The Authorized Ender Companion (50 page)

Theresa and John Paul were proud of what their son had accomplished. They told him so, never referring to Ender in the process. The moment changed Peter’s life. He was finally out of his kid brother’s shadow.

Wiggin, Valentine Sophia I (Polish name: Walentyna Zofia) (EG, WG, [SH], [SG], IC, SD, XN, CM)

Valentine Sophia Wiggin was born and raised in the city, but moved with her family to Greensboro, North Carolina, after Ender left for Battle School. Her middle name, Sophia (or Zofia) was given to her by her father in tribute to his mother’s favorite sister. It also is the Greek word for wisdom.

The second (i.e., middle) child of John Paul and Theresa Brown, she adored her brother Andrew. It was her inability to say his name correctly in childhood that led to his nickname “Ender.” Valentine had a very tender relationship with Ender and taught him arithmetic when he was three years old, which may have led to him receiving his monitor from the International Fleet that same year. Because of her family’s perceived brilliance, Valentine also had a monitor, a rarity for a female child. However, her monitor was removed from her neck when she was three.

Ender left for Battle School when Valentine was eight. Two years later,
she celebrated Ender’s birthday all by herself in the woods around Greensboro. She missed him terribly, particularly at Christmas and on his birthdays. With Ender gone, her rivalry with Peter intensified. Valentine was scared of Peter, and fought with him even over the Christmas gifts he gave.

Not long after Ender left, Valentine discovered the bodies of the animals Peter had killed in the forest. They had been a signal from Peter, though. He had hoped to join with Valentine in what he called a game—writing political commentary on the impending world war that would follow the Formic conflict. Though initially unsure of the effectiveness of two children writing as adults, Valentine soon agreed. She wrote political analysis on the computer nets using several assumed names. Once her skills were perfected, she became the paranoid anti-Russian writer “Demosthenes.”

Demosthenes became tremendously popular, earning a weekly news column. Valentine’s father, John Paul, became a fan of Demosthenes, even quoting portions of the columns at the dinner table. This was a tad embarrassing for Valentine, now eleven years old. She was always nervous that Demosthenes would be exposed and she would be in trouble. It was these nerves that bothered her particularly on the day she was called to the principal’s office where she met Colonel Graff.

Graff’s visit to Valentine had little to do with Demosthenes, but everything to do with Ender. Graff convinced Valentine to write a letter to Ender who, he said, was not doing well at school because of what appeared to be depression. Valentine agreed, though once she wrote the letter she felt guilty for being an apparent pawn in the International Fleet’s game with Ender. She loved her brother, and that love had been exploited. Her anger at the Fleet translated over to her writings as Demosthenes, which she took up with renewed vigor.

Valentine grew to love writing as Demosthenes, even though she was embarrassed that their father still quoted her writings to her. She nearly exposed her identity in a school essay and was shocked to learn that though members of the International Fleet had determined she was the real Demosthenes, they didn’t interfere.

It was she who saw Ender during his brief visit to Earth between his time at Battle School and promotion to Command School. At that time, Valentine unwittingly convinced Ender to return to space and defeat the Formics. She expressed her love for her brother and reassured him that he could beat the Buggers. And she resented Graff and the International Fleet even more for tricking her into doing their bidding.

In the aftermath of Ender’s victory over the Formics, Valentine, as
Demosthenes, made certain that Ender would never return to Earth. The powers of the world, including her own brother Peter, would try to make Ender their puppet. Valentine convinced Peter that Ender should not return, and the two of them wrote essays as Locke and Demosthenes, which led to his exile into space as the governor of a new human colony on a former Formic world. She joined Ender on the journey, retiring from Demosthenes at age fifteen.

Valentine watched Ender closely in the first days and weeks of their travels into space. She worried about his obsession with the Formics, as well as his seeming disinterest in becoming the governor of Shakespeare Colony upon their arrival there. She sought the advice of her parents, something she’d rarely done before, and was called the favorite child for doing so. She also wrote her parents frequent letters, describing both her experiences and her worries for Ender’s welfare.

