The termites were antique creatures whose complex society was the result of their own long evolutionary story. This mound was ancient, built of the mud that had pooled here when infrequent rainstorms caused temporary floods. Its rock-hard carapace protected the termites from the attentions of most animals, but not these apes.

Capo’s use of tools — the termite-fishing sticks, the hammer-stones, the leaves he would chew to a sponge to extract water from hollows, even the fine toothpicklike sticks he sometimes used to perform crude dentistry — seemed sophisticated. He knew what he wanted to achieve; he knew what kind of tool he needed to achieve it. He would memorize the location of his favorite tools, like his hammer-stones, and made subtle decisions about using them — for instance trading off the distance he had to carry a hammer against its weight. And it wasn’t a case of just picking up a handy rock, found by chance; he modified some of his tools, like this termite-fishing stick.

And yet he was not like a human craftsman. His modifications were slight: his tools, abandoned after use, would have been hard to distinguish from the products of the inanimate world. The actions he used to make the tools were part of his normal repertoire, like biting, leaf stripping, stone throwing. Nobody had invented wholly new actions, like a potter’s clay throwing or a wood carver’s whittling. He used each tool for one use, and one use only; it never occurred to him that a termite fishing-stick might also be used as a toothpick. He did not improve his tools, once he had found a design that worked. And if — by some chance — he had in the course of his life happened upon a new kind of tool, however successful a design it was, its use would have spread only very slowly through his community, perhaps taking generations to reach every member. Coaching, the notion that the contents of someone else’s mind might be shaped by rehearsal and demonstration, had yet to be discovered.

So Capo’s tool kit was staggeringly limited, and very conservative. Capo’s ancestors, five million years gone, creatures of a different species, had used tools of only fractionally less sophistication. Capo wasn’t even aware he was using tools.

And yet here was Capo, working assiduously, knowing what he wanted, selecting materials to achieve his goal, making and shaping the world around him, the cleverest so far of all of Purga’s long line of descendants. It was as if a slow fire were smoldering in his eyes, his mind, his hands, a fire that would soon burn much more brightly.

As the sun slid beyond the horizon at the valley’s end the apes huddled closer. Deeply unhappy, they pushed, jostled, and slapped, hooting and screeching at each other. This wasn’t their place. They had no weapons to defend themselves, no fire to keep the animals at bay. They didn’t even have the instinct to keep silent at sunset, the hour of predators. All they had was the protection of each other, of their numbers — the hope that another would be taken, not me.

Capo made sure he was right at the center of the band, surrounded by the burly bodies of the other adults.

The young male called Elephant didn’t have as powerful an instinct for self-preservation. And his mother, lost somewhere in the middle of the huddle, was too concerned with her newest child, a female; right now Elephant was a low priority. He was unlucky to be just the wrong age: too old to be defended by the adults, too young to fight for a place at the center, away from the danger.

He soon found himself pushed out to the fringe of the group. Still, he tried to settle down. He found a place close to Finger, a cousin. This ground was hard and bony, unlike the soft roosts he was used to, but by squirming he managed to make himself a bowl-shaped hollow. He pressed his belly against Finger’s back.

He was too young even to understand the danger he was in. He slept uneasily.

Later, in the dark, he was woken by a soft pricking at his shoulder. It was almost gentle, like a grooming. He squirmed a little, burrowing closer to Finger’s back. But then he felt breath on his cheek, heard a purring growl like a rock rolling down a hillside, smelled a breath that stank of meat. Instantly awake, his heart hammering, he screeched and convulsed.

His shoulder was ripped, painfully. He found himself dragged backward, like a branch torn off a tree. He caught a final glimpse of the troop — they were awake, panicking, hooting, scrambling over each other to get away. Then a starlit sky whirled around him, and he was slammed into the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

A form moved over him, sleek, silhouetted against the blue-black sky. He felt a hard-muscled chest press against his, almost lovingly. There was fur with a scent of burning, breath like blood, and two yellow eyes that shone over him.

Then the bites came, to his legs, over one of his kidneys. They were sharp, almost clinical stabs, and he convulsed with the fiery pain. He screeched and rolled, tried to run. But his legs collapsed, his hamstrings cut. Now came those prickings at his neck again. He was lifted up by the scruff, lifted right off the ground, and he could feel sharp teeth working inside his skin. At first he struggled, scrabbling at the gravel with his hands, but his efforts only brought more pain as the flesh at his neck was torn further.

He gave up. Hanging passively from the chasma’s mouth, his head and damaged legs clattering against the uneven ground, his thoughts dissolved. He could no longer hear the hooting cries of his troop. He was alone now, alone with the pain and the iron stink of his own blood, and the steady, patient padding of the chasma’s footsteps.

Perhaps he was unconscious for a while.

He was dropped on the ground. He did not land hard, but all his wounds flared with pain. Mewling, he pushed at the ground. It was littered with rubble like the place he had come from, but was covered in fur, and the stink of chasmas.

And now small shapes bounded around him, black on black, fast moving, a little clumsy. He felt the brush of whiskers on his fur, tiny nips at his ankles and wrists. They were chasma pups. He hooted his defiance, and swung a fist blindly. He connected with a hot little bundle that was knocked off its feet, yowling.

There was a short, barking roar: the mother chasma. In sudden panic, he tried to crawl.

The pups yapped excitedly as they completed their short chase. And now the biting started in earnest, digging into his back, buttocks, belly. He rolled onto his back, lifting his legs to his chest and flapping at the air. But the pups were fast, furious, and dogged; soon one of them had dug her teeth into his cheek, applying all her small weight to ripping open his face.

Again the mother roared, scattering the pups. Again Elephant tried to flee. Again the pups caught him and inflicted a dozen more tiny, debilitating wounds.

If not for her pups, the chasma would have killed Elephant quickly. She was giving them the chance to chase down a prey animal and knock it over. When they were older, they would be able to finish off prey themselves, ripping it apart; later still she would release some of her prey almost unharmed and allow the pups to finish the hunt. It was a kind of learning by opportunity. This was no more human-style teaching than what occurred among the apes: it was an innate behavior evolved in this clever carnivorous species to enable the young to acquire the skills they would need when hunting alone.

And as the lesson went on Elephant was still conscious, a spark of terror and longing buried in a broken shred of blood, flesh, and gristle. The boldest of the pups even fed on the tongue that dangled from his broken jaw.

But the pups were too young to finish off Elephant alone.