Star Trek by Kevin Killiany

about the big picture is not in their nature.”
    â€œIf we restore the aqueducts properly,” Soloman said, focusing on the problem at hand, “and close off both ends of the connecting spans, the two systems should attain equilibrium.”
    â€œImmediately?”
    â€œNo, they are much too massive for that. The parameters and variables are too complex for me to evaluate without computer models.” He shrugged. “Four local years, maybe six. But once started, the process will be inevitable.”
    â€œFabe,” Bart said with a grin, “why don’t you give Tev a call?”

Chapter
15
    A dozen Smaunif were working on small electric motors, taking them apart and checking each circuit individually. From what Pattie could see, they were finding different things wrong with each one. A broken connection, dirt or moisture inside a sealed casing, a fouled or broken gear. Little things, any one of which could be attributed to normal wear and tear or misadventure.
    That all of these minor breakdowns had happened at once indicated something other than chance was responsible. Pattie could not tell from the technician’s body language if they were simply frustrated or they suspected someone was responsible for their difficulties. For her part, she took it as evidence Corsi was somewhere close at hand.
    Over the last couple of days she and Solal had talked—or he had talked and she had listened—about the problem of the tree dogs. She had only to explain she was from far away and was eager to learn more about them to trigger an exhaustive and wide-ranging lecture on local fauna, religion, and responsibility.
    The tree dogs, who looked very much like her red-haired neighbor but about three times the mass, had appeared shortly after the first landing. They were clever mimics who had amused the first explorers by approximating Smaunif gestures and performing various antics.
    Their most annoying trait had sprung from their playfulness. Whenever a Smaunif hunter had been about to gather game, the tree dogs had run about making loud noises, frightening the animals away. They apparently thought the point of hunting was to surprise animals.
    The tree dogs had gone from amusing near-pets to threat sometime just before the third wave of gliders had arrived. (From context Pattie deduced the third landing had been a few months ago and that Solal had arrived aboard one of those gliders.) It was then that the tree dogs had started imitating speech.
    The imitative speech was a natural outgrowth of their mimicry, of course. There was no intelligence behind it. But it was disconcerting, particularly when they began putting individual words together in new orders. And it raised a possible problem for the colony.
    Because, although those who had been around the tree dogs from the beginning understood they were simply animals, a newcomer might mistake their mimicry for intelligent speech. And if they were tricked into believing the tree dogs were intelligent, the question of whether the tree dogs were—and here the universal translator could not decide if the phrase meant self-aware, responsible for their actions, or even possessed of a soul —would arise. That would throw the entire validity of the colonization of New Smau into question. Valuable years would be lost in foolish debate over the behavior of animal mimics.
    Fortunately the tree dogs were limited to the forest of huge trees not far from the landing site. There were no others in all of New Smau.
    Pattie wondered how he had come by that information, particularly since he’d proudly explained earlier that the colonists here were the only Smaunif to ever visit New Smau. But that was only one inconsistency in a myriad and she had not wanted to interrupt the stream of information, no matter how skewed it was.
    Sonandal, leader that he was, had decided how to avoid wasting those years that should be spent establishing the colony and developing