“Obvious in hindsight, really—the pattern changes are far too fast to be anything but biochemical in origin. Anyway, those implanted tubes running up into the trunk continuously sample the chemicals and shunt the information back down to the module on the taproot. The module takes the chemical data, turns it back into pressure data, and from there back into speech. Some other module—maybe further down the taproot—sorts out the conversations and gets the whole thing ready for encrypting and transmission. That’s all there is to it.” “An organic microphone,” Bel Iblis nodded. “With no electronics
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