The long Earth Wiki
Register
Advertisement
“He's a married man. There'll be no more "exploits" if I have anything to do with it.”
   — Helen Valienté


Helen Green Valienté Doak, (20132067) was the daughter of Jack and Tilda Green. She was the wife of Joshua Valienté, and together they had a son – Rod (Dan) Valienté – before they divorced.[1][2] She later remarried to Ben Doak.[3]

She was originally from Datum Madison. It's mostly through her diary entries that we knows details of the Greens' trek across the Long Earth.

Appearance

Like her mother she has strawberry-blond hair.[4]

The Long Earth

She followed her family during their journey across the Long Earth to Earth West 101,754 where, with other people, they founded Reboot and kept track of the journey in the diary she started when she was eleven years old.[5][6]

A few years after the foundation of Reboot, she had a radio blog where she read entries of her journal on air.[6]

She first met Joshua Valienté and Sally Linsay on their way back to the Datum after Lobsang's merge with First Person Singular.[4]

The Long War

The Letter

In 2028, two years after they settled down on Earth West 101,754 and two years before the events of The Long Earth, they received the Letter, brought by Bill Lovell, saying the assets of the pioneers living beyond Earth East 20 and Earth West 20 were to be impounded by the Datum government.[7] Helen's Mom being ill in bed, her Dad explained the situation to her.

Katie's wedding

Three months after they received the Letter, Katie, Helen's older sister, got married with Harry Bergreen. They brought forward their wedding to make sure Katie and Helen's mother was there to see it.

Finally, Tilda died of her tumour around two months after the wedding and now rests in a grave by the river.

After the US government decided to stop supporting the colonies, the people of Reboot had to learn to make everything themselves. Around 2030, Jack, Helen's father, told her that she had to choose a path in life and since she was already training as a midwife with Belle Doak, she decided that midwifery was her path.

A family life in Hell-Knows-Where

In 2040, Helen has become a top herbalist and a senior midwife and was leaving in Hell-Knows-Where on Earth West 1,397,426 with Joshua, to whom she was married for nine years, and their nine years old son Dan.[2]

Their quiet family life was disturbed around March 2040, when Sally visited them after another incident between humans and trolls. To Helen, Sally's visit meant only bad news and she prepared herself to lose her husband to the Long Earth, even worst, lose him to the woman who travelled with him aboard the Mark Twain all those years ago.

Infuriated by the incidents, Sally asked Joshua to use his influence to go in front of Congress and try to pass a protective law for trolls.[8] Joshua agreed to go and Helen proposed to go with him so they could look for a school in Valhalla for Dan and so their son would have an occasion to see the Datum at least once in his life.

Valhalla

Accompanied by Bill Chambers, one of Joshua's friends from the Home, it took them only a few hours to reach Valhalla on Earth West 1,400,013.[9] There, they were greeted by Thomas Kyangu, another of Joshua's friends, and Sally. Thomas drove them around in his buggy and brought them to the Healed Drum where he booked rooms for them. When Sally discovered that the Valientés were planning to stay several weeks in Valhalla, she stepped away saying it wasn't part of the deal.

The Free School

The next morning, Thomas came to pick them up with his buggy, while Bill went exploring on his own, and drove them to the Free School in Downtown Seven where the Valientés met Jacques Montecute, the headmaster of the school, and fifteen years old Roberta Golding, one of his pupils.[10]

Joshua, having the impression that the name Montecute was familiar suddenly recalled his visit to Happy Landings ten years ago where he met Jacques's great-grandmother, place that Jacques and Roberta both come from.

As they discussed about Valhalla and how the city was sustained by combers, it proved quickly that the silent Roberta was an exceptionnally bright child who even won a kind of scholarship from the US government that allowed her to go, under Jacques's supervision, on the Chinese East Twenty Million mission.

While the headmaster left the office to give Dan a tour of the school, Joshua and Helen went to the cafeteria to get coffee instead of being left alone with Roberta.

Jack Green

To be able to see her father, working for the mayor at Valhalla's city hall, Helen had to make an appointment.[11]

Helen, who hasn't seen him since last Christmas, tried to convince him to stop running away from his guilt by bossing people around but she quickly realized that she chose the wrong moment to see him since all of Jack's attention was on the TV screen on the wall of his office as Ben was delivering the speech that Jack just sent him a few minutes ago.

She silently crept out of his office without her father noticing. She met up with Thomas, who was waiting for her in the lobby, and they went to get coffee in a nearby coffee shop where Thomas told him about his life before Valhalla.

The Gold Dust

They stayed three more weeks in Valhalla to get Dan used to the place and then finally boarded the Gold Dust, linking Valhalla to Datum Earth, with Sally and Bill.[12] As the ship crossed the Mine Belt to pick up some ores, they encountered the Pennsylvania, a twain that got wrecked because of a dust storm some eighty thousand steps West of the Datum.[13] Quickly, the crew of the Gold Dust and the other twains of the fleet organized themselves to form a rescue party. After some efforts, they asked for volunteers from the passengers, to Helen's sorrow.

Without any surprise, Joshua and Sally volunteered and around three hours later, Joshua found himself trapped inside the Pennsylvania's envelope. He got rescued by Bosun Higgs and Sally and got extracted of the wreck with a cable wrapped around his ankle. Helen and Dan saw the whole thing from the ship. The incident made the news and ended on the outernet. Sally stepped away, grinning, as everyone's attention was on Joshua.

