Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

creating them both, hour by hour. We've felt the pattern in him. He may not understand it himself, but there is no difference between these two and himself. Different bodies, perhaps, but they are part of him all the same. Whatever they do, whatever they say, it is Ender's ai ú a , acting and speaking.>
    
    
    
    
    
      
 
    It was the last day of the test of the recolada. Word of its success-- so far-- had already spread through the human colony-- and, Ender assumed, among all the pequeninos as well. Ela's assistant named Glass had volunteered to be the experimental subject. He had lived now for three days in the same isolation chamber where Planter had sacrificed himself. This time, though, the descolada had been killed within him by the viricide bacterium he had helped Ela devise. And this time, performing the functions that the descolada had once fulfilled, was Ela's new recolada virus. It had worked perfectly. He was not even slightly ill. Only one last step remained before the recolada could be pronounced a full success.
    An hour before that final test, Ender, with his absurd entourage of Peter and young Val, was meeting with Quara and Grego in Grego's cell.
    "The pequeninos have accepted it," Ender explained to Quara. "They're willing to take the risk of killing the descolada and replacing it with the recolada, after testing it with Glass alone."
    "I'm not surprised," said Quara.
    " I am," said Peter. "The piggies obviously have a deathwish as a species."
    Ender sighed. Though he was no longer a frightened little boy, and Peter was no longer older and larger and stronger than he, there was still no love in Ender's heart for this simulacrum of his brother that he had somehow created Outside. He was everything Ender had feared and hated in his childhood, and it was infuriating and frightening to have him back again.
    "What do you mean?" said Grego. "If the pequeninos didn't consent to it, then the descolada would make them too dangerous for humankind to allow them to survive."
    "Of course," said Peter, smiling. "The physicist is an expert on strategy."
    "What Peter is saying," said Ender, "is that if he were in charge of the pequeninos-- which he no doubt would like to be-- he would never willingly give up the descolada until he had won something from humanity in exchange for it."
    "To the surprise of all, the aging boy wonder still has a tiny spark of wit," said Peter. "Why should they kill off their only weapon that humanity has any reason to fear? The Lusitania Fleet is still coming, and it still has the M.D. Device aboard. Why don't they make Andrew here get on that magic flying football of his and go meet the fleet and lay down the law?"
    "Because they'd shoot me down like a dog," said Ender. "The pequeninos are doing this because it's right and fair and decent. Words that I'll define for you later."
    "I know the words," said Peter. "I also know what they mean."
    "You do?" asked young Val. Her voice, as always, was a surprise-- soft, mild, and yet able to pierce the conversation. Ender remembered that Valentine's voice had always been that way. Impossible not to listen to, though she so rarely raised her voice.
    " Right. Fair. Decent, " said Peter. The words sounded filthy in his mouth. "Either the person saying them believes in those concepts or not. If not, then those words mean that he's got somebody standing behind me with a knife in his hand. And if he does believe them, then those words mean that I'm going to win."
    " I'll tell you what they mean," said Quara. "They mean that we're going to congratulate the pequeninos-- and ourselves-- for wiping out a sentient species that may exist nowhere else in the universe."
    "Don't kid yourself," said Peter.
    "Everybody's so sure that the descolada is a designed virus," said Quara, "but nobody's considered the alternative-- that a much more primitive, vulnerable version of the descolada evolved naturally, and then changed itself to its present form. It might be a designed virus, yes, but who did the designing? And now we're killing it without attempting conversation."
    Peter grinned at her, then at Ender. "I'm surprised that this weaselly little conscience is not your blood offspring," he said. "She's as obsessed with finding reasons to feel guilty as you and Val."
    Ender ignored him and attempted to answer Quara. "We are