‘Elegy, day or night, there aren’t any predators on BoskVeld. There’s some evidence for occasional cannibalism among the Asadi, though.’
‘What about the psychological predation of their own past? Don’t you think the past’s out there with them, even in their present-day slogging and trudging about? The past is their most remorseless predator. It’s the avenging angel that’s condemned them to their rain-forest hell.’
‘You’ve gone awfully damn metaphorical on me, Elegy.’
‘All right. You mentioned cannibalism. That’s a kind of predation too, isn’t it? Maybe their gathering together in a common place during the day and then dispersing to the wind’s twelve quarters at night are defense mechanisms against an innate tendency – born of past genetic developments whose triggers we haven’t yet guessed at – to prey on one another. The Asadi seem to be in a precarious evolutionary equilibrium between autogenocide and meaningless self-perpetuation. Indifferent Togetherness and Frenetic Dispersal are the modes by which they sustain life, Ben. The fact that they still live at all is the only real meaning their past has bequeathed them.’
‘You think Bojangles’s a candidate for salvation?’
Elegy glanced at me to see if I were baiting her, and decided her suspicion was groundless. ‘I don’t know. But today, suddenly, he seems less alien, more comprehensible. That’s comforting, isn’t it? Nobody’s comfortable with the truly alien, are they, even if they find it exciting and go out of their way to pursue it. Secretly, you know, primatologists are looking for similarities between themselves and their subjects. Differences are scrupulously noted and analyzed, yes, but it’s the points of contact you live for.’ A moment later she added, ‘I’m speaking for myself, of course. That’s all I can do.’
And Bojangles’s amiable susceptibility to the japes of Kretzoi was comforting. We began to feel that the mystery of the Asadi was about to open to us like a flower.
On his second full day in the swimming-pool compound Bojangles stopped staring wistfully, compulsively, after Denebola and got down to the business of exploring his immediate environment, which just happened to include Kretzoi. (Our cameras did, however, record his recurring panic at sunset – but this reaction diminished on each successive evening, until, finally, his only observable response was a rapid alternation of the common fear grin with the ‘threat face’ often employed by Earthly rhesus monkeys: front and side teeth glinting nastily and the mouth full open to screech or howl. Bojangles, however, never made any sound at all.) At first, his forays around the pool’s perimeter and interior made us think he was merely adapting the Asadi assembly-ground behavior to his new surroundings. We weren’t dismayed by this development, though, because it was so striking a departure from the first day’s intense sun worship that we believed even bigger surprises had to be in store.
We expected Bojangles to eat. In this he disappointed us. But he didn’t disappoint us in his newfound readiness to jettison old Asadi behavioral patterns for exploratory ventures of his own.
Ninety-four minutes of marching around and through the empty pool – while Kretzoi sat bemusedly by the chrome ladder at its deep end – were all Bojangles required to survey his artificial clearing. Then he stopped, located Kretzoi, and hurried to him for what we supposed would be another session of mutual grooming. Even Kretzoi was of our opinion in this, for he reached to begin combing the other’s fur – only to have Bojangles deflect his hands, catch them firmly at their wrists, and hold them before him. Kretzoi’s strength was sufficient to permit him to break the hold, but he didn’t move. Then Bojangles voluntarily released his hands.
‘This gets better and better,’ Elegy whispered.
Again, she was right. Kretzoi inscribed a simple gestural communication in the air. Bojangles, whose back was partially to us, leaned forward and stared not at Kretzoi’s hands but deep into the protruding lenses over his eyes.
‘Kretzoi’s getting a spectral display,’ Elegy said. ‘We’re picking it up on the third monitor, Ben.’
This monitor, attached to the catwalk rail to the right of our desk, gave us a telephoto closeup of Bojangles’s grimacing face. So sharp was the picture’s resolution that I could even make out the individual colors in his pinwheeling eyes. But the message in those colors, however eloquent or Homeric, was all of a piece to me: pitiless Greek.
‘Where does he get the energy for that kind of display?’ I wondered aloud. ‘He hasn’t eaten anything for a good sixty to seventy hours.’
‘What about the sun?’ Elegy responded.
This was old speculation, an early theory of Moses Eisen’s as a matter of fact, and the only thing wrong with it was that Komm decrees of, first, the Martial Arm and later, Colonial Administration had never permitted us to put it to a test. Because Bojangles had gone so long without taking food, evidence for some sort of photo-driven organic battery in the optical equipment of the Asadi mounted inexorably. If this hypothesis had any validity, I knew, it might offer the beginnings of an explanation for the present absence of prey and predators on BoskVeld. The Asadi ate low on the food chain; also, they might share with green plants the ability to synthesize chemical energy from direct sunlight, thereby abstracting themselves from any crass dependence on carnivory. Why, then, did they sometimes choose to be cannibals?
Kretzoi suddenly shoved the Asadi in the chest, thrusting him away. He then made a series of angry gestural signatures.
‘What’s that all about?’ I asked.
‘He’s telling Bojangles, You have Kretzoi hands, but I don’t have Bojangles eyes. It’s a rebuke. If they’re going to communicate, he seems to be saying, it’ll have to be by means of an anatomical common denominator.’
‘The hands?’
‘So he’s arguing. The trouble is
