Page 903 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

<With any luck, none of this will matter. Their new starship will find its way Outside, return with the recolada, set you free and us as well, and then the new ship will shuttle us all to as many worlds as we desire.>
<Will it work? The box you made for them?>
<We know the place where they're going is real; we call our very selves from there. And the bridge we made, the one that Ender calls Jane, is such a pattern as we've never seen before. If it can be done, such a one as that can do it. We never could.>
<Will you leave? If the new ship works?>
<We'll make daughter-queens who'll take my memories with them to other worlds. But we ourselves will stay here. This place where I came forth from my cocoon, it's my home forever.>
<So you're as rooted here as I am.>
<That's what daughters are for. To go where we will never go, to carry our memory on to places that we'll never see.>
<But we will see. Won't we? You said the philotic connection would remain.>
<We were thinking of the voyage across time. We live a long time, we hives, you trees. But our daughters and their daughters will outlive us. Nothing changes that.>
Qing-jao listened to them as they laid the choice before her.
"Why should I care what you decide?" she said, when they were finished. "The gods will laugh at you."
Father shook his head. "No they won't, my daughter, Gloriously Bright. The gods care nothing more for Path than any other world. The people of Lusitania are on the verge of creating a virus that can free us all. No more rituals, no more bondage to the disorder in our brains. So I ask you again, if we can do it, should we? It would cause disorder here. Wang-mu and I have planned how we'll proceed, how we'll announce what we are doing so that people will understand it, so there'll be a chance that the godspoken won't be slaughtered, but can step down gently from their privileges."
"Privileges are nothing," said Qing-jao. "You taught me that yourself. They're only the people's way of expressing their reverence for the gods."
"Alas, my daughter, if only I knew that more of the godspoken shared that humble view of our station. Too many of them think that it's their right to be acquisitive and oppressive, because the gods speak to them and not to others."