Page 1053 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Yes, she and her daughters and the fathertrees, they're building some kind of web, but it's never been done before-- catching something already alive and leading it into a body that is already owned by someone else's aiua. It's not going to work, I'm going to die, but I'm dammed if I'm going to let those bastards who made the descolada come along after I'm dead and wipe out all the other sentient species I've known. Humans will pull the plug on me, yes, thinking I'm just a computer program run amok, but that doesn't mean I want someone else to pull the plug on humanity. Nor on the hive queens. Nor on the pequeninos. If we're going to stop them, we have to do it before I'm dead. Or at least I have to get you and Val there so you can do something without me."
"If we're there when you die, we'll never come home again."
"Bad luck, eh?"
"So we're a suicide mission."
"Life is a suicide mission, Miro. Check it out-- basic philosophy course. You spend your life running out of fuel and when you're finally out, you croak."
"You sound like Mother now," said Miro.
"Oh, no," said Jane. "I'm taking it with good humor. Your mother always thought her doom was tragic."
Miro was readying some retort when Val's voice interrupted his colloquy with Jane. "I hate it when you do that!" she cried.
"Do what?" said Miro, wondering what she had just been saying before this outburst. "Tune me out and talk to her."
"To Jane? I always talk to Jane."
"But you used to listen to me sometimes," said Val.
"Well, Val, you used to listen to me, too, but that's all changed now, apparently."
Val flung herself out of her chair and stormed over to loom above him. "Is that how it is? The woman you loved was the quiet one, the shy one, the one who always let you dominate every conversation. Now that I'm excited, now that I feel like I'm really myself, well, that's not the woman you wanted, is that it?"
"It's not about preferring quiet women or--"
"No, we couldn't admit to anything so recidivist as that, could we! No, we have to proclaim ourselves to be perfectly virtuous and--"