Page 704 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Mother shifted on her seat, visibly drawing away from Ela. My poor sister Ela, thought Quim. You may not be spoken to for the next several years.
"And the other problem?" asked Kovano.
"It's one thing to design the replacement virus. It's something else again to produce it." "These are mere details," said Mother.
"You're wrong, Mother, and you know it," said Ela. "I can diagram what we want the new virus to be. But even working under ten degrees absolute, we can't cut up and recombine the descolada virus with enough precision. Either it dies, because we've left out too much, or it immediately repairs itself as soon as it returns to normal temperatures, because we didn't take out enough."
"Technical problems."
"Technical problems," said Ela sharply. "Like building an ansible without a philotic link." "So we conclude--"
"We conclude nothing," said Mother.
"We conclude," continued Kovano, "that our xenobiologists are in sharp disagreement about the feasibility of taming the descolada virus itself. That brings us to the other approach-- persuading the pequeninos to send their colonies only to uninhabited worlds, where they can establish their own peculiarly poisonous ecology without killing human beings."
"Persuading them," said Grego. "As if we could trust them to keep their promises."
"They've kept more promises so far than you have," said Kovano. "So I wouldn't take a morally superior tone if I were you."
Finally things were at a point where Quim felt it would be beneficial for him to speak. "All of this discussion is interesting," said Quim. "It would be a wonderful thing if my mission to the heretics could be the means of persuading the pequeninos to refrain from causing harm to humankind. But even if we all came to agree that my mission has no chance of succeeding in that goal, I would still go. Even if we decided that there was a serious risk that my mission might make things worse, I'd go."
"Nice to know you plan to be cooperative," said Kovano acidly.
"I plan to cooperate with God and the church," said Quim. "My mission to the heretics is not to save humankind from the descolada or even to try to keep the peace between humans and pequeninos here on Lusitania. My mission to the heretics is in order to try to bring them back to faith in Christ and unity with the church. I am going to save their souls."