Page 1065 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"We didn't know," said Wang-mu.
"He knew," said Grace. "Because he's got the all-hearing ear."
Peter blushed. "I hear what she says to me," he said, "but I can't hear what she chooses not to say."
"So... you were being led. And Aimaina is right, you do serve a higher being. Voluntarily? Or are you being coerced?"
"That's a stupid question, Mama," said her daughter, belching again. "If they are coerced, how could they possibly tell you?"
"People can say as much by what they don't say," answered Grace, "which you'd know if you'd sit up and look at their eloquent faces, these lying visitors from other planets."
"She's not a higher being," said Wang-mu. "Not like you mean it. Not a god. Though she does have a lot of control and she knows a lot of things. But she's not omnipotent or anything, and she doesn't know everything, and sometimes she's even wrong, and I'm not sure she's always good, either, so we can't really call her a god because she's not perfect."
Grace shook her head. "I wasn't talking about some Platonic god, some ethereal perfection that can never be understood, only apprehended. Not some Nicene paradoxical being whose existence is perpetually contradicted by his nonexistence. Your higher being, this jewel-friend your partner wears like a parasite-- except who is sucking life from whom, eh? --she could well be a god in the sense that we Samoans use the word. You might be her hero servants. You might be her incarnation, for all I know."
"But you're a scholar," said Wang-mu. "Like my teacher Han Fei-tzu, who discovered that what we used to call gods were really just genetically induced obsessions that we interpreted in such a way as to maintain our obedience to--"
"Just because your gods don't exist doesn't mean mine don't," said Grace.
"She must have tromped through acres of dead gods just to get here!" cried Grace's husband, laughing uproariously. Only now that Wang-mu knew what his laughter really meant, his laugh filled her with fear.
Grace reached out and laid a huge, heavy arm across her slight shoulder. "Don't worry," she said. "My husband is a civilized man and he's never killed anybody."
"Not for lack of trying!" he bellowed. "No, that was a joke!" He almost wept with laughter.
"You can't go see Malu," said Grace, "because we would have to purify you and I don't think you're ready to make the promises you'd have to make-- and I especially don't believe you're ready to make them and actually mean what you say. And those are promises that must be kept. So Malu is coming here. He's being rowed to this island right now-- no motors for him, so I want you to