"No, sir," said Lands. "I will bear whatever penalty they impose on me. What I did has saved humankind from destruction, but I am prepared to join the humans and pequeninos of Lusitania as a necessary sacrifice to achieve that end."

Causo saluted him, then sat back down on his chair and wept.

"WE'RE GIVING YOU A SECOND CHANCE"

"When I was a little girl, I used to believe

that if I could please the gods well enough,

they would go back and do my life over,

and this time they would not take

my mother away from me."

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

A satellite orbiting Lusitania detected the launch of the M.D. Device and the divergence of its course toward Lusitania, as the starship disappeared from the satellite's instruments. The most dreaded event was happening. There had been no attempt to communicate or negotiate. Clearly the fleet had never intended anything but the obliteration of this world, and with it an entire sentient race. Most people had hoped, and many had expected, that there would be a chance to tell them that the descolada had been completely tamed and no longer posed a threat to anyone; that it was too late to stop anything anyway, since several dozen new colonies of humans, pequeninos, and hive queens had already been started on as many different planets. Instead there was only death hurtling toward them on a course that gave them no more than an hour to survive, and probably less, since the Little Doctor would no doubt be detonated some distance from the planet's surface.

It was pequeninos manning all the instruments now, since all but a handful of humans had fled to the starships. So it was that a pequenino cried out the news over the ansible to the starship at the descolada planet; and by chance it was Firequencher who was at the ansible terminal to hear his report. He immediately began keening, his high voice liquid with the music of grief.

When Miro and his sisters understood what had happened, he went at once to Jane. "They launched the Little Doctor," he said, shaking her gently.

He waited only a few moments. Her eyes came open. "I thought we had beaten them," she whispered. "Peter and Wang-mu, I mean. Congress voted to establish a quarantine and specifically denied the fleet the authority to launch the M.D. Device. And yet still they launched."

"You look so tired," said Miro.

"It takes everything I have," she said. "Over and over again. And now I lose them, the mothertrees. They're a part of myself, Miro. Remember how you felt when you lost control of your body, when you were crippled and slow? That's what will happen to me when the mothertrees are gone."

She wept.

"Stop it," said Miro. "Stop it right now. Get control of your emotions, Jane, you don't have time for this."

At once she freed herself from the straps that held her. "You're right," she said. "It's almost too strong to control, sometimes, this body."

"The Little Doctor has to be close to a planet for it to have any effect on it -- the field dissipates fairly quickly unless it has mass to sustain it. So we have time, Jane. Maybe an hour. Certainly more than half an hour."

"And in that time, what do you imagine I can do?"

"Pick the damn thing up," said Miro. "Push it Outside and don't bring it back!"

"And if it goes off Outside?" asked Jane. "If something that destructive is echoed and repeated out there? Besides, I can't pick things up that I haven't had a chance to examine. There's no one near it, no ansible connected to it, nothing to lead me to find it in the dead of space."

"I don't know," said Miro. "Ender would know. Damn that he's dead!"

"Well, technically speaking," said Jane. "But Peter hasn't found his way into any of his Ender memories. If he has them."

"What's to remember?" said Miro. "This has never happened before."

"It's true that it is Ender's aiúa. But how much of his brilliance was the aiúa, and how much was his body and brain? Remember that the genetic component was strong -- he was born in the first place because tests showed the original Peter and Valentine came so close to being the ideal military commander."

"Right," said Miro. "And now he's Peter."

"Not the real Peter," said Jane.

"Look, it's sort of Ender and it's sort of Peter. Can you find him? Can you talk to him?"

"When our aiúas meet, we don't talk. We sort of -- what, dance around each other. It's not like Human and the Hive Queen."

"Doesn't he still have the jewel in his ear?" asked Miro, touching his own.

"But what can he do? He's hours distant from his starship --"

"Jane," said Miro. "Try."

Peter looked stricken. Wang-mu touched his arm, leaned close to him. "What's wrong?"

"I thought we made it," he said. "When Congress voted to revoke the order to use the Little Doctor."

"What do you mean?" said Wang-mu, though she already knew what he meant.

"They launched it. The Lusitania Fleet disobeyed Congress. Who could have guessed? We have less than an hour before it detonates."

Tears leapt to Wang-mu's eyes, but she blinked them away. "At least the pequeninos and the hive queens will survive."

"But not the network of mothertrees," said Peter. "Starflight will end until Jane finds some other way to hold all that information in memory. The brothertrees are too stupid, the fathertrees have egos far too strong to share their capacity with her -- they would if they could, but they can't. You think Jane hasn't explored all the possibilities? Faster-than-light flight is over."

"Then this is our home," said Wang-mu.

"No it isn't," said Peter.

"We're hours away from the starship, Peter. We'll never get there before it detonates."

"What's the starship? A box with a lightswitch and a tight-sealing door. For all we know, we don't even need the box. I'm not staying here, Wang-mu."

"You're going back to Lusitania? Now?"

"If Jane can take me," he said. "And if she can't, then I guess this body goes back where it came from -- Outside."

"I'm going with you," said Wang-mu.

"I've had three thousand years of life," said Peter. "I don't actually remember them too well, but you deserve better than to disappear from the universe if Jane can't do this."

"I'm going with you," said Wang-mu, "so shut up. There's no time to waste."

"I don't even know what I'm going to do when I get there," said Peter.

"Yes you do," said Wang-mu.

"Oh? What is it I'm planning?"

"I have no idea."

"Well isn't that a problem? What good is this plan of mine if nobody knows it?"

"I mean that you are who you are," said Wang-mu. "You are the same will, the same tough resourceful boy who refused to be beaten down by anything they threw at him in Battle School or Command School. The boy who wouldn't let bullies destroy him -- no matter what it took to stop them. Naked with no weapons except the soap on his body, that's how Ender fought Bonzo Madrid in the bathroom at Battle School."

"You've been doing your research."

"Peter," said Wang-mu, "I don't expect you to be Ender, his personality, his memories, his training. But you are the one who can't be beaten down. You are the one who finds a way to destroy the enemy."

Peter shook his head. "I'm not him, I'm truly not."

"You told me back when we first met that you weren't yourself. Well, now you are. The whole of you, one man, intact in this body. Nothing is missing from you now. Nothing has been stolen from you, nothing is lost. Do you understand? Ender lived his life under the shadow of having caused xenocide. Now is the chance to be the opposite. To live the opposite life. To be the one who prevents it."