited. Her goal of causing a nonviolent uprising among the common people against their Chinese occupiers was working. The walls were getting the attention of the Chinese and rallying India against them.

Her “walls of India” had proven so unifying that Virlomi knew that she had great influence over the entire nation of India. She offered her people’s help to Peter Wiggin and Bean in their efforts to free India from China’s occupation. Bean, in turn, offered the help—with some concern—to Alai, the Muslim Caliph who was planning a military attack on China to free India and the rest of Asia.

Virlomi used her influence among the people of India to build an army of men that attacked the Chinese occupation force. They would attack bridges and kill as many soldiers as they could. Politically savvy, Virlomi easily convinced her people that the sacrifices they would make to drive the Chinese from India were worth it. Their acts of insurgency against their occupiers was designed to allow the Muslim soldiers of Alai’s armies to do their work in China and the rest of Asia unimpeded.

Once the Muslim armies freed Asia, a small governing force was put in place in India. Virlomi faded from public view once again. She watched to see if her people were truly free, or if a new threat had entered her homeland. If they were free, she was happy. But if the Muslim forces needed to be pushed back, they would be, too. And Virlomi would again lead her people.

She had become a virtual goddess to her people, and even referred to herself as such. She used her divinity to cause great unrest among her people. They fought back against the Muslim occupiers that lived in India. Many Indians were killed, and they destroyed many of their own crops to prevent Muslim access to them. They killed many more Islamic soldiers than they lost of their own people.

It was a ploy by Virlomi to increase her position in the world. She appeared in the vids, calling on her people to fight the Muslims. But what she had really done was symbolically propose marriage to the Muslim leader Alai or possibly to the Chinese emperor Han Tzu. Whichever took her as his bride, they would have vast resources to conquer the region in which they lived—and much of the world. They would declare war together on the one who did not marry her.

Virlomi broadcast more vids of the violence the Muslim “liberators” were doing to her people. She called on Alai to stop the violence, or at least speak out against it. It caused Alai to travel to India where he executed the general who was leading the armies in their seditious acts.

Alai set up a new Caliphate compound in India, where he ruled the Muslim world. Virlomi also set up her new residence in a hut just outside the
compound. Her presence kept the Muslim soldiers and Alai from provoking the Hindus, while the Indian people did not provoke the Muslims.

Virlomi saw and spoke with many of her followers from her hut. She continued to have tremendous influence over all of India. When China released its prisoners from their time occupying India, Virlomi told her people to ignore the former prime minister on his return. No one paid him any heed, and though he sought reinstatement of his political power, he was exiled to the Netherlands solely because Virlomi had commanded he be ignored.

All was not perfect in Virlomi’s own soul. She dreamed of her dead friend Sayagi who, in the vision, chastised her for becoming someone she truly wasn’t by leaving behind her humble virtues and seeking so much power.

A short time later, Han Tzu, the emperor of China, visited Virlomi in her hut, and proposed marriage to unify China and India. Virlomi refused. Han Tzu left, hoping that the two Battle School graduates could be friends. Virlomi said that might possible, someday.

She decided that the husband she wanted was Peter Wiggin, but he refused her offer of marriage, and she refused his offer to bring India into his worldwide confederation of nations, the Free People of Earth. She was too power hungry to relinquish control of her people to him.

At the meeting with Peter she was also approached by Hyrum Graff and Mazer Rackham who made her the same offer they’d made many other Battle School graduates—leave Earth and go into space as the governor of a human colony.

Rejected by Peter, Virlomi set her sights on Alai the Muslim Caliph. She convinced Alai to marry her, uniting the Muslim and Hindu worlds. But she viewed even her relationship with Alai as a stepping stone to more power, and not as a true marriage. While Alai had hoped the union would bring peace, Virlomi wanted to use the combined forces to attack China.

Alai tried to dissuade Virlomi from launching the attack against the Chinese, but with little success. Though he thought he loved her when they got married, he realized now he didn’t. But he could not tell her that; she was dangerous, believing herself to be a goddess of India.

She used the combined Hindu and Muslim armies at her disposal to attack China. Russia also attacked China and India hoping to capitalize on their weakened state. China called on Peter’s Free People of Earth and received military support from much of the world. Virlomi was soundly defeated.

Humiliated at the military defeat, Virlomi realized that she had, in her arrogance, caused the deaths of thousands of Indians. She was captured on the
battlefield by Suriyawong, and convinced that she should encourage her people to join the Free People of Earth.

Heartbroken over her self-delusion, she admitted her humanity and sought to forget the evil she’d done, thinking she was a god. She was sent into space and given a planet in the Hundred Worlds to govern.

Assigned to the planet Ganges, which would be the first human settlement on a planet that was not originally a Formic world, Virlomi viewed her governorship as a penance for the wrongs she’d done on Earth. She found herself agreeing with the Hegemony that she should have been stopped, and didn’t want to be compared to Achilles Flandres.

While awaiting her transport ship, Virlomi noticed one of her settlers, Nichelle Firth, who seemed obsessed with the name Achilles Flandres. Virlomi assumed that Nichelle’s son was fathered by Achilles. Throughout the voyage, Virlomi paid close attention to Nichelle and her son, determined to keep tabs on them on Ganges.

More than a decade after they had all arrived at Ganges, Virlomi demanded to see Achilles II. She told the then-sixteen-year-old boy that his father was a monster. Achilles II reacted by calling Virlomi a dictator who manipulated elections to stay in power. The war of words became physical when Achilles II struck Virlomi in the face. She had Achilles II arrested, and sentenced him to be exiled off her planet.

When Ender Wiggin arrived a few weeks later, Virlomi allowed him to meet with Achilles II. Ender told Achilles II that his real parents were Bean Delphiki and Petra Arkanian. This revelation caused a great change in Achilles II, who changed his name to Arkanian Delphiki. Virlomi commuted his sentence and remained as the governor of Ganges when Ender left the planet.

Volescu, Doctor (ES, [SH] SP, SG)

Doctor Volescu was a scientist who took Anton’s banned research and furthered it into practice. He created twenty-four genetically altered fertilized embryos, turning Anton’s Key, and causing them to develop mentally and physically faster than normal. When his work was discovered, twenty-three of the twenty-four babies were destroyed. One escaped—Bean.

Years later, Sister Carlotta confronted Volescu, desperately trying to discover information about Bean’s past. Volescu told her some details about what he’d done to the embryos, but didn’t know for certain that Bean had survived. It was through his conversation with the nun that he learned that the one remaining embryo had, in fact, lived.