=She is pleased to reopen the scanner?=
"Not pleased at all. More like scared shitless."
=This is Parikkal.= My earstone translated his skirring with a sizzling
edge, like bacon frying. =The confusion was made elsewhere. No mishap
can be connected to our station.=
I pushed through the bubble into the scan center. I could see the three
dinos through the control window. Their heads were bobbing furiously.
"Tell me," I said.
=Our communications with Gend were marred by a transient falsehood,= said
Silloin. =Kamala Shastri has been received there and reconstructed.=
"She migrated?" I felt the deck shifting beneath my feet. "What about
the one we've got here?"
=The simplicity is to load the redundant into the scanner and finalize ....=
"I've got news for you. She's not going anywhere near that marble."
=Her equation is not in balance.= This was Linna, speaking for the first
time. Linna was not exactly in charge of Tuulen Station; she was more
like a senior partner. Parikkal and Silloin had overruled her before -- at
least I thought they had.
"What do you expect me to do? Wring her neck?"
There was a moment's silence -- which was not as unnerving as watching
them eye me through the window, their heads now perfectly still.
"No," I said.
The dinos were skirring at each other; their heads wove and dipped. At
first they cut me cold and the comm was silent, but suddenly their debate
crackled through my earstone.
=This is just as I have been telling,= said Linna. =These beings have no
realization of harmony. It is wrongful to further unleash them on the many
worlds.=
=You may have reason,= said Parikkal. =But that is a later discussion.
The need is for the equation to be balanced.=
=There is no time We will have to discard the redundant ourselves.=
Silloin bared her long brown teeth. It would take her maybe five seconds
to rip Kamala's throat out. And even though Silloin was the dino most
sympathetic to us, I had no doubt she would enjoy the kill.
=I will argue that we adjourn human migration until this world has been
rethought,= said Linna.
This was typical dino condescension. Even though they appeared to be
arguing with each other, they were actually speaking to me, laying the
situation out so that even the baby sapient would understand. They were
informing me that I was jeopardizing the future of humanity in space. That
the Kamala in reception D was dead whether I quit or not. That the
equation had to be balanced and it had to be now.
"Wait," I said. "Maybe I can coax her back into the scanner." I had to
get away from them. I pulled my earstone out and slid it into my pocket.
I was in such a hurry to escape that I stumbled as I left the scan center
and had to catch myself in the hallway. I stood there for a second,
staring at the hand pressed against the bulkhead. I seemed to see the
splayed fingers through the wrong end of a telescope. I was far away from
myself.
She had curled into herself on the couch, arms clutching knees to her
