Page 618 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"As if the rest were easy," said Novinha, "making a new organelle out of nothing--"
"We can't just inject these organelles into a few piggies or even into all of them, because we'd also have to inject them into every other native animal and tree and blade of grass."
"Can't be done," said Ender.
"So we have to develop a mechanism to deliver the organelles universally, and at the same time destroy the old descolada viruses once and for all."
"Xenocide," said Quara.
"That's the argument," said Ela. "Quara says the descolada is sentient."
Ender looked at his youngest stepdaughter. "A sentient molecule?"
"They have language, Andrew."
"When did this happen?" asked Ender. He was trying to imagine how a genetic molecule-- even one as long and complex as the descolada virus-- could possibly speak.
"I've suspected it for a long time. I wasn't going to say anything until I was sure, but--" "Which means she isn't sure," said Grego triumphantly.
"But I'm almost sure now, and you can't go destroying a whole species until we know." "How do they speak?" asked Ender.
"Not like us, of course," said Quara. "They pass information back and forth to each other at a molecular level. I first noticed it as I was working on the question of how the new resistant strains of the descolada spread so quickly and replaced all the old viruses in such a short time. I couldn't solve that problem because I was asking the wrong question. They don't replace the old ones. They simply pass messages."
"They throw darts," said Grego.
"That was my own word for it," said Quara. "I didn't understand that it was speech." "Because it wasn't speech," said Grego.
"That was five years ago," said Ender. "You said the darts they send out carry the needed genes and then all the viruses that receive the darts revise their own structure to include the new gene. That's hardly language."