“It has now been a year since the arrival of these enigmatic objects...” said the Brigadier, reading aloud for Malone’s benefit, “and we are no closer to understanding what they are, who sent them or why. They appear to be totally inert and have ignored every attempt to communicate with them.”

     He scanned ahead through the text, flipping through the pages of translated notes. Every so often he returned to the original magazine, turning the fragile pages carefully. Almost every page had pictures on it showing images of the fallen civilisation in impossible clarity, as if he were looking through a window at a moment frozen in time.

     He scanned ahead through the text, flipping through the pages of translated notes. Every so often he returned to the original magazine, turning the fragile pages carefully. Almost every page had pictures on it showing images of the fallen civilisation in impossible clarity, as if he were looking through a window at a moment frozen in time. "I wonder what lost technology was responsible for this," he muttered to himself. "Never mind that. Mustn't get sidetracked."

     He returned his attention to Malone. “It speaks of several of the objects being attacked and destroyed,” he said. “Not even that provoked a reaction from the others.”

     “I’ve never seen anything like them,” said Malone. “They’re clearly Radiant in nature, but they don’t make things like that now.”

     The Brigadier nodded distractedly. “The author speculates on whether the objects are connected with the something crisis. There's a word that doesn't translate, but Parcellius’ assistant put in a footnote saying that, from other pieces of text elsewhere, it seems to refer to the loss of their ability to procreate.”

     “They couldn't adopt? Couldn't form parent bonds with animals?”

     “He would have said so if it was that. I think it refers to their original way of procreating themselves. Something to do with their different anatomy.” He turned the pages of the original magazine until he found a picture of a crowd of people. Some of them were small, less than half the height of the others. “They didn't adopt animals. Somehow, they produced small humans that grew, but then they lost the ability to do so.” He leafed through the pages of translated notes. “Not just them but all animals. Every form of life was separate, with no adoption between species.”

     “But the coming of those things stopped that somehow.”

     “So it would seem. The timing cannot be a coincidence, it says. Is this an attack on our world, or an unintended side effect of their presence? There are articles here, discussions between different experts. One arguing one side of the debate, one arguing the other. One thing they seem to agree on is their low opinion of the visitors, though. Either they’re hostile, incompetent or simply uncaring. They may not be the product of intelligent beings at all, this chap says. They may be the cosmic equivalent of seed pods, spread by mindless organisms operating solely on instinct. In whichever case, he says, this is not what we expect from a mature, responsible civilisation.”

     The merchant, meanwhile, was staring at the pictures in the magazine. “This is the civilisation of the Hetin folk?” He said. “Is that a ship? Gods, look at the size of it!”

     The Brigadier ignored him. “Here’s something. They speak of a new form of life they’ve found. Small creatures made of jelly that eat dead organic matter.”

     “Globs!” exclaimed Malone. “So there were no globs before that?”

     “It says they multiply by...” He squinted at the unfamiliar words. “Binary fission. Hmm. Never heard those words before, but they’re written as if they're nortine words so they must mean something. We know that globs split in half, forming two new creatures, when they get big enough. Binary, yes, that fits. The author of this article describes it as if it’s something strange and unusual, though.”

     “I bet those things...” Malone tapped the image of the huge, fruit like objects on the front cover. “... brought the globs. That’s why they don’t care if they’re destroyed, because they’ve already done what they were sent to do. They’re like discarded pods that have scattered their seeds. I bet the Radiants themselves came later, after the civilisation fell and there was no-one left to fight them.”

     “I believe you may be right,” said the Brigadier. “The author of this article seems to agree with you too. He says he believes it to be a colonisation, although whether by a hostile civilisation or mindless, cosmic vegetables he doesn't know.”

     “By the Radiants!” said Malone. “They came later, after the Hetin civilisation had fallen, when there was no chance of organised resistance. They changed the world to suit themselves. Destroyed a civilisation so they could move in.”

     “This speaks of efforts to wipe out the globs,” continued the Brigadier, still reading. “They searched them out, collected them up and incinerated them, but they were everywhere. In every damp corner. All over the world. They tried creating new diseases to kill them...”

     “They could create new diseases?” cried Malone. The merchant also looked up at that. Most of what his two guests were talking about made very little sense to him, but that caught his attention.

     “Apparently. It speaks here of being hopeful of creating a glob plague to wipe them all out. They hoped that, once they were all gone, they would be able to procreate again. That, apparently, turned out to be a false hope.”

     The Brigadier stared ahead at nothing, his eyes unfocused. "Imagine what the last days of their civilisation must have been like," he said, mostly to himself. "With no way to procreate themselves, they faced extinction. There would have been the total collapse of their social order as their population fell, the oldest people dying without new people to replace them. The cessation of agriculture would have soon followed, and then famine, with rival factions fighting over the remaining resources. It would have been a global nightmare. A seemingly eternal nightmare from which the only escape would have been starvation or being killed by their enemies. I know from first hand experience what that's like. Many times during my career as a soldier I've seen civilians living in miserable squalor after their land has been torn apart with war. Nowadays, there are usually nearby regions unaffected by war that can take in refugees and send aid, but if the whole world was falling into chaos..."

