Speaker for the Dead

yes."
      "She won't let me study the Descolada bodies at all . That's what's in some of the locked files, anyway. She's locked up all of Gusto's and Cida's discoveries about the Descolada bodies. Nothing's available."
      The Speaker's eyes narrowed. "So. That's one-third of boba. What's the rest?"
      "It's more than a third. Whatever the Descolada body is, it was able to adapt to become a human parasite ten years after the colony was founded. Ten years! If it can adapt once, it can adapt again."
      "Maybe she doesn't think so."
      "Maybe I ought to have a right to decide that for myself."
      He put out a hand, rested it on her knee, calmed her. "I agree with you. But go on. The second reason she's boba."
      "She won't allow any theoretical research. No taxonomy. No evolutionary models. If I ever try to do any, she says I obviously don't have enough to do and weighs me down with assignments until she thinks I've given up."
      "You haven't given up, I take it."
      "That's what xenobiology's for . Oh, yes, fine that she can make a potato that makes maximum use of the ambient nutrients. Wonderful that she made a breed of amaranth that makes the colony protein self-sufficient with only ten acres under cultivation. But that's all molecular juggling ."
      "It's survival."
      "But we don't know anything. It's like swimming on the top of the ocean. You get very comfortable, you can move around a little, but you don't know if there are sharks down there! We could be surrounded by sharks and she doesn't want to find out."
      "Third thing?"
      "She won't exchange information with the Zenadors. Period. Nothing. And that really is crazy. We can't leave the fenced area. That means that we don't have a single tree we can study. We know absolutely nothing about the flora and fauna of this world except what happened to be included inside the fence. One herd of cabra and a bunch of capim grass, and then a slightly different riverside ecology, and that's everything. Nothing about the kinds of animals in the forest, no information exchange at all. We don't tell them anything, and if they send us data we erase the files unread. It's like she built this wall around us that nothing could get through. Nothing gets in, nothing goes out."
      "Maybe she has reasons."
      "Of course she has reasons. Crazy people always have reasons. For one thing, she hated Libo. Hated him. She wouldn't let Miro talk about him, wouldn't let us play with his children-- China and I were best friends for years and she wouldn't let me bring her home or go to her house after school. And when Miro apprenticed to him, she didn't speak to him or set his place at the table for a year."
      She could see that the Speaker doubted her, thought she was exaggerating.
      "I mean one year. The day he went to the Zenador's Station for the first time as Libo's apprentice, he came home and she didn't speak to him, not a word, and when he sat down to dinner she removed the plate from in front of his face, just cleaned up his silverware as if he weren't there. He sat there through the entire meal, just looking at her. Until Father got angry at him for being rude and told him to leave the room."
      "What did he do, move out?"
      "No. You don't know Miro!" Ela laughed bitterly. "He doesn't fight, but he doesn't give up, either. He never answered Father's abuse, never. In all my life I don't remember hearing him answer anger with anger. And Mother-- well, he came home every night from the Zenador's Station and sat down where a plate was set, and every night Mother took up his plate and silverware, and he sat there till Father made him leave. Of course, within a week Father was yelling at him to get out as soon as Mother reached for his plate. Father loved it, the bastard, he thought it was great, he hated Miro so much, and finally Mother was on his side against Miro."
      "Who gave in?"
      "Nobody gave in." Ela looked at the river, realizing how terrible this all sounded, realizing that she was shaming her family in front of a stranger. But he wasn't a stranger, was he? Because Quara was talking again, and Olhado was involved in things again, and Grego, for just a short time, Grego had been almost a normal boy. He wasn't a stranger.
      "How did it end?" asked the Speaker.
      "It ended when the piggies killed Libo. That's how much Mother hated the man. When he died she celebrated by forgiving her son. That night when Miro came home, it was after dinner was over, it