“Oh but they can,” the old woman broke in. “I can make them.”
Caitland started to object, managed to stifle his natural reaction. He forced himself to think more slowly, more patiently than was his wont. This was a big thing. If this old bat wasn’t looney from living alone out in the back of nowhere, and if she had found a way to make the chimers reproduce in captivity, then she could make a lot of people very very wealthy. Or a few people even wealthier. Caitland knew of at least one deserving candidate.
“I hadn’t heard,” he said warily, “that anyone had
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Ye Who Would Sing
found a way to make the trees even grow after replanting.”
“That’s because I haven’t told anyone yet,” she replied crisply. “I’m not ready yet. There are some other things that need to be perfected for the telling first.
“Because if I announce my results and then demonstrate them, I’ll have to use this forest. And if the eaters find this place, they’ll transplant it, rip it up, take it apart, and sell it in pieces to the highest bidders. And then I won’t be able to make anything reproduce, show anybody anything.
“And that will be the end of the chimer tree, because this is the last forest. When the oldest trees die a couple of thousand years from now there’ll be nothing left but recordings, ghosts of shadows of the real thing. That’s why I’ve got to finish my work here before I let the secret—and this location—out.”
It made things much simpler for the relieved Caitland. She was crazy after all. Poor old bitch. He could understand it, the loneliness and constant alien singing of the trees and all. But she’d also saved his life. Caitland was not ungrateful. He would wait.