“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 food and water, every day of their lives. And they can never go away from Lusitania again or they'll carry death and destruction with them.”

“I suppose we knew that was a possibility,” said Valentine.

“When you left, it was only a possibility. We thought that the descolada would soon be controlled. Now they aren't sure if it can ever be controlled. And that means that you can never leave Lusitania once you go there.”

“I hope we like the weather.”

Miro studied her face, the way she was processing the information he had given her. The initial fear was gone. She was herself again– thinking. “Here's what I think,” said Miro. “I think that no matter how terrible Congress is, no matter how evil their plans might be, that fleet might be the salvation of humanity.”

Valentine answered thoughtfully, searching for words. Miro was glad to see that– she was a person who didn't shoot back without thinking. She was able to learn. “I can see that if events move down one possible path, there might be a time when– but it's very improbable. First of all, knowing all this, the hive queen is quite unlikely to build any starships that would carry the descolada away from Lusitania.”

“Do you know the hive queen?” demanded Miro. “Do you understand her?”

“Even if she would do such a thing,” said Valentine, “your mother and sister are working on this, aren't they? By the time we reach Lusitania– by the time the fleet reaches Lusitania– they might have found a way to control the descolada once and for all.”

“And if they do,” said Miro, “should they use it?”

“Why shouldn't they?”

“How could they kill all the descolada virus? The virus is an integral part of the pequenino life cycle. When the pequenino body-form dies, it's the descolada virus that enables the transformation into the tree-state, what the piggies call the third life– and it's only in the third life, as trees, that the pequenino males can fertilize the females. If the virus is gone, there can be no more passage into the third life, and this generation of piggies is the last.”

“That doesn't make it impossible, it only makes it harder. Your mother and sister have to find a way to neutralize the descolada in human beings and the crops we need to eat, without destroying its ability to enable the pequeninos to pass into adulthood.”

“And they have less than fifteen years to do it,” said Miro. “Not likely.”

“But not impossible.”

“Yes. There's a chance. And on the strength of that chance, you want to get rid of the fleet?”

“The fleet is being sent to destroy Lusitania whether we control the descolada virus or not.”

“And I say it again– the motive of the senders is irrelevant. No matter what the reason, the destruction of Lusitania may be the only sure protection for all the rest of humanity.”

“And I say you're wrong.”

“You're Demosthenes, aren't you? Andrew said you were.”

“Yes.”

“So you thought up the Hierarchy of Foreignness. Utlannings are strangers from our own world. Framlings are strangers of our own species, but from another world. Ramen are strangers of another species, but capable of communication with us, capable of co-existence with humanity. Last are varelse– and what are they?”

“The pequeninos are not varelse. Neither is the hive queen.”

“But the descolada is. Varelse. An alien life form that's capable of destroying all of humanity …”

“Unless we can tame it…”

"… Yet which we cannot possibly communicate with, an alien species that we cannot live with. You're the one who said that in that case war is unavoidable. If an alien species seems bent on destroying us and we can't communicate with them, can't understand them, if there's no possibility of turning them away from their course peacefully, then we are justified in any action necessary to save ourselves, including the complete destruction of the other species."

“Yes,” said Valentine.

“But what if we must destroy the descolada, and yet we can't destroy the descolada without also destroying every living pequenino, the hive queen, and every human being on Lusitania?”

To Miro's surprise, Valentine's eyes were awash with tears. “So this is what you have become.”

Miro was confused. “When did this conversation become a discussion of me?”

“You've done all this thinking, you've seen all the possibilities for the future– good ones and bad ones alike– and yet the only one that you're willing to believe in, the imagined future that you seize upon as the foundation for all your moral judgments, is the only future in which everyone that you and I have ever loved and everything we've ever hoped for must be obliterated.”

“I didn't say I liked that future–”

“I didn't say you liked it either,” said Valentine. “I said that's the future you choose to prepare for. But I don't. I choose to live in a universe that has some hope in it. I choose to live in a universe where your mother and sister will find a way to contain the descolada, a universe in which Starways Congress can be reformed or replaced, a universe in which there is neither the power nor the will to destroy an entire species.”

“What if you're wrong?”

“Then I'll still have plenty of time to despair before I die. But you– do you seek out every opportunity to despair? I can understand the impulse that might lead to that. Andrew tells me you were a handsome man– you still are, you know– and that losing the full use of your body has hurt you deeply. But other people have lost more than you have without getting such a black-hearted vision of the world.”

“This is your analysis of me?” asked Miro. “We've known each other half an hour, and now you understand everything about me?”

“I know that this is the most depressing conversation I've ever had in my life.”

“And so you assume that it's because I am crippled. Well, let me tell you something, Valentine Wiggin. I hope the same things you hope. I even hope that someday I'll get more of my body back again. If I didn't have hope I'd be dead. The things I told you just now aren't because I despair. I said all that because these things are possible. And because they're possible we have to think of them so they don't surprise us later. We have to think of them so that if the worst does come, we'll already know how to live in that universe.”

Valentine seemed to be studying his face; he felt her gaze on him as an almost palpable thing, like a faint tickling under the skin, inside his brain. “Yes,” she said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, my husband and I will move over here and live on your ship.” She got up from her seat and started toward the corridor leading back to the tube.

“Why did you decide that?”

“Because it's too crowded on our ship. And because you are definitely worth talking to. And not just to get material for the essays I have to write.”

“Oh, so I passed your test?”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “Did I pass yours?”

“I wasn't testing you.”

“Like hell,” she said. “But in case you didn't notice, I'll tell you– I did pass. Or you wouldn't have said to me all the things you said.”

She was gone. He could hear her shuffling down the corridor, and then the computer reported that she was passing through the tube between ships.