"The descolada adapts," said Miro. "Jane told me that it's already changed itself a couple of times. My mother and my sister Ela are working on it--trying to stay ahead of the descolada. Sometimes it even looks like the descolada is doing it deliberately. Intelligently. Finding strategies to get around the chemicals we use to contain it and stop it from killing people. It's getting into the Earthborn crops that humans need in order to survive on Lusitania. They have to spray them now. What if the descolada finds a way to get around all our barriers?"
Valentine was silent. No glib answer now. She hadn't faced this question squarely--no one had, except Miro.
"I haven't even told this to Jane," said Miro. "But what if the fleet is right? What if the only way to save humanity from the descolada is to destroy Lusitania now?"
"No," said Valentine. "This has nothing to do with the purposes for which Starways Congress sent out the fleet. Their reasons all have to do with interplanetary politics, with showing the colonies who's boss. It has to do with a bureaucracy out of control and a military that--"
"Listen to me!" said Miro. "You said you wanted to hear my stories, listen to this one: It doesn't matter what their reasons are. It doesn't matter if they're a bunch of murderous beasts. I don't care. What matters is--should they blow up Lusitania?"
"What kind of person are you?" asked Valentine. He could hear both awe and loathing in her voice.
"You're the moral philosopher," said Miro. "You tell me. Are we supposed to love the pequeninos so much that we allow the virus they carry to destroy all of humanity?"
"Of course not. We simply have to find a way to neutralize the descolada."
"And if we can't?"
"Then we quarantine Lusitania. Even if all the human beings on the planet die--your family and mine--we still don't destroy the pequeninos."
"Really?" asked Miro. "What about the hive queen?"
"Ender told me that she was reestablishing herself, but--"
"She contains within herself a complete industrialized society. She's going to build starships and get off the planet."
"She wouldn't take the descolada with her!"
"She has no choice. The descolada is in her already. It's in me."
That was when he really got to her. He could see it in her eyes--the fear.
"It'll be in you, too. Even if you run back to your ship and seal me off and keep yourself from infection, once you land on Lusitania the descolada will get into you and your husband and your children. They'll have to ingest the chemicals with their food and water, every day of their lives. And they can never go away from Lusitania again or they'll carry death and destruction with them."
"I suppose we knew that was a possibility," said Valentine.
"When you left, it was only a possibility. We thought that the descolada would soon be controlled. Now they aren't sure if it can ever be controlled. And that means that you can never leave Lusitania once you go there."
"I hope we like the weather."
Miro studied her face, the way she was processing the information he had given her. The initial fear was gone. She was herself again--thinking. "Here's what I think," said Miro. "I think that no matter how terrible Congress is, no matter how evil their plans might be, that fleet might be the salvation of humanity."
Valentine answered thoughtfully, searching for words. Miro was glad to see that--she was a person who didn't shoot back without thinking. She was able to learn. "I can see that if events move down one possible path, there might be a time when--but it's very improbable. First of all, knowing all this, the hive queen is quite unlikely to build any starships that would carry the descolada away from Lusitania."
"Do
you know the hive queen?" demanded Miro. "Do you understand her?"
"Even if she would do such a thing," said Valentine, "your mother and sister are working on this, aren't they? By the time we reach Lusitania--by the time the fleet reaches Lusitania--they might have found a way to control the descolada once and for all."
"And if they do," said Miro, "should they use it?"
"Why shouldn't they?"
"How could they kill all the descolada virus? The virus is an integral part of the pequenino life cycle. When the pequenino body-form dies, it's the descolada virus that enables the transformation into the tree-state, what the piggies call the third life--and it's only in the third life, as trees, that the pequenino males can fertilize the females. If the virus is gone, there can be no more passage into the third life, and this generation of piggies is the last."
"That doesn't make it impossible, it only makes it harder. Your mother and sister have to find a way to neutralize the descolada in human beings and the crops we need to eat, without destroying its ability to enable the pequeninos to pass into adulthood."
"And they have less than fifteen years to do it," said Miro. "Not likely."