Cautiously, her baby clinging to her back, Shadow crept closer. She started to groom Silverneck, picking gently through the hairs of Silverneck’s shoulders. The older woman, reclining stiffly, submitted to this in silence, eyes closed as if asleep.

Shadow knew what she must do to win a place here. In her home forest she had watched women seeking favour with their seniors. Still cautious, Shadow moved towards Silverneck’s waist and reached out to stroke the older woman’s genitals, just as she had seen others do before.

A hand grasped her wrist, gentle but strong. Silverneck’s face, worn almost bald by grooming, was a mass of wrinkles. And it showed disgust. She pulled her legs under her, and pushed Shadow away.

Shadow sat still, baffled, disturbed.

After a time Shadow again reached out to groom Silverneck. Again Silverneck submitted. This time Shadow did not try to cross the boundary to sexual contact, and Silverneck did not push her away.

As the shadows lengthened across the plain, the carrion-eating bats clustered closer around the remnants of the carcass. One by one the people started to drift back to the forest. The first roosting calls began to sound from the tree tops.

At last the old woman stretched and yawned loudly, bones popping. Then she got to her feet and ambled back towards the forest’s edge.

Shadow sat where she was, waiting.

Silverneck looked back once, thoughtfully. Then she turned and moved on.

Shadow got to her feet, her baby clinging to her back. Hastily she rummaged through the carcass, but the marrow and meat had been chewed or sucked off every bone. Cramming bits of greasy skin into her mouth, she hurried after Silverneck into the forest.

Manekatopokanemahedo:

With a wave of his hand Babo conjured an image of the Red Moon — but it was not an image, rather a limited injective-recursive Mapping of the Moon into itself. The Moon turned for their benefit, a great hovering globe twice Babo’s height. Manekato gazed at searing red desert-continent and steel ocean.

The little hominid who called herself Nemoto stood close to Manekato, her eyes wide, her smooth face bearing some unreadable expression.

“Your work is proceeding well,” Manekato said to her brother.

“It is a routine application of familiar techniques; merely a question of gathering sufficient data… But already the key to this world’s mysteries is clear.”

“Ah.” Manekato said sombrely. She reached up and pointed at the huge volcano that dominated the western side of the rust-red continent. “You mean that.”

“Yes, the volcanic anomaly,” Babo said. “Which in turn must derive from some magmatic feature, a plume arising deep within the belly of this world.”

“You talk of the Bullseye?” Nemoto was watching them, straining to hear, turning her little head this way and that in order to position her small immobile ears.

Babo watched Nemoto uneasily. “Do you think she can follow us?”

“I have taught her a few words,” said Manekato. “But our speech is too rapid for her to grasp; like all the creatures here on this oxygen-starved world, she is sluggish and slow-witted. I have had more success in decoding her own language. It is a little like the nonsense argots you used to make up for my amusement as a child, Babo.”

Babo was still watching Nemoto. “She imitates your behaviour well. Look how she gazes at the volcano! It’s almost as if she can understand what she is seeing.”

Manekato grunted. “Do not underestimate her, brother. I believe she is intelligent, to a degree. Consider the clothes she wears, her speech with its limited grammar, the tools she deploys — even her writing of symbols into her blocks of bound paper. Why, she claims to have come here, not through the blue portals, but in a spacecraft designed by others of her kind. And that she came to this Moon from curiosity. I found this as hard to believe as you, but she drew sketches which convinced me she is telling the truth.”

“But even the making of clothes may be no more than the outcome of instinct, Mane,” Babo said gently. “There is a kind of aquatic spider that makes diving bells from its webbing, and nobody would argue that it is intelligent. Perhaps some day we will discover a species, utterly without mind, which makes starships. Why not? And nor is symbol-making sufficient to demonstrate intelligence; there are social ants which—”

Manekato raised a hand to quiet him. “I am aware of the dangers of anthropomorphism. You think I have found a pet, here in this dismal place — that I am seeking intelligence where all I see is a reflection of my own self.”

Babo rubbed her back affectionately. “Well, isn’t that true?”

“Perhaps. But I strive to discount it. And meanwhile I have come to the belief that Nemoto and her kind may be — not merely intelligent — but self-aware.”

Babo laughed. “Come now, Mane. Let us show her a mirror, and together we will watch her seek the hominid behind the glass.”

“I already tried that test,” Manekato said. “She was very insulted.”

“If she is too proud to be tested, why does she follow you around?”

“For protection,” Manekato said promptly. “You saw how Without-Name treated her when she first found her. Nemoto shows great fear of her.”

Babo grunted. He crouched down before the hominid, Nemoto; his huge body was like a wall before her slim frame.

Nemoto returned his gaze calmly.

“…Intelligent, Mane? But the size of the cranium, the limited expanse of the frontal lobes — the dullness of those eyes. I do not get a sense of a person looking back out at me.”

Manekato snapped, “And you can assess a creature’s intelligence merely by looking at it?” She said, “Nemoto.”

The hominid looked up at her.

“You remember what I told you of the Mapping.” Manekato strove to slow down her speech, and to pronounce each word of Nemoto’s limited language clearly and distinctly.

Nemoto was frowning, concentrating hard. “I remember. You defined a mathematical function to map the components of your body to material of the Moon.” Her words, like her actions, were slow, drawn-out. “The domain of this function was yourselves and your equipment, the range a subset of the Moon. When you had defined the Mapping…”

“Yes?”

Nemoto struggled, but failed-to find the words. “/ have much to learn.’1

Babo grunted. “It is impressive that she knows there are limits to her knowledge. Perhaps that indicates some degree of self-awareness after all.”

Manekato said, “Then I am winning the argument.”

Babo grumbled good-naturedly. “Just remember we are here to study the Moon, and those who sent it spinning between the universes — not to converse with these brutish hominids, who were certainly not responsible.”

Manekato studied Nemoto. The little creature was watching her with empty, serious eyes. “Come,” said Manekato, and she held out her hand.

Nemoto took it with some reluctance.

Babo turned back to the refinement of his Mapping.

Manekato led Nemoto across the Mapped-in floor of the compound. They passed between structures that had been conjured out of Adjusted Space to shelter the people. Rounded yellow forms, to Mane’s taste over-ornate, they made the compound look like a plate set before a giant, loaded with exotic shapes — and with insect-like humans, Workers and hominids scuttling across it.

“You must not let my brother upset you,” Manekato said evenly, striving to express herself correctly in the narrow confines of Nemoto’s limited tongue.

“He has no imagination,” said Nemoto.

Manekato barked laughter, and Nemoto flinched. “I’ll tell him you said that!… But he means you no harm.”

“Unlike Without-Name, who does mean harm, and who has far too much imagination.”

“That is insightful, and neatly phrased.” She snapped her fingers and a Worker came scuttling. “Well done, Nemoto. You deserve a banana.”