To pass the time on the journey, Valentine volunteered to teach classes in Common, the language of the International Fleet. She worked closely with an officer on the ship named Jarrko Kitunen. She also got involved in a play put on by several passengers including Ender, and Dorabella and Alessandra Toscano.

The play was briefly ordered canceled by ship’s commander Admiral Quincy Morgan, who was sure that it was actually a mutiny, and not a play. His evidence for such subversion was a massive ansible message from Earth. Peter had sent Valentine an encrypted message that detailed the events on their home world since the ship’s departure. Once Valentine showed Morgan that the message was not subversive, and asked Peter not to send such a large message to the ship again, the play was back on. Valentine realized through the encounter with Admiral Morgan that he was trying to usurp Ender’s influence on the ship on the planet that awaited him.

Over the two years of travel to Shakespeare Colony, Valentine wrote the first of many books she would write over the years. This one, a history of Battle School, relied on interviews over ansible with Ender’s childhood colleagues. It was heralded as a great success, despite Ender’s minimal involvement. Valentine noticed that he avoided discussing his experiences in the war, but was still obsessed with the Formics.

Valentine also realized that Ender was, perhaps unintentionally, leading Alessandra Toscano on. The girl had a puppy-dog crush on Ender, and Ender helped foster those feelings.

Once the colonists arrived at Shakespeare Colony, Ender and Valentine had another emotional confrontation. Valentine was still concerned about
how Ender treated Alessandra, though the two had no hard feelings between them. She was also frustrated with Ender’s emotional distance in the early days of their arrival at the colony.

She wrote books as she traveled from colony to colony, planet to planet, at Ender’s side. She used Demosthenes as her pseudonym for the books, writing the
History of the Formic Wars
while at Shakespeare, and telling the tales of each colony they visited. She particularly enjoyed writing about the colonies that failed.

With Ender, she kept in touch with their brother Peter on Earth. She last spoke to him when he was in his seventies, and she was entering her twenties—the difference due to the effects of relativistic space travel. She helped convince Ender to write Peter’s biography under his own pseudonym, the “Speaker for the Dead.”

She traveled with him to Ganges, their second stop. There, Ender sought out the son of his friends Bean and Petra. The boy believed he was actually Achilles Flandres’s son, and wanted to kill Ender. Valentine tried to stop Ender from confronting the boy, but was unsuccessful. Though Ender survived the fight, and was able to convert Achilles II away from following in his father’s footsteps, Valentine was angry with him for fighting at all.

Ender and Valentine left Ganges very shortly after their arrival there. They traveled to another planet, and Valentine continued writing her books, making Ender promise not to get himself killed.

Valentine was still traveling with Ender when they reached the planet Sorelledolce near Ender’s twentieth birthday. It was there that she found out her book about the failed colony Helvetica was a smash, and she was rich from the royalties. Valentine received many fan letters on behalf of her alter-ego Demosthenes, and appreciated that people didn’t realize it was she, a young woman, to whom they were writing.

She and Ender left Sorelledolce after two weeks on the planet. She was ready to write a book about crime on a criminal planet after visiting such a place in Sorelledolce. The advanced computer program known as Jane joined her and Ender on their subsequent trips throughout the galaxy. Valentine warned Ender as they left Sorelledolce that she could find herself feeling jealous of Ender’s relationship to his software, though she wasn’t personally familiar with Jane the individual. Ender tried to pacify his sister by reminding her that Jane was just a computer program.

For more than three thousand years of Earth time, Valentine and Ender traveled from planet to planet. They spent a longer time at the Icelandic planet Trondheim than they had other planets. There, Valentine and Ender
were both given assignments as teachers at a local college. Because she answered student questions with answers and not more questions as Ender did, Valentine was the more popular teacher.

On Trondheim, Valentine met and married a fisherman named Jakt. She was pregnant with their first child, a girl named Syfte, when Ender told her that he was leaving for a not-too-distant planet called Lusitania. His departure was hard on Valentine, as she’d spent her whole life with him. But, she knew that he had to go and that her life was on Trondheim with her husband and children.

