Evolution

Crowded out by increasingly ferocious and confident rodents, the posthumans had given up the strategy — superior intelligence — that had brought them such success, and disaster. They had retreated, seeking sheltering niches and passive strategies. Some had become small, timid, fast-breeding runners. They were like vermin. Some even burrowed into the ground. Remembrance’s folk had returned to the ancestral trees, but now the rats were invading even that ancient shelter.

The elephantine humans had tried another approach: becoming so huge they were protected simply by their immense size. But this had not been entirely successful. You could tell that from the design of their gazellelike back legs. Elephants could not have run very quickly, but they had not needed to; in their day no predator existed that could have taken on a full-grown proboscidean. Facing the power of the rodent predator families, the elephantine posthumans had had to retain the power to flee.

But even this had not been enough.

The mouse-raptors were social creatures. Their sociability was deep rooted, reaching back to the colony structures of the marmots and prairie dogs, which had lived in hierarchical "towns" of millions of animals. They scouted, seeking prey or water. They kept sentry watch for each other. They hunted cooperatively. They communicated: The adults called to each other continually with cries, squeals, and the drummings of those powerful tails that sent long-range shudderings through the ground.

For the posthumans, the sociability of these raptors made them simply too effective as predators. The numbers of the big herbivores had steadily dwindled.

But that was bad for the raptors too. And so, in time, the elephantines and the mouse-raptors had developed a kind of symbiosis. The mouse-raptors learned to protect the herds of slow-witted elephantines. Their presence would deter other predators. By their behavior and signals they could warn the elephantines of other dangers, such as fires. They could even guide them to water and good grazing.

All the raptors asked for in return was to take their share of meat.

The elephantines passively accepted all this. They had no choice. And over enough time, selection had shaped the elephantines to fit the new conditions. If the raptors chased away the other predators for you, why be fast? And if they did your thinking for you, why be smart?

As their bodies had bulked up, the people’s minds had shriveled, casting off the burden of thought. They were like domesticated chickens, whose brains had been sacrificed to make longer guts and a more effective digestive system. It wasn’t so bad when you got used to it. Under the mouse-raptors’ unthinking guidance their numbers had even increased. It wasn’t so bad, so long as you turned away when your mother or your sister or your child was taken.

Not such a bad life, to be farmed by rodents.

The light began to leak out of the sky. So Remembrance found another stand of acacias, and crawled gingerly into the branches of the tallest tree. It would have to do. At least she was off the ground.

As the light died, so the stars appeared — but it was a crowded sky.

The sun, in its endless swimming around the Galaxy, was now passing through a wisp of interstellar dust and gas, a wisp mighty enough to span light years. Human astronomers had seen this coming. It was the vanguard of a mighty bubble blown in the gas by an ancient supernova explosion, and at its heart was a region where stars were being built. And so the new sky was spectacular, full of bright, hot new stars.

But there was nobody on Earth who might understand any of this. Remembrance spent a sleepless night listening to the squeals, thrums, and roars of predators, while unnamed constellations drifted over the sky.

III

The first few hundred asteroids the astronomers discovered had orbited in their orderly belt between Mars and Jupiter, comfortably far from Earth. These space rocks had been a curiosity, nothing but a theoretical challenge to students of the origins of the solar system.

It had been quite a shock when Eros was discovered.

Eros was found to sail within Mars’ orbit — in fact at its nearest to Earth, it came to within less than a quarter of the closest approach of Mars and Earth. Later, more asteroids were found that actually crossed the orbit of Earth, making them candidates for eventual collision with the planet.

Eros, that first rogue, was never forgotten. As long as people cared about such things, the asteroid became a kind of mute hero among its kind, better known than any other.