The second part of Nativism reflected an odd prejudice that Duncan had tried to refute in his own book: most historians (and laypeople) thought of and wrote about the gray caps as if they represented a natural phenomenon, as immutable, faceless, and unpredictable as the weather, and, therefore, best understood in the aggregate, like the change of seasons or a bad thunderstorm. (Would that the Nativists had treated the gray caps like weather and tried to divine, from certain signs—a lowering of the temperature, a particular type of cloud, a strange hot wind—what the gray caps had planned for us.)

As Duncan wrote in his book so many years ago:

Looking back at all of Ambergris’s many historical accounts, the answers to three basic yet profound questions are always missing: (1) in the absence of a strong central government, how does Ambergris manage to avoid fragmentation into separate, tiny city-states? (2) What cause could there possibly be for the fluctuating levels of violence and personal property damage experienced during the Festival? (3) Given the presence of members of over one hundred contradictory religions and cults in the city, what prevents occurrences of holy war?

For Duncan, the answers always returned to the gray caps, who, by use of hidden influence (the first physical manifestation being Frankwrithe & Lewden’s use of fungal weapons) and a multitude of carefully engineered “spore solutions,” kept the population balanced between anarchy and control. To Duncan, this meant that it served the gray caps’ interests for Ambergris to lurch ever forward, never truly disintegrating or cohering, but instead always on the edge, teetering.

However, Mary and her Nativists refused to believe in conscious gray cap machinations. In an article for Ambergris Today, Mary wrote:

Time and again, apologists blame the gray caps for our own follies and misdeeds. Such a position abrogates personal responsibility and is as irresponsible as those religions that attribute deeds to the sun, moon, or sea. We are, ultimately, responsible for our own actions, our own history, and our own happiness. I do not refute any claim that the gray caps are vile and degenerate creatures, or that they have not influenced our city in a negative way. But they have not done so with intent. Their story is not that of an overarching conspiracy, of careful control over centuries, but instead the pitiful tale of a subjugated race that acts with the same instinct and lack of planning as any of the lower animals. For us to confer intent upon them—or to seek intent from them—turns us into victims, unable to fashion our own destinies. I reject such crackpot ideology.

Mary mercilessly picked away at any attempt to prove that the gray caps had exhibited conscious thought or causality, no matter how minor. For example, in a letter to the editor for a broadsheet, Duncan wrote about what appeared to him to be a side effect of the gray caps’ efforts: (I did not. I considered these effects to be as intentional as all of the overt harm done to us by the gray caps.)