Orson Card - Children of the Mind

"But there's a price for it," said Causo, nodding.

"Well, let's just say that there's a precondition," said Peter. "A key element of our instantaneous starflight includes a computer program that Starways Congress recently tried to kill. We found a substitute method, but it's not wholly adequate or satisfactory, and I think I can safely say that Starways Congress will never have the use of instantaneous starflight until all the ansibles in the Hundred Worlds are reconnected to all the computer networks on every world, without delays and without those pesky little snoop programs that keep yipping away like ineffectual little dogs."

"I don't have any authority to --"

"Admiral Lands, I didn't ask you to decide. I merely suggested the contents of the message you might want to send, by ansible, to Starways Congress. Immediately."

Lands looked away. "I don't feel well," he said. "I think I'm incapacitated. Executive Officer Causo, in front of Cargo Officer Lung, I hereby transfer command of this ship to you, and order you to notify Admiral Fukuda that he is now commander of this fleet."

"Won't work," said Peter. "The message I've described has to come from you. Fukuda isn't here and I don't intend to go repeat all of this to him. So you will make the report, and you will retain command of fleet and ship, and you will not weasel out of your responsibility. You made a hard choice a while back. You chose wrong, but at least you chose with courage and determination. Show the same courage now, Admiral. We haven't punished you here today, except for my unfortunate clumsiness with your fingers, for which I really am sorry. We're giving you a second chance. Take it, Admiral."

Lands looked at Peter and tears began to flow down his cheeks. "Why did you give me a second chance?"

"Because that's what Ender always wanted," said Peter. "And maybe by giving you a second chance, he'll get one, too."

Wang-mu took Peter's hand and squeezed it.

Then they disappeared from the cargo hold of the flagship and reappeared inside the control room of a shuttle orbiting the planet of the descoladores.

Wang-mu looked around at a room full of strangers. Unlike Admiral Lands's starship, this craft had no artificial gravity, but by holding onto Peter's hand Wang-mu kept from either fainting or throwing up. She had no idea who any of these people were, but she did know that Firequencher had to be a pequenino and the nameless worker at one of the computer terminals was a creature of the kind once hated and feared as the merciless buggers.

"Hi, Ela, Quara, Miro," said Peter. "This is Wang-mu."

Wang-mu would have been terrified, except that the others were so obviously terrified to see them .

Miro was the first to recover enough to speak. "Didn't you forget your spaceship?" he asked.

Wang-mu laughed.

"Hi, Royal Mother of the West," said Miro, using the name of Wang-mu's ancestor-of-the-heart, a god worshiped on the world of Path. "I've heard all about you from Jane," Miro added.

A woman drifted in through a corridor at one end of the control room.

"Val?" said Peter.

"No," answered the woman. "I'm Jane."

"Jane," whispered Wang-mu. "Malu's god."

"Malu's friend," said Jane. "As I am your friend, Wang-mu." She reached Peter and, taking him by both hands, looked him in the eye. "And your friend too, Peter. As I've always been your friend."

"HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY AREN'T QUIVERING IN TERROR?"

"O Gods! You are unjust!

My mother and father

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?"