Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) (Ender Quartet)

before. What could be more dangerous than to have a fast-spreading, semi-intelligent virus in the hands of rebels? This group consisted almost entirely of delegates who were strongly influenced by the Necessarian school from Divine Wind."
    Wang-mu nodded. "And what do the Necessarians teach?"
    "That one lives in peace and harmony with one's environment, disturbing nothing, patiently bearing mild or even serious afflictions. However, when a genuine threat to survival emerges, one must act with brutal efficiency. The maxim is, Act only when necessary, and then act with maximum force and speed. Thus, where the militarists wanted a troopship, the Necessarian-influenced delegates insisted on sending a fleet armed with the Molecular Disruption Device, which would destroy the threat of the descolada virus once and for all. There's a sort of ironic neatness about it all, don't you think?"
    "I don't see it."
    "Oh, it fits together so perfectly. Ender Wiggin was the one who used the Little Doctor to wipe out the bugger home world. Now it's going to be used for only the second time -- against the very world where he happens to live! It gets even thicker. The first Necessarian philosopher, Ooka, used Ender himself as the prime example of his ideas. As long as the buggers were seen to be a dangerous threat to the survival of humankind, the only appropriate response was utter eradication of the enemy. No half-measures would do. Of course the buggers turned out not to have been a threat after all, as Ender himself wrote in his book The Hive Queen , but Ooka defended the mistake because the truth was unknowable at the time Ender's superiors turned him loose against the enemy. What Ooka said was, 'Never trade blows with the enemy.' His idea was that you try never to strike anyone, but when you must, you strike only one blow, but such a harsh one that your enemy can never, never strike back."
    "So using Ender as an example --"
    "That's right. Ender's own actions are being used to justify repeating them against another harmless species."
    "The descolada wasn't harmless."
    "No," said Peter. "But Ender and Ela found another way, didn't they? They struck a blow against the descolada itself. But there's no way now to convince Congress to withdraw the fleet. Because Jane already interfered with Congress's ansible communications with the fleet, they believe they face a formidable widespread secret conspiracy. Any argument we make will be seen as disinformation. Besides, who would believe the farfetched tale of that first trip Outside, where Ela created the anti-descolada, Miro recreated himself, and Ender made my dear sister and me?"
    "So the Necessarians in Congress --"
    "They don't call themselves that. But the influence is very strong. It is Jane's and my opinion that if we can get some prominent Necessarians to declare against the Lusitania Fleet -- with convincing reasoning, of course -- the solidarity of the pro-fleet majority in Congress will be broken up. It's a thin majority -- there are plenty of people horrified by such devastating use of force against a colony world, and others who are even more horrified at the idea that Congress would destroy the pequeninos, the first sentient species found since the destruction of the buggers. They would love to stop the fleet, or at worst use it to impose a permanent quarantine."
    "Why aren't we meeting with a Necessarian, then?"
    "Because why would they listen to us? If we identify ourselves as supporters of the Lusitanian cause, we'll be jailed and questioned. And if we don't, who will take our ideas seriously?"
    "This Aimaina Hikari, then. What is he?"
    "Some people call him the Yamato philosopher. All the Necessarians of Divine Wind are, naturally, Japanese, and the philosophy has become most influential among the Japanese, both on their home worlds and wherever they have a substantial population. So even though Hikari isn't a Necessarian, he is honored as the keeper of the Japanese soul."
    "If he tells them that it's un-Japanese to destroy Lusitania --"
    "But he won't. Not easily, anyway. His seminal work, which won him his reputation as the Yamato philosopher, included the idea that the Japanese people were born as rebellious puppets. First it was Chinese culture that pulled the strings. But Hikari says, Japan learned all the wrong lessons from the attempted Chinese invasion of Japan -- which, by the way, was defeated by a great storm, called kamikaze , which means 'Divine Wind.' So you