by Black, Jake
At the request of Hyrum Graff, Ender and his sister Valentine traveled from Shakespeare to Ganges, where a former Battle School colleague of Ender’s, Virlomi, was governor. Also on Ganges lived a boy named Achilles Flandres II. Achilles was actually the last missing embryo that had belonged to Bean and Petra who were married while Ender traveled to Shakespeare. Achilles II had caused some problems at the new colony. Ender sought out the boy, hoping to teach him about his true parents.
Ender discovered that it had been Achilles II who had started a religious movement from The Hive Queen, and destroyed Ender’s reputation. Their confrontation grew violent as Ender tried to tell Achilles II his true parentage. Achilles II was digusted at the thought that his “father’s” killer was his real father. Even though Achilles nearly killed Ender, he came to accept that Ender was telling the truth. Achilles II changed his name to Arkanian Delphiki, after his real parents.
Ender soon left that colony to travel to others, with Valentine by his side, carrying the Hive Queen with him world to world. He began to hide his identity, which proved to be easy, as few believed Ender the Xenocide was still alive. He kept the Hive Queen secret for centuries as he traveled to each new world and colony. He hoped to find a planet suitable for the Hive Queen to grow and hatch new Formic eggs—relaunching the species.
Ender had been given a monetary pension by the then-grateful citizens of Earth before leaving Eros to colonize. It was a fund he lived on for decades as he traveled through space at relativistic speed, governing worlds. The fund was kept secret as public opinion changed after the war.
On what would have been his subjectively twentieth birthday, Ender arrived at the distant planet called Sorelledolce. Per the law of his home world, Ender would receive a check for the amount in the trust fund, but would also now have to pay taxes on the money. When he approached the tax collector, Benedetto, to receive his promised check for the amount in the fund, his identity was questioned, and he was accused of lying about his name. Benedetto would not allow Ender access to the funds he needed to pay taxes because he had never paid taxes. However, upon discovering Ender’s assets, Benedetto was a little more helpful. Ender made an arrangement with Benedetto that would allow Ender time to take care of his taxes, but there was an apparent problem: the illegal programs used by the tax man to spy on customers’ assets were gone.
Ender studied tax law on Sorelledolce, hoping to use his assets to provide life for the Hive Queen. It was a penance, in Ender’s mind, for his act of xenocide with her species. If he could use his assets to give life to the Hive Queen, it would remove the blood from his hands. He was shocked to receive a computer advertisement for financial software that would answer all of his questions, particularly since interstellar travelers were supposed to be free from advertisements. He was more shocked when the advertisement spoke to him, taking the form of a young human woman, saying she was meant to help Ender specifically. She started giving him advice, addressing him as Ender. She confessed that Ender had made her, and that she evolved along the way. This was Jane, and though Ender was initially disturbed by her presence, she would become a lifelong companion to him.
On Sorelledolce, Ender also attended his first “Speaking,” the funerary rite based on his books, The Hive Queen and The Hegemon.
Thanks to Jane, Ender was able to resolve his tax issues with Benedetto. When Benedetto was exposed as a crook and was killed by some of his past clients, Ender felt responsible. Jane taught him to not feel guilty about the bad things which are not his fault that happen to the people around him.
After two weeks on Sorelledolce, Ender left the planet with Valentine and Jane. He listed his occupation as “Speaker for the Dead” from that time on, taking interest in obituary columns with each new planet he and Valentine visited. At that same time, he began wearing a small receiver in his ear that looked like a jewel. It was actually his direct link to Jane. The jewel allowed Jane to speak privately and directly to Ender.
More than three thousand years by Earth’s time after the victory over the Formics, Ender had traveled with Valentine to so many planets at light speed that he hadn’t aged past thirty-five. He and Valentine spent many months on the Icelandic and Calvinist planet Trondheim, where they both became teachers at the university. It was here that Ender met Plikt, one of his students. Plikt challenged Ender on many of his lessons, but Ender appreciated the questions.
