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I could bring them to like you. Then the Lusitania Fleet will look like what it is-- a monstrous overreaction to a threat that never existed."
    "The fleet is xenocide."
    "So I've said in my propaganda," said Valentine.
    He couldn't bear her self-certainty. He couldn't bear her unshakable faith in herself. So he had to contradict her, and the only way he could was to blurt out ideas that he had not yet thought out completely. Ideas that were still only half-formed doubts in his mind. "The fleet is also self-defense."
    It had the desired effect-- it stopped her lecture and even made her raise her eyebrows, questioning him. The trouble was, now he had to explain what he meant.
    "The descolada," he said. "It's the most dangerous form of life anywhere."
    "The answer to that is quarantine. Not sending a fleet armed with the M.D. Device, so they have the capacity to turn Lusitania and everybody on it into microscopic interstellar dust."
    "You're so sure you're right?"
    "I'm sure that it's wrong for Starways Congress even to contemplate obliterating another sentient species."
    "The piggies can't live without the descolada," said Miro, "and if the descolada ever spreads to another planet, it will destroy all life there. It will ."
    It was a pleasure to see that Valentine was capable of looking puzzled. "But I thought the virus was contained. It was your grandparents who found a way to stop it, to make it dormant in human beings."
    "The descolada adapts," said Miro. "Jane told me that it's already changed itself a couple of times. My mother and my sister Ela are working on it-- trying to stay ahead of the descolada. Sometimes it even looks like the descolada is doing it deliberately. Intelligently. Finding strategies to get around the chemicals we use to contain it and stop it from killing people. It's getting into the Earthborn crops that humans need in order to survive on Lusitania. They have to spray them now. What if the descolada finds a way to get around all our barriers?"
    Valentine was silent. No glib answer now. She hadn't faced this question squarely-- no one had, except Miro.
    "I haven't even told this to Jane," said Miro. "But what if the fleet is right? What if the only way to save humanity from the descolada is to destroy Lusitania now?"
    "No," said Valentine. "This has nothing to do with the purposes for which Starways Congress sent out the fleet. Their reasons all have to do with interplanetary politics, with showing the colonies who's boss. It has to do with a bureaucracy out of control and a military that--"
    "Listen to me!" said Miro. "You said you wanted to hear my stories, listen to this one: It doesn't matter what their reasons are. It doesn't matter if they're a bunch of murderous beasts. I don't care. What matters is-- should they blow up Lusitania?"
    "What kind of person are you?" asked Valentine. He could hear both awe and loathing in her voice.
    "You're the moral philosopher," said Miro. "You tell me . Are we supposed to love the pequeninos so much that we allow the virus they carry to destroy all of humanity?"
    "Of course not. We simply have to find a way to neutralize the descolada."
    "And if we can't?"
    "Then we quarantine Lusitania. Even if all the human beings on the planet die-- your family and mine-- we still don't destroy the pequeninos."
    "Really?" asked Miro. "What about the Hive Queen?"
    "Ender told me that she was reestablishing herself, but--"
    "She contains within herself a complete industrialized society. She's going to build starships and get off the planet."
    "She wouldn't take the descolada with her!"
    "She has no choice. The descolada is in her already. It's in me ."
    That was when he really got to her. He could see it in her eyes-- the fear.
    "It'll be in you, too. Even if you run back to your ship and seal me off and keep yourself from infection, once you land on Lusitania the descolada will get into you and your husband and your children. They'll have to ingest the chemicals with their