his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of Speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.
If I'm not that frightened girl who heard her brother in desperate pain and dared not go to him, who am I? But the water flowing through the grillwork under the fence held no answers. Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.
Still the Speaker lay there on the grama, looking at the clouds coming darkly out of the west. "I've told you all I know," Ela said. "I told you what was in those files - the Descolada information. That's all I know."
"No it isn't," said the Speaker.
"It is, I promise."
"Do you mean to say that you obeyed her? That when your mother told you not to do any theoretical work, you simply turned off your mind and did what she wanted?"
Ela giggled. "She thinks so."
"But you didn't."
"I'm a scientist, even if she isn't."
"She was once," said the Speaker. "She passed her tests when she was thirteen."
"I know," said Ela.
"And she used to share information with Pipo before he died."
"I know that, too. It was just Libo that she hated."
"So tell me, Ela. What have you discovered in your theoretical work?"
"I haven't discovered any answers. But at least I know what some of the questions are. That's a start, isn't it? Nobody else is asking questions. It's so funny, isn't it? Miro says the framling xenologers are always pestering him and Ouanda for more information, more data, and yet the law forbids them from learning anything more. And yet not a single framling xenobiologist has ever asked us for any information. They all just study the biosphere on their own planets and don't ask Mother a single question. I'm the only one asking, and nobody cares. "
"I care," said the Speaker. "I need to know what the questions are."
"OK, here's one. We have a herd of cabra here inside the fence. The cabra can't jump the fence, they don't even touch it. I've examined and tagged every single cabra in the herd, and you know something? There's not one male. They're all female."
"Bad luck," said the Speaker. "You'd think they would have left at least one male inside."
"It doesn't matter," said Ela. "I don't know if there are any males. In the last five years every single adult cabra has given birth at least once. And not one of them has mated."
"Maybe they clone," said the Speaker.
"The offspring is not genetically identical to the mother. That much research I could sneak into the lab without Mother noticing. There is some kind of gene transfer going on."
"Hermaphrodites?"
"No. Pure female. No male sexual organs at all. Does that qualify as an important question? Somehow the cabras are having some kind of genetic exchange, without sex."
"The theological implications alone are astounding."
"Don't make fun."
"Of which? Science or theology?"
"Either one. Do you want to hear more of my questions or not?"
"I do," said the Speaker.
"Then try this. The grass you're lying on - we call it grama. All the watersnakes are hatched here. Little worms so small you can hardly see them. They eat the grass down to the nub and eat each other, too, shedding skin each time they grow larger. Then all of a sudden, when the grass is completely slimy with their dead skin, all the snakes slither off into the river and they never come back out. "
He wasn't a xenobiologist. He didn't get the implication right away.
"The watersnakes hatch here," she explained, "but they don't come back out of the water to lay their eggs."
"So they mate here before they go into the water."
"Fine, of course, obviously. I've seen them mating. That's not the problem. The problem is, why are they watersnakes?"
He still didn't get it.
"Look, they're completely adapted to life underwater. They have gills along with lungs, they're superb swimmers,