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did not argue. When Shatro's eyes met mine, he closed them and looked away in
pure disgust. He joined the others as they walked toward the captain's boat.
"I wish I could talk to the good Lenk or some of his officers about this," the
captain continued. He pounded the black sand with his walking stick, staring
out across the blue expanse of sterile sea. The sand made little barking
noises with each poke. "What the radio messages say is that Lenk is on a ship
to Jakarta right now. Brion himself is going to meet him there. There's going
to be a conference. For now, we can't talk to Lenk, even if the airways are
clear."
Randall had apparently heard of this, but Salap had not.
"Why should we consult with Lenk?" Salap asked cautiously, puzzled by the
captain's line of reasoning.
Keyser-Bach's face reddened to a shade of sienna, his cheeks and chin a
brighter pink. "We have a responsibility here, and not just as scientists."
Realization dawned on Salap but still eluded me. I had not worked with the
captain very long and did not know his attitudes. Salap was ahead of me and
Randall as well.
"You perceive this as a threat?" Salap asked.
"What else would it have been, if the ecos had survived? And for that matter,
how do we know it hasn't merely gone dormant? Hidden the queen somewhere,
_encysted_ to ride out some condition or another..."
"I do not agree these are possibilities," Salap said. "The grove is truly
orphaned."
"The danger is immense," the captain said. "We've learned more on this
expedition than any before us, in all the decades we've been on Lamarckia. And
what we've learned _burns._"
"Perhaps it is innocuous!" Salap argued, heat rising. Randall saw the argument
coming and tried to intervene, but Salap and the captain both raised their
hands, fending him off.
"Ser Salap, how can it be _innocuous_ or _innocent_ that an ecos seeks to
mimic us?"
"They have always been curious!" Salap said. "We are strangers, a new kind of
scion, but we file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Legacy.txt (101 of
183) [5/21/03 12:38:22 AM]
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Legacy.txt do not evoke the
responses that guard against thieves or spies ... We do not smell as a scion
from another ecos would smell, perhaps. The samplers study our shape, take
samples of every individual, carry them ... someplace, we assume for analysis.
But these samples are much more enigmatic than the tissues of a scion from
another ecos. The language of our genes is different in its very grammar. It
takes a long time to puzzle out, even for a master ... or a mistress." Salap's
eyes burned with enthusiasm, as if he expressed his own secret dream or
nightmare -- a religious hope, perhaps. "Somewhere, there is a part of the
ecos, a seed-mistress or queen, or many of them, examining the problem,
studying our genetic material, laboring over the puzzles of human DNA, trying
to understand the functions it codes for and duplicate them, beginning with
the simplest proteins. They have so many problems to solve -- there is an
immense gulf between a megacytic scion and a many-celled organism."
I pictured secret factories hidden in the silvas -- perhaps in organic
fortresses much like the palaces -- where unknown intelligences worked
tirelessly for decades...
_We might as well call them queens._
"That much is obvious," the captain said. "They feel threatened by us. We
steal their scions, we cut them down and make _ships_ of them, or we harvest
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them and eat them. We have the potential to fill Lamarckia and take all
resources ... A queen would sense this, with whatever instinct she has. She
would know. Ser Salap, didn't you expect to find something like the palaces,
someday?"
"Yes, yes, of course! It was my great hope," Salap said.
"I know what we have to do," Keyser-Bach insisted. "We cannot take chances. We
must make certain that Martha is dead."
Salap seemed ready to spit. He walked back and forth on the beach, glaring at
the captain, at us. "You would have us destroy all we have studied?"
"We keep our own samples, to show Lenk. But we burn the grove and try to find
the hidden queen."
"There _is_ no hidden queen!" Salap shouted. He had lost all of his restraint
and spittle flecked his black mustache. "Martha is dead!"
The captain flinched at this outburst. He set his stick down on the sand and
squatted, laying his arms across his knees. Salap knelt beside him and put a
hand on his shoulder.
"It is not necessary to act with such brashness," Salap said, some of his calm
returning.
"Whatever Martha set out to do, clearly it has come to a stop for now. It
appears at least to be dead, or so weakened and reduced that it might as well
be dead. We have time to think and to consult. We go to Jakarta, we explain
our discovery to Lenk. You can request an audience, even when he is busy with
Brion. And you can ask Lenk and his councilors what should be done.
"They cannot deny us now," he said. "Our own curiosity is not a luxury. We
must answer our questions. We _must_ understand these processes."
The captain's face had come back from its dangerous color, and his anger and
anxiety had cooled. "Do you think Nimzhian knew?" he asked.
"Shatro is a fool. She knew nothing," Salap said. While the captain had
cooled, Salap had become infected by an enthusiasm that he took some pains to
hide. He knew he could win this argument and gain an advantage in a larger
war. He approached me and said, loudly enough for the others to hear, "How
ambitious are you, Ser Olmy?"
"I'm eager to learn," I said.
"The captain and I, and the master Randall, have tried for ten years to make
our case, that ignorance is dangerous, that we live on a dangerous world,
however calm and benign it may seem.
There are many more dangers than starvation."
The captain looked up at his chief researcher with an expression mixing
irritation, puzzlement, and wonder, one eye squinted, one hand pulling on his
chin. Whatever his connections, Keyser-Bach had never been much of a political
thinker. Salap, however, more than made up for that lack.
"We have fought and been denied too many times," Salap said. "Our victory with
this expedition -- one ship, and a crew barely adequate -- was a small one.
But Martha has left a legacy more frightful than anything seen on Lamarckia.
And more precious to us than any mountain of metals."
The captain returned to the ship with Shimchisko, Shatro, and Cassir. The
necessity for silence had been impressed on all by Salap. Shimchisko took the
warning with a somber expression.
As they pushed the boat off, the captain said, "Give my farewells to Ser
Nimzhian."
"I will," Salap said.
"Tell her..."
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