Diaspora

Inland, the forest blocked the ocean light, but life spilled into the shadow. Some animals migrated away from the coast to raise their young, closely followed by predators, but there were also local species, starting with plants feeding on nutrients washed out of the forest. Poincarean life employed no single, universal solvent, but half a dozen common molecules were liquid at coastal temperatures. Rain rarely fell on the forest itself, and the major rivers flowing from the barren interior to be vaporized when they hit the magma ocean contained little organic material, but enough high-altitude dew ran down the Janus trees and found its way inland, enriched with debris, to power a secondary ecosystem comprising several thousand species.

Including the Hermits.

Elena summoned up networks of estimated energy and nutrient flows for predation, grazing, parasitism and symbiotic relationships. "The wider the analysis, the more the evidence mounts up. It's not just that they have no predators and no visible parasites; they also face no population pressure, no food shortages, no disease, Every other species is subject to chaotic population dynamics; even the Janus trees show signs of overcrowding and die-offs. But the Hermits sit in the middle of all those wild swings, untouched. It's as if the whole biosphere has been customized to shield them from anything unpleasant."

She displayed a 5-image, and Orlando reluctantly switched his vision to view it properly. The Hermits, Elena explained, were limbless, mollusk-like creatures, living in stationary structures half excreted like shells, half dug our like burrows. They appeared to spend most of their lives inside these caves, feeding on hapless passers-by who fell into a slippery trench that led straight to the Hermits' mouthparts. No carnivore had evolved the tools required to winkle them out, and though many species were smart enough to avoid the trenches, there were always plenty of victims. And of the six million Hermits observed from orbit, none had yet been seen either to breed, or to die.

Karpal was skeptical. "They're just a timid, sedentary species that's had good luck for the brief time we've been watching. I wouldn't be tempted to extrapolate their lifespan to six million times the observation period; we've yet to see any significant temperature fluctuations in the crust, and when they come along they must cause havoc. We should shift our resources to the deserts; if the Transmuters are on Poincare at all, they'll be as far away from the native life as possible. Why would they intervene on behalf of these creatures"

Elena replied stiffly, "I'm not suggesting that they did. The Poincareans could have engineered the whole setup for themselves."

"Have you caught them doing anything remotely like biotechnology?"

"No. But once they'd put themselves in an invulnerable niche, why would they need to make any more changes?"

Orlando said, "Even if they're intelligent enough to have done that, if their idea of utopia is spending eternity sitting in a cave waiting for food to slide down their throats, what are they going to know about the Transmuters? Ten thousand blazing star ships might have flown past Poincare a billion years ago, but even if the Hermits have been around that long, they're not going to remember. They're not going to care."

"We don't know that. Does Carter-Zimmerman on Earth look like a hive of intellectual curiosity? Can you tell what's stored in the polis library from one glance at the protective hull?"

Karpal groaned. "Now you're taking Orpheus to heart. One biological computer on one playlet in another universe hardly proves—"

Elena retorted, "One natural biological computer hardly proves that they're common products of evolution. But why shouldn't Poincarean life engineer them? No one objects to the notion that every technological civilization might undergo its own Introdus. If the Poincareans were skilled in biotechnology, why shouldn't they create a suitably tailored living species, instead of a machine?"

Paolo interjected cheerfully, "I agree! The Hermits could be living polises, with the whole ecosystem as their power supply. But they need not have been built by native Poincareans. If the Transmuters arrived here and found no intelligent life, they might have tweaked the ecosystem to make a safe niche for themselves, then created the Hermits and migrated into them to while away the time in 3-scapes."

Elena laughed uncertainly, as if she suspected she was being mocked. "While away the time until what"'

"Until something evolved here—a species worth talking to. Or someone arrived, like us."

The debate dragged on, but no conclusions were reached. On the evidence, the Hermits might have been anything from random beneficiaries of natural selection to the secret masters of Poincare.

A vote was taken, and Karpal lost. The deserts were too vast to search, with no clear target. The expedition would concentrate its resources on the Hermits.