Like their notharctus ancestors, anthro females lived in tight supportive groups. But in this seasonless tropical forest, perpetually abundant, there was no need for their breeding cycles to be synchronized. Life was much more flexible, with different females coming into estrus at different times.

That made it easier for a small group of males — even a single male, sometimes — to monopolize a female group. Unlike the notharctus Emperor, it wasn’t necessary for an anthro male to try to cover all his females in a single day, or to face the impossible task of keeping other males away. Instead it was enough that he kept rivals away from the small number of females who were fertile at any given time.

Though they were physically larger, anthro males did not “own” the females, or dominate them excessively. But the males, bound to the female group by a genetic loyalty — in a promiscuous group there was always a chance that any child born might be yours — would work to protect the group from outsiders and predators. For their part the females were generally content with the loose satellite male communities that accreted around them. Males were occasionally useful, obviously necessary, rarely troublesome.

But recently, for Whiteblood’s troop, things had gone wrong.

Ten of the twenty-three females in the group had gone into estrus simultaneously. Soon other males had been attracted, drawn by the scent of blood and pheromones. Suddenly there weren’t enough females to go around. It had been an unstable situation, intensely competitive. Already there had been bloody battles. There was a danger the group might fission altogether.

So Whiteblood had gone out hunting females. Juveniles were the preferred target: young and small enough to be handled easily, foolish enough to be easy to separate from their home groups. Of course it meant waiting a year or more before a child like Roamer could be mated. But Whiteblood was prepared to wait: His mind was complex enough for him to act now in the prospect of reward later.

For Whiteblood the situation was quite logical. But for Roamer it was a nightmare.

Suddenly they were swinging and running at a ferocious rate. Whiteblood kept hold of her scruff, seeming to find her no trouble to haul. Roamer had never moved in these great bounds, swoops, and leaps: Her mother and the other females, more sedentary than the males, moved much more cautiously than this. And she was being carried a long way; she could smell muddy water, for they were approaching the bank of the river itself.

And meanwhile the rain clattered down, pelting through the leaves and turning the air into a gray misty murk. Her fur was sodden and water ran into her eyes, making it impossible to see. Far below them, water ran across the sodden ground, rivulets gathering into streams that washed red-brown mud into the already swollen river. It was as if forest and river were merging, dissolving into each other under the storm’s power.

Her panic intensified. She struggled to get free of Whiteblood’s grasping hand. All she got for her troubles were cuffs on the back of her head, hard enough to make her squeal.

At last they reached Whiteblood’s home range. Most of the troop, males, females, and infants, had clustered together in a single tree, a low, broad mango. They sat in rows on the branches, huddled together in sodden misery. But when the males saw what Whiteblood had brought back, they hooted and slapped the branches.

Whiteblood, without ceremony, thrust Roamer at a group of females. One female started poking hard at Roamer’s face, belly, and genitals. Roamer slapped her hand away, hooting in protest. But the female came back for more, and now more of them crowded around her, striving to get close to the newcomer. Their curiosity was a mixture of the anthros’ usual fascination with someone new, and a kind of rivalry over this potential competitor, a new recruit in the ever-shifting hierarchies.

For Roamer everything was bewildering: the sheets of lightning flashing over the purple sky, the hammering rain on her face, the roar of water below, the damp-fur, unfamiliar stink of the females and young around her. Surrounded by open pink mouths and questing fingers, she was overwhelmed. Struggling to escape, she lunged forward, and found herself briefly dangling over the branch.

And she looked down on strangeness.

Two indricotheres were lurking under the tree. These great creatures were a kind of hornless rhino. Looking like meaty giraffes, they had long legs, supple necks, and hides like those of elephants. They were oddly graceful in a slow-moving way, even if they did mass as much as three times as an African elephant — and so huge they were unused to being threatened by anything. Even now they reached up their thick necks and horselike faces to crop at the tree’s soaking foliage.

But they were in danger. Muddy water flowed over the ground, washing around the indricotheres’ legs, as if the tree and the indricotheres alike stood in the river itself.

At last a great sheet of muddy soil broke away from the riverbank, right next to the tree’s shallow roots, and slid without ceremony into the river. One mighty indricothere lowed, its great flat elephantine feet scrabbling at a ground suddenly turned into a slippery, treacherous slope — and then it fell, fifteen tons of meat flying, its neck twisting and long tail working. It hit the water with a tremendous splash, and in an instant it was gone, swept away into the voracious river.

The second indricothere lowed its loss. But it too was in peril as the ground continued to dissolve under the water’s relentless probing, and the bereft animal lumbered backward to safety.

But the tree itself was in trouble. Its roots had been exposed by the sudden erosion of the flash flood, and further undermined by the river’s assault on its bank. The trunk creaked once, and shuddered.

And then, with a series of explosive cracks, the roots gave way. The tree began to topple toward the water. Like fruit from a shaken branch, primates of all sizes tumbled out of the tree and fell screaming into the turbulent water.

Roamer howled and clung to her branch as the tree tipped nightmarishly, all the way into the river.

The first few minutes were the worst.

Close to the riverbank the water was at its most turbulent, torn between the fast-flowing current and friction with the land. In this mighty torrent even the great mango tree was like a twig tossed in a brook. It bucked and creaked and twisted. First its foliage slammed into the water, then its roots, clogged with mud and rocks, would claw toward the sky. Roamer was rolled and dunked, plunged into cloudy brown water that forced its way into her mouth and nose, then carried into the air again.

At last the tree slid away from the turbulence near the bank and drifted into the center of the river, where its rocking and twisting quickly damped out.

Roamer found herself stuck underwater. She looked up through muddy murk at a glimmering surface littered with leaves and twigs. Already her mouth and throat were filling up, and panic overwhelmed her. With a bubbling scream she scrambled up through the tangled, broken foliage, clambering toward the light.

She broke through the surface. Light, noise, and the battering rain assaulted her senses. She hauled herself out of the water and lay flat on a branch.

The tree was floating branches first down the river. Its tangled, ripped roots reached up toward the lowering, lightning-strewn sky. Roamer raised her head, peering around for other anthros. It was not easy to recognize them through the thick rain-filled air, so battered and sodden were they, but she made out Whiteblood, the burly male who had abducted her, a couple of other males — and a female with an infant that had somehow hung onto her back, a little bundle of soaked, miserable fur.