One Mind

"They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also remember. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn't just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don't have a language at all. We use every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don't even have the machinery to know we're signaling. And maybe they've been trying to think to us, and they can't understand why we don't respond."

"All right," said Hermione, disconcerted. "Say the Cloak existed ... what about the stone, Mr. Lovegood? The thing you call the Resurrection Stone?"

"What of it ?"

"Well, how can that be real?"

"Prove that it is not," said Xenophilius.

Hermione looked outraged.

"But that's - I'm sorry, but that's completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doen't exist? Do you expect me to get hold of - of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!"

"Yes, you could," said Xenophilius.