Part 42 (1/2)
”So you have to teach her.”
What good would teaching do? The thinker isn't there. The found thing. The binder-together.
”I don't know what you're talking about.”
Stop trying to look look and and think think, then. This isn't done with eyes.
”Then stop showing me anything, if it depends on another sense. Eyes are too important to humans; if I see anything anything it'll mask out anything but clear speech and I don't think there's much of it'll mask out anything but clear speech and I don't think there's much of that that at a queen-making.” 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 know where where she she is. The queen-body. The worker-caller. The memory-holder. 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 besides the queen's body?” 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 see it. Not with eyes. 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 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 talked as if you as if you were were the Hive Queen.” the Hive Queen.”
We are are. Also all the workers. We're all together.
”But this center-thing, this binder-together--”
We call it to come and take the queen-body, so she can be wise, our sister.
”You call call it. What is it?” it. What is it?”
The thing we call.
”Yes, what is is it?” it?”
What are you asking? It's the called-thing. We call it.
It was almost unbearably frustrating. So much of what the Hive Queen did was instinctive. She had no language and so she had never had a need to develop clear explanations of that which had never needed explaining till now. So he had to help her find a way to clarify what he couldn't perceive directly.
”Where do you find it?”
It hears us calling and cornes.
”But how do you call?”
As you called us. We imagine the thing which it must become. The pattern of the hive. The queen and the workers and the binding together. Then one comes who understands the pattern and can hold it. We give the queen-body to it.
”So you're calling some other creature to come and take possession of the queen.”
To become become the queen and the hive and all. To hold the pattern we imagined. the queen and the hive and all. To hold the pattern we imagined.
”So where does it come from?”
Wherever it was when it felt us calling.
”But where is that?”
Not here.
”Fine, I believe you. But where does it come from?”
Can't think of the place.
”You forget?”
We mean that the place where it is can't be thought of. If we could think of the place then they would already have thought of themselves and none of them would need to take the pattern we show.
”What kind of thing is is this binder-together?” this binder-together?”
Can't see it. Can't know it until it finds the pattern and then when it's there it's like us us.
Ender couldn't help shuddering. All this time he had thought that he was speaking to the Hive Queen herself. Now he realized that the thing that talked to him in his mind was only using that body the way it used the b.u.g.g.e.rs. Symbiosis. A controlling parasite, possessing the whole Hive Queen system, using it.
No. This is ugly, the terrible thing you're thinking. We aren't another thing. We're this this thing. We thing. We are are the Hive Queen, just the way you're the body. You say, My body, and yet you are your body, but you're also possessor of the body. The Hive Queen is ourself, this body is me, not something else inside. I. I wasn't anything until I found the imagining. the Hive Queen, just the way you're the body. You say, My body, and yet you are your body, but you're also possessor of the body. The Hive Queen is ourself, this body is me, not something else inside. I. I wasn't anything until I found the imagining.
”I don't understand. What was it like?”
How can I remember? I never had memory until I followed the imagining and came to this place and became the Hive Queen.