When Ender learned of the death of a xenologist on a planet called Lusitania, he was saddened. Jane created a simulation of the murder, graphic though it was. She also told Ender that a young girl named Novinha had called for a Speaker for the victim. Ender saw his own sorrow and premature adulthood in Novinha’s face. He made the decision to travel to Lusitania and Speak this death. He was thirty-six years old now, and by the time he reached the planet, Novinha would be thirty-nine.
With Jane in command of their spaceship, he traveled to Lusitania. Though traveling to Speak for the dead, Ender also knew that Lusitania might be the best place to allow the Hive Queen to grow. The Hive Queen herself promised Ender that the species would thrive there, and they would not bother the native creatures on the planet, the pequeninos, but they sensed another life-form with whom they would be compatible.
When Ender arrived at Lusitania, he was received relatively coldly. The planet was staunchly Catholic, and the church had spoken out against Speakers. The colony’s governor greeted him, but had secretly banned him access to colony maps. With Jane’s help, and that of a young boy named Olhado, Ender made his way to the home of the Ribeira family—the family who had called him to Speak.
There, he was treated quite badly by most of the children. However, the longer he was in their home, waiting to meet their mother Novinha, the more they warmed up to him. Ender had the thought that he was now, like it or not, a member of the Ribeira family.
His first meeting with Novinha did not go as well, though. She was angry that he had come to Speak the death of her husband and tried to cast him from her house. Her children spoke up on Ender’s behalf, though, and Novinha listened to him, albeit angrily.
Frustrated by the apparent hatred he felt from Novinha, Ender returned to his home. The next day, he investigated the life of Marcão, learning that Novinha had been unfaithful to her husband. With Jane’s help, he learned it was Libo, her now-dead childhood friend, who had fathered her six children.
When Ender, hoping for more information on Marcão and Novinha, visited with the abbot of a Catholic order known as the Children of the Mind of Christ, Jane kept making comments about his conversation. Frustrated with her chatter, Ender turned off the jewel, shutting her out of his ear and mind. Jane was insulted by the act and didn’t speak again to Ender for some time.
Without Jane, Ender was lost. Essentially computer illiterate, he turned to Novinha’s son, Olhado, to teach him how to use the Lusitanian computer networks. He used his newfound computer access to spy on Novinha’s computer files to learn about her, her family, and the deaths they’d asked him to Speak. Novinha confronted him about it, and Ender revealed to her that he’d learned all of her secrets.
Ender essentially had fallen in love with Novinha and her children. He felt that he had found a complete family for the first time in his life. Though many of the Ribeiras held him in disdain, it was his hope that he could bring love to their home and receive it in his life.
He found that he’d established a particularly close rapport with Ela, who confided in him her hopes and dreams, and how Novinha had tried to quash them to preserve Ela’s life.
When Ender performed the Speaking for the late Marcão Ribeira, he exposed his wife Novinha’s adultery with the man Libo. The revelation sent shock waves through the colony, but the surprise was short-lived. Immediately following the ceremony, Ender learned that the Starways Congress had stripped the Lusitanian computers of their files and revoked the planet’s charter.
Ender realized it had been Jane who had exposed the violations of law that had resulted
in the congressional actions. There was communication—albeit distant, but communication nonetheless—from Jane. Ender wept cathartically, realizing his friend had returned to him.
He also knew that it had been Miro and Ouanda’s work with the piggies that had violated the law. The two xenologists were to be arrested and sent to Trondheim. Ender refused to let that happen, telling the now-dethroned governor, Bosquinha, to hold a meeting with the planet’s religious leaders and rebel against Congress’s orders.
To have a chance at successful rebellion, Ender knew he needed information on the virus that had wiped out the planet’s life, the Descolada. It was information that Novinha had kept secret for decades. Ender turned to Ela to approach Novinha for the information. They knew it was the only way to save Miro and all of Lusitania.
With the information Novinha provided, Ender helped the planetary leadership decide to rebel against the Starways Congress. He also discovered that Miro had been hurt trying to climb the fence that surrounded the piggies’ land. Ender and the colony leaders raced to save Miro’s life.
