“Just so,” Matthew agreed. “One at a time, and in pupae that remain stubbornly opaque. But imagine, if you can, a pupation process that could accommodate whole groups of chimerical maggots, which could continue to draw energy from their environment while they went about their leisurely business, because they had chloroplasts as well as mouths. Imagine, if you can, that these maggots need not exercise their biochemical ingenuity in transforming themselves into gloriously gaudy flies, but may instead be more modest in their aspirations, at least routinely—but at the same time, more ingenious in their intercourse. And imagine, if you can, that the maggots might be mammals, monkeys or men. What dreams might they have, I wonder, while they slept?”

“Incredible,” Lityansky said, presumably having no idea how feeble the judgment was bound to sound to his audience.

“I’ve crossed the void in a pupa of sorts,” Matthew reminded that audience. “I’ve lived in that cold chrysalis for seven hundred years, and have outlived my species, save only for the people who accompanied me, as fellow travelers within their own pupae or faithful watchmen set to see that no harm came to us. Is Hopenot a kind of chrysalis too, bearing humans tightly wrapped in steel and further encased in yet more ice? We’ve been unable to fuse with one another, or even to bond, but mightn’t that be reckoned our misfortune, our tragedy? We’re separate from one another; that’s our nature. The only alliances we can form, even in the height of passion, are brief and peripheral encounters—but we’re capable—are we not?—of forging a society in spite of that. We’re capable—are we not?—of working together to the mutual benefit of our species. Imagine, if you can, the society of the people of our purple Ararat. Imagine their memories, their quests, their hopes, their ambitions, their strangeness, remembering as you do that even if everything I’ve said is the purest fantasy, they arepeople, possessed of memories, quests, hopes, ambitions, anxieties, terrors … and, most of all, of differences. At which point, if you don’t mind, I’ll sign off. I’m sure you’d like the chance to offer the audience your side of the argument.”

Without giving Lityansky the opportunity to answer, he signaled to Ikram Mohammed to cut the transmission.

“You really are an egomaniac, you know” Ikram Mohammed said, as soon as he had disemburdened his shoulder of the camera. “Imagine, if you can… you are going to look sostupid if Lityansky turns out to be right.”

“He won’t,” Matthew said. “I might be wrong, but at least I appreciate the magnitude of what needs to be explained and the adventurousness that will be necessary to explain it. Lityansky doesn’t. There might be an explanation that’s just as crazy—or even crazier—than the one I’m trying to put together, but there isn’t one that’s any saner. If Lityansky had ever been down here, he’d know that—but he hasn’t. He’s sat in his lab wearing blinkers, looking at biochemical analyses, without even a decent TV show to broaden his horizons. There may be very good biomechanical reasons why the intelligent inhabitants of this world look like people, but inside, they’re verydifferent and verystrange. We should be glad of that. It’s what we came here for.”

“We came to find a new homeworld. An Earth-clone.”

“That was always the wrong way to think,” Matthew said, with a sigh. “What we should have set our sights on, right from the beginning, was an Earth-with-a-difference. That was what we were always likely to find, and always likely to find more interesting.”

“If you say so,” Ike said. “But you do realize, I suppose, that you’ve used up nearly all your ammunition—and Lityansky now has the floor for at least five times as long as you.”

“They’ll be queuing up everywhere to take him on,” Matthew said. “Every biologist with a pet theory will want to air it, and Milyukov won’t be able to hold them back. Even if no one supports me—and it’s a good enough story to let me hope—the cat’s among the pigeons. The interchange of ideas is well and truly unblocked, and things can only get weirder. All we have to do to get center stage back again is to find the aliens—and that’ll be easy, because we only have to keep walking long enough to make sure they decide that they have to let us find them.”

“I hope you’re right,” Ike said.

Matthew didn’t dare say so do Ibecause he didn’t want his companion to know that he was anything less than 100 percent confident. If he’d had a choice, he’d have kept it secret even from himself.

THIRTY-SIX

The night passed without incident—which was perhaps as well, given that Matthew slept very deeply. He could have used chemical support to stay awake, at least to share sentry duty with Ikram Mohammed, but he didn’t want to do that because he knew that two consecutive nights without sleep would take a heavy toll of his articulacy and powers of concentration. Fortunately, Ike agreed to take on the chemical burden, on the grounds that he had slept for several hours the night before.

It was not until he woke up again that Matthew realized that he must have been in a slightly abnormal state of consciousness throughout the preceding day. Now that his IT had made good progress with the repair of his damaged shoulder and no longer needed to anesthetize him he was fully restored to his normal self. At first, he felt annoyed with himself for having been carried away with such wild abandon, but having reconsidered the events of the previous two days carefully and critically he decided that his manic state had produced as many good effects as bad ones. It would, at any rate, be far better to go with the flow than to change direction.

It had rained during the night, but the sky hidden by the canopy was obviously still overcast. The morning was decidedly gloomy, but not so bad as to require them to use flashlights to find their way.

As soon as he began to make hasty plans for his next broadcast Matthew realized that Ike had been right. He hadused up almost all of his best material on day one. The terrain they had covered was insufficiently various to warrant much further camera study, and he was perilously close to running out of speculative fuel for his wayward flight of fancy.

He was glad to find that some relief was at hand when he began his reintroductory session, in the form of further debate—but Milyukov had belatedly realized that Andrei Lityansky might not be the best man for this particular job, and Matthew found himself faced with sterner opposition. The subsequent discussion of the tactics of sporulation, the mechanics of gradual chimerical renewal, and the limitations of reproduction by fragmentation was far too evenly balanced to be gripping, even to an audience of experts.

To make matters worse, the captain had an even better spoiler still in reserve: Vince Solari. When Matthew went on the air for the second time, he discovered that all three surface bases had now acquired their own TV equipment, and that Solari had been interviewed and cross-questioned as to the progress of his investigation.

Scrupulous honesty had, inevitably, prevailed over evasive caution. Solari had not taken the trouble to avoid the word fakewhen reporting his conclusion that Bernal Delgado had been manufacturing spearheads and arrowheads from local plant products. He had obviously been talking to Lynn Gwyer, and the fact that it was technically hearsay had not prevented him from informing the world that Dulcie Gherardesca—who was, according to the logs and cross-correlated witness statements, the only person who had had the opportunity to commit the murder—had confessed to the crime while contemplating suicide the day before her capture.