“As I see it, something similar must have happened here, with a couple of vital differences. The humanoids migrated from the plains to the hill country because that’s where the technological resources were: the glass and the stone. That’s where they could make their desperate stand against the competitors that had evolved alongside them. The vital difference was that ourcompetitors—our onlysignificant competitors—were our own kind. That wasn’t the case here. Here, the most successful creatures aren’t the handiest, or the keenest-eyed, or the biggest-brained. Here, the most successful creatures are the ones that make the cleverest use of the processes and opportunities of chimerization.”

“The worms and slugs,” Ike deduced.

“Especially the killer anemones,” Matthew agreed. “The killer anemones that became serialkiller anemones, adapting themselves to whatever circumstances chance threw up, taking aboard new features or discarding them every time they had a chance to swap physical attributes with other bioforms in their periodic orgies of chimerical reorganization. There’s an analogy of sorts in something not so verydifferent that happened to our ancestors. Agriculture and civilization were a mixed blessing for their inventors, but not for the other species that took full advantage of the opportunities thus provided. Which species were the favorites to outlast us if the Crash hadproved fatal? Rats and cockroaches. So which species got the greatest benefits out of civilization? Us? Or rats and cockroaches?

“Here, I suspect, neither the rats nor the cockroaches ever stood a chance, because the worms and slugs were always there first: more aggressive, more effective, more adaptable. We saw what they could do when we came down that cliff. We saw how they responded to an unexpected, and perhaps unprecedented, feeding opportunity. How do you suppose they reacted to the humanoids’ establishment of fields: fields full of lovely, concentrated food?”

“It’s anyone’s guess,” Ike pointed out, dutifully—but he was nodding to show that he understood the force of the argument.

“We know how the city-builders reacted: they built walls. Those walls may well have had more to protect than food alone, but even if the crew scientists are right to wield Occam’s razor with such vigor when they talk about sporulation and progressive chimerical renewal, and even if the pyramids aren’t reproductive structures at all, the city-builders stillbuilt walls, and more walls, and even more walls … until they realized that they couldn’t win. Not, at any rate, with the technology they had. If they’d had fire and iron, who knows? They didn’t.

“At the end of the day, their cities—there mustbe more, still buried under purple carpets—were a gift to their competitors they couldn’t afford to go on giving. So they stopped. They probably had a Crash of their own, but when they got up and dusted themselves off they went back to the old ways. It could easily have happened to us. Perhaps it did, more than once. Perhaps it happened a hundred times before we finally became handy enough, and keen-sighted enough, and brainy enough, to run all the way to the stars. But we didn’t have the killer anemones and their kin to fight. All our chimeras were imaginary, creatures of fantasy. Not here.”

Ike was getting into the swim now. For the first time, he took up the argument himself. “Here, chimeras exist,” he said, “and they take all the extra opportunities that chimerization provides. At least, the worms and slugs do, because they’re the ones best fitted to do it.”

“And what makes them best fitted to do it,” Matthew said, “is that they’re so utterly and completely stupid. Swapping biomechanical bits back and forth between organisms is fine and dandy, just so long as the organisms are no smarter than Voconia, running their legs and tentacles on separable autonomic systems.”

“But the humanoids couldn’t do that,” Ike said.

“Right. In order to stay smart—and we have to assume that once they became self-consciously smart the humanoids wanted to stay that way—they had to cut right back on the joys of chimerization. That economy—the increasing strategic avoidance of all the kinds of chimerical renewal that might ruin their big and tightly organized brains—wasn’t particularly costly in reproductive terms, at first, because they’re naturally emortal. When it became costlier, though, as it must have done when they invented agriculture and opened up a whole new wonderland of opportunity to their rivals, they had to backtrack. That’s why social and technological progress did a U-turn here. And there, but for the grace of fire and iron … will that hold the stage for a little while longer, do you think?”

“You haven’t the slightest idea whether it’s true,” Ike pointed out, dutiful as ever. “But yes, as a story, I guess it will run, if only for a little while. Eventually, though, you’re going to have to face up to the fact that it’s all just talk.”

Matthew knew that Ike was right, but when he looked around, all he could see was sheer purple stalks, too slick for anything but a clever worm to climb, and serrated blades that would cut any climber but the most discreet to ribbons. The purple canopy was intriguingly complex, but it was far too dense for its details to be distinguished and defined. Enough light filtered through it to create delicate effects of shade and sparkle, but from the viewpoint of the camera’s eye it was mere wallpaper.

The ground on which they walked was by no means unpopulated by motile entities, but the light-starved population seemed to consist mainly of colorless saprophytes; its detail was not without scientific interest, but nor was it telegenic. There were undoubtedly animals around that were far more complex than worms, including reptile-analogues and mammal-analogues—ground-dwellers as well as canopy-climbers—but they were shy. It was well-nigh impossible to capture more of them on camera than their fleeing rear ends.

It would not have made very much difference, though, if the forest had been lavishly equipped with gorgeous flowers and monstrous insects. Everyone on Hopehad already seen discreetly obtained flying-eye footage of thousands of different kinds of alien plants and hundreds of different kinds of alien animals. What they had not seen, and what Matthew had recklessly promised them, was a humanoid. That was what he had to deliver, in order to create the kind of consensus among the human emigrants that seemed so obviously lacking, and so obviously needed. In the meantime, he had to keep feeding them a story that was interesting enough to hold their interest.

So he and Ike did their double act.

Matthew put out every last thought that he had in reserve, but the day wore on and dusk arrived again, and the perpetual purple twilight faded to black for a second time.

They had covered more than forty kilometers since setting off from Voconia, and had not found so much as a mud hut or a broken arrow. Matthew felt mentally and physically exhausted, even though he had been able to rest his injured arm sufficiently to allow his IT to complete its healing work.

“We’ve done the hard work,” Matthew told his companion. “Now we need the luck. We’ve kept them on tenterhooks long enough. It’s time for the denouement. Why aren’t they here? They were plenty curious enough when we first arrived—why have they suddenly turned shy? They didn’t even take the bait we left outside the bubble when I went to sleep last night. Why not?”

“Maybe they’ve got something else on their minds,” Ike suggested.

Matthew didn’t have to ask what that something else might be. They had Dulcie. Although they hadn’t left her body where her phone had fallen, they mighthave killed her and taken the body with them—but the likelihood was that she had been carried away alive. While they had her, still alive, they had a far more convenient focus for their curiosity than Matthew and Ike—and she wouldn’t die any time soon of hunger, even if she only had alien food to eat. A carbohydrate was a carbohydrate, and sugar was always sweet.