100 million years hence Obsidian-plated pagodas towered in the mist, beaded with condensation. Knots of vegetation fountained up into the silver sky, dotted with dark flowers like open wounds. Carefully delimited ponds of brackish water formed perfect geometric designs on the lowest level of the city, shaded by mangrove-like buildings dripping with moss. Several breeds of burden beasts flapped their moist wings, some slow and majestic, some minute and darting, all laden with parcels and tablets. Many of those tablets bore messages of grief. The warriors of the city had been away for many months, shedding their blood in a distant plain, leav

5000 years hence Some worlds were stranger than others. Girdled by the orbit of three icy moons, Rama shone yellow and green on the emptiness of space. Over a thousand years before, its colonial population had stood at the crossroads between changing their world for themselves and changing themselves for their world, as any other; they had reached their domain crossing asteroids stained with the blood of civilizations torn apart by violence. A philosopher of the yellow plains had reached an astounding yet obvious conclusion: as the protists rolling in the primaeval chaos of the Archaean lagoons had associated into multicellular bodies that