Page 898 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

unless you have those very sections already working to keep rebuilding each other as they break down. And we can't do modifications of the present virus unless the descolada is at least marginally active, in which case it undoes what we're doing faster than we can do it. It was designed to police itself constantly so it can't be altered, and to be so unstable in all its parts that it's completely unmakable."
"But they made it."
"Yes, but I don't know how. Unlike Grego, I can't completely step outside my science on some metaphysical whim and make things up and wish them into existence. I'm stuck with the rules of nature as they are here and now, and there's no rule that will let me make it."
"So we know where we need to go, but we can't get there from here."
"Until last night I didn't know enough to guess whether we could design this new recolada or not, and therefore I had no way of guessing whether we could make it. I figured that if it was designable, it was makable. I was ready to make it, ready to act the moment Quara relented. All we've achieved is to know, finally, completely, that it can't be done. Quara was right. We definitely found out enough from her to enable us to kill every descolada virus on Lusitania. But we can't make the recolada that could replace it and keep Lusitanian life functioning."
"So if we use the viricide bacterium--"
"All the pequeninos in the world would be where Planter is now within a week or two. And all the grass and birds and vines and everything. Scorched earth. An atrocity. Quara was right." She wept again.
"You're just tired." It was Quara, awake now and looking terrible, not refreshed at all by her sleep.
Ela, for her part, couldn't answer her sister.
Quara looked like she might be thinking of saying something cruel, along the lines of What did I tell you? But she thought better of it, and came and put her hand on Ela's shoulder. "You're tired, Ela. You need to sleep."
"Yes," said Ela.
"But first let's tell Planter." "Say good-bye, you mean." "Yes, that's what I mean."
They made their way to the lab that contained Planter's cleanroom. The pequenino researchers who had slept were awake again; all had joined the vigil for Planter's last hours. Miro was inside with Planter again, and this time they didn't make him leave, though Ender knew that both Ela and