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."
"They'll never destroy it," said Quara.
"Because you won't let them."
"Any more than I'd let them destroy you. Sentient life is sentient life."
"No," said Planter. "With ramen you can live and let live. But with varelse, there can be no dialogue. Only war."
"No such thing," Quara said. Then she launched into the same arguments she had used when Miro talked to her.
When she was finished, there was silence for a while.
"Are they talking still?" Ela whispered to the people who were watching in the visual monitors. Miro didn't hear an answer--somebody probably shook his head no.
"Quara," whispered Planter.
"I'm still here," she answered. To her credit, the argumentative tone was gone from her voice again. She had taken no joy from her cruel moral correctness.
"That's not why you're refusing to help," he said.
"Yes it is."
"You'd help in a minute if it weren't your own family you had to surrender to."