"By itself, a green worm is an interesting anomaly. Now I'm going to start showing you some other anomalies. At first, you're not going to see that there's any relationship, and you're probably going to wonder, what's the point of all this? Bear with me. It's worth the effort. But it won't make sense unless you follow all the intermediate steps along the way.
"All right, here-" I punched up the next cycle. "These shots were all made in Coari. These are Coari bunnydogs. They're short, they're squat, they're rubbery and cute. Okay-and these are Coari bunnymen. As you can see, the two most obvious differences between bunnydogs and bunnymen are fur and personality.
"Bunnydogs are usually fluffy pink, sometimes red or brown, and they're always very playful. Bunnymen look like cadaverous naked rats, and they have personalities to match. They're very nasty animals-and they're vicious. Here's the kicker-they're the same species. A bunnyman is a bunnydog without hair. Except it isn't hair-it's more of the neural symbionts, the same ones that live in the gastropedes.
"Now I'm going to put up the rest of the pictures. Please notice the wide discrepancy of sizes and shapes. Interesting, right? Does it mean anything? Well… suppose we were to show you pictures of cocker spaniels, Great Danes, collies, German shepherds, chihuahuas, bulldogs, poodles, English sheepdogs, Irish setters, and Chinese Shar-Peis; and suppose we were to tell you that they were all dogs and could all interbreed freely. If you'd never seen any dogs before, you might find this a little hard to believe. So we looked at these pictures of the bunnydogs and the bunnymen and assumed that perhaps, like dogs, they were capable of expressing a wide range of forms.
"Then we noticed something very interesting." I brought up the next set of pictures and put them side by side on the screens. "These bunnydog pictures were all made four to six years ago…" And waited for their reactions. It took a moment, but pretty soon they began to see it.
"Right," I said, "The bunnydogs we're seeing today are showing a much wider range of phenotypes than the ones we saw when they were first discovered. Why? What's going on? Where are these new expressions coming from? No, not yet." I waved down some hands. "Just let me show the footage.
"These are libbits. I know they look like pigs, but they're not. For one thing, most of their weight is carried on their haunches. Their forelegs are really arms, used mostly for balance, and a little bit of picking up and carrying, and they're much thinner than the hind legs. Look at the thickness there. Here's one sitting down and using her hands to eat. If it weren't for her piglike snout, she'd look like a teddy bear. Libbits are all female. As most of you know, they're actually the female form of the bunnydog. Looking at them, it's hard to believe, but we've actually bred them in captivity. Depending on how many fathers, you either get a litter of libbits or a litter of bunnydogs; you never get a mixed litter.
"Okay, these first shots are libbits living at the Oakland farm. We captured these specimens three years ago. In all that time, we've noticed no metamorphoses among any of them; but here-in these photos from Coari-these libbits are definitely different. And these are differences that we've never seen anywhere before. Look at the thickness of the legs, the length of the torso, the roundness of the body, the shape of the head-these libbits are as fat and sluggish as jellypigs. Is it a difference in diet? Is this the effect of living in a mandala? Or is it a more profound change. We just don't know.
"All right. Let's move on. This next shot was actually taken inside one of the tunnels of the Coari nest. We sent a badger down one of the tunnels to see how far it could go. It ended up in one of those funny dead-end chambers. There was a baby gastropede at the bottom; it tried to eat the badger and the probe was destroyed. However, on the way down, we did get this footage. Yes, some of you may recognize; this is a snuffler. No, this is not Voltaire's famous 'featherless biped.' To some people, though, it does kind of resemble a reporter at a press breakfast. A big mouth and no head.
"Here, let me show you some better shots taken from the Rocky Mountain mandala. The snufflers seem to be some kind of two-legged lizard. Essentially, what you have here is a fat snake, or maybe a leather-skinned slug, that walks on two bird-like legs. Instead of a head, the neck ends in a soft, snuffly-looking mouth, extremely well articulated. The eyes are on the ends of those little stalks that ring the neck. The brain is apparently in the thorax. The creatures are usually tan or gray, they almost always have patterns of red, orange, or purple markings along their backs and sides. We've seen them as small as chickens, and as large as ostriches.
"Okay, now let me go back to the Coari pictures. Do you see the difference? The legs on this creature are almost atrophied. It's longer and its mouth seems to be articulated differently. We've been seeing snufflers in nests almost as long as we've been seeing bunnydogs. We've never seen one like this before.
"This shot is a family of ghouls, popularly known as gorps. Notice the postures. Notice the proportions. Okay-now this shot; this is the one we have at the special holding facility in Alameda. See the difference? Let me go back and forth between the two. The Alameda specimen is sloth-like, so are most of the ones we've seen prowling through Texas and Mexico. The Amazon ghouls, by comparison, look deformed. They're darker, bigger, and much more barrel-chested. Their heads are slung lower, their necks are thicker, their arms and upper-torso musculature are much more developed. Their features look… melted. Again, what's going on here? Which is normal? Which is abnormal? Or are both types wrong?
"Now these pictures-these are millipedes. These three fellows are living at the Oakland farm; they're three of the oldest living millipedes we have in captivity. In fact-yes, they are. I collected these three specimens myself on one of my first missions with the Special Forces. Look at them, they look like pythons. They're almost beautiful. All right, now look at some of the millipedes we've photographed around the Coari mandala. Some of these have red bellies like the ones in Oakland. Some have black bellies. Does it mean anything? We've seen a lot of black-bellied millipedes in areas where there are feral worms and a lot of red-bellied millipedes where there are socialized worms. Okay, now-look at these millipedes, photographed in a Coari corral. They're longer. They're thicker. Their mouth structures are different. And we've got both red-bellies-here—and black-bellies—as you see here in this other shot. Is this a new species? Or a variation on an existing form?
"All right. I think you're starting to see the pattern. Now, let's look at worms for a bit. This is important. Here are worms from all over North America. Pay attention to the mouths. Notice, we see mandibles, we see external teeth. Notice the antennae, notice the eyes, notice this structure that we call the brain-bulge, notice the arms. Okay. Coari again. Here, some of these worms have no antennae. Some have no mandibles or external teeth. Here's one with no arms. Here's one with almost no brain-bulge. We know these are worms-they're big and red and furry. Or are they? They all have the Coari pattern of striping. Or do they?
"Here are some worms with-" I stopped, turned, and stared at the screen far a moment, startled at my own realization. "-Excuse me. I'm sorry. I just realized something. Um. I was going to say-these worms you're seeing, they have a barely visible pattern of white stripes, which we've never seen before-except we have. That's what I just realized." I shook my head in conscious embarrassment, I ran a hand through my hair, I felt naked in front of the room. I looked to Lizard. She was looking at me puzzledly. There was nothing to do but explain.