“Yes.”

“How do they expect to do that without controlling the Redoubt?”

“Avata will not attack the Redoubt.”

“What will they do?”

“What Avata has always done: nurture. Avata will continue to rescue people when possible. Avata will carry us where we need to go.”

“Didn’t the kelp kill Colonists? You heard what Waela said. . . .”

“Another of Lewis’ lies,” Panille said, and Thomas knew that he was right.

He stared off at the jungle beyond Panille. Somewhere in there, he knew, was a large band of survivors, E-clones and normals, all scooped from Pandora’s surface and planted here as the hylighters planted the scavenged Earthside vegetation. Thomas had not seen this collection of people, but Panille and the hylighters had described it. The hylighters could do this thing . . . but . . . Thomas shook his head in despair.

“They have so much power!”

“Who?”

“The ’lectrokelp and the hylighters!”

“Avata, you mean.” Panille’s voice remained patient.

“Why won’t they use their power to defend themselves?”

“Avata is one creature who understands about power.”

“What? What do you . . .”

“To have power is to use it. That is the meaning of possession. To use it is to lose it.”

Thomas closed his eyes, clenched his fists. Panille refused to understand. Refusing to understand, he doomed them all.

Such a loss! Not just humankind . . . but this, this Avata.

“They have so much,” Thomas whispered.

“Who?”

“The Avata!”

He thought about what the hylighters already had shown him, spoke the thought aloud: “That hylighter, the one that brought me, do you know what it showed me after we were fed?”

“Yes.”

Thomas went on, not hearing: “Just in a few blinks of touching it, I hallucinated the development, very nearly complete, of the entire recent geological and botanical phenomena of Pandora. Think of losing that!”

“Not hallucination,” Panille corrected him.

“What is it, then?” Thomas opened his eyes, stared at the passing moons.

“Avata teaches by touch, at first. A true, but sometimes overwhelming flow of information. As the student learns to focus, the information becomes discrete, discriminated. You separate the needed bits from the babble.”

“Babble, yes. Most of it’s babble, but I . . .”

“You know about focus,” Panille said. “You select which noises to hear and understand. You select which things to see and recognize. This is just a different kind of focus.”

“How can we sit here and discuss . . . discuss this . . . I mean, it’s going to end! Forever!”

“This is the true flow of knowledge between us, Raja Thomas. Avata moves from the mastery of touch to direct communication, mind to mind. Precise identification with another being. You have seen demons eat scraps of exploded hylighters?”

Thomas was interested in spite of his frustration. “I’ve seen it.”

“Direct ingestion of knowledge, precise identification. Some ancient creatures of Earth did it. Planarians.”

“You don’t say.”

“No . . . I don’t limit.”