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being alive like this. I know I'm rejoicing when the rest of you are grim, but don't you see? Even if we all die when the air runs out in a few weeks, I can't help but marvel at how it feels to me!"
"We understand," said Firequencher. "You have passed into your Second Life. It's a joyful time for us, as well."
"I spent time among your trees, you know," said Jane. "Your mothertrees made space for me. Took me in and nurtured me. Does that make us brother and sister now?"
"I hardly know what it would mean, to have a sister," said Firequencher. "But if you remember the life in the dark of the mothertree, then you remember more than I do. We have dreams sometimes, but no real memories of the First Life in darkness. Still, that makes this your Third Life after all."
"Then I'm an adult?" asked Jane, and she laughed again.
And again felt how her laugh stilled the others, hurt them.
But something odd happened as she turned, ready to apologize again. Her glance fell upon Miro, and instead of saying the words she had planned-- the Jane-words that would have come out of the jewel in his ear only the day before-- other words came to her lips, along with a memory. "If my memories live, Miro, then I'm alive. Isn't that what you told me?"
Miro shook his head. "Are you speaking from Val's memory, or from Jane's memory when she-- when you-- overheard us speaking in the Hive Queen's cave? Don't comfort me by pretending to be her."
Jane, by habit-- Val's habit? or her own? --snapped, "When I comfort you, you'll know it."
"And how will I know?" Miro snapped back.
"Because you'll be comfortable, of course," said Val-Jane. "In the meantime, please keep in mind that I'm not listening through the jewel in your ear now. I see only with these eyes and hear only with these ears."
This was not strictly true, of course. For many times a second, she felt the flowing sap, the unstinting welcome of the mothertrees as her aiua satisfied its hunger for largeness by touring the vast network of the pequenino philotes. And now and then, outside the mothertrees, she caught a glimmer of a thought, of a word, a phrase, spoken in the language of the fathertrees. Or was it their language? Rather it was the language behind the language, the underlying speech of the speechless. And whose was that other voice? I know you-- you are of the kind that made me. I know your voice.
<We lost track of you,> said the Hive Queen in her mind. <But you did well without us.>
Jane was not prepared for the swelling of pride that glowed through her entire Val-body; she felt the physical effect of the emotion as Val, but her pride came from the praise of a hive-mother. I am