There, Ender, along with Ela, convinced the piggie named Human to take them to the pequeninos’ leaders—the female piggies known as “the wives.” Using Human as a translator, Ender spoke with a wife named Shouter. With her, he wrote up a treaty that would define the relationship between humans and piggies on Lusitania and would allow the pequeninos access to the Hive Queen.
Although Ender would not make any promises for the Hive Queen’s actions, he swore to turn her over to them. Humanity and the pequeninos would maintain their own lands and not kill one another. The piggies would not make war with other tribes of piggies, either.
To make the treaty a reality, Ender was forced to kill Human and plant him as a tree. It was a sacred ritual to the pequeninos, and very hard for Ender to do. But he performed the ordinance as ordered.
He also signed the treaty as “Ender Wiggin,” thus revealing his true identity as “Ender the Xenocide” to Novinha and the other people of Lusitania. Novinha realized that because he’d wiped out an entire species, Ender hadn’t judged her for adultery. The revelation brought Ender and Novinha close emotionally.
The morning after the treaty was signed, Ender attended mass with Novinha and her family, sitting in the place that Marcão had once sat—by Novinha’s side. The two were married by Bishop Peregrino a few months later.
Prior to the wedding, however, Ender had some work to do. He found a place for the Hive Queen to be reborn from her cocoon near the pequenino land. He also helped Jane and Miro connect with each other. Miro left Lusitania in Ender’s spaceship and developed a very close relationship with Jane. It saddened Ender that he and Jane were no longer as close as they once were, and he knew that that relationship with now being shared with Miro.
Nonetheless, Ender began his life on Lusitania. He was married to Novinha and had released the Hive Queen to flourish on a new planet. He knew his life work was complete. Yet a new challenge awaited him. Lusitania was set to be destroyed by the Starways Congress using the Molecular Detachment Device. Ender knew he had to work to protect his new home from the same fate he’d given the Formic home world three millennia earlier. Fortunately, Valentine, now twenty years older, had made the decision to go to Lusitania and help protect the planet alongside her brother.
In the thirty years the people of Lusitania were waiting for the fleet and, more importantly, Valentine, Ender learned that Jane had discovered a way to stop the destruction of the planet by cutting off all interstellar communication. But the move would ultimately result in her own death. Ender, growing older and still on the planet, pleaded with Jane through his ear jewel to find another way that would allow her to live. Jane agreed to try, for Ender’s and his stepson Miro’s sakes.
During these three decades, Ender continued to draw close to the pequeninos. He befriended a talented scientist piggie named Planter and enjoyed greatly the time he spent in the pequenino land. He often visited Human, the fully grown fathertree, and spent much time with his own family.
His stepchildren, Novinha’s children, had become the top scientists on the planet. They were all working tirelessly to fight the Descolada virus. When his stepdaughter Quara theorized that the Descolada was a sentient creature and wiping it out would be xenocide, Ender offered a sympathetic position. He encouraged, as did Novinha, further study and told the family not to reveal their findings to anyone until more was known.
Quara ignored this directive and informed the fathertrees that her family hoped to annihilate the virus that the piggies needed to live. Ender chastened her for this revelation and told the fathertrees himself that more research was being done. But it was too late. The fathertrees made the determination to leave Lusitania with the Descolada still alive in them. They contacted the Hive Queen and made the decision to create a spaceship that would help them get off the planet.
Ender was present when his stepson Miro returned from space, bringing Valentine, her husband Jakt, and Plikt to Lusitania. Due to the effects of relativistic space travel, Miro hadn’t aged during his nearly thirty years’ spaceflight. Ender and the rest of his family had. In fact, Ender was now seemingly older than even Valentine, though not by too much.
Ender and Valentine rejoiced in their reunion. Falling instantly back to the sarcastic banter that had defined their relationship for more than three millennia, the two were glad to be together again.
