“That’s why they’re more violence-prone?” she asked.

“We think so. It parallels structures in our own brains.”

“Really? Men’s neurons?” Dors looked doubtful. “Human males have higher activity levels in their temporal limbic systems, deeper down in the brain-evolutionarily older structures.”

“So why not put me into that level?” Hari asked.

“We place the immersion chips into the gyrus area because we can reach it from the top, surgically. The temporal limbic is way far down, impossible to implant a chip.”

Dors frowned. “So pan males-”

“Are harder to control. Professor Seldon here is running his pan from the backseat, so to speak.”

“Whereas Dors is running hers from a control center that, for female pans, is more central?” Hari peered into the distance. “I was handicapped!”

Dors grinned. “You have to play the hand you’re dealt.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Big Stick, biology is destiny.”

The troop came upon rotting fruit. Fevered excitement ran through them.

The smell was repugnant and enticing at the same time, and at first he did not understand why. The pans rushed to the overripe bulbs of blue and sickly green, popping open the skins, sucking out the juice.

Tentatively, Hari tried one. The hit was immediate. A warm feeling of well-being kindled up in him. Of course-the fruity esters had converted into alcohol! The pans were quite deliberately setting about getting drunk.

He “let” his pan follow suit. He hadn’t much choice in the matter.

Ipan grunted and thrashed his arms whenever Hari tried to turn him away from the teardrop fruit. And after a while, Hari didn’t want to turn away, either. He gave himself up to a good, solid drunk. He had been worrying a lot lately, agitated in his pan, and…this was completely natural, wasn’t it?

Then a pack of raboons appeared, and he lost control of Ipan.

They come fast. Running two-legs, no sound. Their tails twitch, talking to each other.

Five circle left. They cut off Esa.

Biggest thunders at them. Hunker runs to nearest and it spikes him with its forepuncher.

I throw rocks. Hit one. It yelps and scurries back. But others take its place. I throw again and they come and the dust and yowling are thick and the others of them have Esa. They cut her with their punch-claws. Kick her with sharp hooves.

Three of them carry her off.

Our fems run, afraid. We warriors stay.

We fight them. Shrieking, throwing, biting when they get close. But we cannot reach Esa.

Then they go. Fast, running on their two hoofed legs. Furling their tails in victory. Taunting us.

We feel bad. Esa was old and we loved her.

Fems come back, nervous. We groom ourselves and know that the two-legs are eating Esa somewhere.

Biggest come by, try to pat me.

I snarl. He Biggest! This thing he should have stopped.

His eyes get big and he slap me. I slap back at him. He slam into me. We roll around in dust. Biting, yowling. Biggest strong, strong and pound my head on ground.

Other warriors, they watch us, not join in.

He beat me. I hurt. I go away.

Biggest starts calming down the warriors. Fems come by and pay their respects to Biggest. Touch him, groom him, feel him the way he likes. He mounts three of them real quick. He feeling Biggest all right.

Me, I lick myself. Sheelah come groom me. After a while I feel better. Forget about trouble.

I not forget Biggest beat me though. In front of everybody. Now I hurt, Biggest get grooming.

He let them come and take Esa. He Biggest, he should stop them.

Some day I be allover him. On his back.

Some day I be Bigger.

“When did you bailout?” Dors asked.

“After Biggest stopped pounding on me…uh, on Ipan.”

They were relaxing beside a swimming pool and the heady smells of the forest seemed to awaken in Hari the urge to be down there again, in the valleys of dust and blood. He trembled, took a deep breath. The fighting had been so involving he hadn’t wanted to leave, despite the pain. Immersion had a hypnotic quality.

“I know how you feel,” she said. “It’s easy to totally identify with them. I left Sheelah when those raboons came close. Pretty scary.”

“Vaddo said they’re derived from Earth, too.

Plenty of DNA overlap. But they show signs of extensive recent tinkering to make them predators.”

“Why would the ancients want those?”

“Trying to figure out our origins?”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Not everyone has your same interests.”

“Why, then?”

“How about using raboons as game, to hunt? Something a little challenging?”

“ Hunting? The Empire has always been too far from throwback primitivism to” He had been about to launch into a little lecture on how far humanity had come when he realized that he didn’t believe it anymore. “Um.”

“You’ve always thought of people as cerebral. No psychohistory could work if it didn’t take into account our animal selves.”

“Our worst sins are all our own, I fear.” He had not expected that his experiences here would shake him so. This was sobering.

“Not at all. Genocide occurs in wolves and pans alike. Murder is widespread. Ducks and orangutans rape. Even ants have organized warfare and slave raids. Pans have at least as good a chance of being murdered as do humans, Vaddo says. Of all the hallowed human hallmarks-speech, art, technology, and the rest-the one which comes most obviously from animal ancestors is genocide.”

“You’ve been learning from Vaddo.”

“It was a good way to keep an eye on him.”

“Better to be suspicious than sorry?”

“Of course,” she said blandly, giving nothing away.

“Well, luckily, even if we are superpans, Imperial order and communication blurs distinctions between Us and Them.”

“So?”

“That blunts the deep impulse to genocide.”

She laughed again, this time rather to his annoyance. “You haven’t understood history very well. Smaller groups still kill each other off with great relish. In Zone Sagittarius, during the reign of Omar the Impaler-”

“I concede, there are small-scale tragedies by the dozens. But on the scale where psychohistory might work, averaging over populations of many thousands of billions-”

“What makes you so sure numbers are any protection?” she asked pointedly.

“So far-”

“The Empire has been in stasis.”

“A steady-state solution, actually. Dynamic equilibrium.”

“And if that equilibrium fails?”

“Well…then I have nothing to say.” She smiled. “How uncharacteristic.”

“Until I have a real, working theory.”

“One that can allow for widespread genocide, if the Empire erodes.”

He saw her point then. “You’re saying I really need this ‘animal nature’ part of humans.”

“I’m afraid so. I’m trained to allow for it already.”

He was puzzled. “How so?”

“I don’t have your view of humanity. Scheming, plots, Sheelah grabbing more meat for her young, Ipan wanting to do in Biggest-those things happen in the Empire. Just better disguised.”

“So?”

“Consider Ex Spec Vaddo. He made a comment about your working on a ‘theory of history’ the other evening.”

“So?”

“Who told him you were?”

“I don’t think I-ah, you think he’s checking up on us?”

“He already knows.”

“The security chief, maybe she told him, after checking on me with the Academic Potentate.”

She graced him with an unreadable smile. “I do love your endless, naive way of seeing the world.”

Later, he couldn’t decide whether she had meant it as a compliment.