Page 105 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

would interposee comments, but Peter and Val would usually ignore them or change their own comments only slightly to accommodate what had been said.
Peter took careful note of all their most memorable phrases and then did searches from time to time to find those phrases cropping up in other nlaces. Not all of them did, but most of them were repeated here and there, and some of them even showed up in the major debates on the prestige nets. "We're being read," Peter said. "The ideas are seeping out."
"The phrases, anyway."
"That's just the measure. Look, we're having some influence. Nobody quotes us by name, yet, but they're discussing the points we raise. We're helping set the agenda. We're getting there."
"Should we try to get into the main debates?"
"No. We'll wait until they ask us."
They had been doing it only seven months when one of the west coast nets sent Demosthenes a message. An offer for a weekly column in a pretty good newsnet.
"I can't do a weekly column," Valentine said. "I don't even have a monthly period yet."
"The two aren't related," Peter said.
"They are to me. I'm still a kid."
"Tell them yes, but since you prefer not to have your true identity revealed, you want them to pay you in network time. A new access code through their corporate identity."
"So when the government traces me--"
"You'll just be a person who can sign on through CalNet. Father's citizen's access doesn't get involved. What I can't figure out is why they wanted Demosthenes before Locke."
"Talent rises to the top."
As a game, it was fun. But Valentine didn't like some of the positions Peter made Demosthenes take. Demosthenes began to develop as a fairly paranoid anti-Warsaw writer. It bothered her because Peter was the one who knew how to exploit fear in his writing -- she had to keep coming to him for ideas on how to do it. Meanwhile, his Locke followed her moderate, empathic strategies. It made sense, in a way. By having her write Demosthenes, it meant he also had some empathy, just as Locke also could play on others fears. But the main effect was to keep her inextricably tied to Peter. She couldn't go off