“When she fell here, however, life was already present: intelligent, self-aware life. It was not life arising by differentiation and selection, which we are more familiar with. The life here had developed around suboceanic vents and had grown by ramification and accumulation. It was and is, I should think, a fractal sort of creature which recapitulates in each part or group of parts the structure of the whole. In any case, most life on this world is one giant living thing that permeates the outer layer of this planet, a thing called Kaorugi, the Builder, one single being who is able to detach and reattach quasi-independent parts of itself. Though some of the detachable parts were very simple ones, created to be merely self-replicating food items for other parts, all the other detachable parts have some intelligence, and some are self-aware to the extent that they have their own cultures and systems of artistic expression. The Timmys, for example. The Joggiwagga. The Corojumi.”
“The Timmys,” whispered Mouche.
“Indeed. The Timmys, who, according to Bao and Ellin, were shaped differently prior to mankind’s arrival, and who were reshaped as erect bipeds only after mankind arrived on this world. They were made to look like mankind so that mankind would accept their presence. The entire life system, Kaorugi, is everywhere within the crust of this world, in the caves, in the tunnels, in and beneath the oceans, upon the surface, making up forests, pastures, and wildernesses. Since the separate animate parts are all parts of Kaorugi, there is no predator-prey food chain; strong does not eat weak; large sentient things do not live on small sentient ones; all things take their nourishment from sun, air, water, and the flying, sprouting, or swimming things, the self-reproducing, unconscious lifeforms Kaorugi has designed to serve as nourishment and habitat for its roaming parts. These unconscious parts are prolific and were created to have no sense of fear or pain.
“On this world, nature is not raw and violent. The green or violet or blue hair of the Timmys, the bright fur of the Corojumi serve the same function as leaves on plants, to draw energy from the sun. On this world, everything lives for the purpose of everything, and when a part wears out, it returns to that pond we see in the caldera, a place or organ called the Fauxi-dizalonz, and is there reconstituted.”
“You’re describing Eden,” said D’Jevier, wonderingly.
Questioner nodded. “One might say, Eden, yes. Obviously, there is none of the inevitable agony and terror that a food chain implies. Accidents, however, can happen even in Eden, and the intelligent, nonfood creatures of this world have an aversive reaction to being maimed or mangled, just as we do, though they may fear it less, for they know if they are rendered nonfunctional they can be returned to the Fauxi-dizalonz to be healed or remade.
“When Kaorugi became aware of the Quaggi—before the fall—Kaorugi recognized pain and responded to it with what we might call pity or empathy or perhaps only curiosity. The Quaggi called upon certain Quaggian deities by their attributes. Kaorugi had parts with those attributes, so Kaorugi deputized them to make a place for Quaggima and ease her suffering. It is this sympathetic effort that is memorialized in the song you all heard as children.
“In that song and others, Bofusdiaga is called the death defier, the burrower of walls, the singer of the sun. We know this crater next to us was prepared for Quaggima, but Quaggima’s falling created a much larger hole, displacing a great mass of rock that promptly fell on top of her. She was buried, shut off from the sunlight that nourishes her. Now we see that the stones have been removed. Now we see holes burrowed through the rim of this cal-dera where great lenses and mirrors are set to focus and reflect sunlight upon her.”
“She’s still here?” cried Ellin. “Where?”
“There,” said Questioner, gesturing. “She is there, stretched up from the abyss, covering half that great crevasse, her wings exposed to the light.”
“There?” asked Calvy in an awed tone, pointing at the black, shining surface of the pit. “Those are her wings?”