Feroza turned away from the Dragon to look down the slope of the forest-mountain. Below were the superconducting spires assembled by the Berg itself, its flanks had been colonized by a dense underbrush of spinning windmill vanes and pinwheel leaves.

The alien race that designed and sent their mining robots on their long and lonely mission on Titan had probably envisioned something like what Toledo and his ilk wanted: a massive tower of industry, a petrochemical distillery the size of a planet.

But nature had intervened. Feroza theorized, and her learned colleagues agreed, that the factors had once been repair robots servicing the automated oil-rigs whose descendants had become the Bergs. But the factors' programming had mutated. Mistakes multiplied, directed by the blind wisdom of natural selection. Over the course of silent eons, the machines had evolved.

The Berg no longer accumulated petroleum and the oxygen to burn it for the benefit of some interstellar master. Instead, it served its own goal: reproduction. Feroza gave wide berth to the snout of an immature Rocket-seed, the blunt-tipped shaft thrusting up from the metallic ground, preparing to blast off and carry the Berg's genetic legacy to some distant part of Titan.

And to think people like Toledo would undo all of this natural innovation. Chop off the inflorescence of mechanoid biology and reduce Titan back to a mining colony of dumb robots. It made Feroza sick in her heart.

When she tried to articulate the feeling to the engineer, however, he refused to understand.

"Nonsense. Titan isn't alive. It's just covered by a bunch of self-replicating machinery."

"So then what is a cow or a goat, but self-replicating meat?" she countered.

"I guess that's what it is," he said.

Something moved between the twirling leaves and Feroza froze. But it was just a Gob: much too small for a Dragon's sustenance.

"And what about you, Mr. Toledo. What are you, but meat?"

"Thinking meat? Dreaming meat?" He had a smile in his voice, but Feroza couldn't guess why. She was getting too far from the Dragon, but there was no large prey for her to flush. What if she tried to attract some food, instead?

"Anyway," Toledo said, "so what? You make it sound like Petrolean life has more right to these resources than we do."

"Of course it does," she said. "Even if the mechanoids weren't already here when we arrived, every sentient creature deserves to live."

"Huh? There is no intelligent life on Titan."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Yes," she said patiently. "'Sapient' means 'intelligent.' 'Sentient' means it has feelings. And you can't deny the mechanoids have feelings. You can't deny," she said, over his hemming and hawing, "that the father Dragon suffered as you ripped his body apart."

"All right," said Toledo, "so maybe it suffered. So what? A chicken suffers when one kills it."

"Even in the Middle Ages, Jains and Brahmins could live without killing," she said, "and this isn't the Middle Ages. We have no need to be cruel to animals to survive any more. We were just coming to realize that on Earth, and then," she said, mostly to herself, "we discovered Petrolea."

Feroza examined a clear spot of ground, but a few whacks with her field shovel confirmed that under the oily mud was the nose of another nascent Rocket-seed. It was an excellent source of concentrated fuel and oxidizer, of course, but impossible to break into. She moved on.

"Oh yes," said Toledo. "I forgot. You think meat is murder, but I bet you've never had to eat a chicken or starve."

Feroza turned her path into a circle with the Dragon in the center, looking for places where she could tap into an oil line. "But don't you see, Toledo? That is nothing but the wealthy and influential West not caring to give the poor an alternative to meat."

"Oh, 'the poor,' you say?" Toledo actually growled into his microphone. "You self-indulgent little princess. Do you know anything about 'the poor' or where we come from? There were times when I would have killed someone for a chicken to eat."

"But that's just it," said Feroza. "You didn't need to — "

"No. This is crazy. You're crazy. I'm crazy for having this stupid conversation with you. You took the oxygen from the dead Dragon and when I reprogram its fabricators, you will eat and drink the stuff they make because if you don't, you'll die."

"It is better to die than live at the expense of others?" Feroza's frayed patience finally gave way. "And why am I in this position, where I might die like the friends and colleagues you killed with your incompetence?"

"My incompetence," Toledo's English was deserting him. "...the Leviathan! The stupid…stupid...¡Estupidez ideológica de una ecochiquita privilegiada, desenfrenada y decadente!"

From the French and Latin cognates, Feroza assumed that was not complimentary. "If I regain my original beliefs and determination to uphold them, both of us will die. So consider carefully what you say to me."

The only response was the whistle of the carrier wave.

Fuming, Feroza tromped through the forest, flushing nothing but Gobs, stray factors, and families of Helicopter butterflies. Finally, she found a likely clear spot at the base of a superconductor spire where the Berg's oil-lines came close enough to the surface for her to breach one with her shovel.

Black hydrocarbon slurry bubbled in the light of her torch, spilling down the slope in a river of nutritious and tempting food. It wasn't long before something moved among the windmill leaves and hopped down to investigate. A laterally compressed body topped by a swiveling turret of sensors. Its powerful legs folded, its undercarriage a-bristle with piercing and cutting tubes, pipes, and sponges. The Gambol looked like a metal flea the size of a motorcycle.

"There you are, finally."

"What did you say?"

Feroza wasn't aware she'd spoken aloud.

"A Gambol," she said.

"Ah," Toledo sounded embarrassed. "That's good, yes? Why is that good?"

"I have prey for the Dragon."