Page 731 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Father understood at once; of course he did. "As Hegemon he had the power, and the reason as well-- a secret program under his control, so that if there were a rebellion or a coup, he would still hold in his hands the threads that bind the worlds together."
"And when he died, Demosthenes-- his sister-- she was the only one who knew the secret! Isn't it wonderful? We've found it. All we have to do is wipe all those programs out of memory!"
"Only to have the programs instantly restored through the ansible by other copies of the program on other worlds," said Father. "It must have happened a thousand times before over the centuries, a computer breaking down and the secret program restoring itself on the new one."
"Then we have to cut off all the ansibles at the same time," said Qing-jao. "On every world, have a new computer ready that has never been contaminated by any contact with the secret program. Shut the ansibles down all at once, cut off the old computers, bring the new computers online, and wake up the ansibles. The secret program can't restore itself because it isn't on any of the computers, Then the power of Congress will have no rival to interfere!"
"You can't do it," said Wang-mu.
Qing-jao looked at her secret maid in shock. How could the girl be so ill-bred as to interrupt a conversation between two of the godspoken in order to contradict them?
But Father was gracious-- he was always gracious, even to people who had overstepped all the bounds of respect and decency. I must learn to be more like him, thought Qing-jao. I must allow servants to keep their dignity even when their actions have forfeited any such consideration.
"Si Wang-mu," said Father, "why can't we do it?"
"Because to have all the ansibles shut off at the same time, you would have to send messages by ansible," said Wang-mu. "Why would the program allow you to send messages that would lead to its own destruction?"
Qing-jao followed her father's example by speaking patiently to Wang-mu. "It's only a program-- it doesn't know the content of messages. Whoever rules the program told it to hide all the communications from the fleet, and to conceal the tracks of all the messages from Demosthenes. It certainly doesn't read the messages and decide from their contents whether to send them."
"How do you know?" asked Wang-mu.
"Because such a program would have to be-- intelligent!"
"But it would have to be intelligent anyway," said Wang-mu. "It has to be able to hide from any other program that would find it. It has to be able to move itself around in memory to conceal itself. How would it be able to tell which programs it had to hide from, unless it could read them and