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But it still hurt to see her so bowed down under the weight of it, and to know that despite all his love for her, there was nothing Jakt could do to help her bear it.
***
Miro faced Ela and Quara in the doorway of the starship. Inside, Young Valentine was already waiting, along with a pequenino named Firequencher and a nameless worker that the Hive Queen had sent.
"Jane is dying," Miro said. "We have to go now. She won't have capacity enough to send a starship if we wait too long."
"How can you ask us to go," said Quara, "when we already know that once Jane dies we'll never come back? We'll only last as long as the oxygen on this starship lasts. A few months at most, and then we'll die."
"But will we have accomplished something in the meantime?" said Miro. "Will we have communicated with these descoladores, these aliens who send out planet-wrecking probes? Will we have persuaded them to stop? Will we have saved all the species that we know, and thousands and millions that we don't yet know, from some terrible and irresistible disease? Jane has given us the best programs she could create for us, to help us talk to them. Is this good enough to be your masterwork? The achievement of your lifetime?"
His older sister Ela looked at him sadly. "I thought I had already done my masterwork, when I made the virus that undid the descolada here."
"You did," he said. "You've done enough. But there's more to do that only you can do. I'm asking you to come and die with me, Ela, because without you my own death will be meaningless, because without you, Val and I can't do what must be done."
Neither Quara nor Ela moved or spoke.
Miro, nodded, then turned and went into the ship. But before he could close and seal the door, the two sisters, arms around each other's waists, wordlessly followed him inside.
Chapter 8 -- "WHAT MATTERS IS WHICH FICTION YOU BELIEVE"
"My father once told me that there are no gods, only the cruel manipulations of evil people who pretended that their power was good and their exploitation was love. But if there are no gods, why are we so hungry to believe in them? Just because evil liars stand between us and the gods and block our view of them does not mean that the bright halo that surrounds each liar is not the outer edges of a god, waiting for us to find our way around the lie."