"Does he?"
"He says everybody else has to work and work to get a glimmer of an image into or out of the gold bugs' heads, but you could do it the very first time."
"I didn't realize I was all that unusual," said Ender.
"They talk about it when you're not there. Po talks about it with Papa."
"Interesting," said Ender. He didn't sound like he felt flattered, or like he was acting modest--Ender truly sounded like he thought of his unusual talent for talking with the gold bugs as a simple fact.
When he thought about it, this made sense to Abra. You shouldn't be proud of being good at something, if you were born with it. That would be as dumb as being proud of having two legs, or speaking a language, or pooping.
Because he was with Ender, Abra felt free to say what he had just thought of, and Ender laughed. "That's right, Abra. Something you work to achieve, that's one thing. Why not be proud of it? Why not feel good about it? But something you were born with, that's just the way you are. Do you mind if I quote you?"
Abra wasn't sure what he meant by quoting. Was he going to write a scholarly paper? A letter to somebody? "Go ahead," said Abra.
"So...I'm unusually good at talking to the gold bugs," said Ender. "I had no idea. It's not talking, though. It's more like they show you what they remember, and put a feeling with it. Like, here's my memory of food, and they put hunger with it. Or the same image of food, plus a feeling of revulsion or fear, meaning, this is poisonous or I don't like the taste or...you get the idea."
"No words," said Abra.
"Exactly."
"The way I see machinery," said Abra. "I have to find words to explain it to people, but when I see it, I just know. I don't think the machinery is talking to me, though. No feelings."
"It may not be talking," said Ender, "but that doesn't mean you can't hear."
"Exactly! Yes! That's right!" Abra almost shouted the words, and his eyes filled with tears, and he didn't even know why. Or...yes he did. No adult had ever known what it felt like before.
"I had a friend once, and I think he saw battles that way. I had to think things through, the way the forces were arranged, but Bean just saw. He didn't even realize that other people took longer to understand--or never did at all. To him it was simply obvious."
"Bean? Is that a name?"
"He was an orphan. It was a street name. He didn't find out his real name until later, when people who cared about him did enough research to find out that he had been kidnapped as an embryo and genetically altered to make him such a genius."
"Oh," said Abra. "So that's not what he really was."
"No, Abra," said Ender. "We really are what our genes make us. We really have whatever abilities they give. It's what we start with. Just because his genes were shaped deliberately, by a criminal scientist, doesn't mean they're any less his than our genes, which are shaped by random selection between the genes of our father and the genes of our mother. I was shaped deliberately, too. Not by illegal science, but my parents chose each other partly because they were each so brilliant, and then the International Fleet asked them to have a third child because my older brother and sister were so brilliant but still were not quite what the I.F. wanted. Does that mean that I'm not really me? Who would I be, if my parents hadn't given birth to me?"
Abra was having a hard time following the conversation. It made him sleepy. He yawned.
Then Ender came up with a comparison Abra understood. "It's like saying, What would this pump be, if it weren't a pump?"
"That's just dumb. It is a pump. If it weren't a pump, it wouldn't be anything at all."
"So now you understand."
Abra whispered the next question. "So you're like my father, and you don't believe people have souls?"
"No," said Ender. "I don't know about souls. I just know that while we're alive, in these bodies, we can only do what our body can do. My parents believe in souls. I've known people who were absolutely sure. Smart people. Good people. So just because I don't understand it doesn't mean I'm sure it can't be true."
"That's like what Papa says."
"See? He doesn't disbelieve in souls."
"But Mom talks like...she says that she can look in my eyes and see into my soul."
"Maybe she can."
"Like you can look into a gold bug larva and see what it's thinking?"