"Yes," said Plant
er.
"You can't."
"Yes I can. I'm not a very good Christian. I am not able to love the one who chooses to kill me and all my people."
She said nothing.
"Go away now," he said. "I've said all that I can say. Now I want to chant my stories and keep myself intelligent until death finally comes."
She walked away from him, into the sterilization chamber.
Miro turned toward Ela. "Get everybody out of the lab," he said.
"Why?"
"Because there's a chance that she'll come out and tell you what she knows."
"Then I should be the one to go, and everybody else stay," said Ela.
"No," said Miro. "You're the only one that she'll ever tell."
"If you think that, then you're a complete--"
"Telling anyone else wouldn't hurt her enough to satisfy her," said Miro. "Everybody out."
Ela thought for a moment. "All right," she said to the others. "Get back to the main lab and monitor your computers. I'll bring us up on the net if she tells me anything, and you can see what she enters as we put it in. If you can make sense of what you're seeing, start following it up. Even if she actually knows anything, we still won't have much time to design a truncated descolada so we can get it to Planter before he dies. Go."
They went.
When Quara emerged from the sterilization chamber, she found only Ela and Miro waiting for her.
"I still think it's wrong to kill the descolada before we've even tried to talk to it," she said.
"It may well be," said Ela. "I only know that I intend to do it if I can."
"Bring up your files," said Quara. "I'm going to tell you everything I know about descolada intelligence. If it works and Planter lives through this, I'm going to spit in his face."
"Spit a thousand times," said Ela. "Just so he lives."
Her files came up into the display. Quara began pointing to certain regions of the model of the descolada virus. Within a few minutes, it was Quara sitting before the terminal, typing, pointing, talking, as Ela asked questions.
In his ear, Jane spoke up again. "The little bitch," she said. "She didn't have her files in another computer. She kept everything she knew inside her head."
By late afternoon the next day, Planter was at the edge of death and Ela was at the edge of exhaustion. Her team had worked through the night; Quara had helped, constantly, indefatigably reading over everything Ela's people came up with, critiquing, pointing out errors. By midmorning, they had a plan for a truncated virus that should work. All of the language capability was gone, which meant the new viruses wouldn't be able to communicate with each other. All the analytical ability was gone as well, as near as they could tell. But safely in place were all the parts of the virus that supported bodily functions in the native species of Lusitania. As near as they could possibly tell without having a working sample of the virus, the new design was exactly what was needed--a descolada that was completely functional in the life cycles of the Lusitanian species, including the pequeninos, yet completely incapable of global regulation and manipulation. They named the new virus recolada. The old one had been named for its function of tearing apart; the new one for its remaining function, holding together the species-pairs that made up the native life of Lusitania.
Ender raised one objection--that since the descolada must have been putting the pequeninos into a belligerent, expansive mode, the new virus might lock them into that particular condition. But Ela and Quara answered together that they had deliberately used an older version of the descolada as their model, from a time when the pequeninos were more relaxed--more "themselves." The pequeninos working on the project had agreed to this; there was little time to consult anyone else except Human and Rooter, who also concurred.
With the things that Quara had taught them about the workings of the descolada, Ela also had a team working on a killer bacterium that would spread quickly through the entire planet's gaialogy, finding the normal descolada in every place and every form, tearing it to bits and killing it. It would recognize the old descolada by the very elements that the new descolada would lack. Releasing the recolada and the killer bacterium at the same time should do the job.
There was only one problem remaining--actually making the new virus. That was Ela's direct project from midmorning on. Quara collapsed and slept. So did most of the pequeninos. But Ela struggled on, trying to use all the tools she had to break apart the virus and recombine it as she needed.
But when Ender came late in the afternoon to tell her that it was now or never, if her virus was to save Planter, she could only break down and weep from exhaustion and frustration.
"I can't," she said.
"Then tell him that you've achieved it but you can't get it ready in time and--"