She bent to the task of relying knots, pretending to take no notice of his approach. Overhead, towering gray clouds marred the purple bowl of the sky.
“Greetings,” said Toroca, stopping about ten paces short of her, the word appearing as a puff of condensation.
Babnol pulled tightly on the ropes, but didn’t look up. “Hahat dan.”
“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Toroca said.
She gestured at the climbing web. “I’ve got a lot of work left to do still. Perhaps we can speak later?”
“No, I think now would be best. This task can wait.”
“Keenir needs it done.”
“Keenir works for me on this voyage,” said Toroca with uncharacteristic firmness. “My needs outweigh his.”
She stopped working on the knots and straightened. “Of course.”
“The object is missing from my cabin,” said Toroca.
“Object?” repeated Babnol innocently.
“The artifact from Fra’toolar. The blue hemisphere with the strange handgrip.”
“Ah,” said Babnol. “And you say it is missing?”
Toroca’s fingers flexed, a reaction of shock, an instinctive prelude to the unsheathing of claws. He recognized what was happening here, saw that Babnol had moved from him questioning her to her questioning him. It was the first step in the dance, the social custom of avoiding direct questions in uncomfortable areas. At that moment, he knew that Babnol was involved, his worst fears confirmed.
“Yes,” said Toroca, willing to play on a step or two further. “I say that object is missing.”
“You must have been surprised,” said Babnol.
“Yes.”
“Have you asked Keenir if he knows—?”
“Babnol.” Toroca spoke the name sharply. “I will ask the questions, please.” To force direct responses was the height of bad manners.
“Why would you want to question me?” she said.
Toroca ignored that. “I,” he said again, with heavy emphasis, “will ask the questions.”
“I really must get back to my work,” said Babnol, grabbing the climbing ropes, yanking them, looking for another loose knot.
“Did you take the object?” asked Toroca firmly. There was a moment, a pause, a break in the dance. A Quintaglio could not get away with a lie in the light of day. And yet, although direct confrontations such as this rarely occurred, for one did not want to force another to feel he or she had no territory left to retreat into, there was often a final step to the dance, one last, brief movement in which the party wishing to avoid answering would spout a lie in the forlorn hope that his or her muzzle miraculously would not change color.
Toroca waited patiently, and, at last, Babnol dipped her head. “Yes,” she said. “I took the object.”
Toroca turned and looked out over the gray waves. “Thank you,” he said at last, “for not lying to me.” His heart was aching. He cared so much for Babnol, and yet this breach, this violation, cut him to the bone. Toroca had no interest in territoriality but he valued his privacy, which was quite a different thing. “You could have asked me if you wanted to borrow the object,” he said, trying to put his words in a light tone. “I was given quite a start when I realized it was gone.”
“I’m sorry,” said Babnol, and Toroca was relieved to see that her muzzle did not flush blue as she said it.
“I’m certain you are,” he said. “Where is the object now?”
“Toroca—”
“Babnol, where is it? In your quarters?”
“Not in my quarters.”
“Then where?”
“Toroca, I did it for you.”
Toroca’s claws did slip out. “Where?”
“It’s gone, Toroca. For good. Overboard.”
Toroca closed his eyes and exhaled noisily. “Oh, Babnol.” He shook his head. “How could you be so careless?”
“I was not careless,” she said. “I threw it overboard on purpose, out the porthole in your cabin.”
Toroca staggered back on his tail. Had she struck him, he’d have felt no less shocked. “Threw it overboard? But, Babnol, why? Why?”
“It was not a proper thing. It—lacked goodness.” She turned her muzzle directly toward him. There could be no doubt that her obsidian eyes were meeting his. “God must have intended it to remain buried.” Her voice was defiant. “That’s why She had sealed it in rock.”
“Oh, Babnol.” Toroca’s voice was heavy. “Babnol, you…” He hesitated, as if unsure whether to complete the sentence, but at last, with a simple shrug, he did, “you fool.” For the first time in his memory, he found himself stepping back from her, instead of toward her. “You promised me when you came to me, looking to join the Geological Survey, that I wouldn’t be sorry if I let you do so. Well, I’m sorry now.” He shook his head. “Do you know what that object was, Babnol? It was our salvation. It was a gift from God. She put it exactly where I would find it; you credit me far too much if you think my random opening of rocks could find something She wanted hidden. Babnol, that object was a clue, a hint, a suggestion—a whole new way of building machines. Solid blocks that somehow performed work! Flexible clear strands, unlike anything we’ve ever imagined! That object could have been the key to getting us off this doomed moon in time. You didn’t just throw it overboard, you threw our best chance of survival overboard, too.”
Babnol was defensive now. “But you yourself said we didn’t understand the object…”
“I didn’t understand it. You didn’t. But others might. After we finish this voyage, we are returning to Capital City. There I was going to turn the object over to Novato. She and the other finest minds would examine it, and they, or the finest minds of the next generation, or of the generation after that, would have fathomed the object, would have understood the principles it employed.”
Toroca was now furious with himself. He could have sent the object back to Capital City with someone else instead of bringing it on this voyage, but he’d wanted to spend more time with it, and, most of all, he’d wanted to be there personally to see his mother’s face when he presented it to her. Such vanity! Such arrogance. He slapped his tail against the deck, and with words that were talon-sharp, took all that fury out on Babnol. “By the very claws of Lubal, herbivore, how could you do this?”
She looked at the wooden deck, splintering here and there where claws had dug into it. “I did it for you. I—I saw the way it obsessed you, the way it was drawing you in. It was like a whirlpool, Toroca, sucking the goodness out of you, sucking it into an empty, spiritless abyss.” She looked up. “I did it for you,” she said again.
“I see that you’re telling the truth, Babnol, but—” He sighed, a long, whispery exhalation, a whitish cloud of expelled air appearing around his muzzle. He tried again. “The whole point of the Geological Survey is to learn things. We cannot be afraid to look.”
“But some things are best left unknown,” she said.
“Nothing is best left unknown,” said Toroca. “Nothing. We’re trying to save our entire race! It’s only knowledge that will let us do that. We have to shed our superstitions and fears the way a snake sheds its skin. We can’t cower in the face of what we might discover. Look at Afsan! Others cowered and trembled at the sight of the Face of God, but he reasoned. Aboard this very boat, he reasoned it out! We cannot—we must not—do any less than what he did. We cannot be afraid, for if we are afraid, then we—all our people—will die.”