The woman stared at her a while longer. Then she walked away, towards the fire.

Shadow curled over on her side.

Something hit her chest. She flinched back.

It was a piece of meat. It lay on the ground before her. She saw it had been cut from an animal — perhaps an antelope — by a sharp-edged stone. And people had bitten into it already; she saw where it had been ripped and torn by teeth. But still it was meat, a piece as big as her hand. She crammed it into her mouth, tearing at it with hands and teeth.

When she was done she lay down once more. The ground was hard and dusty, and she longed for the springy platform of a nest. But her arm made a pillow for her head.

Suspended between black night and the flickering fire light, she sank into redness.

Reid Malenfant:

On the walk through the forest with McCann, this oddball English guy, Malenfant got fixated on McCann’s crossbow.

The crossbow, made purely of wood, was heavy. There was a long underslung trigger that neatly lifted a bowstring out of the notch. The trigger mechanism worked smoothly. The string itself was made of twisted vine, very fine, very strong. But there was no groove to direct the bolt. And the bolts themselves seemed crude to Malenfant: about as long as a pencil, but a lot thinner, and with a flight made from a single leaf, tucked into a slice in the wooden bolt, just one plane. It was hard to see how you could make an accurate shot with such a thing. But as they walked McCann did just that, over and over, apparently pleased to have an audience.

Nemoto’s silent contempt for all this was obvious. Malenfant didn’t care. His mind was tired of all the strangeness; to play with a gadget for a while was therapy.

It was getting dark by the time the Englishman led them to a fortress in the jungle. The two of them, bruised and bewildered, were led into the compound, taking in little. Surrounded by a tough-looking stockade, it turned out to be a place of straight lines and right angles, the huts lined up like ranks of soldiers, the line of the stockade walls as perfect as a geometrical demonstration.

“Shit,” murmured Malenfant. “I can feel my anus clench just standing here.”

Nemoto said, “They are very frightened, Malenfant. That much is clear.”

Malenfant glimpsed people moving to and fro in the gathering dark. No, not quite people. He shuddered.

McCann showed them hospitality, including food and generous draughts of some home-brew beer, thick and strong.

The hours passed in a blur.

He found himself in a sod hut, with Nemoto. His bed was a boxy frame containing a mattress of some vegetable fabric. It didn’t look too clean.

They were both fried. They hadn’t slept in around thirty-six hours. They had been through the landing, the assault by the Erectus types, the march through the jungle. And, frankly, the beer hadn’t helped. At least here, against all expectations, they had found what seemed like a haven. But still Malenfant inspected his lumpy bed suspiciously.

“I know what to do,” Malenfant said. “Always turn your mattress. Then the body lice have to work their way back up to get to you.” He lifted the corner of his mattress out of its wooden box.

“I would not do that,” Nemoto said; but it was too late.

There was the sound of fingernails on wood, a smell like a poultry shed. Cockroaches poured out of the box, a steady stream of them, each the size of a mouse.

“Shit,” Malenfant said. “There are thousands in there.” He stamped on one, briskly killing it.

“It’s best to leave them,” Nemoto said evenly. “They have glands on their backs. They only stink when disturbed.”

Malenfant cautiously picked up a cockroach. Its antenna and palps hung limp, and it had a pale pink band over its head and thorax.

“Very ancient creatures, Malenfant,” Nemoto said. “You find traces of them in Carboniferous strata, three hundred million years deep.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to share my bed with one,” Malenfant said. Carefully, as if handling a piece of jewellery, he set the cockroach on the floor. It scuttled out of sight under his bed frame.

Malenfant finally lowered his head to the pillow.

“Just think,” Nemoto said from the darkness. “When you sleep with that pillow, you sleep with all the people who used it before.”

Malenfant thought about that for a while. Then he dumped the pillow on the floor, rolled up his coverall, and stuck that under his head.

Later than night Malenfant was disturbed by a howl, like a lost child. Peering out, he spotted a small creature high in a palm tree, about the size of a squirrel.

“A hyrax,” Nemoto murmured. “Close to the common ancestor of elephants, hippos, rhinos, tapirs and horses.”

“Another ancient critter, crying in the night. I feel like I’ve been lost in this jungle since God was a boy.”

“I suspect we are very far from God. Try to get some sleep, Malenfant.”

Shadow:

Pain stabbed savagely in her lower belly. It awoke her from a crimson dream of teeth and claws. She sat up screaming.

There was no cat. In the grey-pink light of dawn, she was sitting in the dirt. She was immediately startled to find herself on the ground, and not high in a tree.

Before her she could see skinny people walking around, pissing, children tumbling sleepily. Some of them turned to stare at her with their oddly flat faces.

But now more pain came, great waves of it that tore at her as if her whole body was clenched in some huge mouth.

Something gushed from between her legs. She looked down, parting her fur. She saw bloody water, seeping into the ground. She screamed again.

She scrabbled at the ground, seeking to find a tree, her mother, seeking to get away from this dreadful, wrenching agony. But the pain came with her. Her belly flexed and convulsed, like huge stones moving around inside her, and she fell back once more.

Now there was a face over hers: smooth and flat, shadowed against the pinkish sky. Strong hands pressed at her shoulders, pushing her back against the dirt. She lashed out, trying to scratch this creature who was attacking her. But she was feeble, and her blows were easily brushed aside. She could feel more hands on her ankles, prising her legs apart, and she thought of Claw, and screamed again. But the pressure, though gentle, was insistent, and kick as she might she could not free herself of these grasping, controlling hands.

Now the pain pulsed again, a red surge that overwhelmed her.

No more than half-conscious, she barely glimpsed what followed: the strong, skilful hands of the Runner women as they levered the baby from its birth canal, fingers clearing a plug of mucus from its mouth, the brisk slicing of the umbilical with a stone axe. All that Shadow perceived was the pain, the way it washed over her over and over, receding at last as the baby was taken from her to be followed by a final agonizing pulse as the afterbirth emerged.

When it was done, Shadow struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. Her hair was matted with dust and blood. The ground between her legs was a mess of blood and mucus, drying in the gathering sunlight.

There were women around her, tall like tree trunks, their shadows long.

One of them — older, with silvery hair — was holding the afterbirth, which steamed gently. The old woman nibbled at it cautiously, and then, with a glance at Shadow, she ran away towards the smoking fire with her stolen treat.

The other women stared at Shadow’s face. Their small, protruding noses wrinkled. Now that the greater pain was ebbing, Shadow became aware of an itching that had spread across her cheeks and forehead and nose; she scratched it absently.

A woman stood before her. She held the baby, her long fingers clamped around its waist. It had large pink ears, small, pursed lips, and wrinkled, bluish-black skin. Its head was swollen, like a pepper. It — he — opened his mouth and wailed.