Page 667 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

All the way up to the surface, Valentine struggled to make sense of what had happened. She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there'd be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying differences between people, language might just as easily soften them, minimize them, smooth things over so that people could get along even though they really didn't understand each other. The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were. Maybe language was better.
They crawled out of the building into the sunlight, blinking, laughing in relief, all of them. "Not fun," said Ender. "But you insisted, Val. Had to see her right away."
"So I'm a fool," said Valentine. "Is that news?"
"It was beautiful," said Plikt.
Miro only lay on his back in the capim and covered his eyes with his arm.
Valentine looked at him lying there and caught a glimpse of the man he used to be, the body he used to have. Lying there, he didn't stagger; silent, there was no halting in his speech. No wonder his fellow xenologer had fallen in love with him. Ouanda. So tragic to discover that her father was also his father. That was the worst thing revealed when Ender spoke for the dead in Lusitania thirty years ago. This was the man that Ouanda had lost; and Miro had also lost this man that he was. No wonder he had risked death crossing the fence to help the piggies. Having lost his sweetheart, he counted his life as worthless. His only regret was that he hadn't died after all. He had lived on, broken on the outside as he was broken on the inside.
Why did she think of these things, looking at him? Why did it suddenly seem so real to her?
Was it because this was how he was thinking of himself right now? Was she capturing his image of himself? Was there some lingering connection between their minds?
"Ender," she said, "what happened down there?" "Better than I hoped," said Ender.
"What was?"
"The link between us."
"You expected that?"
"Wanted it." Ender sat on the side of the car, his feet dangling in the tall grass. "She was hot today, wasn't she?"
"Was she? I wouldn't know how to compare."