The Authorized Ender Companion (32 page)

As she continued to work on the answer to the Descolada issue, Ela also worked on reversing a Starways Congress–caused genetic manipulation of the people on the planet Path. She was aided in this by Han Fei-tzu and his servant, Si Wang-mu, who lived on Path.

During a conversation with Wang-mu via ansible that Jane arranged, Ela and Ender developed a hypothesis that the Descolada had been developed by a third party and was used to regulate the planetary functions of Lusitania. The piggies were the slaves of the virus and its creator.

She and Ender asked their friend Planter, the pequenino, to confirm the theory. He said that he had come to a similar hypothesis and wanted to be the test subject. He wanted to be free of the Descolada and see if he still had self-awareness and free will. This would be accomplished by purging the virus from him, and seeing if he still had his own mind. If not, then it would appear that the virus indeed was used to control the life on the planet, and the pequeninos themselves were not the sentient beings they appeared to have been.

This decision was hard on Ela. She loved Planter as her closest friend and didn’t want to risk losing him. He insisted, though, stating that he would be the first of the race to be free, and his sacrifice could save all life on Lusitania.

With the research on the Descolada proceeding, Ela and her assistant, a piggie named Glass, discovered the keys to unlocking the genetic manipulation on Path. It would be a simple enough process, she felt, once they figured out how to remove the Descolada to apply the same principles to the godspoken, freeing them of their obsessive-compulsive disorder but maintaining the increased intellect.

She also discovered that one person on Path, Si Wang-mu, had been ge ne -tically altered, but had evolved beyond it. She did not suffer from the OCD, but maintained the increased intelligence.

When Quara spoke to Planter shortly before his death, the piggie convinced her to share the information she had on the Descolada virus with Ela. With this new information, Ela was able to develop an antivirus for the Descolada, but was unable to manufacture it. Frustrated, she saw Planter die a martyr’s death, but knew that he had given her the keys to someday free the pequeninos from the virus that enslaved them.

Ela was among those who was assigned to journey into space with Ender and Jane to test a new theory of faster-than-light travel Ender and his stepsons had developed, which used “Outspace” to manipulate philotes. What could be thought of could be created instantly in Outspace. There, Ela would
imagine the anti-Descolada she called the recolada, as well as the cure for the godspoken on Path. If the theory worked, she would be able to manufacture both inoculations instantly.

She traveled with the group into the mysterious Outspace, and the theory worked. She was able to instantly manufacture the recolada and the OCD antivirus. She and Ender tested them before returning to their home dimension moments later.

Ela tested the recolada on Glass, and it worked. Successful in study, the recolada was sent throughout the planet. It cured all life of the Descolada without killing them. Her pathogen to reverse the genetic manipulations on Path worked equally well.

She was among her siblings who beseeched Miro to confront Ender, who had joined their mother at the Children of the Mind of Christ abbey, to return to help save their home world.

With Ender now on his deathbed, and Miro II having found the Descolada’s creators’ home world, Ela decided to leave her family behind and help discover the origin of the deadly virus at its home planet. She joined Miro, Valentine II, her sister Quara, a Formic drone, and a pequenino scientist named Firequencher on what they believed would be their final good-bye to Lusitania. Jane was also dying, and with her, the hope for more faster-than-light travel. As a result, Ela knew, if she traveled to the Descolada’s planet, she’d more than likely never return to Lusitania.

As Ela and her comrades studied the biological communication of the Descolada, they were optimistic that they would figure out the language of the virus, and could potentially return to their home planet as Jane took over the body of Valentine II.

With Quara, Ela figured out that the Descolada communicated by sending signals to its creators that were understood by translation into molecules. This pattern of communication was reciprocated by the virus’s creators.

In the middle of their studies, Ela and Quara were shocked to see that Jane was able to control faster-than-light travel. They were suddenly back on Lusitania, with no warning. Ela celebrated being home, while Quara was angry that they weren’t told ahead of time.

The fleet of starships that had been ordered to destroy their world was rapidly approaching, and so Ela and her companions returned to the descoladore world. There they learned that the molecule the descoladore had given them in the message was a deadly heroinlike creation.

