“Very good. See, here is Enge who has come to be with you, to admire how well you are. Quiet there will be no pain-accompaniment.”

Ambalsi gently removed the nefmakel that covered and protected the stump of Ichikchee’s leg. The Sorogetso shivered but made no protest.

“Look,” Ambalsi ordered. “Gaze with admiration.”

Enge bent to look at the puckered flesh of the stump where flaps of skin had been folded over the exposed bone. In the center was a yellowish growth of some kind. It meant nothing to her. But she dared not say so and bring Ambalasi’s ready wrath down upon her again.

“It heals well,” she said finally. “Ambalasi is a mistress of the healing science. The amputation not only heals but there, in the center, something emerges. Can it be object-of-admiration?”

“It certainly can be—but in your ignorance I cannot expect you to appreciate its significance. That is a new foot growing there, a yellow-mottled foot on a green Sorogetso who is a head shorter than we are. Does any of the awesome importance of this penetrate the solid bone of your skull to the submicroscopic brain that sleeps inside?”

Enge swallowed the insult, always the wisest course if communication were necessary with Ambalasi. “Importance-not-understood. Ignorance admitted.”

“Close attention demanded. Earlier theories discarded. Forget any mention of plate tectonics or continental drift. That period of separation is far too large. I doubted it first when I discovered that we could communicate with the Sorogetso, even at a basic and primitive level. Tens of millions of years cannot separate our species, even a million years is too great. We may appear superficially different, but genetically we are one. Or that foot would not be growing. The mystery deepens. Who are the Sorogetso—and how come they here?”

Enge made no attempt to answer, knowing that the elderly scientist’s unfocused eyes were looking through her, beyond her, at wonders of knowledge she could scarcely imagine.

“It disturbs me. I sense dark experiments that should not have been done. I have found evidence of failed experiments before this, but more often in the seas than on the land, work that has gone astray, ugly creatures that should never have been born. You must realize—not all scientists are like me. There are warped minds as well as warped bodies in this world.”

Enge was horrified at the thought. “Such a thing cannot be.”