Page 1046 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

<Or they'll die when he does, I imagine,> said Human. <Just the way when a hive queen dies, so also do all her workers.>
<Some of them actually linger for days afterward, but yes, in effect, that's right. Only because the workers haven't the capacity to hold a hive queen's mind.>
<Don't pretend,> said Human. <You've never tried it, none of you.>
<No. We aren't afraid of death.>
<That's why you've sent all these daughters out to world after world? Because death means nothing to you?>
<I'm saving my species, not myself, you notice.>
<As am I,> said Human. <Besides, I'm too deep-rooted for transplanting.> <But Ender has no roots,> said the Hive Queen.
<I wonder if he wants to die,> said Human. <I don't think so. He's not dying because he's lost the will to live. This body is dying because he's lost interest in the life that it's leading. But he still wants to live the life of Peter. And the life of Valentine.>
<He says so?>
<He can't talk,> said Human. <He's never found his way to the philotic twines. He's never learned to cast out and link as we fathertrees can. As you do with your workers, and now with me.>
<But we found him once. Connected with him through the bridge, well enough to hear his thoughts and see through his eyes. And he dreamed of us during those days.>
<Dreamed of you but never learned that you were peaceable. Never learned that he shouldn't kill you.>
<He didn't know the game was real.>
<Or that the dreams were true. He has his wisdom, of a kind, but the boy has never learned to question his senses half enough.>
<Human,> said the Hive Queen. <What if I teach you how to join a web?>
<So you want to try to catch Ender as he dies?>
<If we can catch him, and take him to one of his other bodies, then perhaps we'll learn enough to find and catch this Jane, too.>