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"In a game," said Wang-mu.
"In his fight with two boys who threatened his life. He made sure they could never threaten him again. That's how war is fought, in case any of you have foolish ideas to the contrary. You don't fight with minimum force, you fight with maximum force at endurable cost. You don't just pink your enemy, you don't even bloody him, you destroy his capability to fight back. It's the strategy you use with diseases. You don't try to find a drug that kills ninety-nine percent of the bacteria or viruses. If you do that, all you've accomplished is to create a new drug-resistant strain. You have to kill a hundred percent."
Wang-mu tried to think of an argument against this. "Is disease really a valid analogy?"
"What is your analogy?" answered Peter. "A wrestling match? Fight to wear down your opponent's resistance? That's fine-- if your opponent is playing by the same rules. But if you stand there ready to wrestle and he pulls out a knife or a gun, what then? Or is it a tennis match? Keep score until your opponent sets off the bomb under your feet? There aren't any rules. In war."
"But is this war?" asked Wang-mu.
"As Quara said," Peter answered. "If we find out there's no dealing with them, then yes, it's a war. What they did to Lusitania, to the defenseless pequeninos, was devastating, soulless, total war without regard to the rights of the other side. That's our enemy, unless we can bring them to understand the consequences of what they did. Isn't that what you were saying, Quara?"
"Perfectly," said Quara.
Wang-mu knew there was something wrong with this reasoning, but she couldn't lay her finger on it. "Peter, if you really believe this, why didn't you keep the Little Doctor?"
"Because," said Peter, "we might be wrong, and the danger is not imminent."
Quara clicked her tongue in disdain. "You weren't here, Peter. You didn't see what they were throwing at us-- a newly engineered and specially tailored virus to make us sit as still as idiots while they came and took over our ship."
"And they sent this how, in a nice envelope?" said Peter. "They sent an infected puppy, knowing you couldn't resist picking it up and hugging it?"
"They broadcast the code," said Quara. "But they expected us to interpret it by making the molecule and then it would have its effect."
"No," said Peter, "you speculated that that's how their language works, and then you started to act as if your speculation were true."
"And somehow you know that it's not?" said Quara.