A few years after Ender left, one of his former university students confessed to Valentine that she’d uncovered Ender’s true identity as the Xenocide. This student, Plikt, became a friend to Valentine, and tutored Syfte and the other children as they grew up.

Valentine continued her work at the university, but longed to be with Ender. More than twenty years later, she would be. It was revealed that Ender’s new home was going to be destroyed by the same weapon Ender had used against the Formics three millennia earlier. As Demosthenes, she exposed the plan, turning public opinion against Starways Congress, but not dissuading the use of the devastating weapon.

With her husband Jakt and Plikt, a white-haired, nearly sixty-year-old Valentine left Trondheim to stand with Ender as he led a rebellion against the Congress on Lusitania. She began again the life she thought she’d given up when Ender left two decades before.

With her three children and husband, Valentine traveled for several weeks, heading toward a rendezvous with Ender’s stepson, Miro Ribeira. She wrote many essays as Demosthenes, trying to keep the Starways Congress in check and hoping to keep them from destroying Lusitania. She took the opportunity to be physically close to Jakt on the journey as a reward for the sacrifices he’d had to make to accompany her on the mission.

When she finally met with Miro’s ship, she and the young man argued about their views on Lusitania. Miro felt they should consider the option that the planet ought to be destroyed as the only means of protecting the hundred worlds from the deadly virus. Valentine disagreed, planning to do all she could to prevent the destruction of the planet.

At first, Valentine and Miro did not get along, but they quickly grew to respect each other, and Valentine made the decision to move from her ship to Miro’s for the last leg of their journey to Lusitania.

On Miro’s ship, Valentine learned about the Philotic Web—the foundation of life and communication. She also finally met Jane face-to-face. Though she
had been familiar with Ender’s communication with a computer program, she didn’t realize the software was sentient. She had thought Jane was a code name for a group of subversive rebels. And although Valentine had first encountered Jane thousands of years earlier at Sorelledolce, she didn’t realize this was the same self-aware program.

She continued to write essays trying to dissuade Starways Congress from destroying the life on Lusitania. Her essays became more impassioned now that she knew about Jane. Jane represented yet another form of new life that was at risk.

The risk grew even more serious as Jane stated that she had figured out a way to stop the congressional fleet from destroying Lusitania, but it would require Jane to sacrifice her own life in the process. Valentine watched as Miro and Ender begged Jane to find another way. She promised she’d do what she could to preserve Jane’s life as well as the native life on Lusitania, the pequeninos, and the sole-surviving Formic Hive Queen, which Ender had allowed to grow and flourish on Lusitania.

When they arrived on Lusitania, both Ender and Valentine were in their sixties. But they picked up their relationship as it had been during their intergalactic travels. They relished the sarcastic banter they levied at one another.

Ender took Valentine, along with Miro and Plikt, to the Hive Queen’s lair. Valentine was scared of seeing the Queen, as she had had nightmares growing up of the Bugger invasions of Earth. The Hive Queen, using Ender’s close philotic connection of Valentine, spoke to her mind to mind. It was a scary and fascinating experience for the woman, who tried very hard to set aside her own prejudices against the Formics.

She learned, as did the others, that the Hive Queen was building spaceships to take her newly hatched children, as well as the pequeninos, into space.

As they left the lair, Valentine said she felt violated because of the mental communication. Ender and Plikt had never experienced such feelings but tried to be sympathetic to her plight.

Valentine learned that her role as Demosthenes had been uncovered by a young girl named Han Qing-jao on the planet Path. Qing-jao had exposed her political pundit identity to the government leaders of the Starways Congress. The congressional leaders were pleased that the fleet was on its way to destroy Lusitania, as it would also kill the hated Demosthenes in the process.

A short time later, after the murder of Ender’s stepson Quim by the pequeninos, Valentine consulted with the colony’s leaders on how to proceed. She warned the leaders that a riot would take place and unless strict curfews
were enforced, more deaths would occur. The leaders doubted her, but another of Ender’s stepsons, Grego, incited just such a riot.