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perhaps most of them, as they dwelt in the unspoken punishment and imprisonment enforced by the hive queen's workers.
Is all our work in vain, after all? thought Valentine. I, the historian, the philosopher Demosthenes, trying to teach people that they need not fear all aliens, but can see them as raman. And Ender, with his empathic books the Hive Queen, the Hegemon, the Life of Human-- what force did they really have in the world, compared with the instinctive terror at the sight of these dangerous oversized insects? Civilization is only a pretense; in the crisis, we become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and becoming instead the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy, wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone that we'll use the moment it comes close enough.
Now she was back in a clean, safe place, not so disquieting even if it did serve as a prison as well as the center of city government. A place where the buggers were seen as allies-- or at least as an indispensable peacekeeping force, holding antagonists apart for their mutual protection. There are people, Valentine reminded herself, who are able to transcend their animal origins.
When she opened the cell door, Olhado and Grego were both sprawled on bunks, papers strewn on the floor and table between them, some flat, some wadded up. Papers even covered the computer terminal, so that if the computer was on, the display couldn't possibly function. It looked like a typical teenager's bedroom, complete with Grego's legs stretching up the walls, his bare feet dancing a weird rhythm, twisting back and forth, back and forth in the air. What was his inner music?
"Boa tarde, Tia Valentina," said Olhado. Grego didn't even look up.
"Am I interrupting?"
"Just in time," said Olhado. "We're on the verge of reconceptualizing the universe. We've discovered the illuminating principle that wishing makes it so and all living creatures pop out of nowhere whenever they're needed."
"If wishing makes it so," said Valentine, "can we wish for faster-than-light flight?"
"Grego's doing math in his head right now," said Olhado, "so he's functionally dead. But yes. I think he's on to something-- he was shouting and dancing a minute ago. We had a sewing-machine experience."
"Ah," said Valentine.
"It's an old science-class story," said Olhado. "People who wanted to invent sewing machines kept failing because they always tried to imitate the motions of hand-sewing, pushing the needle through the fabric and drawing the thread along behind through the eye at the back end of the needle. It seemed obvious. Until somebody first thought of putting the eye in the nose of the needle and using