"Um, if you've seen my report on last week's operation in Northern Mexico, then you'll see I drew a wrong conclusion. In that report, I said that three socialized worms had killed a feral one. I said that they recognized it was feral by its faint white stripes, which we'd never seen before. Now I'm looking at this footage, and I'm beginning to think that the white-striped worm was the socialized one, and the three worms that killed it were probably feral. Or were they? I don't know. I'm definitely going to have to file an addendum to that report." I glanced over to Lizard helplessly. "I'm not complaining, mind you, but we are definitely getting a tidal wave of information here; much faster than we can assimilate it. Anyway…" I turned back to the rest of the room. "At this point, we have no idea what the white stripes mean-except that we're seeing them in Coari and in Japura, and I don't know where else. I have no idea if there are white-striped worms in Purus, we're checking into that.

"Okay. Now, let's get a little closer to the punch line. Take a look at this footage. I'm not going to tell you where it's from or what these animals are. Not immediately. See if you can figure it out for yourself. Yes, Dr. Shreiber?"

"This is a new Chtorran species, right?"

"Why do you think that?"

"The red fur. Only-" She stopped herself. "No. That's not right. There aren't any four-legged Chtorran species. Not shaped like this. You know what these things look like-?" Her face went suddenly pale.

"Go on," I urged.

She swallowed hard. "They can't be."

"They are," I said. There were too many puzzled looks still in the room. I was going to have to explain this. "Some of the natives living in the mandala apparently brought their cattle with them. Last year, the Coari mandala had two herds of sheep and a small herd of cattle. At that time, all the animals in the herds looked normal. These pictures were taken last week. What you're looking at here is a cow and her calf. Notice the bright red fur-again, the neural symbionts. Also notice that the cow's legs seem shorter and thicker than normal; notice that the same deformity is even more pronounced in the calf."

I moved to the next set of pictures. "These are the sheep," I said. The reaction in the room was a wave of honor and shock. Several people stood up, terribly frightened, looking around as if for an exit. I glanced over to Lizard. She lifted her palm off her lap and made a barely noticeable "be-patient" gesture. Wait, she was saying. Let them have their reactions. I nodded. I lowered my eyes for a bit. I felt like I was invading their privacy. Finally, I looked up again. I said, "Please-please take your seats. There's one more set of pictures."

They looked at me disbelievingly. I'd hit them, and then I'd hit them again-and now I'd just told them that I was going to hit them one more time. They looked betrayed. They looked terrified.

"Please sit down, all of you." I waited. There were disturbed murmurings in the room. I held up a hand for silence-and amazingly, they fell silent and resumed their seats. "This one's going to be the hardest of all," I said, and clicked right into it immediately. The picture came up on the screens like an accusation. "That's an Indian girl," I said. "And no, she does not have a glandular problem. That was our first thought too. Our second thought was that she was morbidly obese. But then we identified her from these photos taken in her home village. Her name is Maria Igo. She's fourteen years old. And this is what she looked like last week in the Coari mandala.

"Last year, she was a normal child. This year-notice the thickness of her legs and buttocks. See how short and splayed her legs have become. That isn't rickets. Look at her posture. She's almost libbit-shaped, and she leans forward like she's having trouble carrying her weight upright. And notice also that it looks like her arms are beginning to atrophy. The breasts-yes, she is pregnant, but that kind of swelling still isn't normal. Her chest measurement has got to be at least two hundred centimeters. No, we don't know what those swirling patterns of lines on her arms and legs might be. We think they're tattoos, but they don't match any of the known Indian styles. Here, in this shot, you can also see that some of the lines extend up onto the skin of her back and belly. If it's some kind of Chtorran thing, we don't know what it is or what causes it. We've never seen it before. And, of course, you can't miss the light coat of pinkish fur. She's just got a downy fringe, but in some of the other shots, you'll see more extreme growth. Neural symbionts? Probably. We're not sure.

"Some of you are thinking this is some kind of a bizarre fluke, aren't you?" I left the question hanging unanswered while the pictures of poor little Maria Igo span out across the screens. "That's what we were hoping too when this footage first popped up. Then the LIs started pulling up all the other anomalies. Here, judge for yourselves. These are the pictures we haven't put up on the network yet." I wished I could close my eyes as the new images began cycling up on the screens, but I forced myself to look, to participate, to be part of the horror again. "Most of these are young women and children," I said. "The women all share the same pattern of deformities; so do the little girls. The little boys-here's one now-no, this is not a bunnydog. That is a six-year-old boy. He has bright red fur, and yes, he is sexually mature. In this next set of pictures, you'll see that his penis is shockingly huge-yes, here he is, copulating with one of the young women. At the risk of sounding salacious, it appears that they are both fairly experienced. This is obviously not the first time for either of them." I counted silently to three and then switched off all the screens and brought the lights up.

I took a breath. I looked out across the room at their devastated faces. "I am now going to tell you what I think we've just seen. Only General Tirelli, Dr. Zymph, and the President of the United States have seen these pictures. We are all agreed on the need for extreme secrecy here. I am now going to tell you what we think these pictures mean-and I hope to God I'm wrong. I hope that somebody in this room will come up with another explanation, a better one-so I can be wrong about this.

"What we're seeing here, all these metamorphoses of the various Chtorran species, is not mutation or adaptation or genetic defects or even natural variation within a species. No. What we're seeing here is the deliberate transformation of species into new forms. I said deliberate. That implies that there is some agency behind it. Yes, I think there is. Is it an intelligent agency, or is it some kind of phenomenon that only occurs when a mandala reaches a certain size and population density reaches a certain point? I don't know. But the evidence of these pictures is that the mandala somehow operates on its inhabitants to transform them according to its needs. There are no exceptions.

"Some of us have fallen into the habit of talking about the worms as if they're the real Chtorrans, the intelligence behind this infestation. If they are-and it hasn't been proven yet-then we're dealing with a species that isn't afraid to remodel itself according to its needs.

"What this footage demonstrates is that whatever Chtorran agency is causing these transformations, it is equally willing and able to effect major transformations in human biology as well." I looked into their terrified eyes and wished I could be anywhere else. "This is the real future of humanity in the mandala."