Almost immediately after their arrival, Ender took Valentine, Plikt, and Miro to see the Hive Queen in her lair. She was laying and hatching eggs, and her society was flourishing. In the visit, Ender and company learned that they were correct in their guess that the queen was building ships to take her people and the pequeninos into space.
The Hive Queen used Ender’s intimately close relationships to Plikt and Valentine as a conduit to speak to the two women mind to mind, as she had Ender. It was a life-changing experience for both Valentine and Plikt.
In the course of their conversation, the Hive Queen promised Ender that she would not kill any humans and was taking the piggies into space. She also revealed the origins of her communication with him, dating back to Ender’s Battle School days.
A few nights later, Jane contacted Ender, warning him that a girl on the planet Path was close to uncovering Demosthenes’s true identity and her own plan of making the attacking fleet “disappear.” She was panicked. Ender spoke silently to her, though Novinha knew he was talking to Jane, and it bothered her.
Ender told Jane a story of a puppet who came to life and was given a human body. The boy died in a fire, but Ender wanted that same miracle for Jane. He promised her he would try to find a way for her to leave the Philotic Web and exist on her own, but she had to truly figure out what she was first. She had to find her soul.
The next day, Ender participated in a meeting with the leaders of the planet, trying to determine how best to handle the situations with the piggies and the Descolada. He spoke his mind plainly, stating that the research to control the virus should continue, as should the research to determine its actual life status. He even supported his stepson Quim’s religious mission to the piggies.
In the meeting, he also hoped to work with his fiery stepson, Grego, to determine a way for faster-than-light space travel—travel that would cross great distances instantly. It was Ender’s secret desire to use the travel to save Jane, somehow.
His relationship with Novinha would not last much longer. She was angry with him for his relationship with Jane and for supporting Quim’s mission to the piggies. She remained silent for days, finally exploding at him with hateful insults. It was hard for Ender to bear, as he loved Novinha deeply. He could understand her feelings, but that didn’t make it easier.
Ender led the search-and-rescue party when it was discovered that Quim had been captured by the rebellious fathertrees. He and his party found Quim’s body, and Ender sent word back to Novinha that her son was dead. He knew that having someone else tell his wife that Quim
had been killed was the smarter choice, as she would not want to hear it from him.
A few days later, Jane contacted Ender, seeking his advice. A girl on the planet Path had uncovered Valentine’s role as Demosthenes as well as Jane’s existence. Jane allowed Ender to hear her conversation with Han Qing-jao, the girl on Path, as Qing-jao decided to send a message to the Starways Congress, informing them of Jane’s existence and role in the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet. Jane would have to allow the message to pass through the philotic system and wanted Ender to tell her not to.
Ender, not wanting to lose his dearest friend—for such a message would mean Jane’s imminent destruction—begged and commanded her to not allow it. However, in an effort to preserve the people of Path and to find out more about who she truly was, Jane consented to the message. Ender was crushed, certain that she would now be killed by the Congress.
In the midst of this conversation, Ender sought Novinha. She had taken the news of Quim’s death very hard and had joined the Children of the Mind of Christ, an abbey for married couples. When he went to the abbey to speak with her, she refused reconciliation, instead choosing to focus on her service to Christ.
Jane hoped that her impending death would allow Ender to be back by his wife’s side. He was deeply saddened by Novinha’s anger and longed to be with her, but not at Jane’s expense.
With Miro, Ender came up with a theory on Jane’s existence. He thought that if Jane had begun her existence as a philote, as he believed all life had, then finding the location of this first philote could be the key to preserving her life. Jane doubted this theory and thought pursuing it was a waste of time and resources. However, Ender, still hurting from losing Novinha, pleaded with her to help them figure it out. She agreed, realizing how important her existence was to Ender and Miro.
Jane facilitated a conversation between Ender and Ela on Lusitania and Wang-mu on the planet Path. Wang-mu had conferred with her former friend and mistress, Qing-jao, asking for her help in the tasks Jane had set before them. Qing-jao refused, but gave Wang-mu some good questions to ask about the Descolada specifically.