     He looked again the images of their civilisation at its height. "How proud and noble they look," he said. "The procreation crisis was already worrying them, apparently, but you can see the hope and optimism in their faces. This was a problem that would be solved, they thought. Their scientists and wise men would find an answer and their civilisation would survive to reach even greater heights. At what point had the truth finally dawned on them, I wonder? What had it done to them when that confidence and optimism had finally been crushed? The shock, the unbelieving astonishment... It touches my soul in a way that few things ever have, Malone. It makes me feel a great wave of pity for those poor, doomed people."

     “They didn’t just destroy a civilisation,” he added. “They wiped out all the higher life forms of this world. Everything and everyone today grew from globs. You, me, the birds in the air, the fish in the sea. We are not descended from survivors of the Hetin civilisation, as we thought. We are descended from the invaders.”

     “Is there anything in there about the globs becoming adopted by worms and insects?” asked Malone.

     “Not that I've found so far, but there's a lot in here. It would take hours to read it all. I'm guessing that this edition was published before any adoption took place, or at least before anyone noticed. Eventually, though, the shorter lived creatures, those that only live for a year or so, would have died out entirely, replaced by identical creatures that were, in fact, transformed globs. Gradually the glob creatures moved up the rungs of life until they became human. I wonder how many of the original humans were left by then. And they would all have been old, nearing the end of their lives. It might have been a close thing. If it had taken the globs longer to climb the rungs of life, the last humans would have died before there were any glob horses, glob dogs, glob goats and so on for them to adopt."

     “And then, when all the original humans had been replaced by glob humans, the Radiants would finally have moved in,” guessed Malone. “They take us to become new Radiants. They destroyed a world to make a Radiant farm, and we’re the crop.”

     “They killed millions, maybe hundreds of millions,” said the Brigadier. “They're capable of a callousness and brutality we’ve never suspected before. That's what they didn't want us to find out, and if they think we're a threat, they’ll wipe our civilisation out the same way. Keep just a few humans as breeding stock so they’ll still have people to adopt.”

     “So we can’t tell anyone?”

     “The King and his ministers will have to know, but no-one else. If it becomes widely known, the Radiants will fear a reaction from us, They’ll fear that we'll attack them. To protect themselves, they'll destroy our civilisation with storms and earthquakes.” He rose from his chair and paced across the room. “The reason the Radiants are afraid of us is that there's a way we can hurt them. We have to find it. Find their weakness, the place where they’re vulnerable. Then, when we're able to fight back, we can work out some kind of relationship with them. Make them treat us with respect. I see no reason why we can't share this world in peace, once we show them that we have the power to defend ourselves. We have to show them that what they did to Tollbine cannot, and will not, be tolerated.”

☆☆☆

     As promised, the staret allowed them to load up a pair of packhorses with a selection of Hetin artefacts before leaving. The Brigadier mainly chose books, including the ones Parcellius' assistant had translated, but he also took a few nude statuettes showing the anatomical differences possessed by the Hetin folk and a few of the inexplicable objects whose purpose they couldn't begin to guess, in case they used technologies that their scientists might be able to unlock one day.

     Outside, they saw that the whole town had gathered for the sacrifice lottery. An elderly woman, flanked by two large, strong men, was turning a large wooden drum into which another woman would occasionally reach to take out a folded piece of paper. They watched in silent horror as the second woman read out the name on the paper, after which a man in the crowd walked meekly forward to take his place among the others already chosen.

     “Isn't he going to protest or something?” asked Malone.

     “It is a great honour to be selected,” replied the merchant. “His parents and siblings will be greatly respected after this.”

     “What if he’s got an adopted animal, only half raised?”

     “Townspeople with half raised animals are exempt from the lottery. As are people too important in society. People the town can't function without.”

     “Which would be the rich and powerful, I expect.”

     “Malone,” warned the Brigadier. “We are guests here. We must respect their customs.” He turned to the merchant. “How will they be executed?”

     “Quickly and painlessly. We are not barbarians. They eat a few yama berries after which they fall into a peaceful sleep. Then we open their veins and leave their bodies for the scavengers.”

     “You don't put them into a glubularium? Let them go back into the earth?”

     “If we did, if there was a chance they might be human again one day, then it wouldn’t be a proper sacrifice. We have to show the Gods that we are genuinely sorry for the damage we are doing to the natural world.”

     “Yes, of course. Well, thank you for all your help. We will be sure to tell King Leothan all that you've done for us.”

     “It was my pleasure. Have a safe journey back home.”

     As they rode their horses through the town gates and out into the forest, Malone looked back one last time. The lottery was over and the chosen ones were being bedecked with garlands of flowers while family and loved ones said their last goodbyes. None of the chosen ones looked particularly unhappy, he noticed. Some of them looked a little put out, a little resentful, as if they were to suffer nothing more than an unexpected interruption to their busy day, but the rest were glowing with pride and happiness.

     “It’s as if they don't know they’re going to die,” he said.

     “They know,” replied the Brigadier. “They've just been conditioned to think of it as something positive, rather than a bad thing. Their whole society has conditioned itself. This may be a good thing, though. It may save them. So long as they think that the volcano was made to erupt by their Gods, and not by the Radiants, so long as they think that the goat girl was deluded, the Radiants have no reason to harm them. Now listen, Malone. This is very important. We must tell no-one what we’ve found out. No-one except the King. No trying to convince everyone we meet. Do you understand?”

     “Yes, Sir.”

     “Good. Now forget about those poor people back there and think about what you're going to make us for supper tonight.”