Jane used her instant transportation to send the crew to the other side of
the planet, saving them. Moments later, Peter Wiggin II appeared on their ship and dissuaded them from their desires to use on the descoladore the Molecular Detatchment Device, the very weapon that was to destroy their own world. Ela agreed, and returned with her friends and family to Lusitania where she attended Ender’s funeral service.

Ribeira von Hesse, Estevão Rei “Quim” (SD, XN)

Quim was one of the children of Novinha and Libo, who was raised by Marcão Ribeira on the planet Lusitania. He was devoutly Catholic, as most of the colonists on Lusitania had been. He held an obvious disdain for Ender Wiggin, as he was a Speaker for the Dead, a career derided by the pope.

When Ender first visited the Ribeira home, Quim was hostile. He called Ender names like “atheist” and “bastard”—the worst insults he could think of. He even tried to prevent his siblings from telling Ender anything about their father.

As that first visit continued, however, he tearfully confessed that he’d prayed to God, the Virgin, and even his canonized grandparents that his father Marcão would die. He blamed himself for bringing, through these prayers, the disease that killed him.

Quim hated Ender, though. He told Novinha that Ender was spending a lot of time with the other children. In the conversation, he accused Novinha of having illicit feelings for Ender. She slapped him for the comment. Quim felt terrible and begged for forgiveness. He held so closely to his faith that he felt repentance was the only course to happiness.

After his brother Olhado helped Ender break into their mother’s computer files, Quim was mean to Olhado, adding to his guilt. It wasn’t until their sister Ela interfered that Quim stopped his bullying of Olhado.

He attended the Speaking for his father, as said by Ender Wiggin. There he learned that his mother had been adulterous and the man he thought was his father was not. He called his mother a whore in front of the community gathered to attend the Speaking. He desperately wanted her to deny it, but she didn’t. Angrily, hurt, he ran from the service.

He spoke with Bishop Peregrino, who instructed Quim to forgive his mother and continue to love her. He was initially resistant, but followed his ecclesiastical leader’s counsel.

Quim accompanied his mother into the forest when she carried a warning message to Ender, who was negotiating with the pequeninos. Consequently, he was a witness when Ender performed the pequenino ritual known as the “Third Life.” In this ritual, Ender killed a pequenino named Human and planted a tree
in him, turning him into a fathertree, the highest honor of pequenino society. Quim called the ritual a resurrection.

After the “resurrection,” Quim devoted his life to learning about the pequeninos so he could be a missionary among them. He studied with his halfsister, Ouanda, and eventually set out for his proselytizing endeavors among the creatures.

In the nearly thirty years that passed from the time Quim saw the so-called resurrection to the time when his brother Miro returned from what to him felt like a monthlong space mission, Quim had become a priest. He was the chief priest for the Catholic Church among the pequeninos. He relished his calling, for he had become the St. Paul to the piggies.

He taught them as much of the gospel as he could; and while traditional marriage didn’t apply to the piggies because of their unique mating patterns, he did introduce the sacraments like communion and confirmation to the aliens.

Quim was present when Miro returned from space and experienced, like the rest of their siblings, the strange awkwardness that comes with aging three decades while your brother doesn’t.

Miro met up with Quim the next time inside the piggies’ land, where Quim had performed mass. The two brothers argued, as they often did, over matters of faith and redemption. They reconciled as Quim revealed to Miro that he was going to preach in a rebellious region of pequenino land. Quim was certain he would be protected from the piggies’ violent ways because he was on a mission from God. Miro was unconvinced and worried that his brother would be killed.

Before he left on this mission, Quim attended the meeting of the colony’s leaders. He listened to everyone’s objections about his mission, but with the support of the Bishop Peregrino and Ender, decided to go anyway.

He traveled into the heart of the piggie lands. The pequeninos he sought believed that the Descolada virus that gave them life was actually the Holy Ghost. They refused to believe the dogma Quim preached to them.

