Earthfall Page 0,81

soil your lips by speaking our language, or if your undergod should choose to speak our impure tongue. We touch your face, look at the light, then go down on our haunches before your face and gaze at it. Yes, I will remember. We will all remember.

Like all the other women, Shedemei was at once frightened, repelled, and fascinated by the procession of diggers who came into the village, carrying their compatriots who had been knocked unconscious by Nafai. But the responsibility for doing something with them was hers, and so she quickly set her personal feelings aside and led the diggers into the ship. She knew at once what Volemak's purpose was; he had seen her doing nondestructive scans and studies of the few animals they had revived, and knew that she could learn a vast amount about a creature using the equipment on the ship. It was imperative that they understand the physical structures and systems that gave shape to the lives of the diggers, and yet it was just as important that they not be harmed.

The trouble was that it might not be such a good idea to let the diggers see the inside of the ship. From the little that Dza had said, she knew that Nafai had overawed them with the powers of the cloak of the starmaster. Perhaps the smooth and shiny surfaces of the inside of the ship would enhance that effect; but perhaps not. There was definitely danger in letting the diggers see that the humans were, after all, human, that what miracles they did were done with tools and machines and not by godlike powers inherent in them.

But that was for another day. Volemak had made his decision, and it was almost certainly best. Even if it wasn't, Shedemei would obey. The peace they had had these past months since arriving on Earth depended on supporting his authority; she would obey him even if he was flat wrong. Peace-that's all Shedemei wanted. A chance to do her work without having to worry about which side she was on and who was on top in the endless family struggles among Volemak's and Rasa's children.

The first order of business once the carriers were gone was to sedate the diggers so that they didn't awaken at an inconvenient time. There had been forty million years of evolution since the biota of Earth and Harmony had diverged, but the most conservative aspect of life was at the chemical level. A light dosage of the safest sedative should do the job. She spoke to the medical computer as she weighed each of the bodies in turn. The dosages were meted out and she pressed the pads against the pink skin.

Pink hairless skin-why would these rodents have lost their fiir? She suspected that there was no sound evolutionary reason for it-it was a cultural thing. Some standard of beauty became general and then only those who exhibited the beautiful trait were able to mate.

Soon pink skin would predominate in the culture while hairiness would be relegated to a few despised members. Otherwise, the trait made no sense. Digger skin had no melanin. No wonder they had to stay in shadows and tunnels all the time, unlike their ancient rat ancestors-they couldn't bear the sunburn if they emerged from the trees.

Once they were all sedated, she meant to begin scanning them at once. But then sleepiness swept over her like a wave at the beach, and she realized that after being awake all night this was hardly the time to conduct serious investigations. So she used the cart and carried each digger in turn to a suspended animation chamber. She set the chambers to normal life support so they wouldn't kick into suspended animation mode-there was too much risk that the suspended animation dosages wouldn't be right for diggers and they'd be unrevivable.

Then she went to her berth and lay down, just for a nap. A couple of hours and she'd be fine. It reminded her of the way she had lived in Basilica before they persuaded her-no, tricked her, manipulated her, forced her-to join Volemak's exodus into the wilderness. In those days, when she was hot on the trail of some elusive gene, she could work around the clock, taking short naps that amounted to little more than a couple of hours of sleep a day. The excitement of discovery and creation was more important than sleeping and eating. She had never wanted that life to be