bring her, and then he must escape from her and leave her alone in Young Valentine."
"Then he will die for her."
"He will die as Ender. He must die as Valentine. But can't he find his way to Peter, and live there?"
"That's the part of himself that he hates," said Human. "He told me so himself."
"That's the part of himself that he fears," said the Hive Queen. "But isn't it possible that he fears it because it's the strongest part of him? The most powerful of his faces?"
"How can you say that the strongest part of a good man like Ender is the destructive, ambitious, cruel, ruthless part?"
"Those are his words for the part of himself that he gave shape as Young Peter. But doesn't his book The Hegemon show that it's the ruthlessness inside him that gave him strength to build? That made him strong against all assailants? That gave him a self despite his loneliness? Neither he nor Peter was ever cruel for cruelty's sake. They were cruel to get the job done, and it was a job that needed doing; it was a job to save the world, Ender by destroying a terrible enemy, for so he thought we were, and Peter by breaking down the boundary walls of nations and making the human race into one nation. Both those jobs remain to do again. We have found the borders of a terrible enemy, the alien race that Miro calls the descoladores. And the boundaries between human and pequenino, pequenino and hive queen, hive queen and human, and between all of us and Jane, whatever Jane might turn out to be -- don't we need the strength of Ender-as-Peter to bring us all into one?"
"You convince me, beloved sister mother wife, but it is Ender who will not believe in such goodness in himself. He might be able to draw Jane out of the sky and into the body of Young Valentine, but he will never be able to leave that body himself, he will never choose to give up his own goodness and go to the body that represents all that he fears inside himself."
"If you're right, then he will die," said the Hive Queen.
Grief and anguish for his friend welled up in Human and spilled out into the web that bound him to all fathertrees and to all hive queens, but to them it tasted sweet, for it was born out of love for the life of the man.
"But he's dying anyway, as Ender he's dying, and if we explained this all to him, wouldn't he choose to die, if by dying he might keep Jane alive? Jane, who holds the key to starflight? Jane, who alone can unlock the door between us and the Outside and pass us in and out by her strong will and clear mind?"
"Yes, he would choose to die so she could live."
"Better, though, if he would bring her into Valentine and then choose to live. That would be better."
Even as she said it, the despair behind her words came out like ooze and everyone on the web that she had helped to weave could taste the poison of it, for it was born of dread for the death of the man, and they all grieved.
Jane found the strength for one last voyage; she held the shuttle, with the six living forms inside it, held the perfect image of the physical forms long enough to hurl them Out and reel them In, orbiting the distant world where the descolada had been made. But when that task was done, she lost control of herself because she could no longer find herself, not the self that she had known. Memories were torn from her; links to worlds that had long been as familiar to her as limbs are to living humans, hive queens, and fathertrees were now gone, and as she reached to use them nothing happened, she was numb all over, shrinking down, not to her ancient core, but into small corners of herself, disparate fragments that were too small to hold her.
I'm dying, I'm dying, she said over and over again, hating the words as she said them, hating the panic that she felt.
Into the computer before which Young Valentine sat, she spoke -- and spoke only words, because she couldn't remember now how to make the face that had been her mask for so many centuries. "Now I am afraid." But having said it, she couldn't remember whether it had