"Tell them," said Planter.
She shook her head, so vigorously that tears flipped outward from her eyes, spattering the inside of the mask. If she kept that up, soon she wouldn't be able to see a thing.
"If you tell what you know, everybody is wiser. If you keep a secret, then everyone is a fool."
"If I tell, the descolada will die!"
"Then let it!" cried Planter.
The exertion was an extraordinary drain on him. The instruments in the lab went crazy for a few moments. Ela muttered under her breath as she checked with each of the technicians monitoring them.
"Is that how you'd like me to feel about you?" asked Quara.
"It is how you feel about me," whispered Planter. "Let him die."
"No," she said.
"The descolada came and enslaved my people. So what if it's sentient or not! It's a tyrant. It's a murderer. If a human being behaved the way the descolada acts, even you would agree he had to be stopped, even if killing him were the only way. Why should another species be treated more leniently than a member of your own?"
"Because the descolada doesn't know what it's doing," said Quara. "It doesn't understand that we're intelligent."
"It doesn't care," said Planter. "Whoever made the descolada sent it out not caring whether the species it captures or kills are sentient or not. Is that the creature you want all my people and all your people to die for? Are you so filled with hate for your family that you'll be on the side of a monster like the descolada?"
Quara had no answer. She sank onto the stool beside Planter's bed.
Planter reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. The suit was not so thick and impermeable that she couldn't feel the pressure of it, even though he was very weak.
"For myself, I don't mind dying," he said. "Maybe because of the third life, we pequeninos don't have the same fear of death that you short-lived humans do. But even though I won't have the third life, Quara, I will have the kind of immortality you humans have. My name will live in the stories. Even if I have no tree at all, my name will live. And what I did. You humans can say that I'm choosing to be a martyr for nothing, but my brothers understand. By staying clear and intelligent to the end, I prove that they are who they are. I help show that our slavemasters didn't make us who we are, and can't stop us from being who we are. The descolada may force us to do many things, but it doesn't own us to the very center. Inside us there is a place that is our true self. So I don't mind dying. I will live forever in every pequenino that is free."
"Why are you saying this when only I can hear?" said Quara.
"Because only you have the power to kill me completely. Only you have the power to make it so my death means nothing, so that all my people die after me and there's no one left to remember. Why shouldn't I leave my testament with you alone? Only you will decide whether or not it has any worth."
"I hate you for this," she said. "I knew you'd do this."
"Do what?"
"Make me feel so terrible that I have to--give in!"
"If you knew I'd do this, why did you come?"
"I shouldn't have! I wish I hadn't!"
"I'll tell you why you came. You came so that I would make you give in. So that when you did it, you'd be doing it for my sake, and not for your family."
"So I'm your puppet?"
"Just the opposite. You chose to come here. You are using me to make you do what you really want to do. At heart you are still human, Quara. You want your people to live. You would be a monster if you didn't."
"Just because you're dying doesn't make you wise," she said.
"Yes it does," said Planter.
"What if I tell you that I'll never cooperate in the killing of the descolada?"
"Then I'll believe you," said Planter.
"And hate me."