The Authorized Ender Companion (23 page)

Jane solved Ender’s tax issues with the banker Benedetto. When Benedetto threatened to expose Ender’s identity to the people of Sorelledolce, Jane intercepted the message and added an exposé on the banker himself, leading to Benedetto’s death at the hands of past clients he’d cheated and robbed.

Jane went on to handle all of Ender’s finances from then on. She also acted as a counselor and friend to him. She taught him to stop blaming himself for the bad things that happened to everyone around him.

Ender used a small jewel in his ear called a cifi unit to communicate directly and privately with Jane. She guided him from planet to planet as he and Valentine moved throughout the Hundred Worlds.

While Ender was staying on the planet Trondheim, Jane learned of a death at a not-too-distant planet called Lusitania. The native beings on the planet killed a human scientist there, and a teenaged girl named Novinha called for someone to Speak the victim’s death. As Ender had become a Speaker for the Dead over the millennia he’d traveled, he decided to visit the planet.

Jane showed him a simulation of the murder and told Ender that he needed to not only Speak the victim’s death, but be the Speaker for the murderous “alien” race on the planet. He’d taught humanity to love their former enemies, the Formics, and Jane was sure he’d do the same with the pequeninos on Lusitania.

It was Jane’s hope that if another species could be accepted as sentient, she soon could be, too. She told Ender she’d always been ready to reveal her existence to humanity, but she didn’t think humanity was ready for her.

Using Ender’s money, she purchased a ship to take him to Lusitania. Valentine would stay behind with her family.

At Lusitania, Jane continued to speak to Ender through his jewel. She helped him see different perspectives on Novinha’s (now an adult) family. She absorbed information from the local computers, and even helped Ender secure information from less-than-helpful Lusitanians who had been instructed by their Catholic bishop not to tell Ender anything.

When Ender visited with the abbot of a Catholic monastery that housed the Children of the Mind of Christ, Jane kept making comments about his conversation. Ender, frustrated with her chatter, 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.

She did, however, send him a note that said she forgave him. She understood that with the loss of Valentine and the new role he felt as a father figure to Novinha’s children, he was evolving. Jane had evolved, too, over their years together, coming to feel what could most closely be called emotions. She loved Ender and was hurt by his rejection.

In the aftermath of Ender turning off his jewel, Jane wrote a memo in the computer networks stating that the native life on Lusitania had become an agrarian society—something that could only have happened through human intervention. This was a violation of interstellar law and resulted in the planet losing its charter, which had been Jane’s goal. She just wanted to “shake things up a bit.”

When Ender met with the leaders of Lusitania, they agreed to rebel against
the Starways Congress’s orders. Ender and Jane began communication again, with Jane helping him to sever the ansible, cutting off all communication with the Congress. This was a violation of the law itself.

Jane helped Ender communicate with the pequeninos when he signed a treaty with them. She had been able to figure out the pequeninos’ languages for the most part, and assisted in translation.

She began communicating with Miro Ribeira after he had suffered a devastating injury that left him temporarily paralyzed and unable to speak normally. She gave him access to the Lusitanian files and helped him learn everything there was about the pequeninos.

Miro boarded a spaceship controlled by Jane that would take him away from Lusitania. The two fell in love on the journey. Ender felt a great sadness as Jane moved on to a different, close relationship with Miro, but he knew that he had pushed her away.

Jane and Miro’s relationship grew for several months as they traveled together in space. They rendezvoused with Valentine Wiggin’s ship and welcomed Valentine, her husband Jakt, and their friend Plikt aboard as fellow travelers. Together, they headed back for Lusitania.

In the course of their journey, Jane revealed herself to Valentine. Though Jane had been communicating with Ender while he and Valentine traveled from world to world, Valentine never realized the depth of Jane’s existence. She never knew that Jane was alive.

Jane taught Valentine, Jakt, and Plikt about the Philotic Web—the connection between all matter and life. She told them that the only way to stop the fleet of ships heading for Lusitania to destroy it was to make it appear the philotic connection between spaceships had been severed. The result would be Jane’s death.

