“Perfectly,” said Quara.
Wang-mu knew there was something wrong with this reasoning, but she couldn’t lay her finger on it. “Peter, if you really believe this, why didn’t you keep the Little Doctor?”
“Because,” said Peter, “we might be wrong, and the danger is not imminent.”
Quara clicked her tongue in disdain. “You weren’t here, Peter. You didn’t see what they were throwing at us — a newly engineered and specially tailored virus to make us sit as still as idiots while they came and took over our ship.”
“And they sent this how, in a nice envelope?” said Peter. “They sent an infected puppy, knowing you couldn’t resist picking it up and hugging it?”
“They broadcast the code,” said Quara. “But they expected us to interpret it by making the molecule and then it would have its effect.”
“No,” said Peter, “you speculated that that’s how their language works, and then you started to act as if your speculation were true.”
“And somehow you know that it’s not?” said Quara.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Peter. “That’s my point. We just don’t know. We can’t know. Now, if we saw them launching probes, or if they started trying to blast this ship out of the sky, we’d have to start taking action. Like sending ships after the probes and carefully studying the viruses they were sending out. Or if they attacked this ship, we’d take evasive action and analyze their weapons and tactics.”
“That’s fine now,” said Quara. “Now that Jane’s safe and the mothertrees are intact so she can handle the starflight thing she does. Now we can catch up with probes and dance out of the way of missiles or whatever. But what about before, when we were helpless here? When we had only a few weeks to live, or so we thought?”
“Back then,” said Peter, “you didn’t have the Little Doctor, either, so you couldn’t have blown up their planet. We didn’t get our hands on the M. D. Device until after Jane’s power of flight was restored. And with that power, it was no longer necessary to destroy the descolada planet until and unless it posed a danger too great to be resisted any other way.”
Quara laughed. “What is this? I thought Peter was supposed to be the nasty side of Ender’s personality. Turns out you’re the sweetness and light.”
Peter smiled. “There are times when you have to defend yourself or someone else against relentless evil. And some of those times the only defense that has any hope of succeeding is a one-time use of brutal, devastating force. At such times good people act brutally.”
“We couldn’t be engaging in a bit of self-justification, could we?” said Quara. “You’re Ender’s successor. Therefore you find it convenient to believe that those boys Ender killed were the exceptions to your niceness rule.”
“I justify Ender by his ignorance and helplessness. We aren’t helpless. Starways Congress and the Lusitania Fleet were not helpless. And they chose to act before alleviating their ignorance.”
“Ender chose to use the Little Doctor while he was ignorant.”
“No, Quara. The adults who commanded him used it. They could have intercepted and blocked his decision. There was plenty of time for them to use the overrides. Ender thought he was playing a game. He thought that by using the Little Doctor in the simulation he would prove himself unreliable, disobedient, or even too brutal to trust with command. He was trying to get himself kicked out of Command School. That’s all. He was doing the necessary thing to get them to stop torturing him. The adults were the ones who decided simply to unleash their most powerful weapon: Ender Wiggin. No more effort to talk with the buggers, to communicate. Not even at the end when they knew that Ender was going to destroy the buggers’ home planet. They had decided to go for the kill no matter what. Like Admiral Lands. Like you, Quara.”
“I said I’d wait until we found out!”
“Good,” said Peter. “Then we don’t disagree.”
“But we should have the Little Doctor here!”
“The Little Doctor shouldn’t exist at all,” said Peter. “It was never necessary. It was never appropriate. Because the cost of it is too high.”