"I find it hard to believe that a species with no abstract language could possibly create spaceships like those out there," said Quara scornfully. "And they broadcast these molecules the way we broadcast vids and voices."
"What if they all have organs inside their bodies that directly translate molecular messages into chemicals or physical structures? Then they could--"
"You're missing my point," insisted Quara. "You don't build up a fund of common knowledge by throwing bricks and sharing sandwiches. They need language in order to store information outside their bodies so that they can pass knowledge from person to person, generation after generation. You don't get out into space or make broadcasts using the electromagnetic spectrum on the basis of what one person can be persuaded to do with a brick."
"She's probably right," said Ela.
"So maybe parts of the molecular messages they send are memory sets," said Miro. "Again, not a language--it stimulates the brain to 'remember' things that the sender experienced but the receiver did not."
"Listen, whether you're right or not," said Firequencher, "we have to keep trying to decode the language."
"If I'm right, we're wasting our time," said Miro.
"Exactly," said Firequencher.
"Oh," said Miro. Firequencher's point was well taken. If Miro was right, their whole mission was useless anyway--they had already failed. So they had to continue to act as if Miro was wrong and the language could be decoded, because if it couldn't, there was nothing they could do anyway.
And yet . . .
"We're forgetting something," said Miro.
"I'm not," said Quara.
"Jane. She was created because the hive queens built a bridge between species."
"Between humans and hive queens, not between unknown virus-spewing aliens and humans," said Quara.
But Ela was interested. "The human way of communication--speech between equals--that was surely as foreign to the hive queens as this molecular language is to us. Maybe Jane can find some way to connect to them philotically."
"Mind-reading?" said Quara. "Remember, we don't have a bridge."
"It all depends," said Miro, "on how they deal with philotic connections. The Hive Queen talks all the time to Human, right? Because the fathertrees and the hive queens already both use philotic links to communicate. They speak mind to mind, without the intervention of language. And they're no more biologically similar than hive queens and humans are."
Ela nodded thoughtfully. "Jane can't try anything like this now, not till the whole issue of the Congress fleet is resolved. But once she's free to return her attention to us, she can try, at least, to contact these . . . people directly."
"If these aliens communicated through philotic links," said Quara, "they wouldn't have to use molecules."
"Maybe these molecules," said Miro, "are how they communicate with animals."
Admiral Lands could not believe what he was hearing. The First Speaker of Starways Congress and the First Secretary of the Starfleet Admiralty were both visible above the terminal, and their message was the same. "Quarantine, exactly," said the Secretary. "You are not authorized to use the Molecular Disruption Device."
"Quarantine is impossible," said Lands. "We're going too rapidly. You know the battle plan I filed at the beginning of the voyage. It would take us weeks to slow down. And what about the men? It's one thing to take a relativistic voyage and then return to their home worlds. Yes, their friends and family are gone, but at least they aren't stuck off on permanent duty inside a starship! Keeping our velocity at near-relativistic speeds, I'm saving them months of their lives spent in acceleration and deceleration. You're talking about expecting them to give up years!"
"Surely you're not saying," said the First Speaker, "that we should blow up Lusitania and wipe out the pequeninos and thousands of human beings so that your crews don't get depressed."
"I'm saying that if you don't want us to blow up this planet, fine--but let us come home."
"We can't do that," said the First Secretary. "The descolada is too dangerous to leave it unsupervised on a planet that has rebelled."
"You mean you're canceling the use of the Little Doctor when nothing has been done to contain the descolada?"
"We will send a landing team with due precautions to ascertain the exact conditions on the ground," said the First Secretary.
"In other words, you'll send men into mortal danger from this disease with no knowledge of the situation on the ground, when the means exist to eliminate the danger without peril to any uninfected person."
"Congress has reached the decision," said the First Speaker coldly. "We will not commit xenocide while any legitimate alternative remains. Are these orders received and understood?"
"Yes sir," said Lands.