Back to the Datum

Sally got back to the Gold Dust before it reached the Datum.[14] As the passengers disembarked, they were led to an immigration hall where their luggage was searched and they had to go through a full whole-body scanner.

As everyone finally passed all the security checkpoints, they stood on the outer hall waiting for a cab when a man approached them. When he got close enough, he reached in his bag and took out a metallic blade. Sally grasped Dan and stepped away with him as Joshua, who put himself between the man and his family, was stabbed above the right breast. He passed out as Helen knocked out their aggressor.

House arrest

After the incident at the immigration hall, Helen was in custody for assault.[15] In the meantime, Joshua, Dan, Sally and Bill at Monica Jansson's place on Madison West 5 before Joshua and Bill's meeting with Senator Starling.

Finally, while Joshua was meeting the Senator Starling, she was released and placed under house arrest at Monica's.[16]

The trolls are gone

In May 2040, Sally and Monica managed to help escape a couple of trolls from the GapSpace facility where they were held prisoners and the news was all over the outernet.[17] In the same time, as the incidents between humans and trolls multiplied across the Long Earth, the trolls started to leave en masse all the Earths with a significant human presence.

Three weeks after Sally's stunt, Lobsang summoned Joshua to meet him at a transEarth facility on the outskirts of Madison West 10 even if the two of them haven't talked to each other for ten years as Joshua was mad at Lobsang for not preventing the Madison bombing.[18]

After a talk about the trolls and the things he learned from them, Lobsang simply asked Joshua to travel once again across the Long Earth in search of Sally and the trolls. Thinking of his duty as a husband and a father, Joshua agreed anyway.

She already knows

When Joshua came out of the facility, he ran into Bill waiting for him.[19] Even if the conversation with Lobsang happened only minutes ago, Bill already knew about the trip and told Joshua, wanting to explain the situation to his family, that Helen already knew.

The garden party

In September 2040, after Joshua, now missing his left hand and wearing an antique prosthetic hand instead, came back from his quest, the trolls shyly started to show up in numbers again.[20] For the occasion, Lobsang and Sister Agnes decided to throw a garden party on their troll reservation in Madison West 11 that the Valientés attended on September 8th.

As they were hanging out by the barbecue with Lobsang and Nelson Azikiwe, they were joined by Agnes, Monica, Sister Georgina and Sister John, tasked to take care of Monica who took a huge dose of radiations from her adventure.

After Monica and Joshua hugged each other, Joshua began once again to tell the story of how he extended his left hand's middle finger as Li-Li was chewing his wrist and that it was what was now nailed to one of the wall of Petra's palace, much to Monica's delight. A gesture that little Dan couldn't help doing every time his father told that story, much to Helen's chragrin.

Their talk was interrupted by Frank Wood, one of the space cadets from the GapSpace facility, who were looking for Sally. Helen led the group to the lake, where a cluster of trolls were singing and where Sally was hanging with Jacques Montecute and Roberta Golding, back from their expedition with the Chinese.

Sally immediately asked the reason of Frank's presence and he told her he was there to thank them for how they handled the situation at the GapSpace facility and how it helped him and his colleagues to get back their moral bearings.

While Frank was launching to one of his fanboy rant about space, Monica felt suddenly that the noise was too much for her and was lead away by Agnes, Sisters Georgina and John and Frank.

After a few minutes, an airship materialized on top of Lobsang and he left his ambulant body, leaving it lifeless. Soon cellphones started to ring and people were stepping out of existence one by one.

It was the first day of the Yellowstone eruption, Sally and Joshua, always ready to lend a hand, didn't wait to go to the Datum to help as much as they could.[21]

The Long Mars

After the Yellowstone eruption, Helen went back to Hell-Knows-Where with Dan to ensure his safety while Joshua, feeling like he had to lend a hand to help with the evacuation effort, went to the Datum.[22]

All this time spent far from his family was the final straw for Helen, to the point where they separated just before the events of The Long Mars.[23]

The Long Utopia

After her marriage with Joshua broke up, she went back to live in Reboot and resumed midwifery.[24]

In 2052, she was present for Joshua's fiftieth birthday and was in a relationship with Ben Doak.

The Long Cosmos

Helen died in 2067, and was burried in Datum Madison. She also had a marker stone outside the Home in Madison West 5. The children from the Home tended the grave under the supervision of Sister John.[3]

References

  1. The Long Earth - Chapter 14
  2. 2.0 2.1 The Long War - Chapter 2
  3. 3.0 3.1 The Long Cosmos - Chapter 1
  4. 4.0 4.1 The Long Earth - Chapter 50
  5. The Long Earth - Chapter 18
  6. 6.0 6.1 The Long Earth - Chapter 25
  7. The Long War - Chapter 5
  8. The Long War - Chapter 3
  9. The Long War - Chapter 8
  10. The Long War - Chapter 9
  11. The Long War - Chapter 10
  12. The Long War - Chapter 12
  13. The Long War - Chapter 20
  14. The Long War - Chapter 22
  15. The Long War - Chapter 23
  16. The Long War - Chapter 25
  17. The Long War - Chapter 35
  18. The Long War - Chapter 36
  19. The Long War - Chapter 37
  20. The Long War - Chapter 68
  21. The Long War - Chapter 69
  22. The Long Mars - Chapter 1
  23. The Long Mars - Chapter 8
  24. The Long Utopia - Chapter 5
Advertisement