Her disdain for the hegemony of male scholarship reminded Pilgrim of his friend Swift Singletree. But while Swift’s scorn was rooted in hurt and anger, Teal was at ease with her rebellion against society’s expectations, confident that she was more than a match for any man who shared her chosen field of research.

In another conversation, the two of them sitting in the library with a fire in the hearth and lamplight gleaming on the spines of the old books and snow falling outside the windows, they discussed the implications of the possibility that the visitors had made contact with bears. Whether the so-called new cities had benefited from gifts of advanced techne, or whether the visitors had favoured the new cities because their inhabitants – philosophers, mathematicians, engineers and artisans who kept no slaves, believed that the world was animated by spirits and made exquisite jade jewellery and glass-like ceramics that no one had been able to duplicate – had been more advanced than the rest of their species.

Or perhaps the figure on the map had nothing to do with the visitors, Teal said, but was some kind of storied demon, or a bear in ceremonial costume with a glancing resemblance to the descriptions given by witnesses. Pilgrim said that he had wondered about that too, and wanted to look for examples of similar figures in the friezes and panels excavated from new cities and stored in the Library of All People.

He told Teal about his grandfather’s work as a bear trapper, his belief that bears were smarter than most people thought. ‘He claimed that when one bear worked out how to spring a trap, the idea quickly spread through the local population. Said that they scratched marks on the trunks of trees that other bears examined as if reading a wallsheet, and thought that the songs they sing to advertise their territories might be remnants of their ancient culture. He tried to talk to some of the bears he trapped, too. Claimed that they were either too stubborn to play along, or didn’t believe that people had anything worth saying to them. But I really do think that the bear in the pit was trying to talk to us. That it was pleading for its life, or asking for mercy and a quick death.’