How It All Goes Down
Ender
- The epigraph is from Pipo's notes: He describes the several different piggie languages, and also says male piggies refer to female piggies as varelse, or animals. Pipo seems to think that's funny—maybe in the future they don't know about the long sexist tradition of referring to women as animals.
- Back at the plot, Jane, a superpowerful sentient AI, shows Ender a holograph of how the piggies killed Pipo; she is trying to convince Ender to go to Lusitania.
- We get some background on Jane: She spontaneously attained consciousness in space among ansible communications and can control all computers everywhere, and she sought Ender out because she read the Hive Queen and knew he was super empathic and awesome.
- Jane tells him that Lusitania would be the only world where he could put the Hive Queen, since it's already off-limits to humans for the most part.
- Seems kind of unfair to the piggies to put the Hive Queen there, which Ender points out, but Jane says he should go talk to them and see if they mind.
- Ender's intuition (and his secret psychic link to the writer of the book) tells him that the piggies didn't intend to torture Pipo, but were trying to help him.
- Jane knows she's convinced him, but he still can't go unless someone calls for a Speaker… which we know from the last chapter that Novinha did. Jane tells him so.
- She shows him a picture of Novinha and he sort of falls in love—in part because her pain reminds him of his own guilt about killing the buggers, and in part because he has super empathy and is able to know exactly how she feels by hearing Jane recite the facts of her life.
- He says he'll go; if he leaves immediately on a near-light-speed ship, he'll arrive when Novinha is in her late 30s.
- Jane instantly commissions a starship because Ender is really, really rich, along with all his other super-powers.
- Jane thinks Valentine will come, but Ender knows she won't because she's married and expecting a baby and has made Trondheim her home.
- Ender has a moment with the Hive Queen, who he carries around with him everywhere like sentient, icky luggage.
- The Hive Queen wants to go to Lusitania and lay her eggs; she forgives Ender for killing all her people, which is nice of her.