Page 468 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"I can't come to you anymore," said Miro.
They waited for his explanation.
"The framlings found out about us. Breaking the law. They sealed the gate."
Leaf-eater touched his chin. "Do you know what it was the framlings saw?"
Miro laughed bitterly. "What didn't they see? Only one framling ever came with us."
"No," said Human. "The hive queen says it wasn't the Speaker. The hive queen says they saw it from the sky. "
The satellites? "What could they see from the sky?" "Maybe the hunt," said Arrow.
"Maybe the shearing of the cabra," said Leaf-eater. "Maybe the fields of amaranth," said Cups.
"All of those," said Human. "And maybe they saw that the wives have let three hundred twenty children be born since the first amaranth harvest."
"Three hundred!"
"And twenty," said Mandachuva.
"They saw that food would be plenty," said Arrow. "Now we're sure to win the next war. Our enemies will be planted in huge new forests all over the plain, and the wives will put mother trees in every one of them."
Miro felt sick. Is this what all their work and sacrifice was for, to give some transient advantage to one tribe of piggies? Almost he said, Libo didn't die so you could conquer the world. But his training took over, and he asked a noncommittal question. "Where are all these new children?"
"None of the little brothers come to us," explained Human. "We have too much to do, learning from you and teaching all the other brother-houses. We can't be training little brothers." Then, proudly, he added, "Of the three hundred, fully half are children of my father, Rooter."
Mandachuva nodded gravely. "The wives have great respect for what you have taught us. And they have great hope in the Speaker for the Dead. But what you tell us now, this is very bad. If the framlings hate us, what will we do?"
"I don't know," said Miro. For the moment, his mind was racing to try to cope with all the information they had just told him. Three hundred twenty new babies. A population explosion. And