The piggies held Quim hostage and tested him to see if his God would save him. They starved him, and after a week of arguing doctrine and interpretation with the piggies, he died of the Descolada, lacking the inhibitors from his food to protect him.

Ender said that he would not Speak Quim’s death, for Quim was true to himself, and there was nothing to be revealed in a Speaking. His mother Novinha was enraged from sorrow. She lost yet another loved one to the piggies and would never forgive those who supported Quim’s final mission because of it.

Ribeira von Hesse, Gerão Gregario “Grego” (SD, XN, CM)

Born on the planet Lusitania, Grego was one of the children of Novinha and Libo, who was raised by Novinha’s abusive husband Marcão. He was mischievous, and enjoyed doing what he wanted at church, even if the nuns would punish him.

On Ender’s first visit to the Ribeira house, Grego tried stabbing Ender with a knife. Ender held him tightly as he sat and spoke with the family. Grego responded by urinating on Ender. Ender realized that Grego’s father’s death was devastating to him. He’d been the only child who had not suffered at Marcão’s hands.

Though he had seemingly been drawn to Ender, his behavioral problems did not improve. He attacked a teacher at school, and wrecked his own bedsheets the day after Ender’s first appearance.

He attended Ender’s Speaking, and also went to mass with his family and Ender. He had grown close to Ender, seeing in him a father figure unlike any he’d ever had.

Thirty years later, Grego, now in his mid-thirties, had become a reputable physicist. As he had through most of his life, Grego approached science from a devil’s advocate position, arguing the counterpoints to his siblings’ research and views.

He felt, contrary to his sisters, that the Descolada needed to be wiped out entirely, regardless of the cost to the native Lusitanian life that depended on it for life and reproduction. He had an us-versus-them mentality toward the virus, feeling that in order for humanity to survive, the disease had to go.

Grego was present when Miro returned from his thirty-year space mission, bringing Valentine Wiggin to Lusitania to help prevent the destruction of the planet. Grego, like the others, felt a bit of awkwardness as he’d aged three decades while Miro, due to the relativistic space travel he’d experienced, had not aged at all.

As the news that the piggies were planning to leave Lusitania to preserve the Descolada spread, Grego was called into a meeting with the leaders of the planet. He was chastised for having loose lips about the plans to eradicate the virus, and causing many problems within the colony.

Ever the rebel, Grego moved to walk out of the meeting, but was stopped by threats of being jailed. He slowly agreed to work with Ender and his family to figure out a way to move from planet to planet at faster-than-light speeds, in an effort to evacuate Lusitania if the need came up.

When his brother Quim was killed by the pequeninos, Grego escaped into drinking. The alcohol fueled bar fights and even led to a riot where several
angry citizens burned a large portion of the piggies’ forest, killing many pequeninos. Grego tried to stop the mob he had incited, but lost control of it. He went to the forest as it burned and, with his brother Miro’s help, was able to disperse the angry mobocrats. But the damage had been done, and he was primarily responsible.

Grego was put in jail for sharing secrets he should not have, though he consented to imprisonment because of the great guilt he carried for his actions that led to the death of so many piggies.

From his jail cell, Grego continued his study of the mysterious Philotic Web, trying to figure out a way to travel at faster-than-light speed. Jane helped guide his research, as it was thought that such speed was the only way to preserve the sentient computer’s life.

He also conducted some rather controversial research from jail, searching for the point of origin for the philote that first housed Jane’s essence. Jane thought this was a waste of time, but Ender and Miro felt it was extremely important, and necessary, to saving Jane.

He was at times frustrated to tears over the difficulty of figuring out faster-than-light travel. But he was committed to it, nonetheless, working hard from his cell to find a way to make it possible.

After Ender learned the principles of philotic travel from their extradimensional home, Grego and his brother Olhado realized that the answer to faster-than-light travel was to call on the philotes they had inside of them—all life was based on philotes—and cross over to the philotes’ dimension. From there, they would think of the philotic pattern of their destination, and the philotes would take them there instantly. It was a phenomenal theory, one that Grego hoped to publish as a paper and use to get hired in a university away from Lusitania.