"I know it," said Quara. "Anyway, it gives us a known context, doesn't it? We know what that language is about, even if we haven't been able to decode it."

"Well, now that you've said all that," said Ela, "I still have no idea how this new wisdom will help us decode the language. I mean, isn't that precisely what you've been working on for months?"

"Ah," said Quara. "I have. But what I haven't been able to do is speak the 'words' that the descolada virus recorded and see what answers we get back."

"Too dangerous," said Jane at once. "Absurdly dangerous. These people are capable of making viruses that completely destroy biospheres, and they're callous enough to use them. And you're proposing that we give to them precisely the weapon they used to devastate the pequeninos' planet? Which probably contains a complete record, not only of the pequeninos' metabolism, but of ours as well? Why not just slit our own throats and send them the blood?"

Miro noticed that when Jane spoke, the others looked almost stunned. Part of their response might have been to the difference between Val's diffidence and the bold attitude that Jane displayed. Part of it, too, might have been because the Jane they knew was more computerlike, less assertive. Miro, however, recognized this authoritarian style from the way she had often spoken into his ear through the jewel. In a way it was a pleasure for him to hear her again; it was also disturbing to hear it coming from the lips of someone else. Val was gone; Jane was back; it was awful; it was wonderful.

Because Miro was not so taken aback by Jane's attitude, he was the one to speak into the silence. "Quara's right, Jane. We don't have years and years to work this out -- we might have only a few weeks. Or less. We need to provoke a linguistic response. Get an answer from them, analyze the difference in language between their initial statements to us and the later ones."

"We're giving away too much," said Jane.

"No risk, no gain," said Miro.

"Too much risk, all dead," said Jane snidely. But in the snideness there was a familiar lilt, a kind of sauciness that said, I'm only playing. And that came, not from Jane -- Jane had never sounded like that -- but from Val. It hurt to hear it; it was good to hear it. Miro's dual responses to everything coming from Jane kept him constantly on edge. I love you, I miss you, I grieve for you, shut up; whom he was talking to seemed to change with the minutes.

"It's only the future of three sentient species we're gambling with," added Ela.

With that they all turned to Firequencher.

"Don't look at me," he said. "I'm just a tourist."

"Come on," said Miro. "You're here because your people are at risk the same as ours. This is a tough decision and you have to vote. You have the most at risk, actually, because even the earliest descolada codes we have might well reveal the whole biological history of your people since the virus first came among you."

"Then again," said Firequencher, "it might mean that since they already know how to destroy us, we have nothing to lose."

"Look," said Miro. "We have no evidence that these people have any kind of manned starflight. All they've sent out so far are probes."

"All that we know about," said Jane.

"And we've had no evidence of anybody coming around to check out how effective the descolada had been at transforming the biosphere of Lusitania to prepare it to receive colonists from this planet. So if they do have colony ships out there, either they're already on the way so what different does it make if we share this information, or they haven't sent any which means that they can't."

"Miro's right," said Quara, pouncing. Miro winced. He hated being on Quara's side, because now everybody's annoyance with her would rub off on him. "Either the cows are already out of the barn, so why bother shutting the door, or they can't get the door open anyway, so why put a lock on it?"

"What do you know about cows?" asked Ela disdainfully.

"After all these years of living and working with you," said Quara nastily, "I'd say I'm an expert."

"Girls, girls," said Jane. "Get a grip on yourselves."

Again, everyone but Miro turned to her in surprise. Val wouldn't have spoken up during a family conflict like this; nor would the Jane they knew -- though of course Miro was used to her speaking up all the time.

"We all know the risks of giving them information about us," said Miro. "We also know that we're making no headway and maybe we'll be able to learn something about the way this language works after having some give and take."

"It's not give and take," said Jane. "It's give and give. We give them information they probably can't get any other way, information that may well tell them everything they need to know in order to create new viruses that might well circumvent all our weapons against them. But since we have no idea how that information is coded, or even where each specific datum is located, how can we interpret the answer? Besides, what if the answer is a new virus to destroy us?"

"They're sending us the information necessary to construct the virus," said Quara, her voice thick with contempt, as if she thought Jane were the stupidest person who ever lived, instead of arguably the most godlike in her brilliance. "But we're not going to build it. As long as it's just a graphic representation on a computer screen --"

"That's it," said Ela.

"What's it?" said Quara. It was her turn to be annoyed now, for obviously Ela was a step ahead of her on something.

"They aren't taking these signals and putting them up on a computer screen. We do that because we have a language written with symbols that we see with the naked eye. But they must read these broadcast signals more directly. The code comes in, and they somehow interpret it by following the instruction to make the molecule that's described in the broadcast. Then they 'read' it by -- what, smelling it? Swallowing it? The point is, if genetic molecules are their language, then they must somehow take them into their body as appropriately as the way we get the images of our writing from the paper into our eyes."

"I see," said Jane. "You're hypothesizing that they're expecting us to make a molecule out of what they send us, instead of just reading it on a screen and trying to abstract it and intellectualize it."

"For all we know," said Ela, "this could be how they discipline people. Or attack them. Send them a message. If they 'listen' they have to do it by reading the molecule into their bodies and letting it have its effect on them. So if the effect is poison or a killing disease, just hearing the message subjects them to the discipline. It's as if all our language had to be tapped out on the back of our neck. To listen, we'd have to lie down and expose ourself to whatever tool they chose to use to send the message. If it's a finger or a feather, well and good -- but if it's a broadaxe or a machete or a sledgehammer, too bad for us."

"It doesn't even have to be fatal," said Quara, her rivalry with Ela forgotten as she developed the idea in her own mind. "The molecules could be behavior-altering devices. To hear is literally to obey."

"I don't know if you're right in the particulars," said Jane. "But it gives the experiment much more potential for success. And it suggests that they might not have a delivery system that can attack us directly. That changes the probable risk."

"And people say you can't think well without your computer," said Miro.

At once he was embarrassed. He had inadvertently spoken to her as flippantly as he used to when he subvocalized so she could overhear him through the jewel. But now it sounded strangely cold of him, to tease her about having lost her computer network. He could joke that way with Jane-in-the-jewel. But Jane-in-the-flesh was a different matter. She was now a human person. With feelings that had to be worried about.