Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"I'd try to drive Qing-jao into helpless madness, if I thought it could save the hive queen and the pequeninos. She's very close to losing her mind--I could do it."

"Do it," said Ender. "Do what it takes."

"I can't," said Jane. "Because it would only hurt her, and wouldn't save us in the end."

"If you were a slightly lower animal," said Ender, "you'd have a much better chance of coming out of this thing alive."

"As low as you were, Ender the Xenocide?"

"As low as that," said Ender. "Then you could live."

"Or perhaps if I were as wise as you were then."

"I have my brother Peter inside me, as well as my sister Valentine," said Ender. "The beast as well as the angel. That's what you taught me, back when you were nothing but the program we called the Fantasy Game."

"Where is the beast inside me?"

"You don't have one," said Ender.

"Maybe I'm not really alive at all," said Jane. "Maybe because I never passed through the crucible of natural selection, I lack the will to survive."

"Or maybe you know, in some secret place within yourself, that there's another way to survive, a way that you simply haven't found yet."

"That's a cheerful thought," said Jane. "I'll pretend to believe in that."

"Peco que deus te abencoe," said Ender.

"Oh, you're just getting sentimental," said Jane.

For a long time, several minutes, the three faces in the display gazed in silence at Qing-jao, at Wang-mu. Then at last the two alien faces disappeared, and all that remained was the face named Jane. "I wish I could do it," she said. "I wish I could kill your world to save my friends."

Relief came to Qing-jao like the first strong breath to a swimmer who nearly drowned. "So you can't stop me," she said triumphantly. "I can send my message!"

Qing-jao walked to the terminal and sat down before Jane's watching face. But she knew that the image in the display was an illusion. If Jane watched, it was not with those human eyes, it was with the visual sensors of the computer. It was all electronics, infinitesimal machinery but machinery nonetheless. Not a living soul. It was irrational to feel ashamed under that illusionary gaze.

"Mistress," said Wang-mu.

"Later," said Qing-jao.

"If you do this, Jane will die. They'll shut down the ansibles and kill her."

"What doesn't live cannot die," said Qing-jao.

"The only reason you have the power to kill her is because of her compassion."

"If she seems to have compassion it's an illusion--she was programmed to simulate compassion, that's all."

"Mistress, if you kill every manifestation of this pr

ogram, so that no part of her remains alive, how are you different from Ender the Xenocide, who killed all the buggers three thousand years ago?"

"Maybe I'm not different," said Qing-jao. "Maybe Ender also was the servant of the gods."

Wang-mu knelt beside Qing-jao and wept on the skirt of her gown. "I beg you, Mistress, don't do this evil thing."

But Qing-jao wrote her report. It stood as clear and simple in her mind as if the gods had given the words to her. "To Starways Congress: The seditious writer known as Demosthenes is a woman now on or near Lusitania. She has control of or access to a program that has infested all ansible computers, causing them to fail to report messages from the fleet and concealing the transmission of Demosthenes' own writings. The only solution to this problem is to extinguish the program's control over ansible transmissions by disconnecting all ansibles from their present computers and bringing clean new computers online, all at once. For the present I have neutralized the program, allowing me to send this message and probably allowing you to send your orders to all worlds; but that cannot be guaranteed now and certainly cannot be expected to continue indefinitely, so you must act quickly. I suggest you set a date exactly forty standard weeks from today for all ansibles to go offline at once for a period of at least one standard day. All the new ansible computers, when they go online, must be completely unconnected to any other computer. From now on ansible messages must be manually re-entered at each ansible computer so that electronic contamination will never be possible again. If you retransmit this message immediately to all ansibles, using your code of authority, my report will become your orders; no further instructions will be needed and Demosthenes' influence will end. If you do not act immediately, I will not be responsible for the consequences."

To this report Qing-jao affixed her father's name and the authority code he had given her; her name would mean nothing to Congress, but his name would be heeded, and the presence of his authority code would ensure that it was received by all the people who had particular interest in his statements.