Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

five months ago." He typed again. The green dots all disappeared. "And those are their positions today."
    She looked for them. She couldn't find a green dot anywhere. Yet Father clearly expected her to see something . "Are they already at Lusitania?"
    "The ships are where you see them," said Father. "Five months ago the fleet disappeared."
    "Where did it go?"
    "No one knows."
    "Was it a mutiny?"
    "No one knows."
    "The whole fleet?"
    "Every ship."
    "When you say they disappeared, what do you mean?"
    Father glanced at her with a smile. "Well done, Qing-jao. You've asked the right question. No one saw them-- they were all in deep space. So they didn't physically disappear. As far as we know, they may be moving along, still on course. They only disappeared in the sense that we lost all contact with them. "
    "The ansibles?"
    "Silent. All within the same three-minute period. No transmissions were interrupted. One would end, and then the next one-- never came."
    "Every ship's connection with every planetside ansible everywhere ? That's impossible. Even an explosion-- if there could be one so large-- but it couldn't be a single event, anyway, because they were so widely distributed around Lusitania. "
    "Well, it could be, Qing-jao. If you can imagine an event so cataclysmic-- it could be that Lusitania's star became a supernova. It would be decades before we saw the flash even on the closest worlds. The trouble is that it would be the most unlikely supernova in history. Not impossible , but unlikely."
    "And there would have been some advance indications. Some changes in the star's condition. Didn't the ships' instruments detect something?"
    "No. That's why we don't think it was any known astronomical phenomenon. Scientists can't think of anything to explain it. So we've tried investigating it as sabotage. We've searched for penetrations of the ansible computers. We've raked over all the personnel files from every ship, searching for some possible conspiracy among the shipboard crews. There's been cryptoanalysis of every communication by every ship, searching for some kind of messages among conspirators. The military and the government have analyzed everything they can think of to analyze. The police on every planet have conducted inquiries-- we've checked the background on every ansible operator."
    "Even though no messages are being sent, are the ansibles still connected?"
    "What do you think?"
    Qing-jao blushed. "Of course they would be, even if an M.D. Device had been used against the fleet, because the ansibles are linked by fragments of subatomic particles. They'd still be there even if the whole starship were blown to dust."
    "Don't be embarrassed, Qing-jao. The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them."
    However, Qing-jao was blushing now for another reason. The hot blood was pounding in her head because it had only now dawned on her what Father's assignment for her was going to be. But that was impossible. He couldn't give to her a task that thousands of wiser, older people had already failed at.
    "Father," she whispered. "What is my task?" She still hoped that it was some minor problem involved with the disappearance of the fleet. But she knew that her hope was in vain even before he spoke.
    "You must discover every possible explanation for the disappearance of the fleet," he said, "and calculate the likelihood of each one. Starways Congress must be able to tell how this happened and how to make sure it will never happen again."
    "But Father," said Qing-jao, "I'm only sixteen. Aren't there many others who are wiser than I am?"
    "Perhaps they're all too wise to attept the task," he said. "But you are young enough not to fancy yourself wise. You're young enough to think of impossible things and discover why they might be possible. Above all, gods speak to you with extraordinary clarity, my brilliant child, my Gloriously Bright."
    That was what she was afraid of-- that Father expected her to succeed because of the favor of the gods. He didn't understand how unworthy the gods found her, how little they liked her.
    And there was another problem. "What if I succeed? What if I find out where the Lusitania Fleet is, and restore communications? Wouldn't it then be my fault if the fleet destroyed Lusitania?"
    "It's good that your first thought is compassion for the people of Lusitania. I assure you that Starways Congress has promised not