deserved to have
a better child
than me!"
from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
"You had the Little Doctor in your possession and you gave it back?" asked Quara, sounding incredulous.
Everyone, Miro included, assumed she meant that she didn't trust the fleet not to use it.
"It was dismantled in front of my eyes," said Peter.
"Well, can it be mantled again?" she asked.
Wang-mu tried to explain. "Admiral Lands isn't going to be able to go down that road now. We wouldn't have left things unsettled. Lusitania is safe."
"She's not talking about Lusitania," said Ela coldly. "She's talking about here. The descolada planet."
"Am I the only person who thought of it?" said Quara. "Tell the truth--it would solve all our worries about followup probes, about new outbreaks of even worse versions of the descolada--"
"You're thinking of blowing up a world populated by a sentient race?" asked Wang-mu.
"Not right now," said Quara, sounding as if Wang-mu were the stupidest person she had ever wasted time talking to. "If we determine that they're, you know, what Valentine called them. Varelse. Unable to be reasoned with. Impossible to coexist with."
"So what you're saying," said Wang-mu, "is that--"
"I'm saying what I said," Quara answered.
Wang-mu went on. "What you're saying is that Admiral Lands wasn't wrong in principle, he simply was wrong about the facts of the particular case. If the descolada had still been a threat on Lusitania, then it's his duty to blow up the planet."
"What are the lives of the people of one planet compared to all sentient life?" asked Quara.
"Is this," said Miro, "the same Quara Ribeira who tried to keep us from wiping out the descolada virus because it might be sentient?" He sounded amused.
"I've thought a lot about that since then," said Quara. "I was being childish and sentimental. Life is precious. Sentient life is more precious. But when one sentient group threatens the survival of another, then the threatened group has the right to protect themselves. Isn't that what Ender did? Over and over again?"
Quara looked from one to another, triumphant.
Peter nodded. "Yes," he said. "That's what Ender did."
"In a game," said Wang-mu.
"In his fight with two boys who threatened his life. He made sure they could never threaten him again. That's how war is fought, in case any of you have foolish ideas to the contrary. You don't fight with minimum force, you fight with maximum force at endurable cost. You don't just pink your enemy, you don't even bloody him, you destroy his capability to fight back. It's the strategy you use with diseases. You don't try to find a drug that kills ninety-nine percent of the bacteria or viruses. If you do that, all you've accomplished is to create a new drug-resistant strain. You have to kill a hundred percent."
Wang-mu tried to think of an argument against this. "Is disease really a valid analogy?"
"What is your analogy?" answered Peter. "A wrestling match? Fight to wear down your opponent's resistance? That's fine--if your opponent is playing by the same rules. But if you stand there ready to wrestle and he pulls out a knife or a gun, what then? Or is it a tennis match? Keep score until your opponent sets off the bomb under your feet? There aren't any rules. In war."
"But is this war?" asked Wang-mu.
"As Quara said," Peter answered. "If we find out there's no dealing with them, then yes, it's a war. What they did to Lusitania, to the defenseless pequeninos, was devastating, soulless, total war without regard to the rights of the other side. That's our enemy, unless we can bring them to understand the consequences of what they did. Isn't that what you were saying, Quara?"
"Perfectly," said Quara.
Wang-mu knew there was something wrong with this reasoning, but she couldn't lay her finger on it. "Peter, if you really believe this, why didn't you keep the Little Doctor?"
"Because," said Peter, "we might be wrong, and the danger is not imminent."