Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"No I'm not," said Jane. "I'm being practical."

"You're being a fool," said Ender. "Grego can't come up with a theory to give us faster-than-light travel just by sitting and thinking about the physics of light, or whatever. If it worked that way, we would have achieved faster-than-light travel three thousand years ago, because there were hundreds of physicists working on it then, back when philotic rays and the Park Instantaneity Principle were first thought of. If Grego thinks of it it's because of some flash of insight, some absurd connection he makes in his mind, and that won't come from concentrating intelligently on a single train of thought."

"I know that," said Jane.

"I know you know it. Didn't you tell me you were bringing those people from Path into our projects for that specific reason? To be untrained, intuitive thinkers?"

"I just don't want you to waste time."

"You just don't want to get your hopes up," said Ender. "You just don't want to admit that there's a chance that you might live, because then you'd start to fear death."

"I already fear death."

"You already think of yourself as dead," said Ender. "There's a difference."

"I know," murmured Miro.

"So, dear Jane, I don't care whether you're willing to admit that there's a possibility of your survival or not," said Ender. "We will work on this, and we will ask Grego to think about it, and while we're at it, you will repeat our entire conversation here to those people on Path--"

"Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu."

"Them," said Ender. "Because they can be thinking about this, too."

"No," said Jane.

"Yes," said Ender.

"I want to see the real problems solved before I die--I want Lusitania to be saved, and the godspoken of Path to be freed, and the descolada to be tamed or destroyed. And I won't have you slowing that down by trying to work on the impossible project of saving me."

"You aren't God," said Ender. "You don't know how to solve any of these problems anyway, and so you don't know how they're going to be solved, and so you have no idea whether finding out what you are in order to save you will help or hurt those other projects, and you certainly don't know whether concentrating on those other problems will get them solved any sooner than they would be if we all went on a picnic today and played lawn tennis till sundown."

"What the hell is lawn tennis?" asked Miro.

But Ender and Jane were silent, glaring at each other. Or rather, Ender was glaring at the image of Jane in the computer display, and that image was glaring back at him.

"You don't know that you're right," said Jane.

"And you don't know that I'm wrong," said Ender.

"It's my life," said Jane.

"The hell it is," said Ender. "You're part of me and Miro, too, and you're tied up with the whole future of humanity, and the pequeninos and the hive queen too, for that matter. Which reminds me--while you're having Han what's-his-name and Si Wang whoever-she-is--"

"Mu."

"--work on this philotic thing, I'm going to talk to the hive queen. I don't think I've particularly discussed you with her. She's got to know more about philotes than we do, since she has a philotic connection with all her workers."

"I haven't said I'm going to involve Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu in your silly save-Jane project."

"But you will," said Ender.

"Why will I?"

"Because Miro and I both love you and need you and you have no right to die on us without at least trying to live."

"I can't let things like that influence me."

"Yes you can," said Miro. "Because if it weren't for things like that I would have killed myself long ago."