Xenocide

“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.”

“They throw darts,” said Grego.

“That was my own word for it,” said Quara. “I didn't understand that it was speech.”

“Because it wasn't speech,” said Grego.

“That was five years ago,” said Ender. “You said the darts they send out carry the needed genes and then all the viruses that receive the darts revise their own structure to include the new gene. That's hardly language.”

“But that isn't the only time they send darts,” said Quara. “Those messenger molecules are moving in and out all the time, and most of the time they aren't incorporated into the body at all. They get read by several parts of the descolada and then they're passed on to another one.”

“This is language?” asked Grego.

“Not yet,” said Quara. “But sometimes after a virus reads one of these darts, it makes a new dart and sends it out. Here's the part that tells me it's a language: The front part of the new dart always begins with a molecular sequence similar to the back tag of the dart that it's answering. It holds the thread of the conversation together.”

“Conversation,” said Grego scornfully.

“Be quiet or die,” said Ela. Even after all these years, Ender realized, Ela's voice still had the power to curb Grego's snottiness– sometimes, at least.

“I've tracked some of these conversations for as many as a hundred statements and answers. Most of them die out much sooner than that. A few of them are incorporated into the main body of the virus. But here's the most interesting thing– it's completely voluntary. Sometimes one virus will pick up that dart and keep it, while most of the others don't. Sometimes most of the viruses will keep a particular dart. But the area where they incorporate these message darts is exactly that area that has been hardest to map. It's hardest to map because it isn't part of their structure, it's their memory, and individuals are all different from each other. They also tend to weed out a few memory fragments when they've taken on too many darts.”

“This is all fascinating,” said Grego, “but it isn't science. There are plenty of explanations for these darts and the random bonding and shedding–”

“Not random!” said Quara.

“None of this is language,” said Grego.

Ender ignored the argument, because Jane was whispering in his ear through the jewel-like transceiver he wore there. She spoke to him more rarely now than in years past. He listened carefully, taking nothing for granted. “She's on to something,” Jane said. “I've looked at her research and there's something going on here that doesn't happen with any other subcellular creature. I've run many different analyses on the data, and the more I simulate and test this particular behavior of the descolada, the less it looks like genetic coding and the more it looks like language. At the moment we can't rule out the possibility that it is voluntary.”

When Ender turned his attention back to the argument, Grego was speaking. “Why do we have to turn everything we haven't figured out yet into some kind of mystical experience?” Grego closed his eyes and intoned, “I have found new life! I have found new life!”

“Stop it!” shouted Quara.

“This is getting out of hand,” said Novinha. “Grego, try to keep this at the level of rational discussion.”

«It's hard to, when the whole thing is so irrational. At‚ agora quem ja imaginou microbiologista que se torna namorada de uma mol‚cula?» Who ever heard of a microbiologist getting a crush on a molecule?

“Enough!” said Novinha sharply. “Quara is as much a scientist as you are, and–”

“She was,” muttered Grego.

“And– if you'll kindly shut up long enough to hear me out– she has a right to be heard.” Novinha was quite angry now, but, as usual, Grego seemed unimpressed. “You should know by now, Grego, that it's often the ideas that sound most absurd and counterintuitive at first that later cause fundamental shifts in the way we see the world.”

“Do you really think this is one of those basic discoveries?” asked Grego, looking them in the eye, each in turn. “A talking virus? Se Quara sabe tanto, porque ela nao diz o que e que aqueles bichos dizem?” If she knows so much about it, why doesn't she tell us what these little beasts are saying? It was a sign that the discussion was getting out of hand, that he broke into Portuguese instead of speaking in Stark, the language of science– and diplomacy.