"Orson Scott Card - Ender's Saga 03 - Xenocide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

"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