Nemoto regarded the yellow fruit proffered by the Worker with loathing.

Manekato shrugged. She popped the banana into her mouth and swallowed it whole, skin and all.

Nemoto said cautiously, “I think your world has no Moon — none but this unwanted arrival.”

Manekato, interested, said, “And what of it?”

“Our scientists have speculated how the destiny of my world might have differed if it had been born without a Moon.”

“Really?” Manekato wondered briefly if “scientists” was correctly translated.

Nemoto took a deep breath. “Our Moon was born in a giant impact, in the final stage of the violent formation of the Solar System. The effects on Earth were profound…”

Manekato was fascinated by all this — not so much by the content, which seemed trivially obvious, but by the fact that Nemoto was able to spin together such a coherent statement at all — even if it was delivered in a maddeningly slow drawl. But Nemoto seemed desperate to retain Manekato’s attention, to win her understanding — and perhaps her approval.

“And what difference would all this make to the evolution of life?”

Nemoto said, “You come from a world that spins fast. There must be winds there persistent, strong. Perhaps you were once bipeds, but now you walk on all fours; probably I could not stand upright on your world. Your trees must hug the ground. And so on. Your air, derived from a primordial atmosphere never stripped off by impact, is thicker than mine, richer in carbon dioxide, probably richer in oxygen. You think fast, move fast, fuelled by the oxygen-rich air.” She hesitated. “And perhaps you die fast. Mane, I can expect to live for seventy years — years measured on your Earth, or mine. And you?”

“Twenty-five,” Manekato breathed. “Or less.” She was stunned by Nemoto’s sudden acuity — but then the homimd had been observing her for days now, learning about Manekato as Manekato had learned about her; she had simply saved up her conclusions — as a good scientist should.

“The evolution of life must have been quite different,” Nemoto said now. “With lower tides your oceans must be less enriched of silt washed down from the continents. And there must be less global ocean movement. I would expect a significantly different biota.

“As for humans, I believe that our evolutionary paths diverged at the stage we call the ‘Australopithecine’, Manekato. But the environment was different on our worlds, evoking a different adaptation. I would hazard that hunting is not a viable strategy for homimds on your world. Probably your short days were simply not long enough. You call yourself ‘Farmers’. Perhaps your world encouraged the early development of agriculture.”

“ ‘Australopithecines.’ I don’t know that word.”

“The homimds called Nutcrackers and Elves here seem to be surviving specimens. From that root stock your kind took one path; mine took another.”

“But, Nemoto — why do such divergent worlds have people at all? Why would homimd forms evolve on world after world—”

“Your kind did not originate on your Earth,” Nemoto said bluntly. “Your scientists must have deduced that much.”

Manekato bristled. She tried to put aside her annoyance at being patronized by this monkey-thing. “You are right. That much is evident. People share the same biochemical substrate as other living things, but are linked to no animal alive or of the past by any clear evolutionary path.”

“But on my Earth there is a clear evolutionary path to be traced from humans back into the past.”

“So you are saying my line originated on your Earth? And how did my Australopithecine grandmothers get delivered to ‘my Earth’?”

Nemoto shrugged. “Perhaps by this Red Moon, and its blue-ring scoops.”

It was a startling vision — especially coming from the mouth of this small brained biped — but it had a certain cogency. Manekato was aware her mouth was dangling open; she shut it with a snap of her great teeth. “Who would have devised such a mechanism? And why?”

Nemoto’s face pulled tight in the grimace Manekato had come to recognize as a smile. “The Hams have a legend of the Old Ones, who built the world. I am hoping you will find them.”

Manekato glared at Nemoto: she was profoundly impressed by Nemoto’s acuity, yet she was embarrassed at her own condescension towards the hominid. It was not a comfortable mixture. “We will talk of this further.”

“We must,” said Nemoto.

Reid Malenfant:

Malenfant counted them. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen Runners: eighteen powerful, languid bodies relaxing on the barren ground. The band seemed to be settling here for the night. The three of them — Julia, Malenfant, Hugh McCann — hunkered down in the dirt. The grass beneath Malenfant’s scuffed boots was sparse, and the Mars-red dust of the world showed through, crimson-bright where it caught the light of the setting sun.

This swathe of scrubby grassland was at the western border of the coastal forest strip NASA cartographers had christened the Beltway. Further west of this point, beyond a range of eroded mountains, there was only the arid, baked interior of the great continent, hundreds of miles of red desert, an Australia in the sky. No doubt it was stocked with its own unique ecology exquisitely evolved to maximize the use of the available resources, Malenfant thought sourly, but it was an unremittingly hostile place for a middle-aged American — and of no interest to him whatsoever, unless it held Emma in its barren heart.

McCann moved closer to Malenfant, his buckskin clothes creaking softly. “How strange these pongids are,” he said. “How very obviously ante-human. See the way they have made their crude camp. They have built a fire, you see, probably from a hot coal carried for tens of miles by some horny-handed wretch. They even have a rudimentary sense of the hearth and home: look at that big buck voiding his bowels, off beyond the group — what an immense straining — everything these fellows do is mighty!

“But that is about the extent of their humanity. They have no tools, save the pebbles they pluck from the ground to be shaped; they carry nothing for sentiment — nothing at all, so their nakedness is deeper than ever yours or mine could be. And though they gather in little clusters, of mothers with infants, a few younger siblings, there is no community there.

“If you look into the eyes of a Runner, Malenfant, you see a bright primal presence, you see cleverness — but you do not see a mind. There is only the now, and that is all there will ever be. Whatever dim spark of awareness resides behind those deceptive eyes is trapped forever in a cage of inarticulacy… One must pity them, even as one admires them for their animal grace.”

Malenfant grimaced. “Another lecture, Hugh?”

McCann sighed. “I have been effectively alone here too long, my reflections on the strange lost creatures who inhabit this place rattling around in my head. Would I were as conservative with my words as dear Julia, who, like the rest of her kind, speaks only when necessary!”

Or maybe, Malenfant thought, she just hasn’t got much to say to you, or me. He’d observed the Hams chattering among themselves, when they thought no human was watching them. For all his bush craft, McCann’s understanding of the creatures around him was obviously shallow.

Without a word, Julia stood up and began to walk across the sparse scrub towards the Running-folk. McCann and Malenfant stayed crouched in the dirt.

The Runners turned to watch her approach. They were silent, still, like wary prey animals.

Julia got as far as the Runners” fire. She hunkered down there, making sure she didn’t sit close to the meat. The Runners were still wary — one burly man bared his teeth at Julia, which she calmly ignored — but they didn’t try to drive her away.

After a time an infant came up to her, bright eyes over a lithe little body. Julia reached out her massive hand, but its mother instantly snatched the child back.