Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"The Fantasy Game," said Ender. "You made a pattern out of the Fantasy Game."

"And when you called . . ."

"But when a philote takes possession of a new hive queen, it controls it, queen-body and worker-bodies. Why didn't this bridge you made take control of me?"

"Why didn't it work?"

"But you could still use it to read my mind."

"More complicated than you expected?"

"But we didn't know that. How could we know?"

"Too bad. Terrifying brilliance would be useful right now."

"We humans get slower as we age. Give me a few more years and I'll be downright cozy."

Ender didn't want this to become another conversation about mortality or any of the other aspects of human life that so fascinated the hive queen. There was still one question that had occurred to him during the hive queen's story. An intriguing possibility.

"The bridge you made. Where was it? In the computer?"

"But not part of me."

"Could it control the computer?"

"How long did you use this bridge? How long was it there?"

"But it was still there the whole time you were studying me."

"How long would it last?"

"But what body was the bridge in?"

"This thing was inside me?"

"No. To you it was like--a bodily function. Like balling up your fist to hit somebody. You did it, and then when you didn't need it you didn't notice whether your fist was still there or not."

"It's still alive, isn't it?"

"But it would still be linked to the computer, wouldn't it? A connection between me and the computer. Only the pattern could have grown, couldn't it? It could include other people, too. Think of it being linked to Miro--the young man I brought with me--"

"And instead of being linked to that one computer, linked to thousands and thousands of them, through the ansible links between worlds."

"And I always thought--Jane and I always thought that she was--that she had somehow come to exist in the ansible connections between worlds. That's probably where she feels herself, the place that feels like the center of her--body, I was going to say."

"Like trying to find a particular muscle that you've been using all your life but never by itself."

"The comparison?"

"Jane," whispered Ender. "You're a big girl now."

Jane's voice came in answer: "You're cheating, Ender. I can't hear what she's saying to you. I can only fee

l your heart pounding and your rapid breathing."

"Neither is Jane."

"She's the bridge. You made her."