Xenocide (Ender's Saga 3)

"I ask, because we want to try to perform an experiment while we're out there."

"Don't waffle about it, Andrew," said Ela. "We want to perform a miracle while we're there. If we get Outside it means that Grego and Olhado are probably right about what it's like out there. And that means that the rules are different. Things can be created just by comprehending the pattern of them. So I want to go. There's a chance that while I'm there, holding the pattern of the recolada virus in my mind, I might be able to create it. I might be able to bring back a virus that can't be made in realspace. Can you take me? Can you hold me there long enough to make the virus?"

"How long is that?" asked Jane.

"It should be instantaneous," said Grego. "The moment we arrive, whatever full patterns we hold in our minds should be created within a period of time too brief for humans to notice. The real time will be taken analyzing to see if, in fact, she's got the virus she wanted. Maybe five minutes."

"Yes," said Jane. "If I can do this at all, I can do it for five minutes."

"The rest of the crew," said Ender.

"The rest of the crew will be you and Miro," said Jane. "And no one else."

Grego protested loudest, but he was not alone.

"I'm a pilot," said Jakt.

"I'm the only pilot of this ship," said Jane.

"Olhado and I thought of it," said Grego.

"Ender and Miro will come because it can't be done safely without them. I dwell within Ender--where he goes, he carries me with him. Miro, on the other hand, has become so close to me that I think he might be part of the pattern that is myself. I want him there because I may not be whole without him. No one else. I can't have anyone else in the pattern. Ela is the only one beyond these two."

"Then that's the crew," said Ender.

"With no argument," added Mayor Kovano.

"Will the hive queen build the ship?" asked Jane.

"She will," said Ender.

"Then I have only one more favor to ask. Ela, if I can give you the five minutes, can you also hold the pattern of another virus in your mind?"

"The virus for Path?" she asked.

"We owe them that, if we can, for the help they gave to us."

"I think so," she said, "or at least the differences between it and the normal descolada. That's all I can possibly hold of anything--the differences."

"And how soon will all this happen?" asked the Mayor.

"However fast the hive queen can build the ship," said Jane. "We have only forty-eight days until the Hundred Worlds shut down their ansibles. I will survive that day, we know that now, but it will cripple me. It will take me awhile to relearn all my lost memories, if I ever can. Until that's happened, I can't possibly sustain the pattern of a ship to go Outside."

"The hive queen can have a ship as simple as this one built long before then," said Ender. "In a ship so small there's no chance of shuttling all the people and pequeninos off Lusitania before the fleet arrives, let alone before the ansible cut-off keeps Jane from being able to fly the ship. But there'll be time to take new, descolada-free pequenino communities--a brother, a wife, and many pregnant little mothers--to a dozen planets and establish them there. Time to take new hive queens in their cocoons, already fertilized to lay their first few hundred eggs, to a dozen worlds as well. If this works at all, if we don't just sit there like idiots in a cardboard box wishing we could fly, then we'll come back with peace for this world, freedom from the danger of the descolada, and safe dispersal for the genetic heritage of the other species of ramen here. A week ago, it looked impossible. Now there's hope."

"Gracas a deus," said the Bishop.

Quara laughed.

Everyone looked at her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was just thinking--I heard a prayer, not many weeks ago. A prayer to Os Venerados, Grandfather Gusto and Grandmother Cida. That if there wasn't a way to solve the impossible problems facing us, they would petition God to open up the way."

"Not a bad prayer," said the Bishop. "And perhaps God has granted it."

"I know," said Quara. "That's what I was thinking. What if all this stuff about Outspace and Inspace, what if it was never real before. What if it only came to be true because of that prayer?"

"What of it?" asked the Bishop.