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"I know that, too. It was just Libo that she hated."
"So tell me, Ela. What have you discovered in your theoretical work?"
"I haven't discovered any answers. But at least I know what some of the questions are. That's a start, isn't it? Nobody else is asking questions. It's so funny, isn't it? Miro says the framling xenologers are always pestering him and Ouanda for more information, more data, and yet the law forbids them from learning anything more. And yet not a single framling xenobiologist has ever asked us for any information. They all just study the biosphere on their own planets and don't ask Mother a single question. I'm the only one asking, and nobody cares."
"I care," said the Speaker. "I need to know what the questions are."
"OK, here's one. We have a herd of cabra here inside the fence. The cabra can't jump the fence, they don't even touch it. I've examined and tagged every single cabra in the herd, and you know something? There's not one male. They're all female."
"Bad luck," said the Speaker. "You'd think they would have left at least one male inside."
"It doesn't matter," said Ela. "I don't know if there are any males. In the last five years every single adult cabra has given birth at least once. And not one of them has mated."
"Maybe they clone," said the Speaker.
"The offspring is not genetically identical to the mother. That much research I could sneak into the lab without Mother noticing. There is some kind of gene transfer going on."
"Hermaphrodites?"
"No. Pure female. No male sexual organs at all. Does that qualify as an important question? Somehow the cabras are having some kind of genetic exchange, without sex."
"The theological implications alone are astounding."
"Don't make fun."
"Of which? Science or theology?"
"Either one. Do you want to hear more of my questions or not?"
"I do," said the Speaker.
"Then try this. The grass you're lying on--we call it grama. All the water snakes are hatched here. Little worms so small you can hardly see them. They eat the grass down to the nub and eat each other, too, shedding skin each time they grow larger. Then all of a sudden, when the grass is completely slimy with their dead skin, all the snakes slither off into the river and they never come back out."
He wasn't a xenobiologist. He didn't get the implication right away.
"The watersnakes hatch here," she explained, "but they don't come back out of the water to lay their eggs."
"So they mate here before they go into the water."
"Fine, of course, obviously. I've seen them mating. That's not the problem. The problem is, why are they watersnakes!"
He still didn't get it.
"Look, they're completely adapted to life underwater. They have gills along with lungs, they're superb swimmers, they have fins for guidance, they are completely evolved for adult life in the water. Why would they ever have evolved that way if they are born on land, mate on land, and reproduce on land? As far as evolution is concerned, anything that happens after you reproduce is completely irrelevant, except if you nurture your young, and the watersnakes definitely don't nurture. Living in the water does nothing to enhance their ability to survive until they reproduce. They could slither into the water and drown and it wouldn't matter because reproduction is over."
"Yes," said the Speaker. "I see now."
"There are little clear eggs in the water, though. I've never seen a water snake lay them, but since there's no other animal in or near the river large enough to lay the eggs, it seems logical that they're watersnake eggs. Only these big clear eggs--a centimeter across--they're completely sterile. The nutrients are there, everything's ready, but there's no embryo. Nothing. Some of them have a gamete--half a set of genes in a cell, ready to combine--but not a single one was alive. And we've never found watersnake eggs on land. One day there's nothing there but grama, getting riper and riper; the next day the grama stalks are crawling with baby watersnakes. Does this sound like a question worth exploring?"
"It sounds like spontaneous generation to me."
"Yes, well, I'd like to find enough information to test some alternate hypotheses, but Mother won't let me. I asked her about this one and she made me take over the whole amaranth testing process so I wouldn't have time to muck around in the river. And another question. Why are there so few species here? On every other planet, even some of the nearly desert ones like Trondheim, there are thousands of different species, at least in the water. Here there's hardly a handful, as far as I can tell. The xingadora are the only birds we've seen. The suckflies are the only flies. The cabra are the only ruminants eating the capim grass. Except for the cabras, the piggies are the only large animals we've seen. Only one species of tree. Only one species of grass on the prairie, the capim; and the only other competing plant is the tropeca, a long vine that wanders along the ground for meters and meters--the xingadora make their nests out of the vine. That's it. The xingadora eat the suckflies and nothing else. The suckflies eat the algae along the edge of the river. And our garbage, and that's it. Nothing eats the xingadora. Nothing eats the cabra."
"Very limited," said the Speaker.
"Impossibly limited. There are ten thousand ecological niches here that are completely unfilled. There's no way that evolution could leave this world so sparse."
"Unless there was a disaster."
