Page 860 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Then stop showing me anything, if it depends on another sense. Eyes are too important to humans; if I see anything it'll mask out anything but clear speech and I don't think there's much of that at a queen-making."
<How's this?>
"I'm still seeing something."
<Your brain is turning it into seeing.> "Then explain it. Help me make sense of it."
<It's the way we feel each other. We're finding the reaching-out place in the queen-body. The workers all have it, too, but all it reaches for is the queen and when it finds her all the reaching is over. The queen never stops reaching. Calling.>
"So then you find her?"
<We know where she is. The queen-body. The worker-caller. The memory-holder.>
"Then what are you searching for?"
<The us-thing. The binder. The meaning-maker.>
"You mean there's something else? Something besides the queen's body?"
<Yes, of course. The queen is just a body, like the workers. Didn't you know this?>
"No, I never saw it."
<Can't see it. Not with eyes.>
"I didn't know to look for anything else. I saw the making of the queen when you first showed it to me years ago. I thought I understood then."
<We thought you did too.>
"So if the queen's just a body, who are you?"
<We're the hive queen. And all the workers. We come and make one person out of all. The queen- body, she obeys us like the worker-bodies. We hold them all together, protect them, let them work perfectly as each is needed. We're the center. Each of us.>
"But you've always talked as if you were the hive queen."