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"You had the Little Doctor in your possession and you gave it back?" asked Quara, sounding incredulous.
Everyone, Miro included, assumed she meant that she didn't trust the fleet not to use it.
"It was dismantled in front of my eyes," said Peter.
"Well, can it be mantled again?" she asked.
Wang-mu tried to explain. "Admiral Lands isn't going to be able to go down that road now. We wouldn't have left things unsettled. Lusitania is safe."
"She's not talking about Lusitania," said Ela coldly. "She's talking about here. The descolada planet."
"Am I the only person who thought of it?" said Quara. "Tell the truth-- it would solve all our worries about followup probes, about new outbreaks of even worse versions of the descolada--"
"You're thinking of blowing up a world populated by a sentient race?" asked Wang-mu.
"Not right now," said Quara, sounding as if Wang-mu were the stupidest person she had ever wasted time talking to. "If we determine that they're, you know, what Valentine called them. Varelse. Unable to be reasoned with. Impossible to coexist with."
"So what you're saying," said Wang-mu, "is that--"
"I'm saying what I said," Quara answered.
Wang-mu went on. "What you're saying is that Admiral Lands wasn't wrong in principle, he simply was wrong about the facts of the particular case. If the descolada had still been a threat on Lusitania, then it's his duty to blow up the planet."
"What are the lives of the people of one planet compared to all sentient life?" asked Quara.
"Is this," said Miro, "the same Quara Ribeira who tried to keep us from wiping out the descolada virus because it might be sentient?" He sounded amused.
"I've thought a lot about that since then," said Quara. "I was being childish and sentimental. Life is precious. Sentient life is more precious. But when one sentient group threatens the survival of another, then the threatened group has the right to protect themselves. Isn't that what Ender did? Over and over again?"
Quara looked from one to another, triumphant.
Peter nodded. "Yes," he said. "That's what Ender did."