Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

descolada?"
    Quara had no answer. She sank onto the stool beside Planter's bed.
    Planter reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. The suit was not so thick and impermeable that she couldn't feel the pressure of it, even though he was very weak.
    "For myself, I don't mind dying," he said. "Maybe because of the third life, we pequeninos don't have the same fear of death that you short-lived humans do. But even though I won't have the third life, Quara, I will have the kind of immortality you humans have. My name will live in the stories. Even if I have no tree at all, my name will live. And what I did. You humans can say that I'm choosing to be a martyr for nothing, but my brothers understand. By staying clear and intelligent to the end, I prove that they are who they are. I help show that our slavemasters didn't make us who we are, and can't stop us from being who we are. The descolada may force us to do many things, but it doesn't own us to the very center. Inside us there is a place that is our true self. So I don't mind dying. I will live forever in every pequenino that is free."
    "Why are you saying this when only I can hear?" said Quara.
    "Because only you have the power to kill me completely. Only you have the power to make it so my death means nothing, so that all my people die after me and there's no one left to remember. Why shouldn't I leave my testament with you alone? Only you will decide whether or not it has any worth."
    "I hate you for this," she said. "I knew you'd do this."
    "Do what?"
    "Make me feel so terrible that I have to-- give in !"
    "If you knew I'd do this, why did you come?"
    "I shouldn't have! I wish I hadn't!"
    "I'll tell you why you came. You came so that I would make you give in. So that when you did it, you'd be doing it for my sake, and not for your family."
    "So I'm your puppet?"
    "Just the opposite. You chose to come here. You are using me to make you do what you really want to do. At heart you are still human, Quara. You want your people to live. You would be a monster if you didn't."
    "Just because you're dying doesn't make you wise," she said.
    "Yes it does," said Planter.
    "What if I tell you that I'll never cooperate in the killing of the descolada?"
    "Then I'll believe you," said Planter.
    "And hate me."
    "Yes," said Planter.
    "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