Page 1125 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

a daughter of hive queens, she realized, and so it matters when she speaks to me, and tells me I have done well.
And if I'm the hive queens' daughter, I am Ender's daughter, too, his daughter twice over, for they made my lifestuff partly from his mind, so I could be a bridge between them; and now I dwell in a body that also came from him, and whose memories are from a time when he dwelt here and lived this body's life. I am his daughter, but once again I cannot speak to him.
All this time, all these thoughts, and yet she did not show or even feel the slightest lapse of concentration on what she was doing with her computer on the starship circling the descolada planet. She was still Jane. It wasn't the computerness of her that had allowed her, all these years, to maintain many layers of attention and focus on many tasks at once. It was her hive-queen nature that allowed this.
<It was because you were an aiua powerful enough to do this that you were able to come to us in the first place,> said the Hive Queen in her mind.
Which of you is speaking to me? asked Jane.
<Does it matter? We all remember the making of you. We remember being there. We remember drawing you out of darkness into light.>
Am I still myself, then? Will I have again all the powers I lost when the Starways Congress killed my old virtual body?
<You might. When you find out, tell us. We will be very interested.>
And now she felt the sharp disappointment from a parent's unconcern, a sinking feeling in the stomach, a kind of shame. But this was a human emotion; it arose from the Val-body, though it was in response to her relationship with her hive-queen mothers. Everything was more complicated-- and yet it was simpler. Her feelings were now flagged by a body, which responded before she understood what she felt herself. In the old days, she scarcely knew she had feelings. She had them, yes, even irrational responses, desires below the level of consciousness-- these were attributes of all aiuas, when linked with others in any kind of life-- but there had been no simple signals to tell her what her feelings were. How easy it was to be a human, with your emotions expressed on the canvas of your own body. And yet how hard, because you couldn't hide your feelings from yourself half so easily.
<Get used to being frustrated with us, daughter,> said the Hive Queen. <You have a partly human nature, and we do not. We will not be tender with you as human mothers are. When you can't bear it, back away-- we won't pursue you.>
Thank you, she said silently ... and backed away. ***