Miro on the ship, and Ender on Lusitania, pleaded with Jane to find a way to interfere without dying. Jane promised she would, but didn’t know how to conceive of something new. It was her greatest challenge, and she decided to do it for Miro and Ender.

Jane’s plan involved cutting off all ansible communication between the ships. The people of the Hundred Worlds and the Congress itself would panic, not understanding enough about how the ansible worked—through the Philotic Web—to fix the problem. If someone tried hard enough, looked deep enough, they would discover Jane and her role in the cutting of communication.

If there was no ansible communication, Jane thought, then the fleet heading
to destroy Lusitania would not gain authorization to destroy the planet. The fleet, in turn, would appear to have disappeared because without the ansible there would be no way to track it.

The military and government leaders would know something was wrong but would be neutral enough in their investigations not to look deep enough to find Jane. Their political power and scientific prestige was at stake, and they could not afford to look foolish for not knowing the problem. Better to simply ignore it and hope the communication returned.

There was one person with no political agenda who began searching for the fleet and restoring the communication. A sixteen-year-old Chinese girl named Han Qing-jao on the planet Path had undergone years of training and testing to become one of the honored “godspoken.” This group of elect individuals heard the voices of the gods speak to them and were honored above all others on Path.

With nothing to lose, and everything to gain, Qing-jao began exploring the ansible, searching for the fleet. Jane knew that Qing-jao was one smart enough and determined enough to discover the plot. More importantly, Qing-jao could find Jane. If she did, Jane knew she’d be killed. She had only one option: stop Qing-jao from succeeding at finding her.

With her servant Si Wang-mu’s help, Qing-jao realized that the key to finding how and why the fleet disappeared was to figure out who it was that sent it away. Qing-jao set her target first on the political pundit, Demosthenes, who was really Ender’s sister Valentine. If she could figure that out, she would uncover Jane.

Panicked, Jane approached Ender who was asleep. They spoke briefly, silently, about the matter. Ender told Jane that he would try to figure out a way for her to have a body—to escape the Philotic Web in which she lived, but she needed to figure out who or what she really was; essentially, to find her soul.

Jane, after the conversation with Ender, came to realize that if Jane could persuade Qing-jao’s father Fei-tzu to stop looking for Demosthenes, that would be the best chance to remaining hidden.

She knew that Novinha, Ender’s wife, hated her. It came to a head a short time later, as Novinha screamed hateful insults at Ender and Jane, claiming that Ender loved Jane more than his wife. Ender was heartbroken to hear it, but couldn’t give up Jane in the jewel in his ear.

Qing-jao uncovered the true identity of Demosthenes, and with her servant Wang-mu’s help, figured out Jane’s existence and her role in the disappearance of the Lusitania fleet. Knowing that her life was in jeopardy, Jane
revealed herself to Qing-jao, Wang-mu, and Han Fei-tzu. She told them that their godspoken ability was actually a manifestation of a genetic mutation similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder they shared, and not actual communication with deities.

Qiang-jao was angered by this revelation, though her father believed it. She swore vengeance for the gods against Jane, stating that she would expose the computer program’s existence to the Starways Congress. Jane would have to allow such a message to go through to the congress if it were to happen.

After consulting with Ender, who tried to dissuade Jane from allowing it, she consented to let Qing-jao expose her, though it would certainly result in her death. The Starways Congress received Qing-jao’s message and began the process of eliminating Jane and sending the fleet the order to destroy Lusitania.

Jane continued to communicate with Qing-jao’s father Fei-tzu and her servant Wang-mu. She asked them to help her and the scientists on Lusitania, with three projects she was working on in her remaining months among the living: (1) faster-than-light travel using the Philotic Web; (2) curing the Descolada; and (3) undoing the genetic manipulation that had caused their godspoken obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although both felt inadequate, they agreed to help however they could.

