Page 297 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Not deliberately. But it was only a fluke we beat them, Jane, you know that--"
"It was your genius."
"They are even more advanced than we are. How would the piggies deal with that? They'd be as terrified of the buggers as we ever were, and less able to deal with their fear."
"How do you know that?" asked Jane. "How can you or anyone say what the piggies can deal with? Until you go to them, learn who they are. If they are varelse, Ender, then let the buggers use up their habitat, and it will mean no more to you than the displacement of anthills or cattle herds to make way for cities."
"They are ramen," said Ender.
"You don't know that."
"Yes I do. Your simulation-- that was not torture."
"Oh?" Jane again showed the simulation of Pipo's body just before the moment of his death. "Then I must not understand the word."
"Pipo might have felt it as torture, Jane, but if your simulation is accurate-- and I know it is, Jane-- then the piggies' object was not pain."
"From what I understand of human nature, Ender, even religious rituals keep pain at their very center."
"It wasn't religious, either, not entirely, anyway. Something was wrong with it, if it was merely a sacrifice."
"What do you know about it?" Now the terminal showed the face of a sneering professor, the epitome of academic snobbishness. "All your education was military, and the only other gift you have is a flair for words. You wrote a bestseller that spawned a humanistic religion-- how does that qualify you to understand the piggies?"
Ender closed his eyes. "Maybe I'm wrong."
"But you believe you're right?"
He knew from her voice that she had restored her own face to the terminal. He opened his eyes. "I can only trust my intuition, Jane, the judgment that comes without analysis. I don't know what the piggies were doing, but it was purposeful. Not malicious, not cruel. It was like doctors working to save a patient's life, not torturers trying to take it."