He found Julia. She was dressed in her native skins; no trace of her guise as a maid for the English remained. He pointed towards the open gate. He said, “Emma.”

She nodded.

He went back to the others. “I’m out of here, McCann. Will you try to stop me?”

McCann laughed. “What difference does it make now? But what will you do?”

“What I came to do,” Malenfant said bluntly.

“Ah — Emma. I wish I had the comfort of such a goal.” McCann looked at Nemoto. “And you, Madam Nemoto? Will you stay with a beaten old man?”

Nemoto raised her face to the sky; flickering light reflected from her skin. “I will seek answers.”

“Answers?” McCann snorted. “Of what use are answers? Can you eat answers, sleep under them, use them to ward off the Runners, the Elves?”

She shrugged. “I am not content to subsist, like you, like these Hams.”

Malenfant felt reluctant to lose her, even though she had betrayed him. And besides, she was scarcely street-wise: he imagined her dreaming of sheaves of parallel universes as a shaped cobble stove in her skull… “Come with me.”

She appraised him coolly. “We have always had different agendas, Malenfant.”

McCann looked from one to the other. Impulsively he said, “I have been sedentary too long. Let me accompany you, Malenfant. I dare say I have a few tricks, born of long experience, which might yet save your hide.”

Malenfant glanced at Julia, who had no reaction. “What about Crawford and the others?”

McCann clapped Thomas on his broad shoulder. “I see no reason why our friends should fail to look after three as well as they have looked after four.”

Thomas nodded curtly.

Malenfant faced Nemoto. “I hope you find what you are looking for.”

“I will see you again,” she said.

“No,” he said, flooded by a sudden certainty. “No, you won’t. We’ll never meet again.”

She stared at him. Then she turned away.

Manekatopokanemahedo:

She was standing on a shining, smooth surface of Adjusted Space, bright yellow, softly warm under her bare feet. Babo and Without-Name still clung to her hands; she released them.

On the Red Moon, there was no Wind. She relished the luxury of not having to fight against the air’s power, enjoying the ease with which she took each breath.

Around them were a dozen more people — more exiles from one ruined Farm or another, their symmorphs adorned with a startling variety of colours and stylings of skin and hair — and perhaps a hundred times as many Workers: Workers tall and slim, short and squat, Workers that flew and crawled and rolled and walked. As was customary, the people’s new symmorphs were as close as possible in appearance to the shells they had abandoned on Earth.

The Mapping had taken account of the different physical conditions. Thus Manekato felt no discomfort as her lungs drank in the thin, oxygen-depleted air of this small world, and her new body would suffer no ill-effects from the relative lack of carbon dioxide. But she had taken care not to engineer out all of the Red Moon’s experiential differences; for if she had there would scarcely be a purpose in coming here at all. Thus the air was cold and damp and laden with a thousand powerful, unfamiliar scents — and thus the lower gravity, just two-thirds of Earth’s, tugged only feebly at her limbs.

Manekato loped through the crowd of gazing people and scuttling Workers. Her gait felt oddly clumsy in the low gravity, as if her muscles were suddenly over powered. The yellow floor was perhaps a hundred paces across. It was a neatly circular disc of Adjusted Space, its smoothness comforting. She reached the rim of the disc. Tiny Workers streamed past her into the green world beyond, recording, interpreting, transmitting.

Beyond the platform was a wall of forest, concealing a dense green gloom. The trees were tall here: great spindly structures of wood, very different from the ground-hugging species of Wind-blasted Earth. Shadows flitted through that green dark. She thought she saw eyes peering out at her, eyes like a mirror of her own.

Babo ran past her with a gurgled cry. He ran straight into the forest and clambered into the lowest branches of a tree, clumsily, but with enthusiasm and strength.

Manekato peered down. In the Moon’s red dust grass grew, sprinkled with small flowers, white and yellow. She leaned forward, supporting her weight on one fist, and touched the grass. The blades were coarse, and other plants and moss crowded around, fighting over each scrap of soil. She saw leaves protruding from beneath the disc, crushed, bent back; some of the living things of this world had already died because of her presence.

The land here had never been Farmed: not once, not in all the billions of years this world had existed. Even this patch of grass-covered land, where billions of living things fought for life in every scrap, was disturbing, enthralling proof of that.

In front of the forest fringe she made out a small, brown-furred Worker — no, not a Worker, an animal, its species probably unmodified by conscious design. It had a short, slim body, and four spindly legs; it bent a graceful neck, and a small mouth nibbled at the grass. It moved gracefully, but with a startling slowness, an unhurried languor that contrasted with the frantic scuttling of the people and the Workers. By the look of the genitalia between its back legs its kind must reproduce in a mammalian fashion, rather than be nurtured directly from the ground…

Nobody had nurtured this creature, she reminded herself; there had been no conscious process. It had been born in blood and pain and mucus, without the supervision of any human, and it found food to sustain its growth in this wild, unmanaged, undisciplined place.

On her world, there had been no parks or zoos for nine hundred millennia. Though the richness of the ecology was well understood and managed minutely — including the place of people within that ecology — there were no creatures save those that served a conscious purpose, no aspect of nature that was not thought through and controlled. Not so much as a stomach bacterium.

Manekato had known that this new Moon would be wild, but that its ecology would function none the less. But it was one thing to have a theoretical anticipation and another to be confronted with the fact. She felt as if she had entered the workings of some vast intricate machine, all the more remarkable for lacking a conscious designer or a controlling intelligence.

Now Babo came hurrying back from the forest. He clutched something in his arms that wriggled sluggishly.

Babo’s legs were covered in scrapings of green moss, and his hair was dishevelled and dirty. But his eyes were bright, and he was breathing hard. “My arms are strong,” he told his sister. “I can climb. It is as if this body of mine remembers its deepest past, many millions of years lost, even though the trees on Earth are mere wind-blown stubs compared to these mighty pillars…”

Without-Name asked, “What is it you carry?”

He held it out carefully. It had a slim body and a small head. Its legs were short and somewhat bowed, but Manekato could see immediately that this creature was designed — no, had evolved — to walk bipedally. It was perhaps half of Babo’s height, and much slimmer.

“It is a hominid,” she said wonderingly.

“I found it in the tree,” Babo said. “It is quite strong, but moves slowly. It was easy to catch.”

Manekato reached to touch the creature’s face.

The hominid whipped its head sideways and sank its teeth into Manekato’s finger.

Manekato fell back with a small cry. Miniature Workers in her bloodstream caused the ripped flesh to close immediately.

“Ha!” the creature yelled. “Elf strong Elf good hurt stupid Ham hah!”

This jabber meant nothing to Manekato.