Charen tilted her head. “They are paying an interest. What that means is beyond my ability to guess at present. I hope to act as an intermediary though, if circumstances permit. Does this change your minds at all?”

Lee and Mal exchanged one quick glance, and they both shook their heads.

“Good.” Charen’s indistinct face was smiling. “We who have been to the ends of the Earths and returned…we have many leagues further to travel.”

An eye blink later, there was just Stig, standing outside the domed house in the rain.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Andrew McGrouther for assistance with police procedure.

Simon Roy and Memo Koseman for their “dinosauroids,” which were (with permission) a significant inspiration for this book.

Brian Third for advice on computer intrusions and hacking.

Maxwell Barclay, Dr. Megan Williams, Dr. Emily Mitchell, Michael Czajkowski and @JUNIUS_64 for their advice on matters palaeontological and biological.

Olivia Michaud and Eliska Bejrova for a tour of the Mount Pleasant Mail Rail system.

Also:

Stephen Jay Gould for his always inspirational Wonderful Life.

Curtis Congreve, Amanda Falk and James Lamsdell of the podcast Palaeo After Dark. Autun Purser for his superb artwork. John VandenBrooks of Arizona State University.

And the usual suspects, who have held my hand and allowed me to get away with this sort of thing for years: Annie, my wife, Simon Kavanagh, my agent, and Bella Pagan and everyone at Pan Macmillan.

And finally:

The staff of my local Cielo and Waterstones cafes for providing such pleasant writing environments. And coffee.

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extras

meet the author

Photo credit: Ante Vukorepa

ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY is the author of the acclaimed ten-book Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series, and other novels, novellas, and short stories including Children of Time (which won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2016) and its sequel, Children of Ruin (which won the British Science Fiction Award in 2020). He lives in Leeds in the UK and his hobbies include entomology and board and role-playing games.

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But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.