Only water was visible, at first, dancing with motes that might have been organic or just dirt. But as they moved away from the shore, the living light penetrated further through clearing water. Still no fish came to investigate; no leviathan moved in the depths. Beneath them, the sea floor fell away in steep shelves, and every surface was covered with a grander form of the life they’d seen on land. Grander, but not by much. True, these varieties were not as dried out and gristly as the hardy terrestrial strains, but the patchwork organization was the same. Cam seemed to be gliding over a broken carpet of folds and intricate whorls. The interlocking quilt-plants, if that was what they were, were packed closely now—it was hard to know where the boundary lay between two neighbours—and the occasional weed-like flag curled slowly in the turbulence Cam created. Under the light all was greenish-grey, almost unpigmented.

Then the sea floor levelled out, Cam’s lamps grew stronger, and they found themselves staring at…just more of the same.

“Are you sure this is still Earth?” Lee asked in a small voice.

Kay looked on thoughtfully, remembering. She’d been a wide reader, scientifically, back in the day, with a shallow purchase on many fields that had little to do with her own. Before she’d worked out who she really was, it had been her major escape.

“This is familiar,” Cam said, and she nodded thoughtfully.

“Have you any records I can look up?” she asked. “Our timeline’s records?”

“Of course,” it told her, and she rattled off her requirements quickly.

As everyone else goggled down at the organic plain below, Kay scrutinized the information picked out in tiny limbs between Cam’s hands. She tapped on individual entries for more information, as though it was her personal touch screen.

Abruptly the avatar changed stance, standing more heavily, its feet spread further and the shoulders rolling forwards. In just a few motions it conveyed the impression of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, one of the Cousins. When it buzzed again, Kay could pick out a creditable impression of Murther’s voice speaking their own mumbling language. A transmission from one of the other Wayfarers.

“She says—” Stig started, but Auruthmer tilted her head and he fell silent, acknowledging her greater expertise in the field of speaking down to humans.

“What we are seeing is known to us, Murther says.” Auruthmer cocked her head. “This superficially resembles what we know about some very early life on Earth.”

“Ediacaran biota,” Kay finished for her. “That’s our word for it. Very early multicellular life, which came before almost everything else, way before anything like Cam even. Although we could be looking at something entirely independent that only happens to look like it.”

“We’ve gone back in time?” Lee tried.