Nemoto moved on, working her way through the ship’s gloomy interior.

McCann watched her, then leaned closer to Malenfant. “Always watching, thinking, recording, your little Oriental friend — eh, Malenfant?”

“That’s her way,” Malenfant said cautiously. “And it’s our mission. Part of it, anyhow.”

“And quite the fount of knowledge about obscure British philosophers two centuries dead.” McCann’s eyes narrowed. “I have observed the gadget she carries.”

Malenfant saw no point in lying. “It’s called a softscreen.”

“Its working is no doubt beyond my comprehension, but its purpose is clear enough. It is a repository of knowledge, from which Madam Nemoto sips as she requires. I am a man of this dismal jungle now, Malenfant, but you need not think me a fool.”

“Take it easy, McCann.”

McCann frowned, as if decoding the colloquialism. “Without my shelter you would both surely be ‘taking it easy’ beneath the crimson dust by now. Remember that.” When Malenfant did not answer, McCann clapped him on the shoulder again. “Enough of one beached vessel; let us seek another. Come.” McCann began to clamber down to the ground, into the helpful arms of the Ham who served him.

It took another two hours to reach the clearing dug out by the lander on its way down.

The lander was gone.

This was the place he remembered: the Gagarin avenue cut through | the trees, the scattered bushes and branches — and even bits of blue ! parafoil, grimy, damp, still clinging to the damaged foliage. But the | lander was gone.

McCann stalked over the grass, inspecting ripped-up bushes, scattered trees. “You’re sure this is the place?”

“It can’t be.”

Nemoto approached him. “Malenfant, you are not a man who has trouble remembering where he parked the car.”

Malenfant wanted to believe the lander was sitting someplace else, where it had fallen, as battered and crumpled and precious as when he and Nemoto had so foolishly become parted from it — a key part of the technological ladder that would take him, and Emma, home. But there could be no doubt.

“We’re stranded, Nemoto,” he blurted. “As stranded as these damn English.”

“Perhaps we always were,” she said evenly.

He hitched his pack of tied-up skin, containing all his belongings, all that was left of Earth. “We’re a pretty pathetic expeditionary force.”

She shrugged. “We still have the most important tools: our minds, and our hands, and our knowledge.” She eyed him. “What do you intend to do now?”

“Let’s get out of here. We have to find the lander. There’s nothing more we can achieve with these English. I hate to be a bad guest, but I’m not sure how well McCann will take our leaving.”

“Not well, I fear,” Nemoto said dryly. And she stepped back.

A hand clamped on Malenfant’s arm. It was a Ham, not Thomas.

McCann came walking up, leaning on his stick, his broad face red and grim. “Thank you, Madam Nemoto,” he said. “He has behaved just as you predicted.”

“Malenfant glared at Nemoto, disbelieving. “You betrayed me. You warned him I’d try something.”

“You are very predictable, Malenfant.” She sighed, impatient, her face expressionless. “You should not make the mistake of believing we share the same agenda, Malenfant. This new Moon, this Red Moon, is the greatest mystery in recorded history — a mystery that deepens with every day that passes, everything we learn. Unless we discover the truth behind it, we will have accomplished nothing.”

“And you believe you can achieve that by staying here, with McCann?”

“We need a base, Malenfant. We need resources. We can’t spend our whole lives looking over our shoulders for the next stone axe to fall, or grubbing around in the forest for food. These British have all that.”

“And what of Emma?”

Nemoto said nothing, but McCann said smoothly, “Our scouts and hunters range far and wide, Malenfant. If she is here, we will find her for you.”

If your Ham scouts tell you everything they see, Malenfant thought. He fingered the little lens in his pocket.

“Let’s look at the matter in a sensible light,” McCann said now. “I know you think little of me, Malenfant. But once again I assure you I am not a fool. I desire more than a chess partner; I desire escape from this place — what man wouldn’t? Now you have fallen from the sky into my lap, and only a fool would let you go, for surely your Americans will come looking for you from that blue Earth of yours. And when they do, they will find me.”

“My world isn’t your world,” Malenfant snarled.

“But my world is lost,” McCann said wistfully. “And I know you have an England. Perhaps I will find a place there.” His face hardened, and Malenfant perceived a new toughness. This was, Malenfant remembered, a representative of a breed who had carved out a global empire — and on a much more hostile planet than Earth. “Providence has given me my chance and I must take it. I believe that in keeping you now, in following the promptings of my own infallible heart, I see the workings of Omnipotence. Is this moral arrogance? But without such beliefs man would never have left the trees and the caves, and remained like our pre-sapient and pongid cousins.” He glanced at Nemoto. “As for your companion’s slight treachery — perhaps she is destined to betray you, over and over, on all Anaxarchus’s infinity of worlds. What do you think?” And he brayed laughter.

The little column formed up for the homeward journey. The big Ham called Thomas took his place beside Malenfant. And he winked broadly.

Emma Stoney:

A day after leaving the first troupe, Emma found another group of Hams, women and a few infants foraging for berries and fruit. They had regarded her blankly, but then, seeing she was no threat — and, as not one of them, of no conceivable interest — they had turned away and continued their gathering.

Emma waited patiently until they were done. Then she followed them back to their encampment.

She stayed here a couple of days, and then moved on, seeking another troupe.

And then on again.

Hams were basically the same, wherever she found them. Their tool-making, for instance. Though each group varied its kit a little according to circumstances, like the availability of different types of stone — and perhaps, she speculated, some slight cultural tradition — still, if something was not in their tool making repertoire, which was evidently very ancient and fixed, no Ham was interested.

They didn’t even talk about their tool-making, even while they jabbered endlessly about their intricate social lives. It was as if they were conscious while they were interacting with each other, but not while they were making tools, or even hunting.

After a time Emma began to get used to it. She reasoned that she did many things she wasn’t aware of, like breathing, and keeping her heart pumping. And she could think of times when she had performed quite complex tasks requiring skill, judgement and the focus on a specific goal without knowing about it — such as driving all the way to work with her mind on some stunt of Malenfant’s, only to “wake up” when she found herself in the car lot. Or she thought of her father, able to carve fine furniture from wood in his hobby workshop, but never able to tell her how it was done; all he could do was show her.

With the Hams, that circle of unawareness spread a little further, that was all. Or maybe it was just that you could get used to anything, given time.

Anyhow it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to run experiments in hominid cognition. It was enough that she was able to use her fish and rabbits and other hunting produce as subtle bribes to gain favour — or at least as a hedge against exclusion.

Thus she worked her way through the forest, moving from one Ham group to the next, using them as stepping stones of comparative safety, one way or another travelling steadily east, day after day, seeking Malenfant.