Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) (Ender Quartet)

loathsome."
    "So that's what power is to you," said Quara. "A chance to push other people around and act like the queen."
    "You really can't do it, can you?" said Jane.
    "Can't what?" said Quara. "Can't bow down and kiss your feet?"
    "Can't shut up to save your own life."
    "I'm trying to solve the problem of communicating with an alien species, and you're busy worrying about whether I'm nice enough to you."
    "But Quara," said Jane, "hasn't it ever occurred to you that once they get to know you, even the aliens will wish you had never learned their language?"
    "I'm certainly wishing you had never learned mine," said Quara. "You're certainly full of yourself, now that you have this pretty little body to play around with. Well, you're not queen of the universe and I'm not going to dance through hoops for you. It wasn't my idea to come on this voyage, but I'm here -- I'm here, the whole obnoxious package -- and if there's something about me that you don't like, why don't you shut up about it? And as long as we're making threats, I think that if you push me too far I'll rearrange your face more to my liking. Is that clear?"
    Jane unstrapped herself from her seat and drifted from the main cabin into the corridor leading into the storage compartments of the shuttle. Miro followed her, ignoring Quara as she said to the others, "Can you believe how she talked to me? Who does she think she is, judging who's too irritating to live?"
    Miro followed Jane into a storage compartment. She was clinging to a handhold on the far wall, bent over and heaving in a way that made Miro wonder if she was throwing up. But no. She was crying. Or rather, she was so enraged that her body was sobbing and producing tears from the sheer uncontainability of the emotion. Miro touched her shoulder to try to calm her. She recoiled.
    For a moment he almost said, Fine, have it your way; then he would have left, angry himself, frustrated that she wouldn't accept his comfort. But then he remembered that she had never been this angry before. She had never had to deal with a body that responded like this. At first, when she began rebuking Quara, Miro had thought, It's about time somebody laid it on the line. But when the argument went on and on, Miro realized that it wasn't Quara who was out of control, it was Jane. She didn't know how to deal with her emotions. She didn't know when it wasn't worth going on. She felt what she was feeling, and she didn't know how to do anything but express it.
    "That was hard," Miro said. "Cutting off the argument and coming in here."
    "I wanted to kill her," said Jane. Her voice was almost unintelligible from the weeping, from the savage tension in her body. "I've never felt anything like it. I wanted to get out of the chair and tear her apart with my bare hands."
    "Welcome to the club," said Miro.
    "You don't understand," she said. "I really wanted to do it. I felt my muscles flexing, I was ready to do it. I was going to do it."
    "As I said. Quara makes us all feel that way."
    "No," said Jane. "Not like this. You all stay calm, you all stay in control."
    "And you will, too," said Miro, "when you have a little more practice."
    Jane lifted her head, leaned it back, shook it. Her hair swung weightlessly free in the air. "Do you really feel this?"
    "All of us do," said Miro. "That's why we have a childhood -- to learn to get over our violent tendencies. But they're in us all. Chimps and baboons do it. All the primates. We display. We have to express our rage physically."
    "But you don't. You stay so calm. You let her spout off and say these horrible --"
    "Because it's not worth the trouble of stopping her," said Miro. "She pays the price for it. She's desperately lonely and nobody deliberately seeks an opportunity to spend time in her company."
    "Which is the only reason she isn't dead."
    "That's right," said Miro. "That's what civilized people do -- they avoid the circumstance that enrages them. Or if they can't avoid it, they detach. That's what Ela and I do, mostly. We just detach. We just let her provocations roll over us."
    "I can't do it," said Jane. "It was so simple before I felt these things. I could tune her out."
    "That's it," said Miro. "That's what we do. We tune her out."
    "It's more complicated than I thought," said Jane. "I don't know if I can do it."
    "Yeah, well, you don't have much choice right now, do you," he said.
    "Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of