Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"I guess we expected that," said Novinha.

"We still had to try," said Ela.

"Why did we have to try?" demanded Grego. Novinha's youngest son--and therefore Ender's stepson--was in his mid-thirties now, a brilliant scientist in his own right; but he did seem to relish his role as devil's advocate in all the family's discussions, whether they dealt with xenobiology or the color to paint the walls. "All we're doing by introducing these new strains is teaching the descolada how to get around every strategy we have for killing it. If we don't wipe it out soon, it'll wipe us out. And once the descolada is gone, we can grow regular old potatoes without any of this nonsense."

"We can't!" shouted Quara. Her vehemence surprised Ender. Quara was reluctant to speak out at the best of times; for her to speak so loudly now was out of character. "I tell you that the descolada is alive."

"And I tell you that a virus is a virus," said Grego.

It bothered Ender that Grego was calling for the extermination of the descolada--it wasn't like him to so easily call for something that would destroy the pequeninos. Grego had practically grown up among the pequenino males--he knew them better, spoke their language better, than anyone.

"Children, be quiet and let me explain this to Andrew," said Novinha. "We were discussing what to do if the potatoes failed, Ela and I, and she told me--no, you explain it, Ela."

"It's an easy enough concept. Instead of trying to grow plants that inhibit the growth of the descolada virus, we need to go after the virus itself."

"Right," said Grego.

"Shut up," said Quara.

"As a kindness to us all, Grego, please do as your sister has so kindly asked," said Novinha.

Ela sighed and went on. "We can't just kill it because that would kill all the other native life on Lusitania. So what I propose is trying to develop a new strain of descolada that continues to act as the present virus acts in the reproductive cycles of all the Lusitanian life forms, but without the ability to adapt to new species."

"You can eliminate that part of the virus?" asked Ender. "You can find it?"

"Not likely. But I think I can find all the parts of the virus that are active in the piggies and in all the other plant-animal pairs, keep those, and discard everything else. Then we'd add a rudimentary reproductive ability and set up some receptors so it'll respond properly to the appropriate changes in the host bodies, put the whole thing in a little organelle, and there we have it--a substitute for the descolada so that the pequeninos and all the other native species are safe, while we can live without worry."

"Then you'll spray all the original descolada virus to wipe them out?" asked Ender. "What if there's already a resistant strain?"

"No, we don't spray them, because spraying wouldn't wipe out the viruses that are already incorporated into the bodies of every Lusitanian creature. This is the really tricky part--"

"As if the rest were easy," said Novinha, "making a new organelle out of nothing--"

"We can't just inject these organelles into a few piggies or even into all of them, because we'd also have to inject them into every other native animal and tree and blade of grass."

"Can't be done," said Ender.

"So we have to develop a mechanism to deliver the organelles universally, and at the same time destroy the old descolada viruses once and for all."

"Xenocide," said Quara.

"That's the argument," said Ela. "Quara says the descolada is sentient,"

Ender looked at his youngest stepdaughter. "A sentient molecule?"

"They have language, Andrew."

"When did this happen?" asked Ender. He was trying to imagine how a genetic molecule--even one as long and complex as the descolada virus--could possibly speak.

"I've suspected it for a long time. I wasn't going to say anything until I was sure, but--"

"Which means she isn't sure," said Grego triumphantly.

"But I'm almost sure now, and you can't go destroying a whole species until we know."

"How do they speak?" asked Ender.

"Not like us, of course," said Quara. "They pass information back and forth to each other at a molecular level. I first noticed it as I was working on the question of how the new resistant strains of the descolada spread so quickly and replaced all the old viruses in such a short time. I couldn't solve that problem because I was asking the wrong question. They don't replace the old ones. They simply pass messages."