Page 813 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

change-- temperature fluctuations, orbital disturbances, seismic and volcanic cycles-- how would a system of really only a handful of species ever cope with that? If the world has only light daisies, how will it ever warm itself when the sun cools? If its lifeforms are all carbon dioxide users, how will they heal themselves when the oxygen in the atmosphere reaches poisonous levels? Your so- called friends in Lusitania are fools, to send you nonsense like this. If they were real scientists, they would know that their results are impossible."
Qing-jao pressed a key and the display over her terminal went blank. "You have wasted time that I don't have. If you have nothing better than this to offer, do not come to me again. You are less than nothing to me. You are a bug floating in my waterglass. You defile the whole glass, not just the place where you float. I wake up in pain, knowing you are in this house."
Then I'm hardly "nothing" to you, am I? said Wang-mu silently. It sounds to me as if I'm very important to you indeed. You may be very brilliant, Qing-jao, but you do not understand yourself any better than anybody else does.
"Because you are a stupid common girl, you do not understand me," said Qing-jao. "I have told you to leave."
"But your father is master of this house, and Master Han has asked me to stay."
"Little stupid-person, little sister-of-pigs, if I cannot ask you to leave the whole house, I have certainly implied that I would like you to leave my room."
Wang-mu bowed her head till it almost-- almost-- touched the floor. Then she backed out of the room, so as not to show her back parts to her mistress. If you treat me this way, then I will treat you like a great lord, and if you do not detect the irony in my actions, then who of the two of us is the fool?
***
Master Han was not in his room when Wang-mu returned. He might be at the toilet and return in a moment. He might be performing some ritual of the godspoken, in which case he could be gone for hours. Wang-mu was too full of questions to wait for him. She brought up the project documents on the terminal, knowing that Jane would be watching, monitoring her. That Jane had no doubt monitored all that happened in Qing-jao's room.
Still, Jane waited for Wang-mu to phrase the questions she had got from Qing-jao before she started trying to answer. And then Jane answered first the question of veracity.
"The documents from Lusitania are genuine enough," said Jane. "Ela and Novinha and Ouanda and all the others who have studied with them are deeply specialized, yes, but within their specialty they're very good. If Qing-jao had read the Life of Human, she would see how these dozen species- pairs function."