best programs she could create for us, to help us talk to them. Is this good enough to be your masterwork? The achievement of your lifetime?"
His older sister Ela looked at him sadly. "I thought I had already done my masterwork, when I made the virus that undid the descolada here."
"You did," he said. "You've done enough. But there's more to do that only you can do. I'm asking you to come and die with me, Ela, because without you my own death will be meaningless, because without you, Val and I can't do what must be done."
Neither Quara nor Ela moved or spoke.
Miro, nodded, then turned and went into the ship. But before he could close and seal the door, the two sisters, arms around each other's waists, wordlessly followed him inside.
Chapter 8
"WHAT MATTERS IS WHICH FICTION YOU BELIEVE"
"My father once told me
that there are no gods,
only the cruel manipulations
of evil people
who pretended that their power was good
and their exploitation was love.
But if there are no gods,
why are we so hungry to believe in them?
Just because evil liars
stand between us and the gods
and block our view of them
does not mean that the bright halo
that surrounds each liar
is not the outer edges of a god, waiting
for us to find our way around the lie."
-- from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
"It isn't working," said the Hive Queen.
"What can we do differently?" asked Human. "We have made the strongest web we can. We have joined to you and to each other as never before, so that all of us tremble, all of us shake as if there were a shimmering wind dancing with us and making our leaves beautiful in sunlight, and the light is you and your daughters and all the love we have for our tiny mothers and our dear mute mothertrees is given to you, our queen, our sister, our mother, our truest wife. How can Jane not see the thing that we have made and want to be a part of it?"
"She can't find a road to us," said the Hive Queen. "She was half made of what we are, but she has long since turned her back on us so she could endlessly look at Ender, belonging to him. She was our bridge to him. Now he is her only bridge to life."
"What kind of bridge is that? He's dying himself."
"The old part of him is dying," said the Hive Queen. "But remember, he is the man who has loved and understood you pequeninos best. Is it not possible that out of the dying body of his youth, there might not grow a tree to take him into the Third Life, as he took you?"
"I don't understand your plan," said Human. But even in his noncomprehension, another message flowed to her underneath the conscious one: "My beloved queen," he was saying, and she heard: "My sweet and holy one."
"I don't have a plan," she said. "I only have a hope."
"Tell me your hope, then," said Human.
"It's only a dream of a hope," she answered. "Only a rumor of a guess of a dream of a hope."
"Tell me."
"She was our bridge to Ender. Can't Ender now be her bridge to us, through you? She has spent her life, all but the last few years, staring into Ender's heart, hearing his inmost thoughts and letting his aiua give meaning to her own existence. If he calls her, she'll hear him even though she can't hear us. That will draw her to him"
"Into the body where he most dwells right now," said Human, "which is the body of Young Valentine. They'll fight each other there, without meaning to. They can't both rule the same kingdom."
"That's why the rumor of hope is so slim," said the hive queen. "But Ender also has loved you -- you, the fathertree named Human, and you, all pequeninos and fathertrees, wives and sisters and mothertrees, all of you, even the wooden trees of pequeninos who were never fathers but once were sons, he loved and loves you all. Can't she follow that philotic twine and reach our web through you? And can't she follow him and find the way to us? We can hold her, we can hold all of her that won't fit into Young Valentine."
"Then Ender has to stay alive to call to her."
"This is why the hope is only the shadow of a memory of the passing of a tiny cloud before the sun, because he must call her and