Xenocide

“How old is that story?”

“Old,” whispered Planter. “You were listening?”

“To the last part of it.” It was all right to talk to Planter at length. Either he didn't grow impatient with the slowness of Miro's speech– after all, Planter wasn't going anywhere– or his own cognitive processes had slowed to match Miro's halting pace. Either way, Planter let Miro finish his own sentences, and answered him as if he had been listening carefully. “Did I understand you to say that this Skysplitter carried little mothers with him?”

“That's right,” whispered Planter.

“But he wasn't going to the fathertree.”

“No. He just had little mothers on his carries. I learned this story years ago. Before I did any human science.”

“You know what it sounds like to me? That the story might come from a time when you didn't carry little mothers to the fathertree. When the little mothers didn't lick their sustenance from the sappy inside of the mothertree. Instead they hung from the carries on the male's abdomen until the infants matured enough to burst out and take their mothers' place at the teat.”

“That's why I chanted it for you,” said Planter. “I was trying to think of how it might have been, if we were intelligent before the descolada came. And finally I remembered that part in the story of Skysplitter's War.”

“He went to the place where the sky broke open.”

“The descolada got here somehow, didn't it?”

“How old is that story?”

“Skysplitter's War was twenty-nine generations ago. Our own forest isn't that old. But we carried songs and stories with us from our father-forest.”

“The part of the story about the sky and the stars, that could be a lot older, though, couldn't it?”

“Very old. The fathertree Skysplitter died long ago. He might have been very old even when the war took place.”

“Do you think it might be possible that this is a memory of the pequenino who first discovered the descolada? That it was brought here by a starship, and that what he saw was some kind of reentry vehicle?”

“That's why I chanted it.”

“If that's true, then you were definitely intelligent before the coming of the descolada.”

“All gone now,” said Planter.

“What's all gone? I don't understand.”

“Our genes of that time. Can't even guess what the descolada took away from us and threw out.”

It was true. Each descolada virus might contain within itself the complete genetic code for every native life form on Lusitania, but that was only the genetic code as it was now, in its descolada-controlled state. What the code was before the descolada came could never be reconstructed or restored.

“Still,” said Miro. “It's intriguing. To think that you already had language and songs and stories before the virus.” And then, though he knew he shouldn't, he added, “Perhaps that makes it u

“Another attempt to save the piggy,” said Planter.

A voice came over the speaker. A voice from outside the cleanroom.

“You can move on out now.” It was Ela. She was supposed to be asleep during Miro's shift.

“My shift isn't over for three hours,” said Miro.

“I've got somebody else coming in.”

“There are plenty of suits.”

“I need you out here, Miro.” Ela's voice brooked no possibility of disobedience. And she was the scientist in charge of this experiment.

When he came out a few minutes later, he understood what was going on. Quara stood there, looking icy, and Ela was at least as furious. They had obviously been quarreling again– no surprise there. The surprise was that Quara was here at all.

“You might as well go back inside,” said Quara as soon as Miro emerged from the sterilization chamber.

“I don't even know why I left,” said Miro.

“She insists on having a private conversation,” said Ela.

“She'll call you out,” said Quara, “but she won't disco

“We're supposed to be documenting every moment of Planter's conversation. For lucidity.”

Miro sighed. “Ela, grow up.”

She almost exploded. “Me! Me grow up! She comes in here like she thinks she's Nossa Senhora on her throne–”

“Ela,” said Miro. “Shut up and listen. Quara is Planter's only hope of living through this experiment. Can you honestly say that it wouldn't serve the purpose of this experiment to let her–”

“All right,” said Ela, cutting him off because she already grasped his argument and bowed to it. “She's the enemy of every living sentient being on this planet, but I'll cut off the auditory monitoring because she wants to have a private conversation with the brother that she's killing.”

That was too much for Quara. “You don't have to cut off anything for me,” she said. “I'm sorry I came. It was a stupid mistake.”

“Quara!” shouted Miro.

She stopped at the lab door.

“Get the suit on and go talk to Planter. What does he have to do with her?”

Quara glared once again at Ela, but she headed toward the sterilization room from which Miro had just emerged.

He felt greatly relieved. Since he knew that he had no authority at all, and that both of them were perfectly capable of telling him what he could do with his orders, the fact that they complied suggested that in fact they really wanted to comply. Quara really did want to speak to Planter. And Ela really did want her to do it. They might even be growing up enough to stop their personal differences from endangering other people's lives. There might be hope for this family yet.

“She'll just switch it back on as soon as I'm inside,” said Quara.

“No she won't,” said Miro.

“She'll try,” said Quara.

Ela looked at her scornfully. “I know how to keep my word.”

They said nothing more to each other. Quara went inside the sterilization chamber to dress. A few minutes later she was out in the cleanroom, still dripping from the descolada-killing solution that had been sprayed all over the suit as soon as she was inside it.

Miro could hear Quara's footsteps.

“Shut it off,” he said.

Ela reached up and pushed a button. The footsteps went silent.

Inside his ear, Jane spoke to him. “Do you want me to play everything they say for you?”

He subvocalized. “You can still hear inside there?”

“The computer is linked to several monitors that are sensitive to vibration. I've picked up a few tricks about decoding human speech from the slightest vibrations. And the instruments are very sensitive.”

“Go ahead then,” said Miro.

“No moral qualms about invasion of privacy?”

“Not a one,” said Miro. The survival of a world was at stake. And he had kept his word– the auditory monitoring equipment was off. Ela couldn't hear what was being said.

The conversation was nothing at first. How are you? Very sick. Much pain? Yes.

It was Planter who broke things out of the pleasant formalities and into the heart of the issue.

“Why do you want all my people to be slaves?”

Quara sighed– but, to her credit, it didn't sound petulant. To Miro's practiced ear, it sounded as though she were really emotionally torn. Not at all the defiant face she showed to her family. “I don't,” she said.

“Maybe you didn't forge the chains, but you hold the key and refuse to use it.”

“The descolada isn't a chain,” she said. “A chain is a nothing. The descolada is alive.”

“So am I. So are all my people. Why is their life more important than ours?”

“The descolada doesn't kill you. Your enemy is Ela and my mother. They're the ones who would kill all of you in order to keep the descolada from killing them.”

“Of course,” said Planter. “Of course they would. As I would kill all of them to protect my people.”

“So your quarrel isn't with me.”

“Yes it is. Without what you know, humans and pequeninos will end up killing each other, one way or another. They'll have no choice. As long as the descolada can't be tamed, it will eventually destroy humanity or humanity will have to destroy it– and us along with it.”