Xenocide

“As long as you live, there's hope,” said Wang-mu. “Who will do such massive experiments for him when you're gone?”

“That's why there's so much urgency,” said Jane.

“What do you need me for?” asked Master Han. “I'm no physicist, and I have no hope of learning enough in the next few months to make any kind of difference. It's your jailed physicist who'll do it, if anyone can. Or you yourself.”

“Everyone needs a dispassionate critic to say, Have you thought of this? Or even, Enough of that dead-end path, get onto another train of thought. That's what I need you for. We'll report our work to you, and you'll examine it and say whatever comes to mind. You can't possibly guess what chance word of yours will trigger the idea we're looking for.”

Master Han nodded, to concede the possibility.

“The second problem I'm working on is even knottier,” said Jane. “Whether we achieve faster-than-light travel or not, some pequeninos will have starships and can leave the planet Lusitania. The problem is that they carry inside them the most insidious and terrible virus ever known, one that destroys every form of life it touches except those few that it can twist into a deformed kind of symbiotic life utterly dependent on the presence of that virus.”

“The descolada,” said Master Han. “One of the justifications sometimes used for carrying the Little Doctor with the fleet in the first place.”

“And it may actually be a justification. From the hive queen's point of view, it's impossible to choose between one life form and another, but as Andrew has often pointed out to me, human beings don't have that problem. If it's a choice between the survival of humanity and the survival of the pequeninos, he'd choose humanity, and for his sake so would I.”

“And I,” said Master Han.

“You can be sure the pequeninos feel the same way in reverse,” said Jane. “If not on Lusitania then somewhere, somehow, it will almost certainly come down to a terrible war in which humans use the Molecular Disruption Device and the pequeninos use the descolada as the ultimate biological weapon. There's a good chance of both species utterly destroying each other. So I feel some urgency about the need to find a replacement virus for the descolada, one that will perform all the functions needed in the pequeninos' life cycle without any of its predatory, self-adapting capabilities. A selectively inert form of the virus.”

“I thought there were ways to neutralize the descolada. Don't they take drugs in their drinking water on Lusitania?”

“The descolada keeps figuring out their drugs and adapting to them. It's a series of footraces. Eventually the descolada will win one, and then there won't be any more humans to race against.”

“Do you mean that the virus is intelligent?” asked Wang-mu.

“One of the scientists on Lusitania thinks so,” said Jane. “A woman named Quara. Others disagree. But the virus certainly acts as if it were intelligent, at least when it comes to adapting itself to changes in its environment and changing other species to fit its needs. I think Quara is right, personally. I think the descolada is an intelligent species that has its own kind of language that it uses to spread information very quickly from one side of the world to the other.”

“I'm not a virologist,” said Master Han.

“And yet if you could look at the studies being performed by Elanora Ribeira von Hesse–”

“Of course I'll look. I only wish I had your hope that I can help.”

“And then the third problem,” said Jane. “Perhaps the simplest one of all. The godspoken of Path.”

“Ah yes,” said Master Han. “Your destroyers.”

“Not by any free choice,” said Jane. “I don't hold it against you. But it's something I'd like to see accomplished before I die– to figure out a way to alter your altered genes, so that future generations, at least, can be free of that deliberately-induced OCD, while still keeping the extraordinary intelligence.”

“Where will you find genetic scientists willing to work on something that Congress would surely consider to be treason?” asked Master Han.

“When you wish to have someone commit treason,” said Jane, “it's best to look first among known traitors.”

“Lusitania,” said Wang-mu.

“Yes,” said Jane. “With your help, I can give the problem to Elanora.”

“Isn't she working on the descolada problem?”

“No one can work on anything every waking moment. This will be a change of pace that might actually help freshen her for her work on the descolada. Besides, your problem on Path may be relatively easy to solve. After all, your altered genes were originally created by perfectly ordinary geneticists working for Congress. The only barriers have been political, not scientific. Ela might find it a simple matter. She has already told me how we should begin. We need a few tissue samples, at least to start with. Have a medical technician here do a computer scan on them at the molecular level. I can take over the machinery long enough to make sure the data Elanora needs is gathered during the scan, and then I'll transmit the genetic data to her. It's that simple.”

“Whose tissue do you need?” asked Master Han. “I can't very well ask all the visitors here to give me a sample.”

“Actually, I was hoping you could,” said Jane. “So many are coming and going. We can use dead skin, you know. Perhaps even fecal or urine samples that might contain body cells.”

Master Han nodded. “I can do that.”

“If it comes to fecal samples, I will do it,” said Wang-mu.

“No,” said Master Han. “I am not above doing all that is necessary to help, even with my own hands.”

“You?” asked Wang-mu. “I volunteered because I was afraid you would humiliate other servants by requiring them to do it.”

“I will never again ask anyone to do something so low and debasing that I refuse to do it myself,” said Master Han.

“Then we'll do it together,” said Wang-mu. “Please remember, Master Han– you will help Jane by reading and responding to reports, while manual tasks are the only way that I can help at all. Don't insist on doing what I can do. Instead spend your time on the things that only you can do.”

Jane interrupted before Master Han could answer. “Wang-mu, I want you to read the reports as well.”

“Me? But I'm not educated at all.”

“Nevertheless,” said Jane.

“I won't even understand them.”

“Then I'll help you,” said Master Han.

“This isn't right,” said Wang-mu. “I'm not Qing-jao. This is the sort of thing she could do. It isn't for me.”

“I watched you and Qing-jao through the whole process that led to her discovery of me,” said Jane. “Many of the key insights came from you, Si Wang-mu, not from Qing-jao.”

“From me? I never even tried to–”

“You didn't try. You watched. You made co

“They were foolish questions,” said Wang-mu. Yet in her heart she was glad: Someone saw!

“Questions that no expert would ever have asked,” said Jane. “Yet they were exactly the questions that led Qing-jao to her most important conceptual breakthroughs. You may not be godspoken, Wang-mu, but you have gifts of your own.”

“I'll read and respond,” said Wang-mu, “but I will also gather tissue samples. All of the tissue samples, so that Master Han does not have to speak to these godspoken visitors and listen to them praise him for a terrible thing that he didn't do.”

Master Han was still opposed. “I refuse to think of you doing–”

Jane interrupted him. “Han Fei-tzu, be wise. Wang-mu, as a servant, is invisible. You, as master of the house, are as subtle as a tiger in a playground. Nothing you do goes u

Wise words, thought Wang-mu. Why then are you asking me to respond to the work of scientists, if each person must do what he does best? Yet she kept silent. Jane had them begin by taking their own tissue samples; then Wang-mu set about gathering tissue samples from the rest of the household. She found most of what she needed on combs and unwashed clothing. Within days she had samples from a dozen godspoken visitors, also taken from their clothing. No one had to take fecal samples after all. But she would have been willing.