What she could not know was what kind of safeguards might be on the shuttle itself. She had explained to Bluecloak the kinds she knew about, the little beams of light or sound that reacted if interrupted, the pressure plates, the locks that required known palmprints or retinal patterns. Bluecloak had not seemed concerned. And that was not her problem now. “They are very intelligent,” Ofelia said. “They learn very fast, even as babies.”
“Babies! What do you know about their babies?” Kira sat up straight, and put down the pie she had held.
This was the part that scared Ofelia most. She had not wanted to admit that the People had babies here, but Bluecloak and Gurgle-click-cough had insisted. She must tell her people about the babies; they must see the babies.
“They have cute babies,” Ofelia said. “Very affectionate, very quick to learn.”
“You’ve seen their babies?!” all of them at once, practically. “There are babies here?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kira asked.
“You didn’t ask me,” Ofelia said, with great satisfaction. Just as anger flowered from the remains of surprise, she stood up. “Come along, if you want to see them.”
Nothing would have stopped them. They crowded her heels across the lane to the center, where Ofelia knocked on the closed door. Bluecloak opened it; she winked at Bluecloak and led the others in. When they were all inside, she shut the door behind them.
“Why are you shutting the door?” Likisi asked.
“We don’t want the babies to run out in the street,” Ofelia said, as she led them down the passage to the schoolroom. She could hear the others following her. Ahead, light spilled out the schoolroom door, and she could hear the squeaky voices of the babies.
TWENTY
Ofelia did not know herself exactly what Bluecloak had planned in the way of demonstrations. What she saw—what they all saw—exceeded anything she had imagined. One of the babies, perched on Gurgle-click-cough’s lap, poked at the controls of a classroom computer. On the display, colored patterns swirled. Two of the adults were hunched over a couple of gourds, fiddling with wires that connected to . . . Ofelia blinked . . . they had connected half the room’s electrical demonstrations to their gourds. The other two babies played on the floor with models of gears and screws, constructing something intricate. Ofelia wondered what it was, and if it would work when it was done. “Oh . . . my . . . God.” That was Likisi; Ofelia had not suspected him of any religious beliefs. “They’re—they’re using a computer?”
Bluecloak came forward; he had shut the door behind them, silently. “Iss dun.”
“But how did he learn—did you teach them? After we warned you?” Likisi glared at Ofelia. Bluecloak stepped between them, forcing a confrontation.
“Huhooaht hooeee sssee, hooeee aaak.” Bluecloak said, waving its arm to encompass everything in the room.
“It means,” Bilong said to Likisi, “what we see, we make. They do, I mean. He says they can make anything they’ve seen. They can’t really, but—”
“Aaakss zzzzt!” Bluecloak said, and spoke in his own language to the creatures with the gourds. Ofelia held her breath. She could hardly believe it would work again; it had seemed too much like magic the first time.
The lights went out, and before the startled humans could exclaim, a string of smaller bulbs flared in the center of the room. The room lights came back on, and the one beside the gourds puffed its throat-sac twice at the humans, then moved a switch and the little lights went off.
“That’s impossible!” Likisi said. “They’ve used an extension cord—a hidden battery—”
“The battery is the gourds,” Ofelia said. Bluecloak had explained it to her. “They brew some stuff that works like the acid in a liquid battery—”
“They can’t do that—there’s no way—”
“It could be.” Kira went over to look. “If they’ve come up with an acid—”
“They make explosives, you know,” Ofelia said. “That shuttle—”
“Zzzzt inn ssky,” Bluecloak said. “Sssane zzzzt inn ires, aaakss lahtt, aaakss kuhll, aaakss tuurn . . .”
“You told them!” Likisi rounded on Ofelia. “You had to tell them this; they couldn’t have figured it out. They don’t even have a government—!”
“Government and science aren’t mutually necessary,” Ori said dryly. He looked more amused than alarmed now, and clearly he enjoyed Likisi’s distress. “Frankly I don’t think Sera Falfurrias has the background to set up this demonstration.” He turned to Ofelia. “Tell me, Sera, what kind of ‘brew’ would it take to generate electricity chemically—do you know?”
“Batteries use acid,” she said. “It’s dangerous, and it makes fumes.”
“Yes. As I thought. And I suspect, Vasil, if we analyze what the indigenes have in their flasks, it will not be the same as the acid Sera Falfurrias may have seen in batteries. As I’ve tried to tell you several times since we came, these indigenes are quite unlike other cultures I’ve studied.”
“Well, they’re aliens!” Likisi said. “Of course they’re different.”
“Excuse me.” Ori turned away from Likisi and went over to Kira. “Have you any idea what’s in there?”
“This plant—I have no idea what it is, or where they got it—” She held out a handful of leaves and some orange-red globes smaller than plums. “I have no idea how they make the liquid from it—”
“It doesn’t matter how they do it,” Likisi said. “It only matters that they’re aliens, and they didn’t have electricity when they met up with Grandma here, and now they do. It’s her fault—”
Ofelia flinched away as he loomed over her; perhaps he didn’t mean to hit her, but she knew that tone, that attitude. Then long, hard fingers closed around his arms, and two of the People held him . . . not so much still, as unable to break free. The other humans froze, staring, then their eyes slid to Ofelia’s face.
“Bluecloak is the singer for most of the nest-guardians of the hunting tribes,” Ofelia said, ignoring Likisi’s struggles and the others’ expressions. She hoped she was using the right human words for the concepts Bluecloak had conveyed so carefully. “Singers are not ‘entertainers’—” That with a pointed look at Ori. “Singers make contact between the nest-guardians who want to make agreements about nesting places or hunting range; they are what we would call diplomats. Nest-guardians are the only ones who can make agreements binding on the People.”
“The . . . rulers?” Ori asked. Give him credit; he was more curious to know the truth than annoyed that he had been wrong.
“No. Not rulers . . . exactly. They are in charge of the young—from the nest to the stage where they begin roaming with the People—and so they are the ones who decide what is important, what must be taught, what agreements must be kept.”
“I don’t see how that works,” Kira said, frowning. “If they stay behind, at the nests with the babies, how can they know what the others decide?”
Ofelia had no idea how they knew, or if they knew. She went on as if Kira had not interrupted. “Bluecloak came when the first ones here reported that I was the same kind of animal as those they’d killed, but also different. Because I am old, and have had children, and because I stayed behind when my people left, they think of me as a nest-guardian for humans. For my humans.”