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Miro and Val looked up, bleary-eyed, from the documents they were poring over at Miro's computer, to see that in the air above Val's computer, Jane's virtual face now hovered, watching them.
"We've been passive observers as long as they'll let us," said Jane. "But now there are three spacecraft up in the outer atmosphere, rising toward us. I don't think any of them are merely remote-controlled weapons, but I can't be certain of it. And they seem to be directing some transmissions to us in particular, the same messages over and over."
"What message?"
"It's the genetic molecule stuff," said Jane. "I can tell you the composition of the molecules, but I haven't a clue what they mean."
"When do their interceptors reach us?"
"Three minutes, plus or minus. They're zig-zagging evasively, now that they've escaped the gravity well."
Miro nodded. "My sister Quara was convinced that much of the descolada virus consisted of language. I think now we can conclusively say that she was right. It does carry a meaning. She was wrong about the virus being sentient, though, I think. My guess now is that the descolada kept recomposing those sections of itself that constituted a report."
"A report," echoed Val. "That makes sense. To tell its makers what it has done with the world it ... probed."
"So the question is," said Miro, "do we simply disappear and let them ponder the miracle of our sudden arrival and vanishing? Or do we first have Jane broadcast to them the entire, um, text of the descolada virus?"
"Dangerous," said Val. "The message it contains may also tell these people everything they want to know about human genes. After all, we're one of the creatures the descolada worked on, and its message is going to tell all of our strategies for controlling it."
"Except the last one," said Miro. "Because Jane won't send them the descolada as it exists now, completely tamed and controlled-- that would be inviting them to revise it to circumvent our alterations."
"We won't send them a message and we won't go back to Lusitania, either," said Jane. "We don't have time."
"We don't have time not to," said Miro. "However urgent you might think this is, Jane, it doesn't do a lick of good for me and Val to be here to do this without help. My sister Ela, for instance, who actually understands this virus stuff. And Quara, despite her being the second most pig-headed