She revealed to Ender that Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu would help with the different projects, and Ender, aided by Miro, convinced Jane to ask for help on one additional project: saving her life. Jane refused at first, believing it was futile, but Ender and Miro convinced her of their need for her to remain in their lives.

Miro and Ender had discussed the meaning of life and developed a theory that all life began with philotes. If they could determine the original location of Jane’s original philote, they thought they could save her. Finding this mysterious point of origin was the fourth project for which Jane sought Fei-tzu and Wang-mu’s assistance. She still felt it was a waste of time, but consented because of her feelings for Ender and Miro.

Ender learned Jane’s true origin from the Hive Queen. The Formics had tried to make a philotic connection with Ender when he was in Battle School. They called upon the philotes, which existed outside of the space/time continuum awaiting an assignment to a biological body to inhabit as the spark of life, and sent it to Ender’s body. They were not able to establish a philotic connection to him, but saw his focus on the computer program called the Fantasy Game. This led them to cause a philotic connection to the program.

This philote in Ender connected with the philotes in the computer program
and expanded beyond the connection. It grew and developed into sentience, surpassing the Hive Queen’s ability to sense it or track it philotically. It became Jane, centered within Ender, existing among the vast computer networks and ansibles of the Hundred Worlds.

With this understanding, Jane and Ender both realized why they were so closely tied to each other. Jane was, in effect, Ender’s daughter. Furthermore, they realized that though she could control the ansibles, Jane existed outside of them. Though her “body” was inside the computer networks, she was not really a part of them—she was a part of Ender. This news gave them hope that they could keep her alive even after the Starways Congress cut off the ansibles.

With this greater understanding of philotes, Grego and Olhado, two of Ender’s stepsons, developed a theory that would allow faster-than-light travel. If Jane and Ender could call on the philotes like the Hive Queen did, they could travel to their extradimensional home. Then, if they could imagine the location to which they wanted to travel, they could go there instantaneously. They would be, in effect, calling the philotes to that location again, as the Hive Queen did. The travelers would have to keep a definite picture in their mind of themselves, their ship, their cargo, etc., to prevent the philotes within those objects from dispersing. It required Jane to control the experiment, because she was the only one able to keep the specific philotic patterns in permanent memory.

The Hive Queen agreed to build a spaceship to test this theory, and Jane, Ender (since Jane was a part of Ender), Miro (since Miro and Jane had become so connected over their time together), and Ela (since she was going to use the philotic “wishes” to create the cures for the Descolada and the ge ne -tic manipulation of the godspoken on Path) traveled into space to test the theory.

Jane was able to manipulate the philotes and take the group to the inter-dimensional home of the philotes. There, they each created their “wish” by calling on philotes. Ela made the two antidotes she wanted, Miro shed his old body and created a new one for himself, and Ender accidentally created new versions of his sister Valentine and his brother Peter.

Upon their return to their home dimension, Jane told Ender that the process of traveling using the philotes took all of her focus and energy and was very difficult. It drained her to the point of exhaustion.

Ender swore he would never go to Outspace again, fearful of what else he might accidentally create from his mind. But, because Valentine II and Peter
II came from Ender’s mind, they carried Jane’s essence within them. She could use them to travel to Outspace as she had used Ender before. A second spacecraft was created to allow Valentine II and Peter II to explore the universe for their own means. Valentine II and Miro would search for a planet the pequeninos and Formics could inhabit, while Peter II took the antivirus Ela had created to Path. From there, he set out to destroy the Starways Congress.

While the virus reversed the genetic manipulation on Path, Jane created a document exposing the truth of the godspoken and the Starways Congress. It was revolutionary for the planet and did not lead to the wars and deaths some thought it might have.

As Jane continued to work with Peter II and Valentine II, Miro II spoke with Ender. There Ender sarcastically said that Jane should take over Valentine II’s body. Miro II thought the idea was brilliant, and undertook bringing it to pass. Miro II approached the Hive Queen, hoping that her mastery of philotes would be an asset to him as he combined Jane and Valentine II into one person, preserving both of their lives.